A long time reader and commenter sent this email to me on Wednesday.

Dear Bruce,

Thought of you seeing all the Rush hate on Facebook today.

If it weren’t for all the Reagan hate, there’d be no Rush.   When Reagan was in office, there was no Rush. 

Rush’s rise began after Reagan left the White House.

Attacks on Reagan continued.  Reagan was a gentleman.  He knew history would vindicate.

He didn’t think it was his place to fight back.  A former president should avoid the limelight.

Then-President Bush didn’t defend him either.  Some of 41’s team even leaked criticism to the media.

Rush filled the void.  No hatred of Reagan.  No attacks on conservative ideas.  No Rush Limbaugh.

You want to see fewer Rush Limbaughs?  Stop hating on conservatives.  Less media bias = fewer Rushes.

–A Reaganite reader

Amidst a flurry of news this week, one odd story has gone woefully underreported. According to federal court documents, NBC and CNN paid $35,000 each for the footage of a Trump-supporting Air Force veteran being shot and killed by a still-unidentified man during the Capitol riot in January.

John Sullivan, the founder of a group called Insurgence USA, has admitted to a federal court that the news networks paid him handsomely for his recording. Prosecutors also allege that Sullivan “infiltrates protests to cause chaos and record video footage.”

I’m no conspiracy theorist, but something here doesn’t add up. A self-proclaimed anti-Trump activist who incites violence at protests profits from a supposedly pro-trump “insurrection.” And the people who pay him have an incentive to push the “insurrection” narrative for a variety of reasons. That narrative is currently being used to label Republicans and Trump supporters as terrorists and fueling calls for a new “War on Terror” within the United States.

Such rhetoric isn’t new. Back in August of 2020, Nancy Pelosi accused Republicans of being “domestic enemies” and “enemies of the state.” The difference now is that there’s been an incident that far too many people with power are using as “proof” of an enemy within.

What the hell is going on? I’m not sure, but a picture is emerging that, ominously, suggests that there is an enemy within, and it may not be Trump supporters.

Consider:

• The Chief of the Capitol Police on the day of the riot said that they made six requests for National Guard troops in the days leading up to the demonstration, but were denied by both House and Senate Sergeants-at-Arms.
• The story that Officer Brian Sicknick was beaten to death by a bloodthirsty mob has fallen apart, even as it’s been used to pummel Trump supporters.
• We’ve been told over and over that the mob was armed, but Capitol Police have never said how many weapons were confiscated or if any weapons were discharged by their officers or rioters.
• The mysterious pipe bombs found at the DNC and RNC were placed the night before the riots, and even with a massive manhunt and video footage no one has been arrested. It’s also odd that no one noticed suspicious packages outside of such secure buildings anytime during January 6th until after the riot began.
• The man appointed to lead the “9/11-Style commission” looking into the breach at the Capitol called Sen. Josh Hawley a “little piece of shit” and has criticized republicans for years on MSNBC.
• Members of Congress falsely accusing colleagues of offering “reconnaissance tours” prior to the riots

There’s more than this, of course. Like the weird tale of panic buttons being removed from Congressional offices with no proof or follow-up by an oddly incurious media, and AOC’s hallucination of being in danger from rioters who never came near her.

The media has parroted the most outlandish of these stories while refusing to do basic follow-up reporting to get to the truth. And now they’ve paid an anti-Trump agitator a startling sum of money for video he took while he was rioting.

The question we need to ask is Cui Bono? Who benefits? It sure looks and feels like the media, Nancy Pelosi, and the surveillance state demagogues are — to our detriment.

There is some humor to be found in the fact that this latest (hypocritical) charge of racism from China is an ACTUAL cartoon and not just one in its essence. Take a long hard look Democrats, own it – this is your monster.

America is the guy at a bar drowning his suspicions of wife’s infidelity in booze. China is the guy shtooping America’s wife, completely sober, refilling Americas cup. Drunkenly, America tells China EVERYTHING China needs to know to break up the marriage and continue shtooping the wife. We are a joke of a country for allowing this to happen time and time again and it’s because we refuse to take our enemies and adversaries seriously. This should be a wake-up call.

When Democrats and the media rip their own country apart for political gain/ratings using narratives of systemic racism, it takes serious arrogance to not acknowledge our living in a competitive global marketplace.

“Our propaganda is better than YOUR propaganda”. – The World

Yes Democrats, there are countries that exist outside of the US and yes they are playing for keeps (stop giving away the game!). This same mindset extends to our coverage and politics surrounding COVID. We may be the ONLY country to do everything we can to inflate our own numbers and even BRAG about how terrible we are at handling the efforts to stop it. Aside from our President who was roundly mocked and subverted out of office, we did everything BESIDES point out the failures and faults of other countries. Does anyone remember the WHO?

Democrats – when our greatest geopolitical adversary (you know, the one with the ACTUAL concentration camps) is using your own propaganda against the American people and government, it’s time to stop writing their propaganda for them and take a good hard hard look in the mirror.

Can anyone imagine Nancy Pelosi allowing one of her top lieutenants in Democratic leadership to oppose the impeachment of former President Trump? Of course not. You can’t imagine it, because their is no way in hell Pelosi would allow someone so wildly out of step with the rest of the caucus and with her liberal base to be in leadership.

Liz Cheney isn’t just some back bencher Republican, she chose to be in leadership and the Republican caucus elected her. She isn’t from a swing district where she needs to flex her bipartisan bonafides to get reelected – she represents a district (the state of Wyoming) that Trump carried with 70%. And yet, Liz Cheney was allowed to not only vote to impeach the former President, but to become one of the lead cheerleaders of the effort.

She survived a secret ballot vote to retain her leadership position by a more than 2 to 1 margin (with 145 Republicans voting for Cheney and just 61 voting to remove her).

If you want to know how any of this is possible the answer is pretty simple:  the Republican establishment hates its base. It always has and apparently it always will.

The left and the Never Trumpers claim Cheney should be applauded for “voting her conscience,” which of course is a nice way of saying Cheney gave the finger to the voters of Wyoming who she is supposed to represent.

The Republican establishment thinks that its base is stupid and that they know what we need (even if we are too dumb to realize it for ourselves). This approach to governing is nothing new, for decades the Republican establishment told its base to accept the policies of Bush, McCain and Romney.

Then along came Trump. Trump told the Republican base that they didn’t have to pretend to enjoy the crap sandwich that the establishment had been serving them for decades. Trump succeeded in winning over the GOP because he offered the base what it actually wanted. None of us cared one iota about the Paul Ryan budget blueprint and Trump told us we could stop pretending.

There is no going back now. You can’t put the base back into their cages. We simply won’t be told how we are supposed to feel and who we are supposed to vote for.

As I said in my most recent column for The Political Insider:

The establishment will tell you that we need to bury the hatchet and focus on winning back Republican majorities in the House and Senate in 2022.

Ignore them.

They want you to bury the hatchet they just shoved in your back, they want you to be the good little foot soldiers that voted for Bush and McCain and Romney, and most of all they want you to let them get back to doing things the way they used to do things before Trump showed up.

The establishment is right, winning back the majority in the House and Senate in 2022 is important, but not until we as conservatives win back our own party.

It is time to clean house. We don’t have to guess which Republicans we can trust, they have exposed themselves over the two months.

Liz Cheney and the duplicitous Republican establishment is going to learn the hard way that things aren’t going back to the way they used to be. This isn’t about Trump, this is about us – the base of the Republican Party. It’s our party now.