I’m Chris Farrell, and this is on Watch. Welcome to on Watch, everybody, the Judicial Watch podcast, where we go behind the headlines to report on things that the mainstream media would rather you not know about, where we try to recover some lost history and explain the inexplicable. We appreciate you taking time to join us. Whether you’re watching us on the online or on the video version of this podcast or listening to us on the audio version on any of the platforms that are out there, we appreciate your time.

We appreciate your interest. We want to know what you want us to cover. So please communicate with us. Email us at info@judicialwatch. org and tell us what you think. Be sure to subscribe. Leave us a rating on any of those platforms that you’re listening or watching on. So thank you again for joining us today. A real treat. We have Cheryl Chumley joining us. She is the online opinion editor at the Washington Times.

She also is a commentary writer in her own right. And she hosts a really great podcast that all of you should subscribe to. And that’s the Bold and Blunt podcast. Cheryl Chumley, welcome to on Watch. Hi, Chris. It’s so great to be with you. Thank you for having me. It’s great. We’re really glad you’ve taken time out of your busy schedule to talk to us and to talk to all the folks that are watching this or listening to it online.

Cheryl, you’ve done some great opinion writing, frankly, for years. But I want to focus on the last couple of things you’ve written that I think are really very important given our current state of affairs, the current situation in the country. And there’s sort of this broader view piece that you did a few days ago, maybe a week, and it talks about how Democrats are rushing to destroy America.

It’s both a provocative title and it’s true. So tell me about the article. Tell me about what inspired you to write that. So thank you. For know, Democrats have been a little bit desperate for some time now as they’re watching the poll numbers fall for Joe Biden and as the numbers at the same time rise for Donald Trump, even with all his legal woes. And so they know Joe Biden, who is, in my view, the puppet president, it’s been talked about that he is the third term of Barack Obama.

And I think you can certainly make that case as truthful. And so they know that he only has a year or so left, and they’re rushing to bring forth this massive globalist agenda that, frankly, the left has been trying to bring into America for decades now. But really they haven’t had any opportunity like now to do it. And so they’re trying to bring this agenda in, solidify it before Donald Trump comes back and takes back the White House, which even with all his legal issues, he’s really on a fast track to do that.

I agree with. You know, I think that one of the things that is a good evidence of that, of this motive that you kind of attribute to Democrats’efforts, showed up in the Senate bill for foreign aid to Ukraine, to Israel and to Taiwan. And buried in there, JD Vance, I think, famously pointed this out, maybe Mike Lee as well in various tweets. But buried inside this foreign aid bill for military support was something about how if a future president or future executive fails to enact or to carry out the funding in this bill envisioned to go out to, I don’t know, 2030 or something, it’s a forever, never ending money, never ending war bill that if they failed to do that, it was an impeachable offense.

And that’s buried in the language or words to that effect. Is that evidence of what you’re talking about? Precisely right. And Democrats are very clever at using the legislative process to insert in secret, hidden agendas in oversized bills that nobody has time to read, even the politicians who vote on it. So this has been a long running thing, trend in Congress to bring these huge bills forward and stuff it as full of as much personal agenda as possible.

But that particular item that you pointed out is just a case in point, textbook example of how Democrats are, a, desperate because they know they’re failing with the american people and b, just trying to subvert any future constitutional process by locking in place certain provisions that if it were done openly, the american people would automatically reject. Yeah, I was waiting to find some sub paragraph in Taiwan that guaranteed unlimited abortion at government expense for everyone.

I mean, that’s another kind of technique that they use. They’ll take something completely unrelated. They’ll be discussing taiwanese military defense and somehow abortion will appear in it. That happens over and over again. It does. And it’s just part, honestly, let’s be truthful, republicans do this, too, right? It’s just been a political trend where our legislators just insert all kinds of special agendas in the bills and so forth that make it very difficult that as american citizens track and to find out what our political leaders are doing.

But Democrats have done it a lot more, a lot more frequently and a lot more egregiously. And when they can’t get it done the legislative route, they bring forth some sort of ridiculous notion like Barack Obama used to sing, I have a cell, I have a phone, I have a pen, I have a cell phone. Who needs Congress? And they’re very open about bringing forth their so called progressive, but honestly, it’s more marxist types principles that way.

Yeah, I always am a guest, or I guess, I guess if they’re going to play that game and they do, as you’ve said, both sides play it. It’s just always remarkable at how much more stupidly the Republicans play the game. Right. They always kind of give it away in the first round. Okay. And then they surrender immediately upon any sort of effort to advance a more conservative agenda on things.

I want to get your impression, in the last couple of weeks, it’s been an astounding sort of pace or tempo of news events. And I think probably something that we’ll be talking about whether it’s later this election year or really even to the next term of whoever is president is special counsel. Her’s report on Biden’s mishandling of classified documents and then President Biden’s reaction that night. I want to get your impression on both of those pieces.

What did you think of her’s report and then what did you think of Biden’s performance that evening? Well, it’s good that her pointed out what we all knew from even the campaign days of Joe Biden in his basement that mentally speaking, he’s a little bit on the incompetent side. And that’s putting it nicely. But it’s unfortunate that once again, we’re not going to have any accountability for our political leaders.

That just seems par for the course when it comes time to politicians, particularly Democrat politicians, when they do something that goes afoul of law, that they’re not held to any sort of consequences or accountability. And as far as Joe Biden’s response, are you talking about when he claimed that he’s perfectly all right, competent, wise, and then mixes up, I think it was Mexico with Egypt? Are you talking about his reaction to her pointing out about his son’s death and he couldn’t recall the date because either way, it’s more from this president that just solidifies the opinion that he is not there mentally strong enough to lead this country.

And it’s a minor point, but I mean, it just goes to his inability to complete a full thought and articulate it. And that is in defense of remembering when his son’s death date was, which of course he didn’t say because I don’t think he could recall it at that moment. He made this sort of hesitant or staggered sort of response where he talked about a bracelet rosary that his son had given him, and he gave it to me and he got it from our lady of and stopped because he couldn’t recall which Marian shrine or whatever church it was.

He couldn’t complete the sentence because he didn’t know what he was saying. He could not recall. Just like he tries to attribute his son’s death to combat in Iraq and it simply is not the case. So I think there’s some conflation. There’s this mixing together of ideas and facts and circumstances that he himself can’t keep straight. And to me, that’s wildly disturbing, let alone a White House that’s out of control with respect to, I mean, look, Jake Sullivan’s the national security advisor.

I mean, that should make people’s skin crawl to begin with. But even then, his secretary of defense takes a walk for a week and doesn’t tell anybody. He’s sitting in the hospital in dire medical straits. Nobody knows. Nobody’s told. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs knows. He doesn’t think he needs to tell anybody. I mean, this is a White House that is out of control and we’re all supposed to go whistling along like everything’s fine? I think we are in incredibly grave circumstances.

And I don’t think I’m exaggerating. I mean, I’ve been around here a long time and this is the most dysfunctional. It’s true. It’s true. And you can go back in time. And you’re right. Even under Barack Obama, we didn’t have the chaos and so forth of a president who could not complete a sentence. Right. So there’s some mental issues going on there with our president. And I know we all have great fun in the media poking fun and writing stories about how he called out this dead person or tried to shake the hand of that dead person and traipsed off for his next ice cream cone and so forth.

And it’s fun, right? But at the same time, for a very long time, really, since campaign days when he couldn’t make a public appearance without making a ton of gaffes, as they were called back then. It’s a national security issue. Right. Because it’s not just american citizens watching our feckless presidents stumble about stages. It’s our enemies in foreign governments. And I think that they have exploited the situation pretty well.

And I think that if you’re looking at the last year of presidency. There is some alarm over where our foreign enemies are going to advance next because they’re going to be trying to rush, too, if they think Donald Trump is going to come back into the White House. Yeah, sort of the thought experiment for me was having watched Biden live in that press conference. And look, his presidency was in the balance at that point.

And I would say know, given his overall performance, he failed. But at the same time he was giving that press conference, Tucker Carlson had just released or put up online a two hour interview that he conducted with Biden’s opposite number in Russia, Putin. Now, I loathe Putin. I know the kind of, kind of character that he is and what he’s done. So I’m no Putin apologist. However, I saw Biden stagger through a 15 minutes press conference where he jumped all over the map.

And we’ve already discussed his gaffes. But I watch Putin, at least for a little while, run circles around Tucker Carlson and dominate an interview and provide long half hour history lessons on russian history since the 9th century. I mean, these are two very different guys with very different faculties, very different capabilities. How do you resolve this? Given a fact or given a crisis, given a set of circumstances, who’s more apt, who has greater facility to deal with a crisis? I think the question answers itself.

It does. And it reminds me, listening to your description, right, of Putin versus Biden, it reminds me when you go back in time to Barack Obama, when you had Barack Obama, I think it was a photograph of him in sandals eating some ice cream on Martha’s vineyard, I believe. And then you had Putin shirtless atop a horse, right, riding horseback. And do you remember those two images and how they played out in the media? And it was sort of the same then, only it’s worse now because you have a president who is aging in America, and he’s just, obviously he’s dealing with a mental decline.

And I can’t emphasize enough, it’s just a national security issue for America. And it also is of a big national or security issue to our allies. Right. Israel. Think of poor Israel depending on America at this time. It’s perilous times, not just for us, but for our allies. And I think President Biden’s commentary on Israel and their activities in Gaza, I think he referred to them as being over the top.

Yes. So comparatively, if you look at the scale of the attack on October 7 against Israel and line it up with our, and you can’t. Right. It’s an impossible comparison. But just again, as a thought experiment, what Israel suffered on October 7 versus what the United States suffered on 911, the impact on Israel proportionally is much more grave and more damaging, more jarring. Doing this analysis is very awkward and difficult, but I’m just trying to give you and give our viewers a sense of the scale of impact, not that anybody’s life is worth more or less, don’t get me wrong.

I’m just trying to say proportionally, there’s an enormous impact on a very small country. And I think it’s jarring to their psyche as a nation in a different way than it was in the United States. And so we go off and we spend 20 years in Southwest Asia invading countries and conducting warfare. That’s a pretty over the top. I mean, one could argue that that’s an over the top reaction in a way that is nothing like what Israel’s doing in Gaza.

I mean, do you see the disconcence between the language Biden uses creates more confusion, more turmoil, more dissension, and is, in essence, betraying really the only or the chief ally we have in the Middle east. This is dangerous stuff. It creates more unrest and confusion. He’s not contributing to peace. He’s not supporting an ally. He’s actually giving ammunition to the people who did what happened on October 7.

He definitely is. And your comparison with September 11 is a comparison that the Israelis make themselves. They call the Hamas attack on them on October 7, their own version of September 11. And proportionally, you’re dead on. Right? It’s just proportionally speaking, it was a horror show for them. And they’re still reeling from the impacts because they’re still hostages, don’t forget. And you’re absolutely right about this White House administration.

When Anthony Blinken goes over there and insists that Benjamin Netanyahu bring about a two state solution, that is like signing a death warrant to the Israelis. And they’re rightly resistant and reluctant and outright refusing to consider a two state solution. Because it’s like this, Chris, how do you strike a deal with people who want to eradicate you from the face of the earth? Right? You can’t strike a middle ground with that.

And that is exactly what a two state solution and solution, in air quotes, would bring for know. Here’s the other thing. Why isn’t Biden, or why aren’t Biden and Blinken saying, before we conduct any further discussions, any further aid, any further anything, you have to release all the hostages. We’re not going to play games with people who are actively holding hostages and threatening their lives so that’s point one, once you resolve the hostage issue, then we can have a conversation.

But until then, Israel is going to do what it needs to do. I mean, you don’t hear that. And I don’t know how we can play this game where we’re going to play patty cake and talk out of both sides of our mouth, where there’s actively hostages being held by the people who did horrendous things on October 7. Second point, different theater of operations completely. Why is there zero conversation about a ceasefire and peace negotiations for Ukraine? Why is that forbidden? I’m not saying that Ukraine gives up or surrenders or turns itself over to Russia.

No, I’m not saying that. But you’re talking about four provinces in eastern Ukraine that Russia is struggling to consolidate and control. 400,000 Ukrainians dead. There’s no condition of saying, look, we need to end this now, ceasefire. Just stop killing each other. Do you see the parallels between these two major conflicts and the leadership from the Biden administration is zero. So with Ukraine, I remember a year ago, maybe even longer, that Senator Rand Paul was one of the few members on Capitol Hill who was requesting accountability and transparency for american tax dollars that were just an open spigot, right, flowing into there.

And he was just vilified. And then the media would come out and do due diligence, cover for the Democrats and show pictures of poor children in Ukraine and crying mothers and so forth to basically help push the continuation of funding. And so why can’t we ask questions about funding first and foremost? I mean, american taxpayers are just, we’re just opening our pockets and pocketbooks to Ukraine. And if we’re going to blow american tax dollars that way, I’d rather have them stay in America.

Right. And so this is the problem when America gets involved with a proxy war. And even more than that, this is the problem when we’ve gone away from the idea, which is based in the constitution, that only Congress has the power to declare war, right? Amen. We have, like, the War Powers act. Now, we had Bill Clinton using the War Powers act, and every president since kind of wages their own war up to a certain amount of time and then hopes that Congress.

Right. Will take it from there. But Congress doesn’t want accountability for declaring war. So we have these non stop wars. And now we’re at the point with Ukraine where the american people don’t even understand the constitutional aspects of waging a proxy war or waging war anymore. It’s just an open pocketbook flowing from us to foreign nations that as you, Chris, why so much money? What’s the end game? What’s the mission here for America? And all the while, our southern border remains wide open.

We’re supposed to go to the ends of the earth to defend Ukraine’s borders, but our own border wide open in the northern border, Canada is correct. That’s also true. You’ve got an excellent podcast called Bold and Blunt. Tell us about bold and blunt and where our viewers and listeners can listen to that. Thank you. So you can subscribe to it at Washington Times, but you can get it anywhere podcasts are offered.

And it’s basically my take on issues of the day from a christian conservative perspective. And then I always have great, interesting guests. I just had Pastor Jack Hibbs on talking about prophecy. I had Senator Ron Johnson talking about the dangers of the COVID shots and everybody in between. So it’s a fun show and it comes out twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays. That’s great. Your work at the Washington Times as both a commentary writer, we’ve kind of covered that a little bit.

But tell folks what you do. What does an online opinion editor do? What’s your day to day stuff? I scan the news for stuff that gets me upset to write about and then I write about it. And usually that’s anything that runs contrary to the constitution and founding Father’s views for America, which gives me a wide field. I also look know people can submit opinion pieces to me and I’ll help send them on up the chain for consideration.

Sure. There’s a lot of folks out there watching this or listening to this who say, boy, I wish I had that job. I would love to be paid job in the world. I would love to be paid to kind of scan the news and figure out what’s of interest and then opine on that. Or at least take submissions and review that also as well for publication. Cheryl, where can folks I know at Washington Times, where else can folks find your work or follow you or if they want to learn more about both your work at the Washington Times and then obviously also your podcast, bold and blood.

What’s the best way to track what you’re up to? So I have a substac, Cherylchumley substac. You can find me on x at CK Chumley and all the social media under my name. And I also have a website where you can check out my book, cherylchumley. com. Tell us before we close out, I guess I’ll give you the last word on this. Tell us about your book and what it’s about and where folks can find it as well.

Well, my latest one, I have four nonfiction. My latest is lock down the socialist plan to take away your freedom. Coming out in September is God given or bust, defeating Marxism and saving America with biblical truths. Excuse me. That’s a great combination. Biblical truth. A good friend of mine, many years ago, he was an anglican priest. We were discussing sort of all the problems in the world and the various turmoil we face, much like our conversation now.

And he leaned over and said to me, hey, listen, in the end, God wins, right? Yes. Whatever we’re dealing with, we never abandon hope, and we have confidence and trust in God wins. So that’s, that’s right. Amen, Chris. That’s right. Very good. Cheryl Chumley, online opinion editor for the Washington Times, commentary writer, host of Bold and Blunt. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me.

I’m Chris Farrell on Watch. .

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