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Why does Pat think Loretta Lynch could be more extreme than Eric Holder?

January 29, 2015
Wilson

Writer

Could Obama's nominee for Attorney General be more radical than Eric Holder? With this administration, Pat thinks anything could be possible. During her confirmation hearings, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) tried to nail down some questions about her stance on gay marriage which she managed to sidestep. But when questions came up about her stance on torture, she was unequivocal. Why one and not the other?

Below is a rough transcript of this segment:

PAT: Yesterday there was a lot of -- a lot of discussion about the attorney general. The attorney general nominee. Loretta Lynch. At first I thought they had nominated Loretta Lynn, the country singer, but it turns out the coal miner's daughter wasn't up for that. She wasn't interested. Is she even alive?

STU: I don't know.

JEFFY: Yeah, she is.

PAT: I don't think she wanted the gig. They went with Loretta Lynch.

JEFFY: She is only in her 80s. Don't worry about it.

PAT: Loretta Lynn?

JEFFY: Yeah.

PAT: She's spry compared to say Robert Byrd.

STU: Or compared to Jeff Fisher, whose birthday is here today at 109 years old.

PAT: Happy birthday, Jeffy. You don't look anything over 203, I'd say.

STU: Yeah. That's fair.

JEFFY: Thank you. I appreciate it.

[laughter]

PAT: All right. So Lindsey Graham tried to pin down Loretta Lynch, our attorney general nominee. This woman is at least as extreme, I think, as Eric Holder.

STU: That's possible.

PAT: Yeah. It's possible. And in this case, with the Bush -- with the Obama administration, it's likely. Because everybody -- everybody that comes into this administration is an extremist, it seems. Can you name a moderate that he's appointed to any position. I can't think of one.

STU: I think people would point to people like Chuck Hagel who was a Republican at one point.

PAT: Chuck Hagel, that's right.

STU: There's been a couple -- secretary of defense holdover. I don't know. Not many. Few and far between.

PAT: No. Not many at all. So Lindsey Graham tried to pin her down on the difference between -- okay, so the same-sex marriage thing is before the Supreme Court. So he was trying to get her to say, all right, is polygamy the next domino to fall because it would seem likely it is. Here's how that exchange went.

GRAHAM: If the Supreme Court rules that same-sex marriages bans are unconstitutional and violates the US Constitution for a state, try to limit marriage between a man and a woman, that's clearly the law of the land, unless there's a constitutional amendment to change it.

What legal rationale would be in play that would prohibit polygamy? What's the legal difference between a state, a ban on same-sex marriage being unconstitutional, but a ban on polygamy being constitutional? Could you try to articulate how one could be banned under the Constitution and the other not?

LYNCH: Well, Senator, I have not been involved in the argument or analysis of the cases that have gone before the Supreme Court. So -- and I'm not comfortable undertaking legal analysis without having had the ability to undertake a review of the relevant facts and the precedent there. So I certainly would not be able to provide you with that analysis at this point, but I look forward to continuing the discussions with you.

PAT: Okay. So she wasn't involved in the argument or the analysis. All right. You know, they're going to say that every time they don't want to answer a question. But she wasn't involved in the argument or analysis. So then they asked her about waterboarding.

VOICE: Do you agree that waterboarding is torture and that it's illegal?

LYNCH: Waterboarding is torture, Senator.

VOICE: And thus illegal?

LYNCH: And thus illegal.

PAT: Wait. I don't think she was involved in the argument or analysis of that either, but she still had an answer somehow on that, that waterboarding is torture, and it is illegal. How can you say that definitively when you weren't involved in the argument or the analysis of that?

STU: I don't know.

PAT: That's kind of weird.

STU: Yeah. I was not involved in the argument or analysis of every episode of Law and Order, but I always have an opinion how it's coming out.

PAT: I don't know why Graham -- well, he sucks.

STU: You mean that he gave up on that?

PAT: Yeah. You don't give up on that. You just push her. Well, I know you were not involved in the argument or analysis, but you've stated an opinion on everything else. Why won't you answer this? The answer to that is, no, there should be no legal barrier to polygamy at the point where same sex becomes the law of the land. Why wouldn't polygamy? I don't understand that. As long as they're consenting adults, I don't understand it. Right?

Because that's the argument for all the other stuff. Why not this too?

STU: Yeah. I think there's a very strong argument to be made there. And, you know, the correct argument I think is, this is why you don't have the government getting involved in people's love life at all.

PAT: At al. Get them out of straight marriage, homosexual marriage. Everything.

STU: Yeah. Do you on your anniversary send a card to the place that gave you the marriage license. Do you make sure that they're a part of the ceremony with you? Do you make sure they're part of the ceremony, and every time we celebrate, do you take them out to dinner as well?

PAT: I have to say, I've been so inconsiderate. I have not done that.

STU: Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. After all they've done for you.

PAT: Throughout my marriage, yeah.

STU: Which is nothing. They don't do anything for anyone.

PAT: Well, they gave us a piece of paper.

STU: To think of this, to allow you to express your love for your wife.

PAT: Yeah.

STU: They gave you -- of thing this as a conservative. We are allowing a system in which we say, okay, government, please give us a piece of paper so we can express who we love. Why don't why do we care about that at all?

PAT: We talked about that quite a few times over the last couple of years. Really it's the only position that makes sense. And glenn has articulated it many times. Get government out of all marriage. Let church handle it. It's a church institution anyway. And if you're an atheist, then go to city hall and do a justice of the peace, so what? Who cares.

STU: Yeah. And you don't have to worry about that if they're out of marriage. You can find someone else you like to do the ceremony for you.

PAT: Like a humanist person.

STU: Right. Weren't you and Glenn at one time ministers in a specific church that may or may not have had a physical location in Modesto, California, perhaps?

PAT: I believe we still are. There's not an expiration.

JEFFY: Once you are, you're still in good standing.

PAT: We can still marry people. And we have in the past.

STU: Yes. And you did it to married people. Think about that again. Okay, so you have to get another license, you have to be a licensed minister so that you can join a union between two licensed people who like each other so you can license their love. Conservatives are like, oh, this sounds great. Really?

PAT: It's been the wrong position from the beginning. We screwed up on that one at the beginning, just like we screwed up on the immigration thing. Should not have fought against illegal immigration. We should have fought for legal immigration. That should have been the battle cry the whole time. And get the government completely out of it.

The Libertarian stance on marriage is the right one. When I was in Salt Lake City a couple of weeks ago, doing the speech for the Eagle Forum and then afterwards, you know, there was a dinner and all that kind of stuff. And one of the local TV stations interviewed me. Their little reporterette came up to me. She wanted a few comments. So, okay.

And I knew it would probably be -- she wanted to do something that would try to trip me up and something she could beat us with. That was in the back of my mind. Sure enough, what was her big deal. The Supreme Court taking up same-sex marriage. And I said, you know, I'd like the government out of all marriage. Yeah, but how do you feel about this? How did this affect the conference when they heard about it? I don't think it affected the conference at all when they heard about it. They just mentioned it, and we kind of moved on and didn't dwell on it.

Well, what do you think about the same-sex marriage amendment.

I said, well, I don't think the government has any business in anybody's marriage. And I think that horse has probably left the barn. I think the Supreme Court will probably rule in favor of same-sex marriage. It will become the law of the land.

STU: You should have just said, I was not involved in the argument or analysis of that particular --

PAT: I should have. But that's the hot button issue that people try to trip you up on when they want to trip you up. And there's no tripping when it's just, get the government out of it. Don't make my church perform a same-sex marriage.

STU: Yeah.

PAT: But if you can find a church that will marry you, and you're a same sex couple, great. Do it. Then the government is completely out of it. But that's not where we are.

As far as the attorney general nominee, Loretta Lynch, she was asked about illegal immigration.

LYNCH: Well, Senator, I believe that the right and the obligation to work is one that is shared by everyone in this country, regardless of how they came here. Certainly, if someone is here, regardless of status, I would prefer that they would be participating in the workplace than not participating in the workplace.

PAT: Isn't that amazing? Here's the attorney general nominee, and she's saying, regardless of how got here, whether they're legal or illegal, I don't care what you're doing. If you've committed identity theft or if you're involved in tax fraud, you have a right to work in the United States of America.

That's the future attorney general?

JEFFY: I would like to see more citizens involved in the workforce in America.

PAT: I think the citizens would like to see that as well. I think the tens of millions who are unemployed would like to see the citizens of this nation be employed, rather than people of illegal status have the right to work. That's insanity.

This is the person who sworn to uphold -- not yet, but she will be. Sworn in to uphold our laws and she doesn't care about them. How do you vote to confirm her?

STU: I don't know. It seems that's what we do now. People get placed into office by somebody, and if they happen to dislike particular laws, they are not enforced. That is not -- I don't remember that with the founders. I don't remember George Washington harping on that particular way of doing business, but that does seem to be where we are. I mean, immigration is the number one thing. How can she be nominated if she had any other stance. The president of the United States has taken this as basically his main pathway of getting things done.

PAT: Yeah. It's inconceivable. And yet, I don't think we know what that word means because we keep using it. It just keeps happening.

Glenn Beck: Here's what's WRONG with conservatism today

Getty Images / Handout | Getty Images

What does it mean to be a conservative in 2025? Glenn offers guidance on what conservatives need to do to ensure the conservative movement doesn't fade into oblivion. We have to get back to PRINCIPLES, not policies.

To be a conservative in 2025 means to STAND

  • for Stewardship, protecting the wisdom of our Founders;
  • for Truth, defending objective reality in an age of illusion;
  • for Accountability, living within our means as individuals and as a nation;
  • for Neighborhood, rebuilding family, faith, and local community;
  • and for Duty, carrying freedom forward to the next generation.

A conservative doesn’t cling to the past — he stands guard over the principles that make the future possible.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: You know, I'm so tired of being against everything. Saying what we're not.

It's time that we start saying what we are. And it's hard, because we're changing. It's different to be a conservative, today, than it was, you know, years ago.

And part of that is just coming from hard knocks. School of hard knocks. We've learned a lot of lessons on things we thought we were for. No, no, no.

But conservatives. To be a conservative, it shouldn't be about policies. It's really about principles. And that's why we've lost our way. Because we've lost our principles. And it's easy. Because the world got easy. And now the world is changing so rapidly. The boundaries between truth and illusion are blurred second by second. Machines now think. Currencies falter. Families fractured. And nations, all over the world, have forgotten who they are.

So what does it mean to be a conservative now, in 2025, '26. For a lot of people, it means opposing the left. That's -- that's a reaction. That's not renewal.

That's a reaction. It can't mean also worshiping the past, as if the past were perfect. The founders never asked for that.

They asked that we would preserve the principles and perfect their practice. They knew it was imperfect. To make a more perfect nation.

Is what we're supposed to be doing.

2025, '26 being a conservative has to mean stewardship.

The stewardship of a nation, of a civilization.

Of a moral inheritance. That is too precious to abandon.

What does it mean to conserve? To conserve something doesn't mean to stand still.

It means to stand guard. It means to defend what the Founders designed. The separation of powers. The rule of law.

The belief that our rights come not from kings or from Congress, but from the creator himself.
This is a system that was not built for ease. It was built for endurance, and it will endure if we only teach it again!

The problem is, we only teach it like it's a museum piece. You know, it's not a museum piece. It's not an old dusty document. It's a living covenant between the dead, the living and the unborn.

So this chapter of -- of conservatism. Must confront reality. Economic reality.

Global reality.

And moral reality.

It's not enough just to be against something. Or chant tax cuts or free markets.

We have to ask -- we have to start with simple questions like freedom, yes. But freedom for what?

Freedom for economic sovereignty. Your right to produce and to innovate. To build without asking Beijing's permission. That's a moral issue now.

Another moral issue: Debt! It's -- it's generational theft. We're spending money from generations we won't even meet.

And dependence. Another moral issue. It's a national weakness.

People cannot stand up for themselves. They can't make it themselves. And we're encouraging them to sit down, shut up, and don't think.

And the conservative who can't connect with fiscal prudence, and connect fiscal prudence to moral duty, you're not a conservative at all.

Being a conservative today, means you have to rebuild an economy that serves liberty, not one that serves -- survives by debt, and then there's the soul of the nation.

We are living through a time period. An age of dislocation. Where our families are fractured.

Our faith is almost gone.

Meaning is evaporating so fast. Nobody knows what meaning of life is. That's why everybody is killing themselves. They have no meaning in life. And why they don't have any meaning, is truth itself is mocked and blurred and replaced by nothing, but lies and noise.

If you want to be a conservative, then you have to be to become the moral compass that reminds a lost people, liberty cannot survive without virtue.

That freedom untethered from moral order is nothing, but chaos!

And that no app, no algorithm, no ideology is ever going to fill the void, where meaning used to live!

To be a conservative, moving forward, we cannot just be about policies.

We have to defend the sacred, the unseen, the moral architecture, that gives people an identity. So how do you do that? Well, we have to rebuild competence. We have to restore institutions that actually work. Just in the last hour, this monologue on what we're facing now, because we can't open the government.

Why can't we open the government?

Because government is broken. Why does nobody care? Because education is broken.

We have to reclaim education, not as propaganda, but as the formation of the mind and the soul. Conservatives have to champion innovation.

Not to imitate Silicon Valley's chaos, but to harness technology in defense of human dignity. Don't be afraid of AI.

Know what it is. Know it's a tool. It's a tool to strengthen people. As long as you always remember it's a tool. Otherwise, you will lose your humanity to it!

That's a conservative principle. To be a conservative, we have to restore local strength. Our families are the basic building blocks, our schools, our churches, and our charities. Not some big, distant NGO that was started by the Tides Foundation, but actual local charities, where you see people working. A web of voluntary institutions that held us together at one point. Because when Washington fails, and it will, it already has, the neighborhood has to stand.

Charlie Kirk was doing one thing that people on our side were not doing. Speaking to the young.

But not in nostalgia.

Not in -- you know, Reagan, Reagan, Reagan.

In purpose. They don't remember. They don't remember who Dick Cheney was.

I was listening to Fox news this morning, talking about Dick Cheney. And there was somebody there that I know was not even born when Dick Cheney. When the World Trade Center came down.

They weren't even born. They were telling me about Dick Cheney.

And I was like, come on. Come on. Come on.

If you don't remember who Dick Cheney was, how are you going to remember 9/11. How will you remember who Reagan was.

That just says, that's an old man's creed. No, it's not.

It's the ultimate timeless rebellion against tyranny in all of its forms. Yes, and even the tyranny of despair, which is eating people alive!

We need to redefine ourselves. Because we have changed, and that's a good thing. The creed for a generation, that will decide the fate of the republic, is what we need to find.

A conservative in 2025, '26.

Is somebody who protects the enduring principles of American liberty and self-government.

While actively stewarding the institutions. The culture. The economy of this nation!

For those who are alive and yet to be unborn.

We have to be a group of people that we're not anchored in the past. Or in rage! But in reason. And morality. Realism. And hope for the future.

We're the stewards! We're the ones that have to relight the torch, not just hold it. We didn't -- we didn't build this Torch. We didn't make this Torch. We're the keepers of the flame, but we are honor-bound to pass that forward, and conservatives are viewed as people who just live in the past. We're not here to merely conserve the past, but to renew it. To sort it. What worked, what didn't work. We're the ones to say to the world, there's still such a thing as truth. There's still such a thing as virtue. You can deny it all you want.

But the pain will only get worse. There's still such a thing as America!

And if now is not the time to renew America. When is that time?

If you're not the person. If we're not the generation to actively stand and redefine and defend, then who is that person?

We are -- we are supposed to preserve what works.

That -- you know, I was writing something this morning.

I was making notes on this. A constitutionalist is for restraint. A progressive, if you will, for lack of a better term, is for more power.

Progressives want the government to have more power.

Conservatives are for more restraint.

But the -- for the American eagle to fly, we must have both wings.

And one can't be stronger than the other.

We as a conservative, are supposed to look and say, no. Don't look at that. The past teaches us this, this, and this. So don't do that.

We can't do that. But there are these things that we were doing in the past, that we have to jettison. And maybe the other side has a good idea on what should replace that. But we're the ones who are supposed to say, no, but remember the framework.

They're -- they can dream all they want.
They can come up with all these utopias and everything else, and we can go, "That's a great idea."

But how do we make it work with this framework? Because that's our job. The point of this is, it takes both. It takes both.

We have to have the customs and the moral order. And the practices that have stood the test of time, in trial.

We -- we're in an amazing, amazing time. Amazing time.

We live at a time now, where anything -- literally anything is possible!

I don't want to be against stuff. I want to be for the future. I want to be for a rich, dynamic future. One where we are part of changing the world for the better!

Where more people are lifted out of poverty, more people are given the freedom to choose, whatever it is that they want to choose, as their own government and everything.

I don't want to force it down anybody's throat.

We -- I am so excited to be a shining city on the hill again.

We have that opportunity, right in front of us!

But not in we get bogged down in hatred, in division.

Not if we get bogged down into being against something.

We must be for something!

I know what I'm for.

Do you?

From Pharaoh to Hamas: The same spirit of evil, new disguise

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

The drone footage out of Gaza isn’t just war propaganda — it’s a glimpse of the same darkness that once convinced men they were righteous for killing innocents.

Evil introduces itself subtly. It doesn’t announce, “Hi, I’m here to destroy you.” It whispers. It flatters. It borrows the language of justice, empathy, and freedom, twisting them until hatred sounds righteous and violence sounds brave.

We are watching that same deception unfold again — in the streets, on college campuses, and in the rhetoric of people who should know better. It’s the oldest story in the world, retold with new slogans.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage.

A drone video surfaced this week showing Hamas terrorists staging the “discovery” of a hostage’s body. They pushed a corpse out of a window, dragged it into a hole, buried it, and then called in aid workers to “find” what they themselves had planted. It was theater — evil, disguised as victimhood. And it was caught entirely on camera.

That’s how evil operates. It never comes in through the front door. It sneaks in, often through manipulative pity. The same spirit animates the moral rot spreading through our institutions — from the halls of universities to the chambers of government.

Take Zohran Mamdani, a New York assemblyman who has praised jihadists and defended pro-Hamas agitators. His father, a Columbia University professor, wrote that America and al-Qaeda are morally equivalent — that suicide bombings shouldn’t be viewed as barbaric. Imagine thinking that way after watching 3,000 Americans die on 9/11. That’s not intellectualism. That’s indoctrination.

Often, that indoctrination comes from hostile foreign actors, peddled by complicit pawns on our own soil. The pro-Hamas protests that erupted across campuses last year, for example, were funded by Iran — a regime that murders its own citizens for speaking freely.

Ancient evil, new clothes

But the deeper danger isn’t foreign money. It’s the spiritual blindness that lets good people believe resentment is justice and envy is discernment. Scripture talks about the spirit of Amalek — the eternal enemy of God’s people, who attacks the weak from behind while the strong look away. Amalek never dies; it just changes its vocabulary and form with the times.

Today, Amalek tweets. He speaks through professors who defend terrorism as “anti-colonial resistance.” He preaches from pulpits that call violence “solidarity.” And he recruits through algorithms, whispering that the Jews control everything, that America had it coming, that chaos is freedom. Those are ancient lies wearing new clothes.

When nations embrace those lies, it’s not the Jews who perish first. It’s the nations themselves. The soul dies long before the body. The ovens of Auschwitz didn’t start with smoke; they started with silence and slogans.

Andrew Harnik / Staff | Getty Images

A time for choosing

So what do we do? We speak truth — calmly, firmly, without venom. Because hatred can’t kill hatred; it only feeds it. Truth, compassion, and courage starve it to death.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage. That’s how Amalek survives — by making you fight him with his own weapons. The only victory that lasts is moral clarity without malice, courage without cruelty.

The war we’re fighting isn’t new. It’s the same battle between remembrance and amnesia, covenant and chaos, humility and pride. The same spirit that whispered to Pharaoh, to Hitler, and to every mob that thought hatred could heal the world is whispering again now — on your screens, in your classrooms, in your churches.

Will you join it, or will you stand against it?

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Bill Gates ends climate fear campaign, declares AI the future ruler

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

The Big Tech billionaire once said humanity must change or perish. Now he claims we’ll survive — just as elites prepare total surveillance.

For decades, Americans have been told that climate change is an imminent apocalypse — the existential threat that justifies every intrusion into our lives, from banning gas stoves to rationing energy to tracking personal “carbon scores.”

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates helped lead that charge. He warned repeatedly that the “climate disaster” would be the greatest crisis humanity would ever face. He invested billions in green technology and demanded the world reach net-zero emissions by 2050 “to avoid catastrophe.”

The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch.

Now, suddenly, he wants everyone to relax: Climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise” after all.

Gates was making less of a scientific statement and more of a strategic pivot. When elites retire a crisis, it’s never because the threat is gone — it’s because a better one has replaced it. And something else has indeed arrived — something the ruling class finds more useful than fear of the weather.The same day Gates downshifted the doomsday rhetoric, Amazon announced it would pay warehouse workers $30 an hour — while laying off 30,000 people because artificial intelligence will soon do their jobs.

Climate panic was the warm-up. AI control is the main event.

The new currency of power

The world once revolved around oil and gas. Today, it revolves around the electricity demanded by server farms, the chips that power machine learning, and the data that can be used to manipulate or silence entire populations. The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch. Whoever controls energy now controls information. And whoever controls information controls civilization.

Climate alarmism gave elites a pretext to centralize power over energy. Artificial intelligence gives them a mechanism to centralize power over people. The future battles will not be about carbon — they will be about control.

Two futures — both ending in tyranny

Americans are already being pushed into what look like two opposing movements, but both leave the individual powerless.

The first is the technocratic empire being constructed in the name of innovation. In its vision, human work will be replaced by machines, and digital permissions will subsume personal autonomy.

Government and corporations merge into a single authority. Your identity, finances, medical decisions, and speech rights become access points monitored by biometric scanners and enforced by automated gatekeepers. Every step, purchase, and opinion is tracked under the noble banner of “efficiency.”

The second is the green de-growth utopia being marketed as “compassion.” In this vision, prosperity itself becomes immoral. You will own less because “the planet” requires it. Elites will redesign cities so life cannot extend beyond a 15-minute walking radius, restrict movement to save the Earth, and ration resources to curb “excess.” It promises community and simplicity, but ultimately delivers enforced scarcity. Freedom withers when surviving becomes a collective permission rather than an individual right.

Both futures demand that citizens become manageable — either automated out of society or tightly regulated within it. The ruling class will embrace whichever version gives them the most leverage in any given moment.

Climate panic was losing its grip. AI dependency — and the obedience it creates — is far more potent.

The forgotten way

A third path exists, but it is the one today’s elites fear most: the path laid out in our Constitution. The founders built a system that assumes human beings are not subjects to be monitored or managed, but moral agents equipped by God with rights no government — and no algorithm — can override.

Hesham Elsherif / Stringer | Getty Images

That idea remains the most “disruptive technology” in history. It shattered the belief that people need kings or experts or global committees telling them how to live. No wonder elites want it erased.

Soon, you will be told you must choose: Live in a world run by machines or in a world stripped down for planetary salvation. Digital tyranny or rationed equality. Innovation without liberty or simplicity without dignity.

Both are traps.

The only way

The only future worth choosing is the one grounded in ordered liberty — where prosperity and progress exist alongside moral responsibility and personal freedom and human beings are treated as image-bearers of God — not climate liabilities, not data profiles, not replaceable hardware components.

Bill Gates can change his tune. The media can change the script. But the agenda remains the same.

They no longer want to save the planet. They want to run it, and they expect you to obey.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Why the White House restoration sent the left Into panic mode

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

Presidents have altered the White House for decades, yet only Donald Trump is treated as a vandal for privately funding the East Wing’s restoration.

Every time a president so much as changes the color of the White House drapes, the press clutches its pearls. Unless the name on the stationery is Barack Obama’s, even routine restoration becomes a national outrage.

President Donald Trump’s decision to privately fund upgrades to the White House — including a new state ballroom — has been met with the usual chorus of gasps and sneers. You’d think he bulldozed Monticello.

If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s ‘visionary.’

The irony is that presidents have altered and expanded the White House for more than a century. President Franklin D. Roosevelt added the East and West Wings in the middle of the Great Depression. Newspapers accused him of building a palace while Americans stood in breadlines. History now calls it “vision.”

First lady Nancy Reagan faced the same hysteria. Headlines accused her of spending taxpayer money on new china “while Americans starved.” In truth, she raised private funds after learning that the White House didn’t have enough matching plates for state dinners. She took the ridicule and refused to pass blame.

“I’m a big girl,” she told her staff. “This comes with the job.” That was dignity — something the press no longer recognizes.

A restoration, not a renovation

Trump’s project is different in every way that should matter. It costs taxpayers nothing. Not a cent. The president and a few friends privately fund the work. There’s no private pool or tennis court, no personal perks. The additions won’t even be completed until after he leaves office.

What’s being built is not indulgence — it’s stewardship. A restoration of aging rooms, worn fixtures, and century-old bathrooms that no longer function properly in the people’s house. Trump has paid for cast brass doorknobs engraved with the presidential seal, restored the carpets and moldings, and ensured that the architecture remains faithful to history.

The media’s response was mockery and accusations of vanity. They call it “grotesque excess,” while celebrating billion-dollar “climate art” projects and funneling hundreds of millions into activist causes like the No Kings movement. They lecture America on restraint while living off the largesse of billionaires.

The selective guardians of history

Where was this sudden reverence for history when rioters torched St. John’s Church — the same church where every president since James Madison has worshipped? The press called it an “expression of grief.”

Where was that reverence when mobs toppled statues of Washington, Jefferson, and Grant? Or when first lady Melania Trump replaced the Rose Garden’s lawn with a patio but otherwise followed Jackie Kennedy’s original 1962 plans in the garden’s restoration? They called that “desecration.”

If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s “visionary.”

The real desecration

The people shrieking about “historic preservation” care nothing for history. They hate the idea that something lasting and beautiful might be built by hands they despise. They mock craftsmanship because it exposes their own cultural decay.

The White House ballroom is not a scandal — it’s a mirror. And what it reflects is the media’s own pettiness. The ruling class that ridicules restoration is the same class that cheered as America’s monuments fell. Its members sneer at permanence because permanence condemns them.

Julia Beverly / Contributor | Getty Images

Trump’s improvements are an act of faith — in the nation’s symbols, its endurance, and its worth. The outrage over a privately funded renovation says less about him than it does about the journalists who mistake destruction for progress.

The real desecration isn’t happening in the East Wing. It’s happening in the newsrooms that long ago tore up their own foundation — truth — and never bothered to rebuild it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.