Donald Trump did a lot of sorting in the Republican Party in 2016.

He exposed many of the frauds and grifters.

And now one Never Trumper has just snipped his credibility with an alarming statement in the NYT that he’ll never recover from.

Donald Trump became a permanent enemy of the D.C. establishment in February 2016 during the South Carolina GOP primary.

Trump told Jeb Bush that his brother lied the country into the Iraq War, effectively painting Bush and the neocons as warmongers.

Prior to that moment, even king neocon Bill Kristol wrote favorably of Trump, suspecting Trump might have been a security hawk.

From that moment forward, Kristol and the neocons have attacked Trump with every weapon in their arsenal.

Kristol even recruited former National Review writer David French to launch a third party run in 2016 to siphon votes away from Trump and hand the election to Hillary Clinton, who would reliably bomb whichever country the neocons wanted.

French withdrew his name from consideration but became one of the leaders of the Never Trump movement.

Unsurprisingly, French now writes for the New York Times, and like so many of the other Never Trump warmongers, he has reversed almost all of his positions, except war; in fact, French recently promoted an article at Commentary Magazine that defended the Iraq War.

French has effectively bent the knee to the “woke” Left on a number of issues, particularly “gender-affirming” butchery on children.

French wrote in a recent Times column, “Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas issued a directive to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate as ‘abuse’ both surgical and pharmaceutical interventions for transgender children, regardless of the good faith and desires of the parents, children and caregivers involved. To understand the gravity of the state interference with parental authority, it’s worth remembering the words of Chief Justice Warren Burger in the 1972 case Wisconsin v. Yoder, in which he wrote that the ‘primary role of the parents in the upbringing of their children is now established beyond debate as an enduring American tradition.’ To simply presume that parents are abusive because they may dissent from state consensus on transgender care is to violate this principle of American law.”

First, French doesn’t seem similarly outraged about parents losing custody of their children for not “gender-affirming” or psychologists being threatened with loss of licensure for the same reason.

Nevertheless, he apparently does believe that parents having genitalia altering surgery and hormone manipulations performed on their children – what he terms “transgender care” – is somehow equivalent to the Amish parents that Justice Burger wrote of who took their kids out of government schools. 

At least he does now that he works for the New York Times.

French was singing a different tune about transgenderism not that long ago.

In 2019, French called Drag Queen Story Hour a “blessing of liberty,” but in 2016 during the transgender bathroom controversy, French wrote in National Review, “North Carolina’s lawsuit represents a direct challenge to the notion that the EEOC can amend federal law merely by changing its ‘interpretation.’ It also challenges the very idea that requiring people to use bathrooms that correspond with their biological sex represents sex discrimination. The Obama administration credulously buys the notion that a man in a dress or a man who has been surgically mutilated is now a ‘woman,’ and it seeks to enforce that notion with the full power of the federal government. AS I said before, quack science meets quack law, and the Constitution is the casualty.”

French dismissed transgenderism as “quick science” and mocked the idea that a “surgically mutilated” man could become a woman.

A reader took exception with French’s words and wrote, “The phrase ‘surgically mutilated’ both mischaracterizes sex reassignment surgery & shows your inherent transphobia.”

French responded, “Mutilation is still mutilation, even when done with a scalpel. So very sad.”

One reader objected to French’s characterizing trans surgery as “mutilation.” Here was French’s reply: pic.twitter.com/wXJNsQUqBS

— Seth Dillon (@SethDillon) March 15, 2023

 Conservatives have often been criticized as leftists simply driving the speed limit.

When people like Kristol and French were considered at the forefront of thought on the American Right for so long, it’s easy to see how America has been overtaken by “wokeness.”

Pants on Fire News will keep you up-to-date on any developments to this ongoing story.

The Democrat Media Complex is figuring out how to destroy Ron DeSantis.

He has been the subject of countless hit pieces.

But DeSantis brought the New York Times to fits with his latest victory.

Republicans have known for a long time that the so-called mainstream media is heavily biased in favor of Democrats.

But during the Donald Trump era, more and more people in the middle and on the center-left got to experience it for themselves.

The Left control almost every facet of American culture, and they use that cultural power to push left-wing ideas.

One of those cultural outlets is the New York Times Book Review section.

The Times’s book reviewers are wildly partisan, and it showed in a scathing review of Florida Governor Ron Desantis’s memoir “The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival.”

Nonfiction book critic Jennifer Szalai wrote, “[T]he overall sense you get from reading his new memoir is that of the mechanical try-hard — someone who has expended a lot of effort studying which way the wind is blowing in the Republican Party and is learning how to comport himself accordingly. Not that he admits any of this, peppering ‘The Courage to Be Free’ with frequent eruptions about ‘the legacy media’ and ‘runaway wokeness.’ But all the culture war Mad Libs can’t distract from the dull coldness at this book’s core.”

Szalai attempted to paint DeSantis as a political phony, but the voters of Florida seem to think he’s genuine, as he turned the state from purple to blood red.

She added, “What this has meant in practice looks an awful lot like thought policing: outlawing classroom discussion of sexual orientation through the third grade; rejecting math textbooks that run afoul of Florida’s opaque review process; forbidding teachers and companies to discuss race and gender in a way that might make anyone feel “discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress.” Florida also has a ban on abortion after 15 weeks — which DeSantis has indicated he would be willing to tighten to six weeks — with no exceptions for rape and incest.”

The reviewer worked in a political screed, which had nothing to do with the substance of the book.

The fact that she wrote “outlawing classroom discussion of sexual orientation through the third grade” as if it’s some barbaric proposal illustrates just how far to the left the Democrats have gone.

Despite the Times’s wailing, DeSantis’s book hit number one on Amazon, which bodes well for his prospects as a national candidate.

The Times must be frustrated that its review section is no longer the gatekeeping institution that it once was in the world of publishing.

Pants on Fire News will keep you up-to-date on any developments to this ongoing story.

It’s quite clear who the Democrats fear in the Republican Party.

The candidates they attack mercilessly are the ones that concern them.

That’s why the New York Times is getting behind one RINO candidate for 2024.

The Democrat Media Complex always seems to vilify the Republicans they deem a threat.

That’s why Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has daily hit pieces written about him.

But the corporate press seems to be getting cozy with New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, who called Donald Trump “f*cking crazy” last October.

Now the New York Times is writing puff pieces about Sununu, floating him as a potential candidate.

Matt Flegenheimer wrote a piece titled: “Chris Sununu Eyes the G.O.P.’s ‘Normal’ Lane in 2024. Does It Exist?”

By “normal” The Times means feckless.

Flegenheimer wrote, “Mr. Sununu says the time for indulging Mr. Trump’s delusions has long passed. The midterms, he argues, proved that the nation, including many Republicans, had little interest in the far-right candidates the former president backed. Even nominating a onetime Trump acolyte from the prospective 2024 field, like Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida or the former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, is a misread of the moment, he says.”

The article made sure to reference DeSantis several times and undercut his chances as a presidential figure.

For example, The Times wrote, “The governor also criticized ostensible conservatives for targeting private businesses deemed hostile to right-wing values, citing Mr. DeSantis in particular. ‘Is government going to solve a cultural issue?’ he asked. ‘No. Good Republicans don’t believe that.’”

The fact that Sununu and other RINOs are unwilling to fight culture war battles are precisely why the culture has gone haywire.

Moderates simply think “messaging” will solve the problem, but they are sorely mistaken.

Trump and DeSantis are so popular because they have been willing to engage in the culture war.

Establishment Republicans have ruined the party’s credibility as fiscally responsible, so the idea that tax cuts and deregulation is enough to satisfy voters is folly.

The Times isn’t the only Democrat-controlled source pumping Sununu.

Joe Scarborough of MSNBC recently said, “I think everybody you put up on stage, maybe with the exception — and I’ll say this, of Chris Sununu, who’s sitting at 70-plus percent up in New Hampshire, and doesn’t really put up with a lot of you-know-what. I think he can kind of punch [Trump] back.”

Time will tell if Sununu has a prayer in a Republican primary but odds are against it.

Pants on Fire News will keep you up-to-date on any developments to this ongoing story.