As I Was Saying…

By Charlie Johnston

Butler, Pennsylvania – Donald Trump began his remarks at the Butler rally on Saturday, Oct. 5, with the words in the headline, a wry reference to the interruption of the assassination attempt at the first Butler rally on July 13. The crowd roared its approval. I was sitting in the shade of a vendor truck at the far back.

It was the second biggest event I have ever attended (the largest was the J6 rally on the Washington Mall). I estimated the crowd size at 75,000 while I was there. I have seen estimates of between 60,000 to 100,000 in the aftermath. It was HUGE (or, as Trump might say, YUGE.)

Once again, clean-up crews did not have to do too much after this event. Besides the regular trash cans, both vendors and groups of folks put out cardboard boxes to collect local trash for regular transport to the venue’s cans. Of course, when you have a leftist event, the place is totally trashed. This is commented on so commonly that it has almost become cliched. Yet I think it speaks to something very deep. The left screams about its enlightened idealism while trashing everything it touches. Normal people try to do good for all while taking care of the little plot around them. Does this not evoke James 2:18? “Show me your faith without works, and I will show you my faith by my works.” Those who do without saying may do well, but those who say without doing are in danger of the judgment.

Of course, there was a LOT of walking, which gets right tough on old bones. Every other person I met walking back to the car checked to see that I was okay. I was huffing and blowing like an old-time steam engine, so I understand why. I’m just 12 years removed from walking across the country. I reckon I could do it again if I needed to (After about a month and a half of doing it every day, you get much stronger.) But I’m carried along more by stubbornness than prowess these days – and I could only walk much on days where my hip wasn’t acting up too bad. This old body was not made to last forever – just to carry us on our sojourn through this life.

Alas, I had already started walking back to my car by the time Elon Musk made his surprise appearance. I liked to beat the rush to the cars and back on the road even when I was young. It wouldn’t have mattered that much. The speakers were facing a relatively small arena to the front. The great mass of people, including me, were at the back watching the show on giant screens. You could see the tiny back of the speakers in the distance, but it was the camaraderie of the giant crowd at a communal TV screening that was the draw. I did hear J.D. Vance and Donald Trump.

Seeing, in person, the building from where the assassin perched was a revelation. The failure of the Secret Service there was truly of monumental proportions. The building was starkly visible – and there was no place to hide on it. You really only needed two people to know if someone was there – one facing one side of the roof and another facing the other. Of course, many people did see the shooter – and were shouting about it for a half hour before he took his shots. But the Secret Service had not set up effective comms with local law enforcement. I am appalled because you truly would have had to be trying pretty hard NOT to see that there was a breach. There was literally no place for the gunman to hide up there. It does make me go, hmmm. There were plenty of drones up this time, enough so that sometimes the buzzing was annoying. A radio reporter from Pittsburgh saw me jump a creek rather than take the long way around to get in and interviewed me briefly. He asked if I was worried about safety at the event. I laughed and said that after the two huge embarrassments to the feds here in Butler earlier and in Florida later, I was willing to bet this was the safest place in America for the day. It was a safe bet. You could not turn around without seeing four or five law enforcement officers – and EVERY roof had a sniper on it.

When things are normal and elections are played on the square, I will put myself against any nationally-ranked prognosticator. Back in the day I did, and usually came out best. I cannot act with such swagger when everything is adulterated and the game is fixed. Yet, I did do well in prognostication when the fraud was retail instead of wholesale. Shoot, I worked primarily in Illinois – so if you did not know how to account for a two-to four-point fraud factor, you needed to find another line of work. On the night before election in 2016 a Catholic broadcaster asked what I thought would happen. I told him I had seen massive red flags of fraud, probably five to 10 million fraudulent votes already – but that the shock of the night for Democrats would be it would not be enough and Trump would win. They had, I told him, vastly underestimated how disgusted ordinary people had become with the antics of the left under Obama.

Yeah, the left was shocked. But instead of changing their ways, they just worked to take vote fraud wholesale, destroying all chain of custody, printing massive amount of blank ballots to be used as needed, and noodling vote totals via web connections. They did their beta test in 2018, then unleashed their kraken in 2020 to illegitimately install Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Even with all the upfront fraud, they had to stop counting in swing states and “find” tens of thousands of ballots in each of them to overcome Trump’s commanding lead. There WAS a red wave in 2022, but the left’s wholesale fraud vitiated it. The problem for the left is that putting their fraud machinery on steroids did not solve their foundational problem but only exacerbated it by making them think they did not have to do anything different.

This year will be like 2016: they may already have banked 30-50 million phony votes…but it will not be enough. The left has no idea how absolutely furious the average person is at their depredations and utter incompetence. If there is anything close to an honest count, Trump will win by an historic landslide and leftist Democrats will be turned out of office en masse. Marxist Democrats and RINO Republicans have long run a uniparty. Alas for them, the likes of Trump, Robert Kennedy, Tulsi Gabbard and Elon Musk have, this year, formed an opposition party, diverse in political ideology but united in their commitment to liberty and the sovereignty of the people.

I wrote a piece for the CORAC Newsletter a week ago focused on the Chinese concept of the “mandate of heaven.” It speaks to the idea of legitimacy and how quickly it can fall, bringing down ancient regimes in toto. Right now it is truly pathetic to watch Kamala Harris and the left at work: suddenly everything they touch turns to mud. They have completely forfeited the mandate of heaven. Even their efforts to tamp down Republican votes are only serving to infuriate Democrats caught as collateral damage in disaster zones – provoking many of them, maybe even a majority, to vote Republican for the first time. It won’t be their last time.

I was with the crowd on the National Mall for J6. The mood there was upbeat, though shocked and furious at what had been done to our nation. The mood in Butler last Saturday was still upbeat, but rather than shocked fury, the crowd was marked with an unalterable resolve that this will not stand any longer. Whether the left can manufacture enough votes to make it look close – or even simulate a win – it will be utterly crushed a month from now. Though the regime stenographers in the establishment press will howl, the people have taken as much as they are willing and they are not taking it anymore.

We have a lot of work ahead of us. But a seminal moment is being passed right now. We are at the beginning of the return of America. A lot of strife still lays ahead, but the woke, godless left has already lost. The people aren’t having it anymore and will not rest until, like the Mayans of old, there is no trace left of the once powerful, woke left. Start chopping.

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Our own Sheryl Collmer did a bracing piece for Crisis Magazine, entitled, American Cristeros. It discusses the sort of persecution Catholics and Christians could suffer if the left did manage to take absolute power in this country. Comparing such a scenario to that which broke out in Mexico early last century, it focuses the mind to the sort of preparation needed to repel such an assault.

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I will make visits to Florida, the Carolinas, Virginia and Georgia beginning the second week of January. If you are in one of those or an adjacent state and want to set up a visit, please contact my scheduler, Gina, at ginaw@coracusa.

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We will have a field day in Leonardtown, Maryland this Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 12 and 13, in Leonardtown, Maryland. There are all manner of sessions available on radio communications, gun use and safety, tinctures and other useful skills. There is still time for last-minute registrations. Hope to see you there!

If communication goes out for any length of time, meet outside your local Church at 9 a.m. on Saturday mornings. Tell friends at Church now in case you can’t then. CORAC teams will be out looking for people to gather in and work with.

Find me on Twitter at @JohnstonPilgrim

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