The key issues in this campaign were not climate change, legalising marijuana, or gay marriage; they were the economy, jobs, immigration, and terrorism

Donald J. Trump … won because he challenged all political convention and every single facet of the establishment

writes Piers Morgan.

He took on his 17 Republican rivals, the Democrats, the print and TV media, Washington and Wall Street elites, and sneering foreign leaders.

Even the Pope copped it when he dared to criticise him.

It wasn’t pretty, and occasionally it was downright ugly.

But it was also astonishingly effective in rallying support from the tens of millions of working class Americans struggling to make ends meet, many of whom who can’t even afford a train ticket to taste the rich and privileged air on the East and West coasts.

 Trump was their billionaire Robin Hood, a man who absolutely understood their cares and concerns and was prepared to stand up and fight for them against the ruling classes who didn’t seem to give a monkey’s cuss about them.

The key issues in this campaign were not climate change, legalising marijuana or gay marriage.

They were the economy, jobs, immigration, and terrorism.

Trump tapped into each of these with clear, defined, loud messages that he rammed home day in day out for 16 months and which grabbed huge media attention.

Love him or hate him, he was constantly speaking about things that Americans really worry about.

He also positioned himself against the corrupt, self-interested, lobby group infested political system that these same Americans feel strongly has enriched itself at their expense.

Hillary Clinton perfectly personified that system; a career politician who has repeatedly fleeced her positions of power to make millions of dollars for herself and her husband, and who carried with her a permanent smug sense of entitlement to be America’s first female president.

I was struck by the sheer scale of cocky complacency which enveloped the Clinton camp in the past few weeks as Election Day approached.

It smacked of precisely the same ‘there’s no way we can possibly lose to these ‘ignorant, racist, sexist Neanderthals’ establishment mentality that provoked Britain into Brexit in June.
Hillary herself dripped with haught, superior arrogance, referring to Trump’s supporters as a ‘basket of deplorables’.

I genuinely don’t think she ever gave any serious thought to losing to someone like Trump, who will now become the only President never to serve in political life or the military.

In that regard, she reminded me of General John Sedgwick, who reassured his Union Army men in the American Civil War as enemy snipers lurked: ‘They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance….’

General Sedgwick was then promptly shot dead before he could finish the sentence.

Hillary got her come-uppance for failing to identify what was really engaging her fellow, less well-off Americans and for constantly mocking those who were attracted to Trump’s outsider appeal.

I watched all the millennials sobbing in shock at her quickly dismantled ‘victory’ party last night and thought: ‘you all only have yourselves to blame.’

I saw them all tweeting their derision at Trump, snorting with incredulous laughter at what they saw as this idiot clown daring to play in their world.

As Trump roared around Middle America rallying the poor, jobless and downtrodden with increasingly powerful speeches offering hope and change, the Clinton brigade were bopping up and down to Hillary’s celebrity mates like Beyoncé, Lady Gaga and Katy Perry all calling her ‘Madam President’ and saying how wonderful she was.

It showed how detached these people all were from the real world.

Their message was clear: ‘Hillary stands for wealth, fame and success.’

That’s fine if you live in mid-town Manhattan or Beverly Hills.

But not if you live in rural Florida, Texas or Pennsylvania, have lost your job, and can’t afford to buy your family enough food.

Trump instinctively got this.

The shock of Trump’s win was too much for many Clinton millennials to bear.

One stopped me in the street in New York late last night and pleaded: ‘Pray for us, please.’

Twitter and Facebook exploded with stunned rage, indignation and horror.

People who I know and respect behaved like this is the end of the world, an Armageddon moment from which the planet will never recover.

Oh pur-lease! Get over yourselves.

Trump’s never been the monster they said he was, just as Hillary has never been the perfect angel they claimed her to be.

 … Trump, against all the odds and mockery, just won the biggest prize of them all.

President Trump: The Blow — and What Comes Next

Sur le plateau d'Infrarouge, les téléspectateurs suisses de RTS ont pu voir un débat très musclé entre Évelyne Joslain, Karen Olson, Micheline Calmy-Rey, Boris Vejdovsky, et Pierre Schifferli sur le choc de l'élection de Trump allant de électeurs de Trump aux promesses électorales…

The secret to Trump’s success is really no secret at all—he flipped the rustbelt states from blue to red

I’m not glad Donald Trump won the election

admits Benny Huang at the Constitution website,

but I’m doing backflips that Hillary Clinton lost. The world’s most arrogant woman was finally made to eat crow and there was nothing her rich friends, her media allies, or her husband could do to stop it. Too distraught for words, she wasn’t even able to deliver the customary concession speech until the next day. My guess is that she was in her hotel room, bawling her eyes out and chugging Jack Daniels straight from the bottle. If only I could have been a fly on the wall for that!

The secret to Trump’s success is really no secret at all—he flipped the rustbelt states from blue to red. That region of the country, once the engine of America’s industrial might, has fallen upon hard times. There are a number of reasons for this, not all of which are accidental.

The American “rust belt” is hard to delineate. For the purposes of this article I’ll define it as Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Michigan, and the western parts of Pennsylvania and New York. This is coal country, steel country, and manufacturing country—or at least it used to be. The people who live there wish it could be again. Besides New York, which is only rusty in the western portion, Clinton won only a single state—Illinois. Barack Obama won six of these eight states in 2012 and seven of these eight in 2008. Without the rust belt, Hillary’s quest for the presidency didn’t stand a chance.

Donald Trump’s populist message certainly resonated in this long-suffering region. Working class people, and particularly working class whites, are sick of being dumped on. They keep hearing about this “white privilege” thing but they’ve never actually seen it. They’ve been searching for an advocate and they found one in Donald Trump. He blamed illegal immigration, and on that issue I’m in complete agreement. Stop the lawlessness now, build a friggin’ wall, and start deporting these intruders before they bankrupt the whole country. Not that I think he’ll do that but I can dream, can’t I? Trump also blamed trade deals such as NAFTA. I’m still on the fence on this one.

Hillary Clinton erred by not realizing until it was far too late that she couldn’t take these people for granted. The Democratic Party is, after all, the traditional home of the working class. In days gone by the electorate divided up along predictable class lines—labor for the Democrats and management for the Republicans. But things are changing. The Democrats have been veering hard left for a long time while their working class supporters have lagged behind, moving leftward but at a much slower pace. Sure, today’s working stiff may accept same-sex marriage as no skin off his back but it doesn’t compel him to the polls. He certainly doesn’t think it’s more important than his job.

Secure as the Democrats thought they were with blue collar workers, they rested on their laurels, prioritizing every other constituency group above them. They pushed hard to get confused men into women’s bathrooms this year–does that tell you something about the party’s agenda? Democrats sided with the illegal aliens, claiming that they do the “jobs Americans won’t do.” Millions of working class Americans knew better. Illegal aliens do the jobs Americans used to do—roofing, drywall, cooking, meatpacking and janitorial work. Americans would surely do those jobs again if employers would hire them but why would they do that? Illegals work harder for less. [The Democrats] joined forces with the environmentalist movement, pursuing unreasonable regulations that make industry cost prohibitive. Joe Sixpack can see that these regulations represent a threat to his livelihood.

Millions of disaffected people decided to switch their votes, or vote for the first time, because they finally heard someone who was speaking to their issues. Trump smashed the bipartisan consensus on trade. When a clear choice emerged, traditional party loyalties were tossed aside. The consensus on illegal immigration was less solid, with Democrats fanatically in favor of amnesty and Republicans standing around sheepishly for fear of being called racist. Some Republicans even collaborated with the Democrats—I’m looking at you, Bush Brothers. Even so, the Republican Donald Trump spoke to this issue and assured workers that there’s nothing racist about not wanting to lose their jobs.

There were some flickers of recognition among the Democrats that the white working class could not be relied upon this election year. Michael Moore (of all people!) predicted Trump’s victory and correctly identified disaffected rust belt voters as the reason. This son of Michigan knew all too well the simmering anger in his own state. Joe Biden, a guy once described as “a good example of a working class kid,” said in July that the Democrats haven’t spoken enough to white working class voters. He thinks they’ve helped them, of course, but he admits that they haven’t spoken to them. Surely the Dems must have known that Hillary wasn’t polling well in the rust belt.

Even Bill Clinton seemed to acknowledge that Democrats had lost their luster with certain segments of the electorate. Said Bill: “We all know how [Hillary’s] opponent’s done real well down in West Virginia and eastern Kentucky. Because the coal people don’t like any of us [Democrats] anymore.”

 ... Funny that Bill Clinton should mention coal. The coal industry is an excellent example of why the working class is abandoning the party that their ancestors voted for in droves. Coal country is dying and not because people don’t want their product anymore. The Obama Administration is crippling the industry just as he promised. The problem with coal is that it’s dirty—and because the environmentalists have more pull in the party than the working stiffs, coal has to go.

In July of this year, Murray Energy, the largest coal company in America, announced that it would be laying off about 80% of its workforce. Just think of how many families discovered the joys of grinding unemployment. Oh, I’m sure they’ll find work someday—Wendy’s is hiring, right? In March, Hillary Clinton pledged to “put a lot of coal companies and coal miners out of business.” Woops, she forgot to lie. Naturally, she promised to “invest in renewable energy,” presumably to make up the difference. That “investment” would probably fare about as well as Solyndra. She also pledged “not to forget” the workers. Translation: after the Democrats kill the coal miners’ jobs they’ll make sure that they all get welfare checks instead.

Allow me to summarize Hillary’s three step plan for strangling coal country. Step one: Destroy a perfectly good industry that evolved without government assistance. Step two: Fleece the taxpayer to fund other fanciful energy projects—wind, solar, unicorn farts, whatever. Step three: When those projects fail, force the once-proud coal miners to subsist on welfare.

The plan is absolute genius. Each step of the way they get to look like the good guys, first as environmentalists then as saviors of the people whose way of life they demolished. When the plan is complete, there’s no one left in coal country but wards of the state beholden to the Democrats for their daily bread. Mission accomplished.

It’s no small irony that it was rusty Pennsylvania that sunk Hillary Clinton’s presidential ambitions. Back in 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama had something to say about unemployed Pennsylvanians that came off as horribly elitist. At a closed-door event in San Francisco, he made his infamous “bitter clingers” remark, saying: “And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” Perhaps if the Democrats listened to these people rather than arrogantly dismissing them we’d be calling Hillary “Madam President.” The bitter clingers made their voices heard on November 8^th, pulling off the biggest upset in recent memory—and it was a beautiful thing.

French TV Debate: How Can We Expect Trump's Foreign Policy to Turn Out?

On France 24's Le Débat, four guests debated on the subject of what face Trump's foreign policy can be expected to take…

Trump à la Maison Blanche : quel visage pour la diplomatie américaine ? (partie 1 et partie 2)

Au lendemain de son élection, Donald Trump se prépare à gouverner. Il s'est entretenu jeudi avec Barack Obama à la Maison Blanche, avant que ce dernier lui cède sa place en janvier prochain. Durant la campagne, le candidat républicain a multiplié les déclarations fracassantes en matière de politique étrangère, notamment à l’égard du Mexique. Quelle politique peut-on attendre à l’international de la part de la future administration Trump?

Émission préparée par Élise Duffau, Anthony Saint-Léger et Louma Sanbar.

Par Raphaël KAHANE

Nos invités

Annick CIZEL

Enseignante-chercheur à l’Université Paris Sorbonne Nouvelle.

Julien ZARIFIAN

Maître de conférences en civilisation américaine à l'Université de Cergy Pontoise et chercheur au laboratoire AGORA.

Erik SVANE

Journaliste et auteur. Membre des Republicans overseas.

Dominique SIMONNET

Essayiste

Good-Bye, Friend: Hallelujah, Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen — Hallelujah

If you want to know why Trump won, just look at the response to his winning

If you want to know why Trump won, just look at the response to his winning 

writes Brendan O'Neill.

The lofty contempt for ‘low information’ Americans. The barely concealed disgust for the rednecks and cretins of ‘flyover’ America who are apparently racist and misogynistic and homophobic. The haughty sneering at the vulgar, moneyed American political system and how it has allowed a wealthy candidate to poison the little people’s mushy, malleable minds. The suggestion that American women, more than 40 per cent of whom are thought to have voted for Trump, suffer from internalised misogyny: that is, they don’t know their own minds, the poor dears. The hysterical, borderline apocalyptic claims that the world is now infernally screwed because ‘our candidate’, the good, pure person, didn’t get in.

This response to Trump’s victory reveals why Trump was victorious. Because those who do politics these days — the political establishment, the media, the academy, the celeb set — are so contemptuous of ordinary people, so hateful of the herd, so convinced that the mass of society cannot be trusted to make political decisions, and now those ordinary people have given their response to such top-down sneering and prejudice.

Oh, the irony of observers denouncing Middle America as a seething hotbed of hatred even as they hatefully libel it a dumb and ugly mob. Having turned America’s ‘left behind’ into the butt of every clever East Coast joke, and the target of every handwringing newspaper article about America’s dark heart and its strange, Bible-toting inhabitants, the political and cultural establishment can’t now be surprised that so many of those people have turned around and said… well, it begins with F and ends with U.

The respectable set’s allergy to Trump is fundamentally an allergy to the idea of democracy itself. To them, Trump’s rise confirms the folly of asking the ignorant, the everyday, the non-subscribers to the New York Times, to decide on important political matters. They’re explicit about this now. In the run-up to election day, big-name commentators wondered out loud if democracy is all it’s cracked up to be. Trump’s ascendancy showed we need better checks and balances on ‘the passions of the mob’, said Andrew Sullivan. We should ‘cool and restrain [these] temporary populist passions’, he said, and refuse to allow ‘feeling, emotion’ to override ‘reasoned deliberation’. The little folks only feel and wail, you see, and it’s down to the grown-ups in the system to think coolly on their behalf.

Elsewhere, a writer for the New York Times asked Americans to consider installing a monarchy, which could rise above the ‘toxic partisanship’ of party politics — that is, above open, swirling, demos-stuffed political debate. In a new book called ‘Against Democracy’ — says it all — Georgetown philosopher Jason Brennan argues for an epistocracy, an ‘aristocracy of the wise’, who might decide political matters for those of us who are ‘low information’ (ie. stupid). This echoes the anti-democratic turn of liberals in the 2000s, when it was argued that daft, Bush-backing Americans increasingly made decisions, ‘not with their linear, logical left brain, but with their lizard, more emotional right brain’, in Arianna Huffington’s words. Such vile contempt for the political, democratic capacities of the ordinary person has been in great evidence following Trump’s win — across Twitter and in apocalypse-tinged instant responses — and it is likely to intensify. Anti-Trump will morph more explicitly into anti-democracy.

If this all sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the same kind of pleb-fearing horror that greeted the Brexit result four months ago. ‘Why elections are bad for democracy’, a headline in the Guardian said. The people are deluded and it is the task of those with ‘reason and expertise’ to ‘un-delude’ them, said a writer for Foreign Policy. ‘What if democracy doesn’t work? What if it never has and never will?’, wondered a pained George Monbiot. Boom. That’s it. The secret and not-so-secret cry of the elites and the experts and the observers over both Brexit and Trump is precisely that: ‘What if democracy doesn’t work?’ It’s not so much Trump they fear as the system that allowed him to get to the White House: that pesky, ridiculous system where we must ask ordinary people — shudder — what they think should happen in the nation.

The anti-Brexit anti-democrats claimed they were merely opposed to using rough, simplistic referendums to decide on huge matters. That kind of democracy is too direct, they said. Yet now they’re raging over the election of Trump via a far more complicated, tempered democratic system. That’s because — and I know this is strong, but I’m sure it’s correct — it is democracy itself that they hate. Not referendums, not Ukip’s blather, not only direct democracy, but democracy as an idea. Against democracy — so many of them are now. It is the engagement of the throng in political life that they fear. It is the people — ordinary, working, non-PhD-holding people — whom they dread and disdain. It is what got Trump to the White House — the right of all adults, even the dumb ones, to decide about politics — that gives them sleepless nights

This nasty, reactionary turn against democracy by so many of the well-educated both explains the victory of Trump, which neatly doubles up as a slap in the face of the establishment, and confirms why democracy is more important today than it has ever been. Because it really would be folly, madness in fact, to let an elite that so little understands ordinary people, and in fact loathes them, to run society unilaterally. Now that would be dangerous, more dangerous than Trump.

America Votes — Republican and Democrat Clash on France's BFMTV Station

On BFMTV L'Amérique vote pour choisir son 45ème président (2/2)

C'est le jour J aux Etats-Unis. Les Américains se rendent aux urnes pour élire leur 45ème président. 42 millions ont déjà voté grâce au vote anticipé. Les sondages sont serrés, mais donnent l'avantage à Hillary Clinton. La candidate démocrate est créditée de 45,4% contre 42,2% pour son rival républicain Donald Trump. - Pour en parler: Owen Franken, membre de Democrats Abroad France (frère du sénateur du Minnesota Al Franken). Et Erik Svane, membre de Republicans Overseas France. - BFM Story, du mardi 8 novembre 2016, présenté par Olivier Truchot, sur BFMTV.

Dinesh D'Souza Brings Us the Star-Spangled Banner

Dinesh D'Souza asks us to

Watch the moving scene from the end of "Hillary's America" that has audiences on their feet and in tears around the country!

Global Warming Update: The Cold May Be So Severe in France This Winter That the Country May Be Plunged into Darkness

As the Daily Telegraph reports on "a severe weather warning for northern and eastern England warning people to expect up to four inches of snow in the next 48 hours", snowflakes are also starting to cover the ground in Northern France — much earlier than usual — leading one Vincent Maillard to warn in Les Echos that the cold front might be so severe this winter that electricity grids might fail, plunging France into darkness.

All of which leads Ed Driscoll to deadpan with a headline from a couple of years ago:

SNOWFALLS ARE NOW JUST A THING OF THE PAST

Reminder — A LOOK BACK: More global warming and more heat waves
— from the winter of 2012, the winter of 2011, the winter of 2010 ("The coldest start to December for centuries"), the winter of 2009, the winter of 2008, and the winter of 2007…

Les Echos:

Vincent Maillard
La France risque vraiment d’être dans le noir cet hiver

LE CERCLE/POINT DE VUE - La France pourrait subir une coupure de courant cet hiver si une forte vague de froid balayait le pays. …

Dinesh D'Souza Has A Word For Christians Not Voting This November

D'Souza Has A Word For Christians Not Voting This November

Here's D'Souza's message for Christians planning to not vote this November. If not now, when? If not us, who?

Is What We Are Witnessing Soros's Formula for Killing America?

The American Association of Evangelicals has produced A Brief Guide, for Americans (as well as for foreigners?), called Soros's Formula for Killing America. All that can be said is, let us hope (let us pray?) that the AAE is paranoid or wrong if not both.

Incorporating recent leaks and IRS documents, this short video best explains the dangerous agenda, strategy and tactics of the Soros network, in America. Stand with Christian patriots, for the world God so loves. Produced by: the Awareness Project.

Please join us at AmericanEvangelicals.com — to sign our letter, “A Call to Repentance and Renewal." See endorsements below.

“What if this conspiracy stuff were true? God help us, because this much of it really IS true. Please watch this video. Our country hangs in the balance.” 

 ~ Eric Metaxas, author of Bonhoeffer; and, If You Can Keep It

“Two ‘Georges’ — but oh so different! George Soros is selfishly trying to destroy what George Washington sacrificially founded: America. Thank God for these fearless producers exposing one of the most sinister, destructive forces to the Republic. Listen to this. Listen carefully. Your nation depends on it.” 

~ Pastor James Garlow, Skyline Church, San Diego 

Epic Rap Battles of History: Donald Trump vs Hillary Clinton

From the impressive Epic Rap Battles of History series:
Donald Trump vs Hillary Clinton