Why Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris and why the Democratic Leadership or the Media will never admit that they have failed.

He worked in a whore house.

He was a member of an outlaw motorcycle gang – a 1%er. At various points in his career, he claimed help run their protection business, sold drugs, and worked as the ticket man in a Bronx brothel filled with 18-year-old sex workers from the Dominican Republic and run by a shady Greek businessman.

Last week, as a researcher of organized crime I was doing what you would hope that I would do, I interviewed him about his methods inside the professional criminal world.

We spoke about New York City police corruption – “Those guys are just another OC gang. They are so corrupt! But you don’t need to bribe them if you work in a whorehouse. You just give them freebies…”

About advertising in an industry that cannot advertise publicly: “You just get a good product and then let word of mouth spread… that place will fill up fast!”

About business operations – “Never take money from your customers. They put the money on the table in a cup. You get them to take a ticket from outside. You do not want take their cash directly. Its same with selling drugs on the streets. Its organized, dude. You have to be smart.”

However, before we began the interview, we spoke about the US election. He wanted Trump to win. I asked him why?

“Because I hate all these stupid wars. When Trump was President we were involved in less wars in all these places around the world. I don’t like them.”

The point being that the first reason that he – a habitual criminal – mentioned for voting Trump was because he was weary of the constant warfare that this country is engaged in.

This is not the America of twenty-years-ago, post 9/11, when the population was saturated with a communal blood lust. Now, people want peace. They want their children to stop dying. They want to stop spending money on getting other people’s children to die and focus on their own economy.

Another American, another interview from the last few days. This man is the exact professional opposite to the criminal: a former senior law enforcement official, active against human trafficking, and a committed Christian.

“I cannot bring myself to vote for Kamala Harris. The wars will just go on.” NOTE THE NEXT POINT… “I loathe Trump. He is a slimy jerk but at least we stand a better chance of stopping all these wars.”

These two disparate people are symbolic of a wider spirit in the country. The most important, but largely ignored, statistic from Tuesday’s election is that 65% of Americans feel that the country is on the wrong path.

Now, we are being flooded with media tales of how the electorate did not realize what a wonderful person the Democratic candidate is. According to the media, they do this because voters are too stupid or too racist or both. In short, Kamala Harris did not fail America, America failed Kamala Harris. It is nonsense that ignores a deep unhappiness that Americans feel towards their status quo.

A Slowly Deflating Store Mannequin

Kamala Harris’s people ran a not very good campaign. In August, such was the relief of ditching a clearly addled Joe Biden, her ‘running on joy’ campaign did great work. She got a bump in the polls. Then a strong performance in the only presidential debate worked well for her. Since then, the Democrat campaign dwindled like a slowly deflating giant store mannequin.

The problem was that it was never clear during the fall campaign season on what Harris’s Democrats were actually running for.

Rather their campaign was a herd of cliches running across a rhetorical prairie in search of a vision. You got lots of “I am talking moments” but not very much about how she may or may not stop the ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

There was never a drop the gloves moment where Harris spoke to the American electorate in clear, unambiguous terms about what she actually believed in.

One example, Joe Biden’s administration did fantastic work against the corporate monopolies that run America. They launched lawsuits against Google, Amazon, and the algorithm that forces US renters to pay more money for their apartments. What they have not done is talk about these lawsuits. Harris never emphasized these extraordinary campaigns on behalf of the average Americans. Instead her election team was overshadowed by the presence of rich, billionaire donors – like Reid Hoffman – who hate the work against monopolies.

After the 2016 election we were treated to the spectacle of the Clinton Team blaming everyone but themselves for the loss – the Russians, the Racists, the tide of misinformation that swayed the voters they claimed were too stupid to choose Hilary.

Now, the same thing is happening with the Harris Campaign. The most popular incumbent politician in America is Bernie Sanders. Yet his campaign involvement was light. Instead we got Jon Bon Jovi and Beyoncé on stage with Kamala Harris. Don’t get me wrong – I Iike their music – but they are not exactly the kind of people I go to for political advice.

They Lied

The mainstream media lied to us.

The US establishment press – New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, The Atlantic – have bungled just about every single important story of the last eight years.

They got Russiagate wrong – it never happened.

They go the origins of Covid wrong – it came from a research lab.

They got Hunter Biden’s laptop story wrong – it was genuine.

If any of the above is a surprise to you, I will write articles on them later. For now, know they are walking-talking scandals of media complicity with the political establishment. And after screwing up these important stories, and others, the mainstream media cheered on the widespread censorship of anyone who got them right (including yours truly).

At no point, do any of them seem to be ready to apologize. Five months ago, Uri Berliner, a senior business editor at National Public Radio (NPR), wrote a thoughtful, considered article about the lack of introspection at his network after all their mistakes on the big stories of our times. He said, in part:

But when the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion, NPR’s coverage was notably sparse. Russiagate quietly faded from our programming.

It is one thing to swing and miss on a major story. Unfortunately, it happens. You follow the wrong leads, you get misled by sources you trusted, you’re emotionally invested in a narrative, and bits of circumstantial evidence never add up. It’s bad to blow a big story.

What’s worse is to pretend it never happened, to move on with no mea culpas, no self-reflection. Especially when you expect high standards of transparency from public figures and institutions, but don’t practice those standards yourself. That’s what shatters trust and engenders cynicism about the media.

Uri Berliner was, effectively, fired a few weeks later. There was no change, not even an independent discussion within NPR about whether he was right.

This lack of introspection tracks across American media. When Jeff aka Daddy Warbucks Bezos did not endorse Kamala Harris at the newspaper paper he owns – The Washington Post – he was accused of being either greedy or a coward. He wrote an oped in his own newspaper pointing out that Americans do not trust their media. Journalists ignored him.

The same thing happened to the far more credible Los Angeles Times owner who seemingly could not bring himself to endorse either candidate Harris or Trump with their support for the massacres in Gaza.

A recent Gallup poll was devastating for the industry. More than one-third of Americans stated that they have “no trust at all in the media” (36%). Another one-third of the population said they did “not very much” trust the media. This is a lower level of confidence than used car salesmen or federal politicians.

Heck! These “journalists” even made their professional colleagues at Fox News look good. For two years, the right-wing journalists claimed that there was something wrong with Joe Biden’s cognitive capacity. The rest of the American media responded with a barrage of fabrications and false stories. The anchor on MSNBC’s Morning Joe and his panel even announced that Joe Biden of 2024 “was the best version of Joe” ever.

With “journalism” like that how could they expect anyone to believe them about anything?

Their outright lie of the final week of the campaign was to pretend that Donald Trump had threatened former Republican politician Liz Cheney with execution. He didn’t. What he actually said, was that Cheney was a ‘chicken hawk’. As a politician, she had been always been ready to send other people’s children to war yet she had never actually served in a war zone herself. He suggested that she go to a war zone and then she might be more reluctant to volunteer other people for such danger.

This Election was Liz Truss versus Boris Johnson

The real problem is that this was yet another American election where the really important questions were not asked.

Here are a few of them:

Why does America keep losing wars? They spend lots of money – $1 Trillion a year – but have not won a conflict since 1991.

Why does Cuba (ranked 38th) have a better health outcomes for their impoverished population than America?

Why do so many people go bankrupt when they get sick?

Why are so many young people graduating from university with massive debts.

There was very little difference on policy between the two candidates on many subjects. They competed with each other to give more support to Israel, for fracking, and on immigration (Harris has, essentially, endorsed the idea of a border wall).

There was one politician who argued, and is arguing now, for the need for more imagination and progressive policies. His name is Bernie Sanders. He is, as mentioned above, the most popular politician in the country. The Democratic Party leadership is doing their best to besmirch his reputation and ignore anything he has to say. As long as they do that, they will continue to fail in elections.