The Rod Martin Report

Cruz Endorses Trump!
Trump’s Surge
Black and Foreign Leaders Trash Hillary
More Email: Obama’s Pseudonym
It Feels Like 1980…and Not Necessarily in a Good Way
What Hath Capitalism Wrought?

Dear Friends,

So he finally did it. Yesterday, Ted Cruz endorsed Donald Trump for President.

In a public Facebook post, the Texas Senator and conservative lion wrote:

“In Cleveland, I urged voters, “please, don’t stay home in November. Stand, and speak, and vote your conscience, vote for candidates up and down the ticket whom you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution.”

“After many months of careful consideration, of prayer and searching my own conscience, I have decided that on Election Day, I will vote for the Republican nominee, Donald Trump.

“I’ve made this decision for two reasons. First, last year, I promised to support the Republican nominee. And I intend to keep my word.

“Second, even though I have had areas of significant disagreement with our nominee, by any measure Hillary Clinton is wholly unacceptable — that’s why I have always been #NeverHillary….

“My conscience tells me I must do whatever I can to stop her.”

You can (and should) read the full statement here, in which Ted outlines six key policy differences between Trump and Clinton which absolutely necessitate all possible action to stop her.

Many have already criticized him for “selling out his principles.” But I find that entire idea surreal. Whether or not you like Donald Trump — even if you think he’s the devil — Ted Cruz made a promise to support the Republican nominee.

It was not a throwaway: it was engineered specifically, by the RNC and all of Trump’s opponents, to box in the real estate mogul when he “inevitably” lost the primary and then (as we all feared likely) decided to play the spoiler, spending countless dollars to tank a GOP he thought had wronged him.

So the promise — by every candidate except possibly Trump himself — was utterly self-serving from the very beginning. And more than that, the RNC tied all aid, including data transfers, mailing lists and so forth, to signing the promise. Those who signed the promise — and everyone did — received goods and services in exchange for it.

Breaking the promise was thus absolutely no different from buying a car and refusing to pay.

If anyone could have made that case, it was Ted Cruz. I have written in these pages of my distress at his refusal to keep the pledge at the RNC; however, it was also true that Trump had mistreated Ted’s father and wife in a uniquely ugly way, very different from the sticks-and-stones “manhandling” he gave Jeb! Bush by calling him “low energy”. Ted’s outrage was genuine, and justified.

But breaking his promise was not. Some are saying that Donald Trump is so far beyond the pale that it is “unprincipled” to keep the promise. But a Trump victory was always one of the possibilities, and anyway, what kind of “principle” is it to advocate promise breaking? A promise is a promise.

So because he rose above his personal hurts and kept his promise, even as others like Jeb! and John Kasich have refused to do so, Senator Ted Cruz is once again our Hero of the Week.

*******

Ted’s endorsement comes just before Monday night’s first-ever debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, a cage match if there ever were one. A lot of ink has been spilled on this, but the bottom line is pretty simple. If Trump exceeds expectations he wins (the debate, not the election). If Hillary fails to meet expectations, she loses (ditto).

On the other hand, if both happen, Trump is likely to be elected God-Emperor of Dune.I make no predictions as to that. Both camps are preparing furiously. But that last outcome might be easier than one would think. Trump was supposed to be a sure loser in every GOP primary debate: he held his own just fine, against 16 determined, better-prepared foes. By contrast, Illery – and a corrupt DNC colluding with her – did everything in their power to avoid real primary debates, and to avoid debating in time-slots likely to be seen by…anyone.

Mrs. Clinton is not her husband. Nor is she even as quick on her feet as Mr. Trump. The CW is always that she’s a force of nature in debate, but that proposition is largely untested, and if untested, also unhoned.

Oh, and one prime time seizure or collapse might end her.

*******

Trump’s candidacy, of course, was supposed to be dead and buried in August. The reports of his death were, as I told you then, ludicrously exaggerated.

As of this afternoon, the RCP average is within the margin of error. Rasmussen has Trump +5, Reuters and L.A. Times each have Trump +2, CBS/NYT has it all tied up.

Worried Trump could lose Georgia, as some were fretting last month? Quinnipiac now has Trump +7, Isakson +21. Indeed, Iowa is also now Trump +7, Grassley +12, with Florida Trump +1, Rubio +9, and Colorado – supposedly lost forever – tied.

Fox has Nevada Trump +3 (and GOP Senate nominee Joe Heck +7 to replace Dirty Harry Reid), Ohio and North Carolina Trump +5. The Donald is tied in Maine (!), +11 in Maine’s Second Congressional District (one electoral vote), and within the margin of error in Michigan and Wisconsin. NBC has Trump within the margin of error in New Hampshire, and supposedly-doomed Ayotte +8.

Oh, and one other thing. Even before the Cruz endorsement, Rasmussen finds that more Dems support Trump than Republicans support Clinton. And Trump has a huuuggee lead among Independents, 45% to 27%.

This is despite Democrats outspending Trump and his allies by over five-to-one.

All this, and we’re only two weeks out from Labor Day.

*******

I think most would agree that the biggest single reason for Trump’s resurrection is message discipline, imposed quite effectively by my dear friend Kellyanne Conway.

It’s easy to underestimate the importance of this, which goes far beyond what The Donald has actually been saying. Make no mistake, the mere fact that we clearly see Trump listening to Kellyanne – or to anyone – is a big deal in and of itself. Many of us had questioned whether he was teachable or could control himself at all. Every day of discipline puts those fears further to rest.

It also eats away at fears of Trump’s supposed narcissism and misogyny. Pride-driven woman-haters aren’t likely to self-impose a radical course change based on the nagging of some blonde, no matter how smart she claims to be. They’re even less likely to allow the “little woman” to get the credit.

Kellyanne Conway is not only making Donald Trump the candidate he ought to be. She’s also demonstrating he’s a better man than we thought he was. And in so doing, she’s draining a little more air out of Illery’s tires every day.

*******

So are many of Clinton’s supposed allies.

Ross Douthat, writing in the New York Times, provides possibly the best example of this with his assertion that “leftist scolds” like Samantha Bee, Trevor Noah, John Oliver and Seth Meyers are inadvertently torpedoing Hillary’s candidacy. David Marcus’ piece elaborating on this theme is an absolutely must-read.

But it certainly doesn’t stop there. As you know (because the Enemedia told you so), all Muslims hate Donald Trump. But this week, both Clinton and Trump met separately at the UN with Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and the results were not pretty.

As Breitbart put it, the Egyptian delegation had high praise for Trump, while blasting Clinton (who was Secretary of State when Obama made his famous apology speech in Cairo), expressing “frustration and outrage over the Obama administration’s support of the Muslim Brotherhood and…concern that a Clinton administration would continue to undermine Egyptian efforts to dismantle Brotherhood terrorists attempting to destabilize the Egyptian government.”

But the money quote came from Ahmed Gad, chairman of the Egyptian Parliament’s Foreign Relations Committee:

“I think 90 percent of Egyptians would prefer Trump because he will not cooperate with terrorists.”

Exactly.

*******

Egypt was not Illery’s only foreign policy embarrassment this week. Former Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda declared in Washington that “I know Hillary doesn’t really like Mexico.”

He also said Trump will “easily” be able to make Mexico pay for his wall.

*******

If that weren’t bad enough, Nation of Islam founder Louis Farrakhan dismantled Barack Obama this week. You just have to watch it to believe it.

Farrakhan may not have endorsed Donald Trump. But he certainly underlined the difference between Trump’s attention to the inner city and the Democrats’ empty lip service. If Black Lives Matter so much, why do the over 3,000 shootings in Chicago this year alone not? Democrats have run America’s cities for over a century. You can see the result.

Meanwhile, America’s first elected black governor, Doug Wilder, said this week that Illery is taking the black vote for granted. He wasn’t happy about it.

Mrs. Clinton will need Obama-level black turnout, and an Obama-level percentage of the black vote, to win. Don’t count on her getting it.

*******

For much the same reason that Farrakhan disowned Obama, the Fraternal Order of Police – the nation’s largest police union – just endorsed Trump.

They’re one of the few unions that have. But that may not mean much. Increasingly, union ranks are backing Trump. That certainly accounts for much of the tightening of the race throughout the Rust Belt, and is likely to cost Illery the Presidency.

*******

Colin Kaepernick isn’t helping her either. If anything could highlight and underline the need to “Make America Great Again”, it surely must be the in-your-face anti-Americanism of a bunch of millionaire entertainers hijacking America’s favorite sport for what can only be seen as Democrats’ political agenda.

But Kaepernick’s story is not merely glass-half-full: it’s close to brimming over.The NFL’s ratings are tanking, with the opening game down 8% from 2015, and Sunday’s numbers down a whopping 13%.

All of this is on the heels of news that Donald Trump may actually be outperforming Mitt Romney with Hispanics, and that he’s cut Clinton’s lead with Millennials from 27 points to just 5.

It couldn’t happen to nicer people.

*******

It feels a bit like 1980.

No, I’m not strictly comparing Donald Trump to Ronald Reagan, though the Illery-Carter comparison is more than a bit apt.

As the 1970s closed, America faced a growing assault from within and without, and a President who was committed as a matter of principle to the inevitability – and alleged benefits of – America’s decline.

Then as now, foreign enemies pressed in. America just suffered three terrorist attacks in 24 hours, and the Democrat nominee’s response is to demand we import a million more Middle Eastern “refugees” in her first term. The President’s response was perhaps even more surreal, telling us that America and ISIS are in a “narrative battle.”

Then as now, Democrats pressed against American energy development, when an energy glut – and accompanying economic boom – was within reach.

Then as now, leftist “culture” trashed America constantly, producing no small part of the backlash which gave us Reagan.

*******

Even so, however incompetent he may have been, Jimmy Carter was universally acclaimed an honest man. Today’s Democrats are rather different.

Hillary’s strained relationship with the truth has been a key feature of this campaign from the beginning: you will recall that in several early primary states, of the 34% of Democrats who rated “honest and trustworthy” as their most important reason to vote for a candidate, an incredible 95% voted againstClinton. It’s not just the “Vast Right Wing Conspiracy” that finds her imperfectly forthcoming.

But last night, in yet another late-Friday data dump, the FBI revealed something rather remarkable about the Hildebeast’s boss, in truest “What did the President know and when did he know it” fashion.

When the email scandal blew up, Obama proclaimed he had learned of Clinton’s homebrew server only “from news reports”. But FBI documents show that not only did the President know, he knew years earlier…and he actually corresponded with her about classified information under a pseudonym!

When confronted with this by the FBI, Huma Abedin is documented as having “exclaimed” in shock, “How is this not classified?”

Perhaps worse still, when Clinton requested changes to her email retention policy after the scandal blew open, the internal support ticket actually refers to this as “the Hilary coverup operation”.

More data dumps are coming. This one has not been fully analyzed. But I’ve told you for months: in a race in which both candidates’ negatives are twice as high as any winning candidate’s have ever been, this race will be won by the one who can drive the other’s higher.

Illery is doing Trump’s work for him. And given these new, bizarre revelations about Obummer, she may not be the only person dependent on a Clinton victory to avoid prosecution.

*******

Indeed, everyone’s favorite former Florida Governor Charlie Crist, campaigning this week for the FL-13 Congressional district, told a crowd that Clinton is honest. They laughed.

*******

Speaking of the 1970s, I’m old enough to remember the “scientific consensus” regarding Global Cooling. In fact, in 1978 and 1979, if memory serves, we missed 40 days each year for snow, not in Jackson, Wyoming but in Ozark, Arkansas. This “proved” the need for a socialist “solution”, of course.

The left’s current imitation of King Canute suffered another blow last week, as four peer-reviewed studies found “no observable sea-level effect” from man-made global warming.

No word yet on what new socialism-necessitating disaster will loom before us next.

*******

The left needs to distract us with looming, future disasters. The real disasters – riots in Charlotte, “rapefugees”, Iran and North Korea getting the Bomb – are all their own doing.

Worst example of the week: “Democratic Socialist” Venezuela, where a new study finds that the country – which has the largest, highest quality oil reserves on Earth – is on the brink of famine. Indeed, 15% of Venezuelans now say they eat garbage to survive.

As I said, it feels a bit like 1980.

*******

Will it end like 1980? We shall see.

But if it does, the future is genuinely radiant with hope. Capitalism is, after all, the greatest engine for the reduction of poverty ever invented. And it’s spreading.

Here is the global poverty rate over time. Note how very high it was in the era in which half the world lived under Communism. It’s…changed.

As poverty decreases, which is to say as prosperity increases, everyone lives better and longer. Take food supply per person as just one example. Hunger is increasingly a thing of the past.

Or life expectancy at birth.

Or literacy (and note the spike following the global introduction of that constantly demeaned “luxury” smartphones).

All of which is, once again, a function of economic freedom.

Hillary Clinton promises to reduce that last bit, dramatically. But she can’t do that without taking us backward in those other areas as well.

That simply is not something we can allow. We are on the brink of an era with more promise for advance than all the wonders of the 20th Century from Kitty Hawk to the Internet. Our children’s children will fly to cities in space like we fly across the country, they will live decades longer than we do, and they will look back on us as though we huddled in log cabins.

If we let them. Because we surely have the ability to rob them of their futures.

We must not.

*******

You may have noticed a slight change in the name of this newsletter: we’re “The Rod Martin Report” now. This is intended to match something new we’re about to launch: “The Rod Martin Show.” Stay tuned: you’re going to love it!

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Best wishes,