Michael J. Bernard
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Michael J. Bernard
@mj-bernard.bsky.social
22 followers 61 following 57 posts
Investing and Op-Ed Writer
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mj-bernard.bsky.social
Ben Shapiro finally did the thing most of the movement’s “big voices” have refused to do: he said the names out loud, drew a bright line between truth and performance, and treated grift as an actual threat to coalition survival

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December 20, 2025 at 2:42 PM
mj-bernard.bsky.social
Elections feel decisive, but the moment after the votes are counted tells a quieter story. Presidents inherit legitimacy, not control, and quickly discover a system designed to wait them out rather than obey them.
#TCOT #MAGA #AmericaFirst

tcotreporter.com/winning-the-...
Winning the Election Isn’t Winning Power - #TCOT Reporter
Every four years, Americans participate in an elaborate ritual designed to reassure them that political authority changes hands cleanly and decisively. Votes
tcotreporter.com
December 20, 2025 at 2:21 PM
mj-bernard.bsky.social
Minnesota’s fraud scandals weren’t just about bad actors — Keith Ellison’s role as the political interface, and why that position matters more than intent. Systems fail where enforcement becomes negotiable.
#SomaliScam #Minnesota #KeithEllison

tcotreporter.com/keith-elliso...
Keith Ellison: The Interface Problem - #TCOT Reporter
How Keith Ellison Became the Human Firewall Between Fraud and Accountability Systems rarely fail at the edges. They fail at the interface. In every large-scale
tcotreporter.com
December 20, 2025 at 1:58 PM
mj-bernard.bsky.social
On the morning of September 5, 1972, the Olympic Village in Munich looked the way it had been designed: open, informal, unguarded. These were to be the “Happy Games”—a deliberate contrast to Berlin 1936, a repudiation of militarism, fences, and armed authority.

tcotreporter.com/a-festival-o...
A Festival of Appearances - #TCOT Reporter
Munich Summer Olympic Games, 1972 The Munich Olympics were designed as an act of national self-correction. West Germany wanted distance from the memory of
tcotreporter.com
December 19, 2025 at 6:20 PM
mj-bernard.bsky.social
Examining modern NGOs through the historical lens of piracy, where intermediaries and “ports” mattered more than the raiders themselves. If the structure doesn’t change, neither will the outcome.

#TCOT #NGOArchipeligo #SomaliScam

tcotreporter.com/ports-factor...
Ports, Factors, and Prize Agents - #TCOT Reporter
How the Modern NGO Economy Recreates the Infrastructure of Piracy Piracy was never defeated by bravado or moral condemnation. It was defeated when governments
tcotreporter.com
December 19, 2025 at 6:03 PM
mj-bernard.bsky.social
The 2026 midterms will be decided less by candidates than by systems built long before voting begins. Process power, not persuasion, now shapes outcomes.

#BallotWars #TCOT #MAGA #AmericaFirst

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Ballot Wars 2026: Forecast and Field Manual for the Midterms - #TCOT Reporter
The 2026 midterms will not be decided the way most Americans imagine elections are decided. They will not hinge primarily on candidate charisma, debate
tcotreporter.com
December 19, 2025 at 5:44 PM
mj-bernard.bsky.social
The right dominates online attention but keeps losing procedural ground. That’s because influence without infrastructure doesn’t translate into power.
#BallotWars #TCOT #MAGA #AmericaFirst

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The Digital Counter-Factory - #TCOT Reporter
Building Transparent Infrastructure on the Right For years, conservatives have mistaken visibility for strength. Big rallies, viral clips, loud personalities,
tcotreporter.com
December 17, 2025 at 4:58 PM
mj-bernard.bsky.social
Al-Shabaab likes to posture as a fearsome jihadist force, but up close it looks like a corrupt protection racket with a religious costume.
#WelfareWarlords #JVJihad #SomaliScam

tcotreporter.com/welfare-warl...
Welfare Warlords Of The Somali Main - #TCOT Reporter
Al-Shabaab: The Junior-Varsity Jihad That Keeps Somalia Hostage. Small-time thugs with big-time body counts, a protection racket pretending to be a caliphate.
tcotreporter.com
December 15, 2025 at 12:09 AM
mj-bernard.bsky.social
Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens didn’t “break” the Right. They found a business model inside its weakest impulse: attention without accountability.

#TCOT #MAGA #AmericaFirst

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December 14, 2025 at 12:56 AM
mj-bernard.bsky.social
Mitt Romney’s “7% moment” marked the end of persuasion politics in America. The electorate that could once be moved by argument has been replaced by demographic hardening, institutional distrust, and a dependency-driven politics

#TCOT #MAGA #AmericaFirst

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WHY ROMNEY’S 7% NO LONGER EXISTS - #TCOT Reporter
Why the persuadable middle collapsed, how Trump recognized it early, and what the new political math means for 2025 and beyond. Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign
tcotreporter.com
December 13, 2025 at 11:13 PM
mj-bernard.bsky.social
Did you know that 38 states allow never-resided foreign-born citizens to vote? It’s a loophole big enough for foreign interests, identity theft networks, and entire diasporas to influence states they’ve never lived in.
#BallotWars #TCOT #MAGA #AmericaFirst

tcotreporter.com/voting-witho...
VOTING WITHOUT RESIDENCE: THE UNITED STATES’ UNSEEN ELECTORATE - #TCOT Reporter
How 38 states let citizens who’ve never lived in the U.S. vote — creating phantom constituents with real influence and raising urgent questions about
tcotreporter.com
December 12, 2025 at 9:57 PM
mj-bernard.bsky.social
Election power drifted upward over the last decade, away from voters and toward courts and agencies. State constitutions offer a way to rebalance that power without nationalizing elections further.
#BallotWars #TCOT #MAGA #AmericaFirst

tcotreporter.com/the-federali...
The Federalism Fix - #TCOT Reporter
Using State Constitutions to Rebalance Process Power For years, election fights have been framed as federal battles — Supreme Court cases, DOJ interventions,
tcotreporter.com
December 12, 2025 at 6:27 PM
mj-bernard.bsky.social
The 7% remark wasn’t just a gaffe — it was a blueprint for why the old GOP model collapsed. We break down how Romney failed to understand the era he was running in, and why that miscalculation reshaped the party’s future.

#Romneys7Percent #TCOT #MAGA #AmericaFirst

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ROMNEY’S 7%: THE MOMENT THE OLD REPUBLICAN STRATEGY DIED - #TCOT Reporter
The 7% remark wasn’t a gaffe — it was a blueprint for why the old Republican model collapsed. There are moments in American politics when a single sentence
tcotreporter.com
December 11, 2025 at 8:23 PM
mj-bernard.bsky.social
Union dues aren’t just funding workplace issues anymore — they’re bankrolling entire political ecosystems. Most of it happens through coalitions and nonprofits workers never hear about.

#BallotWars #TCOT #MAGA #AmericaFirst

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Union Money in Disguise - #TCOT Reporter
How Labor Underwrites Non-Labor Causes For most of the modern political era, “labor money” has functioned as a kind of civic shorthand. Ask the average voter
tcotreporter.com
December 11, 2025 at 3:59 PM
mj-bernard.bsky.social
Minnesota’s Somali-linked fraud crisis didn’t happen in a vacuum. A 2% political bloc out-organized an entire state and Ilhan Omar became the symbolic center of a system that stopped supervising itself.
#SomaliScam #Minnesota #IlhanOmar

tcotreporter.com/ilhan-omar-p...
ilhan Omar: Pirate Queen - #TCOT Reporter
MINNESOTA’S MATHEMATICAL DISASTER: HOW A 2% POLITICAL MACHINE TOOK THE OTHER 98% HOSTAGE THE SCALE PROBLEM MINNESOTA REFUSES TO ACKNOWLEDGE Minnesota prides
tcotreporter.com
December 11, 2025 at 1:05 AM
mj-bernard.bsky.social
Small-dollar fundraising has become a subscription economy that funds politics year-round. What looks like grassroots passion is often a network of recurring donations powering permanent infrastructure. #BallotWars #TCOT #MAGA #AmericaFirst

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Small-Dollar Fronts - #TCOT Reporter
ActBlue’s Shadow Economy of Recurring Donors There’s a story we tell ourselves about small-dollar fundraising: that it’s democratic, spontaneous, and organic —
tcotreporter.com
December 10, 2025 at 4:46 PM
mj-bernard.bsky.social
From the very first hour of the new administration, Washington activated a machinery designed for containment: an episode in which the previous executive’s networks functioned as the de facto continuity administration.
#TheShadowPresident #TCOT #MAGA #AmericaFirst
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Obstructed: The Resistance Presidency (2017–2020) - #TCOT Reporter
Even before Day One, the First Trump Presidency was sabotaged and the agenda hindered. The day Donald Trump won the 2016 election, Washington revealed
tcotreporter.com
December 9, 2025 at 11:14 PM
mj-bernard.bsky.social
The disclosure fight isn’t happening at the FEC level — it’s happening inside the IRS, where the definitions of “political activity” quietly determine what the public gets to see.
#TheBallotWars #TCOT #MAGA #AmericaFirst
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Dark Money and Disclosure Loopholes - #TCOT Reporter
IRS as Political Firewall There’s a strange reality in American politics that almost no one outside the infrastructure class fully understands: the agency with
tcotreporter.com
December 9, 2025 at 6:36 PM
mj-bernard.bsky.social
A handful of nonprofit funds have learned how to reshape politics by building the infrastructure beneath it. They don’t run campaigns — they manufacture the groups that influence campaigns.
#BallotWars #TCOT #MAGA
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Arabella’s Four Funds - #TCOT Reporter
The Fiscal Sponsorship Super-Structure If the modern left has a central nervous system, it isn’t the DNC, a think tank, or a social-media operation. It’s a
tcotreporter.com
December 8, 2025 at 10:38 PM
mj-bernard.bsky.social
Voters don’t wait for legislatures to tell them how to participate — they adapt first, and the law eventually follows.
#BallotWars #TCOT #MAGA #AmericaFirst

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Behavioral Lock-In - #TCOT Reporter
Once Voters Adapt, Laws Follow There’s a quiet rule in politics that no strategist ever writes down, but every effective one understands: law doesn’t create
tcotreporter.com
December 7, 2025 at 11:29 AM
mj-bernard.bsky.social
Election rules aren’t being rewritten in legislatures as much as they’re being rewritten in training rooms. A network of “nonpartisan” NGOs has figured out that shaping clerks is more powerful than shaping candidates.
#BallotWars #TCOT #MAGA #AmericaFirst

tcotreporter.com/training-the...
Training the Clerks - #TCOT Reporter
Bureaucratic Capture Through “Nonpartisan” NGOs Every election ends the same way: exhausted voters go home, the candidates thank their families, the pundits
tcotreporter.com
December 7, 2025 at 1:11 AM
mj-bernard.bsky.social
America isn’t falling to one revolution — it’s being hollowed out by five. A surgical breakdown of the administrative, NGO, legal, digital, and border revolutions reshaping the country in real time.
#ColorRevolution #TCOT #MAGA #AmericaFirst
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December 7, 2025 at 12:35 AM
mj-bernard.bsky.social
Texas sent soldiers, Illinois sent statements. What began as a border stunt just rolled into the Windy City—and suddenly “compassion” has a logistics problem. #Chicago #brandonjohnson #JBPritzker tcotreporter.com/chicagos-san...
Chicago’s Sanctuary Showdown - #TCOT Reporter
When Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced that National Guard units were heading not south but north—to reinforce ICE facilities outside Chicago—the reactions
tcotreporter.com
December 6, 2025 at 2:11 AM
mj-bernard.bsky.social
Two years after Hamas’s massacre, New York’s “peace” movement marked the date by chanting for more war—while the moral echoes of Bill Ackman’s old feud with Zohran Mamdani returned louder than ever.
#ZohranMamdani #BillAckman #NYC

tcotreporter.com/the-annivers...
The Anniversary of Amnesia - #TCOT Reporter
On the second anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 attack, Union Square became a stage for déjà vu. Protesters chanted slogans that would have been unprintable a
tcotreporter.com
December 6, 2025 at 12:57 AM
mj-bernard.bsky.social
California’s self-styled progressive icon just learned what happens when the echo chamber finally runs out of walls.
#KatiePorter #California #Progressive

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Katie Porter: Not Ready for Prime Time - #TCOT Reporter
California’s Katie Porter built her brand on whiteboards and righteous indignation. It’s a great act for cable news—until the cameras stop rolling and someone
tcotreporter.com
December 6, 2025 at 12:00 AM