☕️ FROZEN IN ☙ Saturday, January 18, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠
Inauguration switch creates cold metaphors; deportations hit the ground running Tue morning; Team Biden clocks out for the last time; media punished by defamation liability; HHS bars EcoHealth; more.
Good morning, C&C, it’s Saturday! Time for the final weekend edition of the Biden Regime. In a way, it feels like something will soon be rightfully restored; I started writing Coffee & Covid during Trump’s presidency, but never had a chance to really get going before I was very carefully writing about stolen elections, then mandates, and so on. In today’s weekend roundup: Trump Inauguration involved in last-minute venue swap as DC descends into deep freeze; Trump Admin plans to start checking off promises first thing Tuesday morning, aggravating progressive partisans; the Biden Administration clocks out; media hammered by defamation lawsuits as jury prepares to award massive punitive damages; and just before Trump takes office, HHS takes action against EcoHealth Alliance.
🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍
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This morning, I had planned to deliver the bad news for the rest of the weekend’s blogging schedule, what our looming travel plans to brave the storms and fly to the Nation’s Capital for the historic Inauguration. But yesterday afternoon, everything changed. The Washington Post ran the dramatic story headlined, “How moving Trump’s inauguration inside spurred an all-out scramble.”
And just when they’d gotten the 200,000 folding chairs set up. As the story’s sub-headline perfectly summarized, “The sudden weather-induced change forced a scramble for hundreds of thousands of people who had spent months planning for the swearing-in of the nation’s 47th president.” Indeed.
But I wonder. I wonder whether the sudden, eleventh hour switcheroo was in fact on account of the weather. Or could it have been a strategic last-minute swap, confounding the plans of nefarious plotters aiming to injure the President? Or if they couldn’t get close to Trump, to hurt attendees, thereby injuring Trump indirectly. After what just happened in New Orleans, who knows.
The weather, indeed, looked particularly foreboding. Especially to this Floridian. It also has historical precedent. President Trump pointed out in a post that, in 1985, President Ronald Reagan also took his second oath inside the Capitol Rotunda — due to strikingly similar frigid weather. Reagan was one of our greatest presidents. So that is an encouraging parallel.
Viewed properly, the inclement weather also rings metaphorically perfect. Trump’s second term is arriving on the heels of a big storm: Sunday’s forecast calls for a minor blizzard, expecting 3-5 inches of fresh snow.
But the very next day, on Monday, Trump will enter the Capitol Rotunda to take the oath with the storm having ended and the skies having cleared. Another wonderful metaphor.
Even the cold works. Monday will be sunny but very, very cold—6 degrees after wind chill. That sunny but frigid climate reflects a practical indoor Inauguration venue which is aimed more at business than optics. It signals a sunny but icily workmanlike theme — in stark contrast to Trump’s first inauguration, where he got sucked into a meaningless melee with the media over crowd size.
This time, Trump clearly isn’t worried about how the size of the crowd looks, or how the media will report the event.
As for we 220,000 ticketholders, well, we can watch from a much warmer and more comfortable locale of our own choosing. The tickets themselves are now, officially, not for entrance but only “commemorative.” A swearing-in rally was hastily organized for the appropriately named Capital One Arena, which only holds 20,000. Insiders advised lining up at 5am to make sure of getting in.
It will be below zero at 5am. Frostbite weather. So.
Trump said he’d join the big party following his swearing in, but he also has a lot of executive orders to sign, so it isn’t clear when exactly he might arrive. What to do? “People from across the country,” the WaPo reported, “who had bought flights and booked hotels reconsidered their trips to the nation’s capital.”
Despite the disappointment, for security reasons, and because I don’t know how even well-layered Florida people could possibly have survived 5-6 hours on the National Mall, I think this is probably for the best.
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The all-business presidency is planning to get started as soon as the music stops on Monday. The Wall Street Journal ran an eye-popping story yesterday headlined, “Trump to Begin Large-Scale Deportations Tuesday.” They literally aren’t wasting a day. The sub-headline added, “Chicago will be an early target, with as many as 200 officers being sent to carry out the operation.”
First thing Tuesday morning, ICE starts a week-long immigration raid in Chicago. The Journal reported, anonymously, that the transition team picked the Windy City because of a “large number of immigrants who could be possible targets” —meaning criminals, the focus of Trump’s deportation plan— and because of Trump’s “high-profile feud” with Chicago’s socialist mayor Brandon Johnson.
A feud so “high-profile” that I never heard of it. But set that aside.
The NGO’s are preparing themselves for a monumental struggle to preserve the illegal alien army they’ve painstakingly created over the last four years. WaPo quoted the director of the “Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles,” Jorge-Mario Cabrera (probably a fake name), who bragged that his group has held over 140 workshops since the election to inform immigrants of their rights and deliver legal resources to fight deportation.
It’s almost certain Jorge-Mario’s NGO was paid by our own government to teach immigrants how to thwart our own government. You can’t make this stuff up. As Lincoln sagely said, a house divided against itself cannot stand.
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The Biden Regime staff left their offices for the last time yesterday. Staff like Merrick Garland, who was applauded by a large crowd of federal workers who’d gotten dressed and actually came into the office to applaud Garland’s departure from the office. Kind of ironic, if you think about it. Commenters like Charlie Kirk were upset by the overlong video of permanent federal employees clapping like trained seals while Garland passed between them like some kind of celebrity. But I thought there might be a different way to interpret all their evident enthusiasm — as honest happiness that Garland was finally leaving.
You can tell that the whole lame production was a show, totally fake, because Garland wasn’t carrying anything. His hands were free for princess-waving, baby-patting, fist-bumping, and the occasional awkward hug. Are we meant to believe that, after all this time as the country’s worst and most divisive Attorney General, there wasn’t anything in Garland’s office he wanted to take home?
Not even a lock of hair taken from a January 6th prisoner?
I feel like, had I been there, I would be clapping like crazy, too. Goodbye! So long! Sayonara! Move quicker! Don’t let the door hit your bony backside on the way out!
Goodbye to them all.
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Corporate media had a difficult week. Reuters ran a story yesterday afternoon headlined, “CNN settles with US Navy veteran after $5 million defamation verdict.”
CLIP: The moment the furious jury read its verdict finding CNN liable for defamation (1:59).
During the Biden Administration’s sudden disastrous surrender in Afghanistan, Navy veteran and former CIA agent Zachary Young helped with the emergency rescue of stranded U.S. workers. Zach charged corporate clients up to $14,500 per rescued employee. But later, CNN falsely told viewers that Zach had run a “black market” of extorting desperate Afghanis, like a cruel cartel coyote or something.
CNN’s fraudulent exposé wrecked his career. So Zach sued.
As I have often said, the discovery did CNN in. Internal CNN communications uncovered during the litigation showed CNN correspondent Alexander Marquardt slandering Mr. Young to his colleagues. In one email, Marquardt wrote, “We gonna nail this Zachary Young,” and referred to him with a highly inappropriate expletive. In other messages, CNN staff members admitted Marquardt’s report was “flawed.”
“Flawed” is one way of putting it. You might choose a different word.
In the New York Times version, the Gray Lady glumly noted that “public opinion has turned sharply against news organizations.” You don’t say. Whatever could have caused that sharp turn in public opinion? (The Times wasn’t feeling introspective and didn’t speculate.) Could it be that the public doesn’t think corporate news should be trying to “nail” anybody, but rather, just report the news fairly and accurately?
Anyway, the Bay County, Florida, jury returned its delightful verdict, awarding Zach $5 million in defamation damages, and finding CNN liable for punitive damages. A panicked CNN immediately settled for an undisclosed amount. The reason they panicked is that the jury would have next deliberated on how much to award in punitive damages. By law, they could have awarded triple damages, or another $15 million, or an amount necessary to prevent the conduct from reoccurring, based on CNN’s net worth.
Zach was probably smart to settle, since he got his money now rather than waiting for a long appeals process. My guess is CNN paid more than $5 million. They weren’t in a position to haggle much.
🔥 That’s not all. You might recall that last month, ABC settled a different defamation case with President Trump for $15 million dollars. Well, guess what? It’s happening again. The Wall Street Journal ran a story yesterday headlined, “Exclusive | CBS Owner Discusses Settling Trump Suit, With Merger Review on Tap.”
According to “people familiar with the situation,” top executives at Paramount Global, which owns CBS, internally discussed offering to settle a lawsuit against CBS by President Trump for election interference, which seeks $10 billion dollars in damages.
Maybe CBS could just pay off one of Trump’s lawfare lawsuits.
Apparently, Paramount has some pending regulatory issues, and the media giant needs to get on the new Administration’s good side. “Executives at the company,” explained the Journal, “were gaming out options to reduce friction with the incoming administration.”
The lawsuit arose from a CNN interview with Kamala Harris that was heavily edited to make the joyful Vice President look smarter than she really is. Fake news. So the media executives are considering possible operational changes that would “shore up” CBS News’s editorial accuracy and “reassure” Trump’s team, such as by adding new review processes or releasing the full, unedited transcript of its “60 Minutes” interview with Harris.
Freeing the transcript might interest historians, but the electoral horse is out of the political barn. She lost anyway.
One paragraph from the story stuck out. It showed the real problem: Whenever Democrats have their hands on the wheels of power, they freely punish corporations that don’t cooperate politically. As another example, the Journal reported that, if CNN helps Trump in any way, pouty progressives will punish it however they can:
That aside, this story is more good news. News media enjoyed decades of formal and informal protection from defamation liability and accuracy accountability. It was nearly impossible to win one of these cases, and even when you did, the skeptical courts of appeal were likely to miniaturize your verdict.
But as this week’s developments show, things are very different now.
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The Hill ran a story yesterday headlined, “Kevin O’Leary says he’s offering $20B cash for TikTok.” It wasn’t clear whether he just said he was offering or actually made an offer. Either way, TikTok is in a very poor negotiating position.
TikTok is a short-form, streaming video-sharing platform owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. It started less than ten years ago in 2016. It is popular with its 170,000 American users for its cute filters, special effects, and easy video editing features. The platform is extremely unpopular with the United States government, which has ferociously opposed TikTok for years.
Recently, the U.S. Congress passed a federal law making it illegal to help TikTok with operating in the United States, which takes effect tomorrow night. Violators are subject to fines of $5,000 a day times 170 million users. In other words, instant bankruptcy. Yesterday, the Supreme Court denied an emergency challenge to the law. The government has consistently and forcefully claimed TikTok is Chinese spyware intended to undermine the youth of America by rotting their brains.
I think it is pretty rich that the same people who are totally unconcerned with Democrats employing or sleeping with literal Chinese spies are so worried about a single video-sharing platform. And, while TikTok may be rotting kids’ brains, who knows, I feel like OnlyFans and porn sites pose a more immediate threat than TikTok’s funny pet videos.
But Congress seems utterly untroubled by OnlyFans.
Another problem nobody talks about much is that the U.S. government can’t control ByteDance like it can Meta, Twitter, or Instagram. So it has long complained about all “misinformation” on TikTok, meaning true information shared between Americans which is inconvenient for the government to be widely known.
There’s one exception to the shutdown order: TikTok can hang on so long as it is in good faith negotiations to be sold to an American company. No pressure. That is why Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary made a lowball offer to buy the troubled platform, and one supposes there are even more offers that we haven’t heard about.
In another odd reversal of fortunes, President Trump —who argued forcefully for TikTok’s shutdown during his first term— promised last week to try to help TikTok through an executive order on Monday. He also spoke with President Xi yesterday, and reportedly the men discussed fentanyl and TikTok, which if you think about it, is a kind of psychological opioid. But so is OnlyFans.
It’s a fascinating drama.
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Speaking of banned companies, yesterday Science.com ran a story headlined, “Federal officials suspend funding to EcoHealth Alliance, the nonprofit entangled in COVID-19 origin debate.” The five-year ban extends to all federal contracts between the government and EcoHealth or its criminal founder, “Doctor Mengele” Peter Daszak.
As nearly everyone knows, Daszak and his grant-grabbing “nonprofit” EcoHealth Alliance spearheaded gain-of-function research into making coronaviruses more deadly and more infectious. They did it at the Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China, where the pandemic started.
Science.com called the ban “possibly a mortal blow,” probably because neither Daszak nor EcoHealth has any customers apart from the United States government. But it is not as mortal of a blow as endured by people who died from Daszak’s genetically engineered bioweapon, the spike protein.
One workday before Trump assumes control of HHS, the agency finally approved the Republicans’ long-standing request to ban these bad actors. EcoHealth has its defenders. Bowtied wonder, jab pusher, and fellow science-grant-millionaire Dr. Peter Hotez, Baylor College of Medicine, defended the sleazy rent-seekers, saying that “EcoHealth Alliance is one of the few organizations we have to track the emergence of new and dangerous virus pathogens. If they disappear, our national security suffers.”
One of the few organizations tracking pandemics? Has Hotez never heard of the W.H.O.? At least he admitted it’s all for the security state. We can hope they disappear. But like an engineered virus, we can probably never completely eliminate them.
It was a little more accountability progress. And we will never, ever stop until the job is completely finished and justice has been obtained.
Have a wonderful weekend! Since the DC trip remains up in the air, Coffee & Covid plans to publish SOMETHING on Monday morning, but it’s not yet clear whether it will be a regular roundup. Stay tuned!
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We need to cover Washington DC in prayer
I’m relieved to hear to Inauguration will be held indoors. Security and safety! Perhaps the Almighty is sending the Artic temps to DC for a good reason.