Many times we’re so close to something we have a hard time seeing it, hence the old saying, “you can’t see the forest for the trees.” But 2024 was a remarkable year in many ways, many of which we probably can’t fully understand yet. Historians may look back at 2024 as a key turning point.
Below are some key events from the eventful past year.
JANUARY
On New Year’s Day, Harvard’s embattled President Claudine Gay was hit with six new plagiarism allegations. Gay and some other Ivy League presidents created a national scandal in late 2023 when they testified before Congress but appeared unwilling or unable to decry anti-Semitism on their campuses. In an early sign that America’s DEI structure was beginning to crack and a harbinger of reforms to come, on Jan. 2 Gay announced she was resigning as Harvard President. However, thanks to tenure, she remained on the payroll as a professor, despite having been exposed as an academic fraud.
DEI, which originally stood for “Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion,” had been rebranded by some wag as “Didn’t Earn It.”
On January 2, the US national debt was $33.99 trillion.
On Jan. 5 the door on an Alaska Airlines plane built by Boeing blew-out midflight. The plane was able to land safely, but all the Boeing 737 Max 9 planes were grounded until all could be inspected. Alaska Airlines (AA) found “many” loose bolts on other planes and Boeing had to pay AA $160 million for lost revenues.
Like Gay’s resignation a few days before, this too was a wake-up call to the rot that DEI policies are having on our nation. Like many other big corporations, Boeing had proudly touted their diversity chops. The satire site Babylon Bee had a field day roasting them with headlines like these:
- Boeing CEO Assures Nervous Fliers That All 737 Aircraft Are Built To The Highest Diversity Standards
- Concerning: Boeing Lists Job Opening For ‘Guy Who Knows How To Keep Wings On Plane’
- Boeing Board Forces CEO To Resign After Evidence Surfaces He Is A White Male
Americans entered 2024 knowing it was a presidential election year, but with leftover emotions from 2020 and even 2016, the feelings of many folks was, “Can’t we have two different candidates this time?”
However, after early caucuses and primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire and other early states, it soon became clear: 2024 was to be another Biden-Trump match.
As Yogi Berra put it, “It’s Déjà vu all over again.”
Trump actually faced a crowded and impressive field of GOP opponents, like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley. However, Trump essentially steamrolled them all, with many supporters seemingly willing to walk over broken glass barefooted to vote for him.
In contrast, the DNC basically rigged their Democrat primaries, clearing the way for Biden to win the nomination. These two facts alone make a mockery of the continual claims that “Donald Trump was an existential threat to our democracy” and “only Biden can protect our democracy,” even though Biden’s verbal and mental gaffes had been on full display for years.
Comedian-journalist Dave Barry, in his hilarious “Year in Review: 2024 was an exciting year, and by ‘exciting,’ we mean ‘stupid,’” summed up the candidates this way:
“In other words, we have one candidate who lost the last election but claims he won it, and another candidate who won the last election but might not remember what year that was. America, the choice is yours!”
Lawfare against former Pres. Trump continued with an unprecedented four legal cases against him, in New York City, Washington, Atlanta, and Florida. However, little attention was focused on the DNC lawfare against Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a lifelong Democrat seeking the Democrat nomination, as his uncle Ted Kennedy had done and narrowly lost to Jimmy Carter during the 1980 Democrat primaries. Many court cases aimed to keep RFK off the ballots in Dem primaries, thus paving the way for Biden’s planned “coronation.”
Further crippling RFK’s campaign, the Biden administration repeatedly denied RFK’s requests for secret service protection, even though he was a serious presidential candidate and both his father and uncle had died from assassinations. Thus, RFK had to spend precious campaign funds to pay for their own security. (The Biden administration finally agreed to secret service help after the July 13 rally at Butler, PA).
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin made headlines when it was revealed had taken ill in December but had not notified the White House, Congress, or the press corps that he had been hospitalized and had given his responsibilities to an underling while he was absent. The fact that the Pentagon chief was basically MIA despite wars in Ukraine and Gaza sparked widespread outrage. A full timeline is here.
Roanoke County made history when Vinton Supervisor Jason Peters defeated longtime incumbent Nancy Horn for Commissioner of the Revenue in Nov. 2023. Since Horn was the last elected Democrat official in the County, Peters’ inauguration to his new post in early 2024 meant every elected office holder in Roanoke County, from local level to General Assembly to Congress, is a Republican.
FEBRUARY
On Feb. 22, the issues of illegal immigration and border security came into painful focus after it was reported 22-year-old University of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley had been killed by an illegal alien from Venezuela. Evidence released during the November trial showed that Riley had bravely “fought for her life” for an amazing 18 minutes before the monster finally crushed her skull.
On Feb. 25, Roanoke lost a remarkable citizen Claude Smith, one of the few remaining WWII veterans and members of “the Greatest Generation. He passed at 101. A native of Lynchburg, Smith served in the Philippines during WWII and moved to Roanoke in 1949, the same year the Mill Mountain Star was installed. Some more recollections about his amazing life and accomplishments, including a summary of the eulogies at his memorial service, can be found here.
The massive, predawn Aug. 8, 2022 raid on Trump’s private home at Mar-a-Lago, allegedly about improperly stored files, was for many Americans the first warning sign that something is seriously wrong in our nation. The outrage grew louder when, not long afterward, it was discovered that Joseph Biden had improperly stored classified documents, found at both the Biden Center at University of Pennsylvania and in his home garage!
The double-standard was glaring, and in February special counsel Robert Hur released his findings that he would not prosecute Biden for it, essentially letting Biden off the hook for what Trump was still on the hook for.
As reported by PBS: “In the report, Hur said that it could be difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Biden intended to keep the documents, which is the standard for conviction in a criminal case. In part, he argued, jurors could be swayed that Biden’s age made him seem forgetful, and there was the possibility for ‘innocent explanations’ for the mishandling of any records.
“’Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,’ Hur wrote in his report.”
Which is a polite way of saying, “Biden is seriously cognitively challenged,” which many have been concerned about for a long time anyway, for both a president and commander in chief!
Angry at his portrayal as an “elderly man with a poor memory,” Biden hastily called a late night press conference to dispel concerns about his mental faculties, but instead poured gas on the fire by mistakenly referring to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi as the leader of Mexico.
MARCH
Biden spoke to Congress and the nation in his State of the Union Address. He was closely watched, to see if he would make more of his characteristic gaffes. Actually, he spoke clearly and forcefully, leading some to wonder if he had been doctored up on some medications for the event. He never mentioned Trump by name but took swipes at “my predecessor” 13 times.
Some at the speech called on Biden to say the name “Laken Riley,” the nursing student killed by an illegal alien just a few weeks before. Biden appeared to then refer to “Lincoln Riley.”
Conservative talk show host and sports commentator Clay Travis tweeted on X: “Joe Biden just confused Laken Riley, a college student killed by an illegal immigrant, with USC football coach Lincoln Riley. This just happened. The man’s brain is mush. Incredibly disrespectful.”
Notably, most in corporate media, playing up Biden’s relatively strong performance, all used the same word to describe his speech: “fiery.” The fact that various news personalities on different channels would all use the same word made many even more convinced that most reporters just parrot the lines they are given, but it’s unclear who is writing the scripts.
In the early months of 2024, some judges and Democrat politicians in Colorado, Maine, and Illinois had sought to keep Trump’s name of the ballots in their states’ upcoming primaries. Many were struck by the Orwellian reasoning: “Trump was responsible for the J6 Insurrection, so in order to ‘defend democracy,’ his supporters cannot be allowed to vote for him again.”
In early March, the US Supreme Court put the kibosh on that aspect of the anti-Trump lawfare when they issued a rare unanimous opinion that states can not keep an otherwise-qualified candidate off a ballot. If they could, then single states could possibly control who became president in future elections.
The Babylon Bee summed up the wrangling with headlines like these:
- Democrat States Save Democracy By Not Allowing People To Vote For Preferred Candidate
- In Major Blow To Democracy, Supreme Court Rules Voters Can Vote For Favorite Candidate
A cargo ship, licensed in Singapore, had electrical failure and veered off course and struck part of the Francis Scott Key Bridge that carries I-695 over Baltimore Harbor. The Key Bridge carried over 30,000 vehicles per day and Baltimore Harbor handles more cars and trucks than any other port in the US. Six motorists and highway workers were killed but two victims managed to swim to safety. Some immediately suspected terrorism, but that was never proven.
A major theme of 2024 was the widespread collapse of trust and viewership of so-called “legacy media.” Their despicable acts of deception are legion, but one example came from March 16, when Trump was speaking at a campaign event in Ohio. He was explaining that China is building car plants in Mexico, from where they can import autos into the US without tariffs, due to having been made in North America. Trump was warning his audience, and Ohio is a manufacturing state, that it would be a “bloodbath” for the US auto industry if Biden won reelection and that happened. But then, the corporate media, again as if on cue, screamed “Trump promises a bloodbath if he doesn’t win!”
APRIL
Much of the nation took a break from politics while eclipse fever took over for awhile. On April 8, a total solar eclipse made its path across much of the US, from Texas to Maine. Southwest Virginia was on the edge of the path, so a partial eclipse was visible to those who caught a glimpse of it through the cloudy skies here.
Biden made headlines again when he made the outrageous assertion that an uncle of his who served in WWII had been eaten by cannibals. “They never found the body because there used to be — there were a lot of cannibals for real in that part of New Guinea,” an unfounded remark that drew the ire of Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister.
MAY
The four-front lawfare against against Trump took a seedy turn when the case in New York went public. Former porn star Stormy Daniels claimed she and Trump had had a one-time sexual encounter in 2006, and he then falsified business records to cover up the hush money he paid her to avoid a PR disaster during his 2016 run for the White House.
Trump denied it all, but as some have pointed out, scandals usually only hurt a politician when it damages their previously-positive image. Even among Trump’s most ardent fans, most admit he has a history of womanizing, but they point out, again, the double-standard. Bill Clinton was known as a womanizer when he ran for the presidency in 1992, and even paid hush money, but not only was he never put on trial for it, he won two consecutive elections.
Moreover, the judge in this NYC case, Judge Juan Merchan, was accused of being biased because his daughter is a Democrat fundraiser. Between the four separate cases, Trump was usually pinned down in courts that kept him off the campaign trail for weeks at a time. Trump even had to ask the judge for a day off from trial so he could attend his son Barron’s high school graduation. Plus, some “gag orders” on him kept him from being able to freely dispute the charges and defend himself in the court of public opinion.
True: the first witness in the trial was a former Trump friend and owner of the National Enquirer, David Pecker.
JUNE
This month was the 80th anniversary of the heroic D-Day landings in Normandy, France. Biden appeared with some other world leaders, but often appeared confused or physically unwell, once even appearing to wander away from a group of heads of state until Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni walked over to him and seemed to “reel him back.”
Those stories just added fuel to the fire that Biden is not up to the task of being president, let alone running for another four years. In response, White Press spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre, the first lesbian to hold that position, attacked the circulating videos showing a clearly diminished Biden as “cheap fakes.”
Adding to the deception, there was a steady drumbeat claiming Biden was physically and mentally up to the job; the oft-repeated line was “sharp as a tack.”
In late June, amid claims that Biden was incapacitated and with bad poll numbers, he agreed to a debate with Trump. That was unprecedented, as presidential debates usually start in October.
The June 27 debate was a disaster for Biden, for he often appeared confused, distracted, and even made the irrelevant claim, “we finally beat Medicare!”
Then, as if someone flipped a switch, the unison of calls stating “Biden is sharp as a knife” became “Biden’s too old and confused to run again. He has to be replaced. But he is in fine enough shape to finish his term till January 2025.”
If Democrats thought their lawfare would break Trump or separate him from his supporters, they were wrong. With each passing week of the various cases against him, his polling numbers and fundraising kept climbing.
JULY
In normal years, July is a quiet month politically, when most Americans focus on vacation time. But this year was not normal, and July was a wild month.
Early on, it was believed the election would come down to about 7 “swing states.” In the Sunbelt, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada, and the Dem’s vaunted Rust Belt “Blue Wall” of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
More Dave Barry:
“…the Democrats are in a state of panic. Behind the scenes, party leaders desperately want to get Biden off the ticket, but he repeatedly insists that he’s going to be the candidate. This leads to an awkward national conversation:
BIDEN: I’m staying in the race.
PARTY LEADERS: You have our full support, Mr. President! Whatever you decide!
BIDEN: OK, as I said, I’m staying in the race.
PARTY LEADERS: It’s your call, sir! Run, or don’t run! It’s totally up to you!
BIDEN: Again, I’m definitely running.
PARTY LEADERS: Whether you stay in or drop out, we fully support either choice! Including dropping out!
BIDEN: I SAID I’M RUNNING (expletive).
PARTY LEADERS: We await your decision, sir!
And so on.”
As recently as July 5, Biden was insisting he was staying in the race and, stating he had beaten Trump in 2020, claimed he was the candidate most able to beat him again.
The defining moment of the campaign came on July 13, a hot Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania, when Trump took the stage and was soon shot. A bullet grazed his ear, after which he dropped to the stage. Surrounded by secret service, Trump then stood and, with a US flag behind him, fist pumped the air and exclaimed “fight! fight! fight!”
Had Trump not moved his head about an inch to view a jumbotron graphic on illegal immigration, that bullet that hit his ear probably would have pierced his brain.
Tragically, retired firefighter Corey Comperatore was killed while trying to shield his wife and daughters from the bullets.
Almost immediately, the corporate media, as if guided by an “invisible hand,” sought to downplay the attempted assassination, as explained here.
It’s probably impossible to prove of disprove, but many believe Elon Musk’s late 2022 purchase of Twitter helped make Trump’s re-election possible. One, Musk exposed the industrial-scale censorship that has been going on for years. Two, the (relatively) free speech platform for millions who question “the official narrative” to meet, share ideas, and build their own platforms and audiences. Three, it created a competitive alternative to legacy media, where independent journalists could debunk corporate media myths in real-time, as on July 13.
Within minutes of the shooting, many realized that much about the event didn’t make sense. How did an armed man make it onto an exposed roof close to where Trump was speaking, even though many in the crowd saw him and told the police? Many sadly concluded, either the secret service were woefully inept, or else it was an inside job.
Some of the unanswered questions are here.
Many believe that moment and image sealed the election. Even Musk and Mark Zuckerberg touted the extreme heroism of Trump’s response and resolve.
On Sunday, July 21, some key Biden staffers were still claiming he was in the race, when he mysteriously posted to Twitter/X that he was dropping out of the race after all! Then, some 30 minutes later, he posted that he was endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris to be the nominee.
Many found it outrageous that Biden, having won all the primaries and over 14 million Democrat votes, would suddenly quit. There was immediate speculation that Party Bosses forced him out. Most point to Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer, but until today that has not been proven. It all points to the shadowy nature of the party and many blasted it as a coup.
Kamala, known for her word salads and having launched her political career as mistress to Willy Brown, a married, powerful politician in California, was widely-regarded as a weak vice president. However, as if on cue, the legacy media began praising her as a political genius, in a clear attempt to help her win. Also, as a senator from California, she identified as being of Indian background, but in running for the White House, she was portrayed as black.
Also, after Biden quit, (or was forced out), the media chorus praised him as “the greatest president since George Washington! He voluntarily left office for the good of the country!”
This odd spectacle of Biden dropping out was one more example of something that earlier had been blasted as a “right-wing conspiracy theory” was proven to be true.
Fox Journalist Brit Hume was condemned for pointing out Biden’s frailties…on Nov. 22, 2021! “It’s a far cry from certain he will run again or will be in any condition to. In fact, I think the thing we have to watch is the question of whether Biden serves out his first term. He’s clearly deteriorating. He’s clearly senile.”
The Paris Olympics which ran from late July to early August were marred by controversy. Many condemned the opening ceremony for a tableau that many thought blasphemed the memory of Christ’s Last Supper. A boxer from Algeria who was widely seen as a male won the female boxing contest, by beating up his Italian woman opponent. At first she complained about the unfair treatment she had received, but when many scolded her, she apologized for having spoken up. Some swimmers claimed the Seine River where they competed was contaminated with untreated sewage.
Trump picked Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance to be his running-mate. Vance authored the bestseller Hillbilly Elegy. Trump’s pick of the white male Vance from humble beginnings in Ohio was seen as an attempt to win blue collar voters, especially men in the Midwest Rust Belt.
Shortly after being picked, Vance held a packed-out rally at Radford University.
To be continued…
Scott Dreyer
