THE TYGRRRR EXPRESS

Top 10 news stories of 2024

10.) The Detroit Lions — For decades, these lovable losers were about as likely to be successful with a football as Charlie Brown. They epitomized a losing culture, even becoming the first NFL team to ever go 0-16 in 2008. Yet Coach Dan Campbell came along and changed the culture. The Lions began this calendar year by reaching the NFC Title Game. Proving they were no fluke, this season’s team has a legitimate chance of reaching their first ever Super Bowl. They last won a championship in 1957. For the first time in their entire history, they were even favored by the betting markets to win it all. History matters. It took decades of suffering, but Lions fans can now roar with pride.

9.) Dow Jones 45k, Nasdaq 20k — Over time, the stock market always goes up. While not a completely accurate reflection of the overall economy, more Americans than ever directly or indirectly own stocks. United States corporations continue to provide the ingenuity that revolutionizes the world. The first three American business revolutions were agriculture, industrial, and the information age that began in 1995. Now the artificial intelligence revolution could remake society in ways we cannot begin to fathom. AI itself would be a bigger story, but we are at least one year away from seeing what it does. For now, this new technology has made many big and small investors far wealthier than they were. The business of America remains business, and the stock market remains its beating heart.

8.) United Healthcare CEO murdered — Not all business stories are positive. In an act of evil, United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot to death by a young man with a grudge against healthcare companies. In an even more vile display, the killer became a hero to many leftist Americans disgruntled with CEOs in general and healthcare executives in particular. Ghoulish comments from leftists in government including Senator Liz Warren tried to rationalize the killing as understandable frustration. Despite the “eat the rich” rhetoric from the left, the real victim was Thompson, a husband and father. He started with nothing and rose to success through honest, hard work. The killer was a rich white leftist heir to a multi-million dollar business empire.

7.) SCOTUS Chevron Doctrine reversed and Presidential immunity decision — The United States Supreme Court alway matters, but this year brought two blockbuster decisions that will reverberate for years if not decades. The most famous case dealt with presidential immunity. The High Court split the difference, even answering questions that were not asked. The court ruled that presidents have immunity from prosecution for official decisions made in the capacity of their presidential duties. This means a president after leaving office cannot be indicted for bombing another nation and killing people. The court also ruled that a president does not have immunity from actions taken in office that were unrelated to the job. Illegal activities are still illegal. Yet on the issue of whether President Trump’s January 6th actions deserved immunity, the Roberts Court basically said “We’re not touching that powder keg” and continued its long tradition of deciding not to decide.

Yet while presidential immunity was the most high profile case, the most significant was Chevron. For decades, the Chevron Doctrine required that businesses and individuals defer to administrative agency state bureaucrats under the notion that these administrative staters were “experts.” This horrendous anti-business ruling allowed the government expert leviathan to exponentially explode, with diminishing results. The overturning of Chevron finally lays bare a message that conservatives have been screaming for years. The supposed experts don’t know everything. In fact, many of them don’t know anything. The Chevron ruling restores sanity to the business world by returning decisions on what businesses do to the people who actually have expertise in doing those things. This ruling if properly followed should lead to the defanging of the administrative state altogether.

6.) Ivy League anti-Semitic violence — Jews have always felt comfortable in America. 2024 was the year where that ceased to be the case. College campuses in recent years had always had pockets of leftist radicals promoting anti-Jewish attitudes. In 2024 the radicals became the norm. Anti-Jewish violence exploded on campuses, funded by everyone from leftist George Soros to Islamists backed by Iran. During a congressional hearing on the matter, the female presidents of Harvard and other universities refused to condemn overt anti-Jewish violence. Thankfully, that disastrous hearing led to a backlash. Several university heads were fired or resigned under pressure. Wealthy Jewish donors canceled their donations. Anti-Jewish protesters were put into a database so that Jewish businesses would know not to hire them. The Jew-hating left crossed the line from hateful but protected speech into physical violence. The response from a largely pro-Jewish nation put the Jew-haters on their heels. The battle for the campuses is ongoing.

5.) The Middle East is being remade — The October 7th, 2023 attacks on Israel shocked the conscience. Israel has a history of waging war successfully but then stopping short of finishing the job. They buckle under cruel intentional pressure motivated mainly by antisemitism. Yet this time was different. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to finish the job, and that “total victory” was his goal. He was derided by the world’s leftists, who insisted that such a goal was impossible. Under heavy pressure from his own left flank, President Joe Biden pressured Mr. Netanyahu to fold. Netanyahu defied the world and was proven right. Hamas was smashed. Hezbollah was blasted. Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Nasrallah were liquidated. A brilliant operation involving exploding pagers had Hamas and Hezbollah on their heels. While not permanently eliminated yet, they were devastated militarily and financially. This tightened the noose on Iran, and indirectly Syria. A domino fell when the Syrian government collapsed. Syrian Dictator Bashar Assad fled to Russia. The incoming Trump administration has given Israel the green light to do what it needs to do to defend itself. Targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities remains an option. Israel’s biggest military victory since 1967 is already having reverberations. A full normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia is back on the table. Outside of college campuses, “Palestinians” are an afterthought. Israel seems to have finally won.

4.) Biden forced out — For the first time in 56 years, an incumbent president was forced out of the race for reelection. In 1968, anger over the Vietnam war split the Democrats and led to RFK threatening to take down LBJ. President Lyndon B. Johnson backed down and decided not to run. Yet at least 1968 was a legitimate fight over policy. 2024 was far more sinister. For several years, Democrats hid that presidential candidate and then President Joe Biden was in a state of deep mental decline. Anyone pointing out his mental decline was ostracized. Democrats have a history of such shenanigans, covering up Woodrow Wilson’s stroke and FDR’s polio. The Biden health coverup collapsed during his 2024 presidential debate with former President Donald Trump. Biden was exposed on live television to 100 million debate watchers to be mentally shot.

When Biden refused to voluntarily drop out, former President Barack Obama and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi effectively blackmailed him. Either he drops out, or they publicly leak damaging information to force him out. The party that was all about “saving democracy” engineered a coup. Rather than have an open primary process like in 1968, Obama and Pelosi forced Vice President Kamala Harris as the nominee. This was expected given that the Obamas forced Biden to put her on the 2020 ticket. Harris, not Biden, was the true ideological heir to the Obama presidency. Biden was forced out for only one reason, that he looked like he would lose. This was craven unprincipled political opportunism. The plan backfired when it became clear that Harris was terrible at campaigning. She did worse with some constituencies than Biden did in 2020. Yet the real story was that Biden and Harris were both puppets. Obama won a third term, and was unable to secure a fourth term. By backing losers, Obama damaged his own brand. His endorsement no longer matters and his party no longer worships him.

3) Trump law fare cases collapse — Terrified that Trump might win reelection in 2024, Democrats devised a complex law fare scheme to ban him from running. They tried arguing that he was an insurrectionist even though neither he or anyone else was ever charged with insurrection. Democrats in multiple states tried to cite the 14th Amendment to have him removed from state ballots. The U.S. Supreme Court tossed out those challenges in a unanimous 9-0 ruling.

Trump also became the subject of four different criminal matters in three different states that were designed to financially bankrupt him or even imprison him unless he dropped out of the presidential race. Rules and laws were contorted and justice was turned upside down. His personal home was raided as Biden Department of Justice officials seized former First Lady Melania Trump’s underwear. These various cases each began to unravel when it became clear that Trump was the only person being charged for words and deeds that had never been criminal before him. These cases were carefully coordinated with the Biden White House. One by one the cases collapsed when it became clear that there was simply no there there. Democrats will keep insisting that he was guilty, but the voters saw through the ruse. Trump rightly reminded the world that if the law can be weaponized against him, it can be weaponized against anyone. Democrats keep bleating that no one is above the law, but the lesson of 2024 is that nobody is below the law either. If they were going to remove Trump, they would have to do so at the ballot box, not in the courtroom.

2.) Trump assassination attempts — When having Trump disqualified and imprisoned failed, the next step for his enemies was simply to try and kill him. America was rocked by the political assassinations of the 1960s and terrified by the shooting of President Ronald Reagan in 1981. Then came a lull of normalcy that was shattered on July 13th, 2024 in Butler, Pennsylvania. A young assassin with possible ties to Iran fired off several shots a Trump rally, killing one person and nearly murdering Trump himself. At the very last moment, Trump turned his head, resulting in a bullet grazing his earlobe rather than hitting him straight between his eyes. As expected, many people on the left blamed Trump’s rhetoric for him getting shot. The overall American electorate was more kind than ghoulish, as decent Americans prayed for his recovery.

Immediately after being shot, Trump raised his fist in the air in an act of defiance. Serious Secret Service Breakdowns had people questioning whether the Biden administration deliberately short-shifted Trump from a security standpoint. That investigation is ongoing. Trump faced a second assassination attempt when someone tried to fire at him while he golfed at his Mara Lago resort in South Florida. Despite facing multiple assassination attempts that nearly succeeded, Democrats from Biden and Harris on down kept ramping up the incendiary rhetoric. They kept calling Trump a “fascist” and a “threat to democracy.” The assassination attempts themselves were horrifying, but the reaction was just as evil. Far too many people have gotten to the point where the assassination of a person they hate is “understandable,” a code word for “justified.”

They tried to disqualify him. They tried to bankrupt him. They tried to imprison him. They tried to kill him. Then they finally tried to beat him at the ballot box. This brings us to the top news story of 2024.

1.) Trump returns — The 45th President is now the 47th President-Elect. Trump became the first President since Grover Cleveland to win the White House, lose his reelection, and then win reelection to serve two non-consecutive terms. His return sent a pair of forceful messages. First of all, Reagan’s maxim “Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?” still matters. Voters were dissatisfied in 2020 due to COVID. In 2024, with the pandemic having subsided, voters determined that the quality of life under Biden was worse than it was under Trump. Harris tried to run as a change agent while being the sitting Vice President. That strategy failed for Al Gore and Hillary Clinton, the sitting Secretary of State at the time of her run.

Yet beyond basic economic conditions and worries about the border and the overall world, Trump’s return was an anti-establishment revolt. Despite having been a sitting President, Trump remained an anti-establishment figure. He was a giant middle finger to the elitist snobs in government who live for regulations, mandates and bans. Voters just want to be free and be left alone. They do not want government taxing and regulating them out of existence. Trump voters were called deplorable, irredeemables, neanderthals, smelly Walmart people, racists, bigots, and other names voters do not appreciate. The voters struck back.

Most importantly, Trump now knows who to trust and who not to trust. His first term was undermined by subordinates defying his orders. Trump is the ultimate disruptor, and now he has bringing in a team of disruptors to root out insubordinate officials. This time his orders will be carried out. Eight years ago business leaders openly worked against him. Now the business community is falling all over themselves to kiss his ring and get on his good side. Even though Trump retakes office on January 20th of 2025, his dominating presence plus Biden’s decline and disappearance have world leaders treating Trump as president already.

Trump shocked the political world in 2016. Yet “The art of the deal” is less impressive than “The art of the comeback.” Trump’s business comeback from financially tough times in the 1990s was impressive. His political comeback is one for the ages. Richard Nixon came back, but not with this much drama and fanfare. Nixon’s victories did not end the Kennedy legacy. Trump’s comeback smashed the Obama and Clinton dynasties to pieces. He remade the entire Republican Party of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Paul Ryan into a populist party not seen since Teddy Roosevelt.

For these and other obvious reasons too numerous to mention, the return of Donald J. Trump to the White House is the top news story of 2024.

eric