Check out one of the best explanations of the run on GameStop’s stock on the internet, courtesy of Mike Slater who expertly broke down the situation.

It is estimated that for every $12 the stock went up, hedge funds lost one billion dollars leading one such firm to lose all of their $13 billion, he explained.

“The hedge funds got so greedy that they did something called naked shorting… someone there noticed how over-exposed these hedge funds were.”

WATCH:

January 29, 2021 at 05:21PM - Matt Howerton
The best explanation of the run on GameStop | Mike Slater
Read the full story by clicking this headline, at The First TV

The Left has launched an all-out assault on Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene but she is not backing down and is continuing her push to impeach President Biden.

The smear campaign is translating into a fundraising frenzy for the freshman Congresswoman who announced a recent haul of $1.6 million from supporters across America.

“I’m not sorry for standing my ground… Joe Biden is guilty of abusing power,” she told Jesse Kelly this week.

WATCH:

January 29, 2021 at 05:01PM - Matt Howerton
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene: Biden abused power
Read the full story by clicking this headline, at The First TV

So much for Joe Biden being the “nice guy” who would act rationally and bring the country together, Buck Sexton said this week.

With the 46th president advancing the agenda of the far-Left, we might as well have Bernie Sanders as president, he added before playing audio of Biden claiming, “We have never fully lived up to the promise of this nation.”

“Some of us were predicting this all along, that Joe Biden was the Trojan horse…”

WATCH:

January 29, 2021 at 02:25PM - Matt Howerton
Joe Biden is a Trojan horse after all | Buck Sexton
Read the full story by clicking this headline, at The First TV

The White House has issued a memorandum shunning the use of the term “China virus,” claiming it “stokes fears of Asian-Americans.”

Acknowledging the geographic origin of the virus or the incompetency of the Chinese communist regime is not racist, Dana Loesch explained.

“I’m so happy to see that the Party that put them in internment camps is now suddenly concerned about their feelings.”

WATCH:

January 29, 2021 at 12:15PM - Matt Howerton
White House shuns use of term China virus | Dana Loesch
Read the full story by clicking this headline, at The First TV

Do you remember Kyrsten Sinema, the socialist and radical? I stress the socialist and radical part because that is not the Kyrsten Sinema that we see today. In fact, Sinema has become somewhat popular in conservative and libertarian circles.

To remember the socialist Sinema, you’ll have to get into the Way Back Machine and travel back to the Arizona Senate campaign of 2018. Sinema was squaring off against Republican Martha McSally in a race that pitted the two congresswomen against each other in a battle for Jeff Flake’s Senate seat.

I remember this race well because there was a lot of angst about Sinema. Looking back, some of the biggest issues in the campaign seem to be the fact that Sinema was once photographed wearing a “pink tutu” at a protest and the allegation that she was “a Prada socialist.” The charges were not without merit. Sinema was once a Ralph Nader supporter in the Green Party. McSally, a former Air Force fighter pilot, framed the race as “patriot against protester.”

A funny thing happened on the way to the election though. In a race where McSally was once heavily favored, Sinema started gaining ground. By October, McSally was acknowledging on the Sean Hannity Show, “I’m getting my ass kicked.” Sinema went on to win the election by about 2.5 points.

But, as Paul Harvey used to say, “Here’s the rest of the story.”

Despite Republican claims that she was a “radical socialist,” Sinema has emerged as one of the most conservative Democrats in the Senate. Granted, “conservative Democrat” sounds like an oxymoron, but “conservative” can be a relative term.

GovTrack’s ideology score ranks Sinema as the 47th most conservative senator. This puts her ahead of Republicans Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Richard Burr (R-N.C.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). Sinema even has a 50 percent career Trump score from FiveThirtyEight.

Not bad for a radical Prada Socialist!

What really made me think about Kyrsten Sinema this week was the filibuster. After taking the Senate, there was a lot of pressure from progressive groups for Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to nuke the filibuster.

Do you know who stepped up to save the filibuster? Kyrsten Sinema.

Yes, it’s true. This radical pink tutu-wearing socialist went to Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and told him that she opposed eliminating the filibuster. In the newly 50-50 Senate, her vote alone would kill the attempts to invoke the nuclear option, but Joe Manchin (D-W.V.), ranked 53 on the GovTrack scale, joined her as well.

I think it’s fair to say that Republicans were wrong about Sinema. Granted, she’s not a conservative unless you use the term as an adjective to modify the word “Democrat,” but she is legitimately a moderate.

And how about the rest of Martha McSally’s story? After losing to Sinema, McSally was appointed to Arizona’s other Senate seat when Jon Kyl resigned. The two women ended up going to Washington together.

But McSally’s story doesn’t have a happy ending. In a special election in 2020, she once again lost, this time to former astronaut Mark Kelly.

The saga of Kyrsten Sinema and Martha McSally has lessons for both parties as we shift gears from 2020 to 2022. The biggest and most important lesson is that Republicans can’t win simply by using the “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” strategy of pointing at their opponent and screaming “Socialism!”

Playing the socialist card may have worked in the past, but, like crying wolf, it has lost its effectiveness. This is especially true when the Democrats nominate a moderate. If there is any doubt of this, one need look no further than the 2020 losses of Donald Trump, David Perdue, and Kelly Loeffler where “socialism” attack ads were prominent in all three races.

And that’s the biggest lesson for Democrats: Don’t nominate far-left candidates in red and purple states. Nominate moderates.

Far-left candidates may occasionally win in conservative states if the stars align and Donald Trump campaigns for their opponent, but it would be far easier for Democrats to pick up Republican seats if they could nominate a few pro-life, pro-gun candidates. This is especially true in the South and Midwest. Such candidates might have more staying power than Doug Jones of Alabama who, in McSally fashion, won a special election in 2018 but was given walking papers in 2020.

The question is whether Democrats would rather stick to pro-abortion and pro-gun principles and lose or have a moderate who can actually win. In a version of the Buckley Rule, Democrats would do well to nominate the most liberal candidate who can win rather than the most liberal candidate period. Democratic voters should remember that they won’t always have Donald Trump campaigning for their Republican opponents.

The other lesson for Republicans will be more difficult for them to learn and that is that general election voters do not like Donald Trump. As I wrote for the First in November 2020, what we saw in the election was a country that rejected both extremes. Voters told President Trump, “You’re fired,” but also gave Republicans a larger caucus in the House.

To pick on Martha McSally again, she was a rather mainstream Republican who embraced Donald Trump on the campaign trail. Trump’s support enabled McSally to best “Chemtrail Kelli” Ward in the Republican primary, but Trump’s antics were toxic in the general election where he dissed McSally at a rally a few days before the 2020 election, saying, “You got one minute! One minute, Martha! They don’t want to hear this, Martha.”

Unfortunately, the Republicans did not take this lesson to heart. The party went all-in on Trump’s false claims of a stolen election and tried to disenfranchise several entire states that had voted for Biden. This turned the easily winnable Georgia Senate races into tossups. When President Trump rallied for Perdue, who nearly won the November election outright, and Loeffler just before Election Day and persuaded them to endorse throwing out Georgia’s Electoral College votes, it persuaded many fence-sitters, myself included, to vote Democrat.

It also didn’t help that the president, in what will be remembered as one of the biggest strategic errors in the history of American politics, spent two months telling his base that Georgia’s elections were rigged. As a result, many of Trump’s supporters answered his call to be in Washington on January 6 instead of at the polls in Georgia on January 5.

To return to Arizona as a microcosm for the country, Martha McSally lost two winnable Senate races in two years by running close to Trump, but instead of breaking with the failed president, the Arizona GOP is now in the hands of “Chemtrail Kelli” and is tweeting about being willing to die for Trump.

In 2021, both parties find themselves at a crossroads. Do Democrats shift gears toward progressivism or do they stick with the moderate, center-left Biden politics that won the White House? Will Republicans continue to swear allegiance to the man who lost not only the White House but the House of Representatives and Senate as well? Whichever party learns best the lesson that their partisan fringe is not representative of general election voters will probably carry the day.

As the saying goes, all either party has to do is not be crazy, but it’s doubtful that either side will be able to meet that low bar.

Follow David Thornton on Twitter (@captainkudzu) and Facebook

The First TV contributor network is a place for vibrant thought and ideas. Opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of The First or The First TV. We want to foster dialogue, create conversation, and debate ideas. See something you like or don’t like? Reach out to the author or to us at [email protected].

January 29, 2021 at 11:51AM - David Thornton
What both parties can learn from Kyrsten Sinema | David Thornton
Read the full story by clicking this headline, at The First TV

CNN gave New York Governor Andrew Cuomo a softball interview as he continues to pass the buck on his failure on COVID-19 vaccine distribution, said Bill O’Reilly this week.

Even worse, the same guy who issued the nursing home mandate had the nerve to say “incompetent government can kill people,” he pointed out.

Wolf Blitzer failed to do his job by not taking him to task and it was likely because they previously agreed the nursing home question was off the table, Bill explained.

WATCH:

January 29, 2021 at 11:47AM - Matt Howerton
Cuomo gaslights America on CNN | Bill O’Reilly
Read the full story by clicking this headline, at The First TV

Yesterday, I wrote how hilarious I found the pearl-clutching financial media’s condemnation of a bunch of Reddit users buying GameStop $GME stock to the moon, and extracting between $10 and $25 billion in losses from hedge funds that had to cover “naked call” options on non-existent shares.

I compared it to Eddie Valentine and Louis Winthorp taking down the Duke brothers in “Trading Places.” But in reality, it’s not that at all. It’s much more cynical, and much more hilarious.

RobinHood, the app/broker that handles most of the Reddit users stock transactions, suspended users’ ability to buy $GME, while large players could still execute trades. This brought a spate of lawsuits (turns out that not all the Redditors are “idiots”–or at least some of them have law degrees) against RobinHood. But that’s not even remotely close to the real truth.

When you get into the down and dirty details, like Alexis Goldstein’s analysis, you learn that Melvin Capital, which was wiped out when GameStop hit $300, was bailed out by Citadel LLC. Citadel LLC happens to own Citadel Securities, which happens to be the “market maker” or middleman for RobinHood. That means Citadel makes money–like the house makes money on casino players–on every RobinHood transaction. And $GME volume topped the stock market this week, even over Apple and Tesla. Citadel made a lot of money.

Far from killing the Wall Street consigliere, the “wsb” crowd simply shifted some of the money from one boss to another.

Who’s the other party that gave cash to Melvin Capital? Point72, the new investment advisory firm for Steve Cohen. Cohen’s former hedge fund SAC Capital, the firm that pled guilty to insider trading in 2013 (though Cohen himself emerged without admitting guilt). It’s also worth noting that Melvin Capital is run by Gabriel Plotkin, who was one of SAC capital’s top traders. Cam Karsan has some further thoughts on the Citadel/Point72 rescue of Melvin here.

Oh there’s more, and this is the funniest part.

The CEO of Citadel LLC is Kenneth C. Griffin. Here’s Griffin’s political giving over the last few years.

Oh yeah, we’re talking somewhere around $50 million given to Republican super PACs.

The guy who bailed out Melvin Capital, who made bank on every trade by RobinHood users who killed Melvin, is funding Republicans.

I have some predictions for today. The “wsb” crowd is not going to give up. They’re going to complete the “squeeze” on GameStop and drive the stock back up. In fact, GameStop, AMC, BlackBerry, and Koss, along with others in the Reddit Occupy Wall Street revolt, are back up in off-hours trading.

The crowd is motivated and prepared to go all-in to finish this. They may not make money in the end (some will, some won’t), but they’re going to show the hedge fund glitterati and financial press who’s boss today. Don’t think those bosses won’t hit back, though.

By noon, I believe we’ll see some “double secret probation” style emergency powers invoked by the SEC to halt trading on stocks that “wsb” is buying as “market manipulation.” Of course, the hedge funds engage in “dark pools” and legal market manipulation every day, but it’s somehow society-destroying when a lot of little guys do it.

Sometime today, a politician (probably a Democrat) will accuse the entire Reddit scheme of being a Chinese operation. Or a Russian one, but probably Chinese. They’ll be accused of being duped by a foreign power to take down America’s trusted stock market. As the Internet kids say, lulz.

By late afternoon, the media will be running profiles (i.e. doxxing) on some of the “leaders” of the Reddit group. I can imagine the subreddit “wallstreetbets” might be shut down by social media, and its members somehow “flagged” for blocks on other platforms. When the plebes take over the campus, that’s how the upperclassmen react.

These “wsb” Wall Street occupiers are causing far more mayhem than the liberal feces-flinging monkeys who physically squatted on the streets of New York ever could. But in the end, they won’t win anything. In fact, they’re just lining the pockets that fund Republican super PACs.

The Democrats are going to be furious. Expect the Biden administration to go full Palpatine on the ability of little guys to topple the big ones at their own game when this chapter closes.

Follow Steve on Twitter @stevengberman.

The First TV contributor network is a place for vibrant thought and ideas. Opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of The First or The First TV. We want to foster dialogue, create conversation, and debate ideas. See something you like or don’t like? Reach out to the author or to us at [email protected]. 

January 29, 2021 at 07:09AM - Steve Berman
Democrats will be furious when they learn who profited on the GameStop revolt | Steve Berman
Read the full story by clicking this headline, at The First TV

What is the psychological impact of COVID-19 mitigation on our youth? Whatever the benefit may be, the trauma is not worth it, argued Mike Slater on Wednesday.

He made the case that kids in middle school and younger should not be forced to wear masks.

“We’re freaking out our kids for no reason… No kids should wear masks.”

WATCH:

January 28, 2021 at 02:56PM - Matt Howerton
Are we traumatizing our children? | Mike Slater
Read the full story by clicking this headline, at The First TV

There is a big lie being pushed in America that demonizes law enforcement and manipulates the public to advance a political agenda, said Jesse Kelly on Tuesday.

He played the footage of President Biden perpetuating the lie this week as he revisited the George Floyd tragedy to justify executive orders on racial justice.

“All these people care about is power and money…”

WATCH:

January 28, 2021 at 02:45PM - Matt Howerton
The truth about systemic racism in America | Jesse Kelly
Read the full story by clicking this headline, at The First TV

President Joe Biden has declared that we must “spend money now” to avoid “a deeper, deeper, deeper depression,” Buck Sexton recently reported.

Award-winning radio host Trish Regan joined Hold The Line to chime in on the fiscal cliff that the 46th president seems to be leading the country toward.

“It’s gonna haunt us for generations…. we should be smarter than this.”

WATCH:

January 28, 2021 at 01:00PM - Matt Howerton
Is Biden leading the U.S. to financial ruin? | Buck Sexton
Read the full story by clicking this headline, at The First TV