Constitution
Mexican gambit, accepted – TIP-2-1
The Heritage Foundation’s Transition Integrity Project Game One begins with Mexican pressure on the U.S.-Mexican border.
Toward the end of last week, the Heritage Foundation released its own Transition Integrity Project report. As CNAV discussed yesterday, Heritage sought to model certain critical events, and outside pressures on the United States. They began their simulation before the disastrous June 27 Debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. That, even more than the Supreme Court’s primer on Presidential immunity, has most people assuming that Trump would win. That is, if certain bad actors did not, or could not, repeat their bad acts of 2020. Today CNAV examines the first of Heritage’s two Games, which we call Mexican Gambit, Accepted. Gambit because that’s the word for a gaming strategy, and Accepted because the Biden administration tries negotiating with Mexico. In other words, Biden would play Mexico’s game – which, in this scenario, would not save him.
Review of game play setup
Briefly, Heritage set up the players in several teams, which they grouped into three cells, as follows:
Blue Cell: Biden Administration, the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Congressional Democrats, Intelligence Community/FBI/CIA, Department of Justice, Mainstream Media, Big Tech/Social Media/Internet Companies, TikTok, Black Lives Matter/Antifa/Pro-Hamas, and Urban Law Enforcement.
Red Cell: Republican National Committee (RNC), Congressional Republicans, Republican Lawyers’ Association, Conservative Media, Evangelicals, Twitter/X and Truth Social, Project 2025, and Local Sheriffs.
White Cell: China, Russia, Mexico/Central America, Cartels, Appeals Court, Supreme Court of the United States, U.S. Military, Lower Courts in Swing States, and Swing State Governors.
Roles functioning as non-players/exercise facilitators: Exercise Leader, Exercise Manager, Scenario Analysts, Tech Support, and Scribes.
Game play proceeded in six Turns, as follows:
- Democratic National Convention to Labor Day,
- Labor Day to whenever early voting starts in any given unit (i.e., county or independent city),
- From start of early voting to Election Day,
- One week from Election Day to November 12,
- The certification period (November 13 through December 5), and
- End of certification period to the Constitutional Inauguration Day (January 20, 2025).
Communications flowed freely between and among some players (almost always within Cells), and not so freely between and among others. As each game began, all players received a briefing on the circumstances peculiar to the war game they would run. Then the players relayed their intentions to the Facilitators – who played the same role as that of the Dungeon Master in Dungeons and Dragons. The Facilitators, said Heritage, “used free arbitration methods to decide which measures would meet with success.” Meaning, they would roll dice – or guess.
Social media players, whoever they were, could emulate – or change – the Rules of the particular social media platforms they portrayed.
The Mexican gambit: crashing the southern border
Game One began with the Democrats getting a post-Convention bounce, which will be late in August. But that bounce will fizzle and even “reverse,” as the situation on the U.S.-Mexican border gets worse. Migration, according to Heritage, always picks up toward the end of summer, and will this time.
Heritage guessed – correctly – that Mexico’s left-wing MORENA Party would win big. MORENA – in actual fact – has a supermajority in the lower house, and a commanding majority in the Mexican Senate. Heritage had assumed that MORENA would take supermajorities in both chambers, so that prediction is not far off the mark.
With that supermajority, MORENA drove hard bargains with the Biden White House. Biden sought an agreement that would reduce immigration at the Rio Grande – temporarily – until after the election.
Colleges and universities “took up” around Labor Day, as usual – and protests ramped up, as expected. CNAV has noticed before that many campus protesters are not university students or other community members, but are outside agitators. Heritage assumed the same. The protests pressed the usual leftist demands:
- Defunding of police (and one can imagine how that would play with Urban Law Enforcement!),
- “Enhanced voting rights” (for non-citizens, with absentee ballots for any reason or no reason, etc.),
- Reparations for slavery,
- “Opposition to Zionism,” whatever that might mean at any given time, and
- Deindustrialization, carbon taxation, and other “climate actions.”
Turn Two: foreign actors, Mexican immigration, and police loyalty
After Labor Day, four trends began to appear. First, the “Feds” tried to enlist local police in hindering conservative groups in their organization and canvassing. Police rank-and-file indignantly refused such orders, and members of the public expressed open skepticism. In one memorable episode, a police union in Philadelphia told Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-Pa.) what he could do with his “threat descriptions” that read like condemnations of Republicans for being Republicans.
In Texas, elements of the Texas Military Department discovered an “encampment” that was assisting in border infiltration. TMD personnel cleared this camp out – and the Biden administration didn’t like it. (Remember: the Texas Military Department consists of Texas Army and Air National Guards, and the Texas State Guard.)
The Biden administration “offered” to settle as many as 50,000 Palestinian “refugees” in this country. No one said a word about vetting any of them for HAMAS or other terrorist connections or affiliations.
The Intelligence Community collectively suggested that Chinese, Iranian, and Russian operatives were “interfering” in the election. But they were not coordinating their efforts, as far as anyone could determine (or would admit). Game One said one thing that totally strains credulity: that Vladimir V. Putin made statements in support of Biden’s reelection. Separately, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and her MORENA Party were also trying to support Biden’s reelection on the sly. They sought to score foreign aid and the acceptance, by the United States, of Mexico as a one-party State.
Turn Three: hostage situation!
Sometime during the start of early voting (either late September or early October), a 19-member unit of HAMAS actually invaded the home of “a well-known Jewish celebrity” and held her hostage. If that celebrity is supposed to be Laura Loomer, she has not (in real life) acknowledged, protested, or otherwise commented. The FBI – presumably elements of its Hostage Rescue Team – laid siege to the house and rescued the hostage unharmed.
Widespread cellular radio outages, Internet blackouts, and even water contamination incidents happened on October 16. In parallel with this, the FBI suspended 18 “whistleblowers.” In short, this was a false-flag pseudo-operation – so the hostage situation could have been another false-flag pseudo-operation.
Biden’s Palestinian refugee program provoked public backlash. So Biden announced that the program would accept only 25,000, after thorough vetting. These would go to Michigan (presumably Dearborn), Minnesota and Wisconsin.
And then, Iran got The Bomb. They tested, underground, a device with 20 percent more explosive force than the “Little Boy” bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Iran trumpeted its triumph – and Trump benefited from the public outrage.
The election – why so close?
To everyone’s surprise, the election was much closer than the polling after the Iran bomb story would suggest. Heritage offered no explanation. Republicans captured the Senate with a commanding majority, but not a supermajority: 56-44. But the House was tied, 217 each, with Arizona’s First District remaining to call. Worse yet, the Presidential election came down to Trump leading 267-260, with Arizona too close to call. Trump led in Arizona by 65,554 votes – with more than 340,000 votes outstanding. Most of these were – of course – mail-in, with some provisional.
Then the lawfare began, with lawsuits in Arizona, and street violence in major cities everywhere. True to the gambit, elements of the Mexican MORENA Party stirred up much of the trouble in Arizona.
The FBI, using the excuse of rumored race-based intimidation, started civil-rights investigations in eight States, including Arizona – and Virginia. Federal officials asked State Divisions of Elections to stop reporting vote tallies until the investigations were complete. Democratic Secretaries of State obeyed. But finally the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government had no standing to open any investigations. (Heritage directs the reader to the Appendix, but that section contains no Supreme Court decision from Game One.)
But Attorney General Merrick Garland refused to obey the Supreme Court, and kept trying to interfere with the Arizona count. Nevertheless, the count clearly showed that Trump did much better in Maricopa County (Arizona’s most populous) than he had done four years ago. Garland gave up, and Trump claimed Arizona – and victory.
Mexican gambit – bogus
Game One comes close to being realistic, but always shies away from declaring what’s really happening. No one, reading the story of the hostage situation, can doubt that the FBI deliberately put that hostage’s life at risk, just to get a headline and try to redeem the credibility it had squandered since the death of J. Edgar Hoover. The really unrealistic part of that story is that Laura Loomer – whether as the hostage or simply as a fellow Jewess – did not loudly declaim the obvious. Possibly she did, but, of course, the Red Cell social media platforms disallowed every word. But surely X, Truth Social, and especially Gab would have allowed her free rein.
That Palestinian refugee resettlement program makes the absence of Green Cell (Gab, Andrew Torba, Nick Fuentes, Bradlee Dean, Gary De Mar, et al.) painfully obvious. The followers of the individual members would be waiting for them to say something! Remember: these are covenantal theologians, and have no sympathies for Jews. But would they express support for “Palestinian” refugee resettlement? Nick Fuentes might be foolish enough to express that support. The other three would wait and watch. Then, after the hostage incident, Nick Fuentes would be too humiliated to continue as a commentator. But Bradlee Dean especially would cry, “False Flag!” And he would be correct.
What happened to the electoral vote count?
But the most stunning plot hole in this game is the election going from 336-202 for Trump, to 267-260-11. Why!? Again, Heritage offers no explanation. Heritage especially fails to explain why Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin go from likely Trump to Biden carries. And why Arizona turned into the Toss-up State That Decided the Election!
Furthermore, no one says a single word about Georgia. True enough, the Georgia Board of Elections recently made rules for ballot and voter check-in reconciliation at precinct level. But what took them so long? And does anyone really believe that Georgia elections will clean themselves up, as long as Brad Raffensperger remains as SecState? He should be part of the Game, whether to get removed, or to try to extort some kind of concession from Trump. And again, Teams Dominion (Voting Services), ES&S, KNOWiNK, and other Electronic Voting Machine vendors should have belonged to White Cell.
One tacit recommendation stands out: mail-in ballots have to go. But better yet, Early Voting has to go. Someone needs to ask for a consultation from France about how to run elections without Electronic (or other) Voting Machines.)
In the next installment, CNAV will treat Game Two.
Terry A. Hurlbut has been a student of politics, philosophy, and science for more than 35 years. He is a graduate of Yale College and has served as a physician-level laboratory administrator in a 250-bed community hospital. He also is a serious student of the Bible, is conversant in its two primary original languages, and has followed the creation-science movement closely since 1993.
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