Ding, Ding, Round Two!
But once again, there’s no real contender as former President Trump heads to Detroit, skipping the second Republican presidential nominee debate tonight at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California.
You can’t really blame him, given his position in the polls is still dominant, but one thing is for sure, tonight is make-or-break for any hopefuls…
Everyone from debate No. 1 qualified for debate No. 2 except former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson.
Those who tuned into the first debate may have noticed some major topics and questions were missing or minimized — everything from election integrity, a huge concern for many Republicans after the 2020 election, to the fate of Jeffrey Epstein, which Tucker Carlson tackled during an interview with former President Trump that ran at the same time as the debate.
Nathan Worcester, writing for The Epoch Times, lays out some more things to look out for at the showdown in Simi Valley.
Trump, Trump, and More Trump
A transcript of the first debate shows the word “Trump” was spoken more than 25 times.
President Trump will likely remain a significant focus of the conversation on Sept. 27. As he faces multiple indictments while campaigning for his previous office, the real estate developer turned politician is still the main character in American politics and certainly in the Republican Party.
“He has a huge lead. As the debates have gone on, his lead has only increased. While there were some standout performances in Milwaukee, nobody really made a dent in that,” Mr. Kall said.
“They can’t just attack each other and hope to do well. They really have to take the fight to Donald Trump,“he added.
“There’s definitely a split in the Republican Party — those who want to move into the populist direction and those who want to stay with the 2000s or even earlier type of Republicanism, like Nikki Haley or Mike Pence.
“That’s going to be something for Republican primary voters to decide at the ballots,” Ms. Krieger said.
Mr. Ramaswamy and Gov. DeSantis are closer to the populist camp. A strong attack on President Trump from either one would be noteworthy.
More Foreign Policy Clashes
During the first debate, some of the biggest arguments erupted over foreign policy.
That’s unsurprising. In a party reshaped by President Trump and, before him, the likes of Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan, hawkishness has given ground to what some call non-interventionism and what others call isolationism.
As the closest equivalent to President Trump in Milwaukee, Mr. Ramaswamy sparred with Ms. Haley and Mr. Christie as well as former Vice President Pence.
Mr. Pence described Mr. Ramaswamy’s vision of ceding parts of Ukraine to Russia to sever it from Beijing as a “giveaway… to Putin.”
Ms. Haley, who served as the United States ambassador to the United Nations during the Trump administration, argued with Mr. Ramaswamy over Russia, China, Taiwan, and Israel.
Count on foreign policy remaining a hot topic at the Reagan Library. After all, the president has considerable power over foreign policy, as outlined in Article II of the Constitution, and American foreign policy decisions resonate across the country and the planet.
The ‘Laptop from Hell’
Special counsel David Weiss’s investigation of Hunter Biden, President Biden’s son, didn’t come up as part of the moderators’ questions in Milwaukee.
Mr. Christie and Mr. DeSantis did mention his legal issues at the first debate.
Although Hunter Biden has been under investigation for years, no charges were filed until whistleblowers with the IRS testified that multiple U.S. attorneys declined to let Mr. Weiss bring charges.
Now, an FBI agent has come forward and confirmed their accounts during a closed-door interview with members of Congress.
“I remember learning at some point in the investigation that Mr. Weiss would have to go through his other processes because the U.S. Attorney’s Offices had, I guess, in that sense, using that terminology, wasn’t going to partner,” the agent said, as recorded in a transcript The Epoch Times has obtained and reviewed.
Hunter Biden is also suing former Trump aide Garrett Ziegler in connection with the laptop linked to him in the runup to the 2020 election, dubbed “the laptop from hell.”
As Newt Gingirch writes at The New York Sun, overall debate performance is not all that matters. In this kind of wide-open environment — with seven candidates maneuvering to become the Trump alternative — candidates have two simple goals.
First, do not get too eager and screw up. One big mistake could lead people to write you off as unable to beat Mr. Trump or lead the country.
Second, find no more than three breakthrough moments in which your ideas, language, delivery, intelligence, courage, and authenticity vividly come through. Networks will specifically hunt for these moments to highlight repeatedly. And they will go viral on social media.
Ambassador (and former Governor) Haley came close to breaking through after the first debate. Many polls showed that people felt she was the most effective and forceful debater. Her focus on Vice President Harris worked to her advantage.
Ms. Haley’s range of experience in foreign policy and national security was impressive.
Her toughness about balancing the budget and lessons she learned as a reform governor of South Carolina communicated an important authenticity. She may be the best positioned to break out.
Mr. Ramaswamy impressed in the first debate.
As a remarkably successful 38-year-old entrepreneur, he has a lot going for him. However, many people refuse to consider him because they don’t believe he has enough experience to be President. If he can perform well enough to overcome those concerns, he could take off and have an exciting run.
Mr. Desantis may be facing his last chance to prove he is a contender.
He has been an excellent governor of Florida. It has been perplexing to watch him decay under the dual assaults of the Trump team and the left-wing press. This may be his last opportunity to resurrect his candidacy and convince people — especially major donors — to give him a second look.
Gingrich closes by suggesting that “it will be an interesting and important debate. It is worth your time to watch and think about it.”
The two-hour event will be moderated by Fox News’ Dana Perino and Stuart Varney as well as Univision’s Ilia Calderon.
The debate is being hosted on Fox News and Fox Business, accessible online only via login. Click the image below to link to the live Rumble feed (not embeddable)…
Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Elon Musk on Tuesday revealed that he took multiple COVID-19 vaccines so that he could travel during the period of intense pandemic restrictions and that after taking his third shot, he nearly ended up hospitalized.
Mr. Musk made the remarks in a post on X that was part of a thread he started as a response to a warning by European Union (EU) officials that X has fallen squarely into the bloc’s censorship crosshairs for being found to be the top purveyor of so-called misinformation and disinformation.
“Have you heard dis information?” Mr. Musk captioned his original post, in a play on words that accompanied a video compilation of COVID-19 vaccine news headlines that began with bold initial claims early in the pandemic that the vaccines are “100 percent effective” before steadily dropping lower and lower.
My concern was more the outrageous demand that people *must* take the vaccine and multiple boosters to do anything at all. That was messed up.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 26, 2023
Until the Supreme Court invalidated Biden’s exec order, SpaceX and many other companies would have been forced to fire anyone who…
“The mRNA COVID-19 vaccine was only 47% effective after 5 months?” reads one of the later headlines, followed by even more negative headlines like “Sweden, Denmark Halt Moderna’s Covid Shot for Younger People” and, finally, ones highlighting vaccine-maker profitability amid calls for seemingly endless boosters.
Mr. Musk’s meme on waning vaccine efficacy drew a number of comments, including one by political journalist Ed Krassenstein, who raised objections.
“I think efficacy changes are a result of new strains and the vaccine immunity wearing off. It’s stupid anyone ever claimed it was 100% effective. No vaccine is 100% full-proof,” he wrote.
Mr. Musk replied by saying that he’s not against vaccines in principle, but that he opposes mandates forcing people to get the shot.
“My concern was more the outrageous demand that people *must* take the vaccine and multiple boosters to do anything at all. That was messed up,” Mr. Musk wrote.
He added that, until the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated President Joe Biden’s executive order imposing a vaccine-or-test mandate for large companies, his company SpaceX “and many other other companies would have been forced to fire anyone who refused to get vaccinated!”
“We would not have done so. I would rather go to prison than fire good people who didn’t want to be jabbed,” Mr. Musk continued.
Mr. Musk also revealed that he got COVID-19 and experienced “mild cold symptoms” but took vaccines repeatedly for travel.
“The third shot almost sent me to hospital,” Mr. Musk said.
“How many other people out there have symptoms that are actually from the vaccine or Covid treatment, rather than Covid itself?” he asked.
There’s a growing body of data suggesting that COVID-19 vaccine side effects are more serious than previously claimed.
Mr. Musk qualified his remarks by saying he’s not against vaccines as a matter of principle.
“It’s not like I don’t believe in vaccines — I do. However, the cure cannot be potentially worse than the disease,” he said.
“Public debate over efficacy should not be shut down,” Mr. Musk continued.
Mr. Musk added that he believes “there is also great potential for curing many diseases using synthetic mRNA, so let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water.”
The X chief’s post garnered a series of reactions, including a humorous one by the Joe Biden Press Release (Parody) account, which features a photo of a smiling President Joe Biden saying: “I promise you’ll be safe after the 42nd booster.”
“Just be sure to triple mask, Elon,” the account added.
Meanwhile, in Brussels, EU officials took Mr. Musk and X into their censorship crosshairs.
A senior European Union official on Sept. 26 accused X of being the top purveyor of disinformation and issued a veiled threat, prompting Mr. Musk to push back by posting the meme highlighting waning vaccine effectiveness and sparking online debate.
At a press conference on Tuesday, the EU’s top commissar on disinformation — European Commission (EC) Vice President Vera Jourova—singled out X as being “the platform with the largest ratio of mis– or disinformation posts.”
Unlike competitors like Facebook and Google, Mr. Musk’s X has refused to participate in the European Union’s (EU) voluntary anti-disinformation effort called the 2022 Code of Practice on Disinformation.
While the code is supposedly nonbinding, companies that take part can ease some of their compliance requirements under the EU’s Digital Services Act, which kicked in at the end of August and is mandatory for the biggest tech platforms with over 45 million users in the EU — including X.
After earlier reprimanding Mr. Musk and X for lacking the appetite to self-censor and not taking the EU’s fight against “disinformation” seriously, the EU ramped up its rhetoric on Sept. 26, the day that social media companies like Facebook and Google — but not X — published reports on compliance with the bloc’s new “disinformation” code.
“Mr. Musk knows that he is not off the hook by leaving the code of practice because now we have the Digital Services Act fully enforced,” Ms. Jourova said. “So my message for Twitter is you have to comply with the hard law and we will be watching what you are doing.”
While X quite the voluntary code in May, it counts as a “very large online platform” under the mandatory Digital Services Act (DSA) and so is subject to stricter content rules.
Ms. Jourova reminded Mr. Musk of the fact that the EU has enforcement tools to pressure the platform into compliance with its content laws.
She made the remarks while providing an update on the 27-nation EU’s 2022 Code of Practice on Disinformation, which companies like Google, TikTok, and Facebook parent Meta signed up for — but which Mr. Musk’s X has snubbed.
Some examples from the reports include Google indicating that it prevented around $33 million in advertising dollars from going to “disinformation actors” and Meta slapped over 40 million pieces of content with factchecking labels.
The new Digital Services Act rules apply to 19 “very large” digital platforms (such as social media networks, websites, and online retailers) with at least 45 million active users in the EU.
The 19 platforms that fall under the umbrella of the new rules are: Alibaba AliExpress, Amazon Store, Apple AppStore, Bing, Booking.com, Facebook, Instagram, Google Maps, Google Play, Google Search, Google Shopping, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, X, Wikipedia, YouTube, and Zalando.
We have been writing over the last few months about increased competition in China’s EV market and (most recently) about intense EU scrutiny over Chinese subsidies, which the EU claims is mucking up its electric vehicle market by driving prices lower.
Now, one Japanese automaker is backing out of China altogether. Mitsubishi “has started final withdrawal talks with China’s Guangzhou Automobile Group”, its joint venture partner in China, according to Nikkei. The company has been suffering from “sluggish sales”, the report says, noting that other Japanese automakers are also reassessing their viability in the Asian country.
GAC Mitsubishi Motors has shuttered its manufacturing operations in Hunan province indefinitely, marking the end of Mitsubishi’s sole factory in China. GAC, which holds a 50% share in the joint venture, plans to repurpose the Hunan facility for electric vehicle (EV) production while aiming to retain some level of its workforce, the report says.
Mitsubishi Motors and Mitsubishi Corp., owning 30% and 20% stakes respectively, will pull their investments, although GAC Mitsubishi will continue to exist as a business entity.
Nikkei notes that in 2022, Mitsubishi’s car sales in China plummeted by 60% to 38,550 vehicles. An attempt to revive sales with the launch of the hybrid Outlander SUV last autumn failed to meet expectations. Mitsubishi now plans to reallocate resources to Southeast Asia and Oceania, areas responsible for about one-third of the company’s consolidated sales.
Meanwhile, the electric vehicle market in China is booming, with a report from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers indicating an 80% surge in EV sales in 2022 to 5.36 million units. Mitsubishi has lagged in this segment, relying on GAC for EV supplies in China.
Competition from Chinese auto manufacturers is also intensifying. Data from research firm MarkLines shows that Chinese brands captured 50.7% of the passenger car market in 2022, an increase of 5.2 percentage points from the previous year. Japanese companies accounted for 18.3% of the market, a decline of 2.8 percentage points.
Nissan Motor’s president and CEO, Makoto Uchida, recently expressed concern over the challenging market conditions, citing unsustainable discounting practices and hinting at a potential reevaluation of Nissan’s joint ventures in China, according to the report.
Mitsubishi has had a long history in China, dating back to the 1970s when it began exporting commercial vehicles. It formed a joint venture with Soueast Motor that lasted from 2006 until 2021. GAC Mitsubishi Motors was established in 2012 and reached its zenith in 2018 with 140,000 vehicles sold.
It isn’t just Japanese automakers that the heat is getting turned up on in China. Recall yesterday we wrote that Tesla was part and parcel with the ongoing EU investigation into Chinese subsidies.
EU executive vice-president Valdis Dombrovskis said this week that there was “sufficient prima facie evidence” to support the probe, FT reported on Tuesday morning. We had previously written about the EU’s investigation and Beijing’s response via The Global Times.
In an interview this week, responding specifically to whether or not Tesla would be included in the investigation, Dombrovskis said: “Strictly speaking, it’s not limited only to Chinese brand electrical vehicles, it can be also other producers’ vehicles if they are receiving production-side subsidies.”
He said he was “constantly pressed by his Chinese counterparts about the probe” after a five day trip to China, FT wrote.
“The EU is now probably the largest market which is open for Chinese producers,” he commented, defending the investigation. He said that the EU was “open to competition” but that it “needs to be fair”.
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