Political Pistachio
By Douglas V. Gibbs
Six Congressional Democrats have sparked controversy by calling on members of the military and intelligence community to defy President Trump from within. Senators Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Mark Kelly of Arizona, joined by Representatives Chris DeLuzio and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire, and Jason Crow of Colorado, released a video presenting themselves as veterans of military or intelligence service. In the video, they urged current personnel to resist the President’s authority, effectively advocating a coup that would render him powerless to carry out his policies.
The lawmakers claimed the Trump administration is turning the military and intelligence community against American citizens, insisting that service members swore an oath to defend the Constitution. Yet their complaint centers on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) enforcing laws against illegal aliens, not against American citizens. The Constitution explicitly requires the President to faithfully execute the laws of the Union, and grants him authority to use the militia, which today includes the National Guard, to execute federal law when necessary.
Their appeal rested on the notion of refusing “illegal orders.” But when pressed, they failed to identify a single order from President Trump that could be deemed illegal. The strategy is less about substance and more about perception. By invoking the phrase “illegal orders,” they plant the suggestion that Trump is issuing them, hoping uninformed viewers will accept the claim without evidence.
In reality, the move amounts to more than political theater. By encouraging defiance within the executive branch, these Democrats are calling for a seditious act against the sitting President. In plain terms: insurrection.
One can only imagine the uproar had Republicans attempted such a maneuver during the Obama or Biden administrations. The double standard is striking and deeply troubling.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
By Douglas V. Gibbs
In the age of instant headlines and viral soundbites, accuracy doesn’t matter to Democrats. Perception is everything, and they know that usually all they need to do is plant seeds of doubt. Democratic Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett demonstrated this all too clearly when she falsely accused Republicans of taking campaign donations from convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Crockett leveled her accusations against Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin, former Republican Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, and the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC). The claim was explosive, and nowhere near the truth. The donations in question came not from the disgraced child-sex human trafficker, but from a self-employed physician who happens to share the same name.
Rather than owning up to the mistake, Crockett attempted to soften the blow by insisting she had said “a Jeffrey Epstein,” as though that distinction excused the implication. She then shifted blame to her staff, claiming they only had twenty minutes to search Google before she made the accusation.
“My team looked into this quickly,” Crockett said. But when an allegation this serious is being leveled, shouldn’t the details be correct?
Crockett further defended herself by arguing she wasn’t lying, since Zeldin did receive donations from a Jeffrey Epstein. “At least I wasn’t trying to mislead people,” she said. Yet the contex, Epstein’s notoriety and death in 2019 made her framing misleading at best, reckless at worst.
Federal Election Commission (FEC) records show the physician named Jeffrey Epstein donated $750 to Zeldin’s congressional campaign on April 24, 2020, and $250 on August 31, 2020; both donations occurring a year after the sex offender’s death in a Manhattan jail cell.
The same individual also donated twice to Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, with contributions of $250 each. No evidence connects these donations to the infamous Epstein.
So why did Crockett make such a claim? Because she knew she could get away with it. In today’s political climate, planting seeds of suspicion can be more powerful than facts. Once the accusation is made, many voters will remember the headline, not the correction.
It raises a troubling question: if one were to conduct a “man on the street” interview, how many people would now believe Republicans took money from Jeffrey Epstein simply because Crockett said so?
This episode underscores the danger of careless accusations in politics. Crockett’s refusal to fully acknowledge her error, coupled with her attempt to deflect responsibility, reveals a troubling disregard for truth. In a time when trust in institutions is already fragile, such reckless rhetoric only deepens division and misinformation.
It was almost as stupid, and as dangerous, as the video of the six congressional Democrats encouraging members of the military and intelligence community to sabotage Trump from within by refusing to follow their chain of command, and follow lawful orders. By the way, after accusing Trump of issuing unlawful orders, when Martha MacCallum challenged Representative Jason Crow what unlawful orders were issued by Trump, Crow folded into word salads faster than Kamala Harris in a high stakes poker game.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
By Douglas V. Gibbs
Hollywood has long leaned left, often embracing values and narratives that diverge from mainstream America. During my brief time as an actor during the mid-1990s, I noticed a striking norm in the industry: even back then, gay men were prevalent not only among performers but also in many behind-the-scenes roles. As a Christian, I believe homosexuality is an immoral behavior. As a constitutionalist, I also believe that individuals have the right to make personal choices, so long as those choices do not infringe upon the rights of others.
That’s the line. The Constitution protects liberty, not moral conformity. Therefore, any attempt to use the law to either promote or suppress the homosexual or transgender agenda would be unconstitutional. The real battleground isn’t legal, as a result. It’s cultural. And Christians must engage that battlefield with clarity and conviction. Why should we cede the cultural arena when the left uses it so effectively? Movies and music have shaped public sentiment for decades, and frankly, we’ve been losing badly on the cultural battlefield of late.
Which brings me to a disturbing example.
In the recent film The Running Man, progressive messaging saturates the storyline. But one detail stood out as especially sickening. Throughout the movie, a fictional children’s cereal called “Fun Twinks” appears repeatedly as a product in the future world that character Ben Richards lives in. At first glance, it might seem like a quirky, futuristic brand. But the term “twink” carries a darker meaning. In general parlance, it refers to a youthful, petite gay male. Within the homosexual subculture, however, it can denote something far more troubling: an underage boy used for sexual pleasure by an adult man.
I don’t make this claim lightly. My father, whose sexuality led to my parents’ divorce when I was an infant, lived a lifestyle I witnessed firsthand during visits. I know what the term means in that world.
So when The Running Man pairs “twink” with “fun” and markets it as a cereal children crave, it’s not just tone-deaf, it’s depraved. This isn’t innocent branding. It’s subliminal messaging. It’s grooming. It’s a cultural signal that associates children with sexualized gay imagery, cloaked in humor and fantasy. And it appalled me.
Hollywood thought this film would be a blockbuster. Instead, it revealed just how far the industry is willing to go to normalize what should never be normalized. Christians must not remain silent. We must speak truth, engage culture, and expose the sickness when we see it.
And this is exactly why Hollywood is in trouble. They are losing money, and from this writer’s observation post, it is of no surprise.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
By Douglas V. Gibbs
Congress passed a bill demanding that within 30 days the Department of Justice release the Epstein Files. President Trump has signed that bill, and Bondi’s DOJ has responded by indicating they will release the files within the 30-day window provided. It is unconstitutional for the Congress to demand that the executive branch do anything, but I get why they did it, and I am not going to get too hung up on what they did because I understand why they did it.
What are the Epstein Files? I was asked this just yesterday by someone not in tune with politics the way I am. In a nut shell, they are the files that have been gathered by the federal government during their investigation regarding Jeffery Epstein. For those who have been living under a rock, Epstein was a fake-financier who used financial leverage and corrupt schemes to make a lot of money and have the ability to rub elbows with some pretty powerful and wealthy people. However, not only was he a criminal in the financial world, but he was also a criminal sexual pervert. So much so, that when Donald Trump discovered how weird Epstein was, he kicked him out of Mar-a-Lago and broke any ties, not matter how small, he had with him.
Epstein’s sexual perversion included the Lolita Express, which facilitated flights to his sex island in the Caribbean where underage sex was not only permitted, but orchestrated by him and his human trafficking operation.
Federal investigations into Jeffrey Epstein began in 2005, when parents of a 14-year old girl reported him to Florida authorities. This led to a broader federal probe by the FBI in 2006. The 2005 investigation uncovered multiple victims and led to a probable cause affidavit recommending charges for unlawful acts with minors.
The FBI opened a federal investigation under the codename “Operation Leap Year” in May of 2006, focusing on Epstein’s sex trafficking of minors across state lines. Despite extensive evidence, federal prosecutors in Florida negotiated a controversial non-prosecution agreement in 2007, which shielded Epstein and unnamed co-conspirators from federal charges.
In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to two counts of soliciting prostitution (one involving a minor) and served 13 months in jail, with work release privileges. The plea deal halted the federal investigation for the moment.
Investigative journalism in 2018 reignited public and legal interest in Epstein’s case, exposing that the scope of the abuse was much broader than originally realized. In July of 2019, federal prosecutors in New York charged Epstein with sex trafficking of minors, making a full reactivation of federal efforts.
While Epstein first appeared officially on the federal government’s radar during George W. Bush’s presidency, Epstein’s connections with his Lolita Express allegedly reaches back to President Bill Clinton. The Deep State, I believe, realized that Epstein’s connection to many powerful politicians and political donors could prove devastating to their plans, and did what they could to make sure progress on the Epstein case didn’t proceed too quickly, too effectively, or too deeply. Once Obama was President, I believe the attempt to bury it, and perhaps even destroy some of the records, went into high gear; especially when it was realized that after Obama’s presidency, Hillary Clinton was to be Obama’s heir apparent. She is, after all, the wife of former President Bill Clinton, whose name has come up quite a few times when it comes to the names allegedly listed on flight logs for the Lolita Express.
Donald Trump winning in 2016 threw a monkey wrench into everything, but the Democrats and their leftist allies still maintained control of any Epstein files that existed, so they weren’t too worried about those files being exposed.
During Biden’s presidency I believe that some more of the files were not only destroyed, but as a precaution, false records were inserted into the Epstein Files. When Trump won the 2024 Election, a desperate attempt to destroy more files by the FBI took place, while they also tried to add more false pages in the hopes of making it look like Trump had something to do with Epstein.
When Epstein was in his fake-financier heyday, of course he and Donald Trump bumped into each other on occasion. As a businessman always seeking investors, Trump’s proximity to circles that Epstein also sometimes found himself in even led to a photograph of the pair that the Democrats were happy to put out there in the hopes of pushing a narrative that Trump somehow had some kind of relationship with Epstein.
Until Pam Bondi grabbed the reins of the Department of Justice, and Kash Patel became chief over the FBI, the Democrat’s allies in the Deep State bureaucracy had control of the Epstein Files the entire time – even while Bush was President, and during Trump’s first term. They never expected Trump to return to the White House, and due to the connections to important Democrats and establishment Republicans they were happy to keep the files buried and out of sight of the public. When Trump reentered the White House in 2025, they panicked. Their false narrative, as a result, began to bubble to the surface pretty quickly, with insinuations that somehow Trump was in those files, and that’s why the Epstein Files were not being released by the Trump administration’s DOJ.
Pam Bondi said, at one point, to the American Public: The files are on my desk. But, I believe when she said that, she had not gone through them, yet. Once she did, she realized many sections of the files were missing, and fraudulent entries existed. She couldn’t release the files until the DOJ separated fact from fiction. The delay, however, was a chance for the Democrats to create their Epstein Hoax, and insinuate that Trump was listed in those files as a potential pedophile.
One has to ask, however, when one considers the hate they have for Trump and all of their lawfare attempts to sink him: If Trump is in those files as they claim, why didn’t they release those files themselves while they had them in their clutches? If the files say what they are claiming today, then they would have sunk the man forever. Therefore, by that fact alone, I know that Trump is not implicated in those files.
As things began working lately, some emails and text messages have come to the surface. Democrats released emails from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate claiming they implicated Donald Trump in Epstein’s sex trafficking activities. However, the move backfired on them when the redacted victim’s name in those emails was revealed to be Virginia Giuffre, already publicly known, and one who had testified that Trump had nothing to do with Epstein’s games. The revelation undermined the Democrats’ framing of the emails as bombshells.
Which brings us back to the recent bill that Trump signed compelling the DOJ to release all unclassified Epstein files…
While Congress does not have the constitutional authority to compel the executive branch to do anything, thanks to the Separation of Powers concept, the reason they did it was to show the public that the Republicans were happy to vote in favor of releasing the files. The Republicans being behind the push to release the files turns the tables by accusing Democrats of orchestrating a hoax against Donald Trump.
Now, we simply need to wait for the full release of the files. I have a feeling, and we’ve seen some signs of what I believe to be true, that the files will reveal fully that Epstein was a Democratic Party guy, that the Democrats were the ones mainly rubbing elbows with him, and I believe the files will likely end many Democratic political careers while also destroying many of the donors to the Democratic Party. Fallout, after all, is already affecting prominent figures like Larry Summers who resigned from multiple public roles (from the board of OpenAI, from advisory roles at Yale’s Budget Lab and the Center for Global Development, and he took a leave of absence from Harvard University where he was teaching economics) following revelations of his correspondence with Epstein.
Summers is just one of several high-profile individuals caught in the wave of scrutiny. More fireworks are sure to come over the next thirty days as the Epstein Files begin to be released. And understand, this matters greatly because it is just another crack in the shell of corruption and elitist smuggery that may be an integral part in not only bringing down the Deep State, but it may even finish off the advancement of evil that has been creeping through our government for well over a century.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
By Douglas V. Gibbs
First thing’s first. SNAP is unconstitutional. The federal government has no authority to be involved in providing a safety net for Americans. The Constitution simply does not provide that authorization. And before you use the “general welfare” clause argument, read James Madison’s veto of the Bonus Bill before you try to use that unconstitutional claim.
Secondly, for those now screaming that I am calling for people to go hungry and lose their livelihoods and all of that, don’t be so dramatic. I am not saying that there can’t be a safety net. I am simply saying that the federal government may not constitutionally provide it. The Tenth Amendment is clear that if a power is not granted to the federal government, but not prohibited to the States, then the States may entertain that authority. So, in short, things like food stamps (a.k.a. SNAP), help with housing, and even government healthcare assistance may be provided at the State level. States may deny providing it completely, or provide it liberally, or achieve any condition in between. If the we feel that the federal government should be the ones administering such programs? Then fine, amend the Constitution to add that authority to the federal government’s list of enumerated powers.
The problem with welfare-style benefits is that if allowed, people will make it their lifestyle rather than a temporary condition until they can get on their feet through participation in America’s wonderful free market economy. The other thing is that if the system is not carefully monitored, and if it doesn’t come with a mess-load of conditions, abuse will run rampant. SNAP has proven that latter one to be true.
According to U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, dead people have been receiving benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Also, many people have been receiving the benefits twice. Records from twenty-nine states reveal that a “staggering” 5,000 dead people have been receiving the benefits, and 500,000 people were “getting benefits two times under the same name.” Additionally, 80% of those on SNAP in those states were able-bodied Americans, meaning that they have the ability to participate in the workforce. “They don’t have small children at home, they’re not taking care of an elderly parent. They can work, and they choose not to work, of course, because they’re getting significant benefits from the taxpayer.”
Under the Trump administration the federal government is working on “cracking down” on benefit fraud. “We now have a plan to fix it and we’re really, really excited about doing that for the American people.”
It is important to note that while 29 states complied and shared their SNAP data with the administration, 21 states refused to do so. Two of those states that refused to share data sued the Trump administration over the matter.
One has to ask, “What are those 21 other states hiding?” By the way, of the 29 States that did respond, nearly all of them were led by Republican governments.
The effort by the Trump administration to get the fraud under control will include requiring the USDA requiring beneficiaries to reapply. The SNAP benefit provides assistance to about 42 million people, with many of those folks being illegal aliens, or fraudulently receiving benefits. The cost of the program is about $100 billion, or at least that is what it was in 2024.
Rollins added, “Can you imagine when we get our hands on the blue-state data what we’re gonna find?”
If this administration wants to operate constitutionally on this matter, they would simply refuse to continue the program and hand it over to the States. I am willing to bet the blue-states, once their taxpayers start footing the bill for massive fraud, may think twice about how they administer the programs and who has access to those benefits.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
By Douglas V. Gibbs
When federal power overreaches, who stands in the gap?
Constitutionally, We the People and the States are the final arbiters of the U.S. Constitution. Congress is supposed to be responsible enough to only pass constitutional laws, and should repeal laws that do not meet constitutional muster. When they do not honor that responsibility it is up to the people for the House of Representatives, and the States for the Senate (or at least before the 17th Amendment), to remove those members of Congress who do not honor their constitutional oath. The courts may hear cases regarding the constitutionality of law, but their job is not to act legislatively and strike down laws they do not like. The courts may, however, if after reviewing a law they find an issue with its constitutionality, issue a judicial opinion. The legislature is supposed to consider the judicial opinion, and act accordingly if the interpretation holds constitutional validity. But, what happens if the federal government begins operating against the Constitution, and the three branches of government are colluding together to begin using their unconstitutionality against the people?
The last line of defense is your county sheriff.
The sheriff is the executive officer of your county, elected directly by the people. That means that the sheriff, since they are not appointed, are not beholden to Washington, the State, nor even your county supervisors. He answers directly to those who put him in office. His authority is local, constitutional, and rooted in tradition. Historically, the federal government could not operate inside a county without the sheriff’s approval. If the sheriff deemed the operation unconstitutional, he had every right to deny access.
That said, there are a few constitutional exceptions.
Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution requires the federal government to guarantee a republican form of government in the states. That means if a State, or any of the governments within that State, veers from republican principles, federal action doesn’t need a sheriff’s permission. This has been a hotly debated topic between I and a few of my constitutional colleagues. Do I really believe that if the States or any of the governments within a State are operating outside what is considered a republican form of government as laid out by the Constitution, the federal government can send in the troops and fix it?
Yes. And if the sheriff is truly constitutional, they’ll be standing side by side with those federal officers when the protests get violent.
That said, if the sheriff feels the federal government is wrong in their assessment, he still has the authority to resist federal intrusion. But, as the final arbiters of the Constitution, if the people disagree with the sheriff’s actions, they have every authority to remove him from office and put a new sheriff into that seat.
Today’s headlines remind us that there are also a few other exceptions to the “federal government needs the State’s or sheriff’s permission” rule.
Article I, Section 8 provides three more exceptions:
• Executing the laws of the United States
• Suppressing insurrection
• Repelling invasion
Given the framework about the sheriff being the last line of defense against the federal government, I’m surprised Democrats haven’t leaned on their sheriffs to challenge federal officers with the latest attempts by President Trump to execute immigration enforcement. As provided by Article I, Section 8 President Trump and federal agencies like ICE are operating under constitutional authority, but I am surprised the Democrats and their allies have skipped over using the sheriff and went straight to violent mob operations. And since the federal government with ICE are executing federal law, technically their resistance is not and option. They are violating the Constitution and federal law.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not questioning their right to protest. The First Amendment and Freedom of Speech is an important part of the American ideal of liberty, and they can protest all they want. But when their actions become violent, obstructive, and even dangerous to the safety of the federal officers on the ground, their right to protest went from peaceable assemble to non-peaceable assembly; and the latter is not a natural right.
They can peacefully resist. Heck, a sheriff may even choose to resist. That’s their prerogative. But when the sheriff takes up that kind of mantle and it is not in line with the Constitution, then it’s up to the voters to make the adjustment. The question then becomes, are the people informed enough to judge the sheriff’s decision? Will they re-elect him? Will they replace him? That’s the beauty of local constitutional accountability. The sheriff answers to the people. And the people are supposed to be knowledgeable enough about the Constitution to make the right decision.
Violent opposition to federal personnel while they try execute federal law is not the right decision.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary