I didn’t know much about Joe Knopp when I attended the special press conference of Jim Renacci on Thursday, December 2nd, 2021. I knew I liked Jim Renacci and supported him emphatically to run for governor of Ohio. The current governor, Mike DeWine, had not shown that he was a conservative during his first term, and his Covid response was a disaster against the Constitution. He was the first governor in all of the nation to attempt to alter election laws and shut down our economy, and we have all seen enough. He had to go, and Jim was the best replacement. But this particular event was a bit of a surprise. Jim was going to announce his Lt. Governor. Naturally, I was thinking of the apparent picks; it would have to be a conservative woman of some kind because that’s what everyone does these days. But no, instead, Jim was thinking outside the box when he announced that he was putting Joe Knopp on the ticket, another privately successful person. The more I thought about it and got a chance to meet Joe, the more I liked him. He was, after all, the producer of the Trump movie, The Trump I Know.
About halfway through the Joe Knopp introduction, I started putting everything together. Joe was the guy who produced the movie showing all the great Trump women who came out right before the election in 2020. It told the story that nobody covered about Trump, all the little things he does behind the scenes that made him such a great president, and how he treated women in his campaign and organizations. It all came to an excellent little focus during the press conference, especially during the question and answer session where reporters asked what Renacci planned to do about Ohio being the number 1 state in all of America for corruption. Sometimes we all start accepting dysfunction to such an extent that we think of it as reality. But the reason the media hated Trump, as the Swamp itself does, was because of these independent business guys, people like Trump, and his friend Jim Renacci. Joe Knopp wanted to eliminate the dark money cookies that all the Swamp creatures get to eat off of. Columbus, Ohio was every bit as much of a swamp as Washington D.C., Just on a different scale, and essentially, Governor DeWine is like the Joe Biden in the executive branch. A deeply compromised person who has become rich off dark money hated people who challenged that structure. From the media to the politicians, it was all an addiction to dark money that they considered such a threat. So much so that they would have destroyed President Trump if they could. But the Trump women that Joe Knopp captured in his film so beautifully told the absolute truth, which is what voters saw. And in Ohio, we were going to get to make the same kind of decision in favor of the Jim and Joe Show.
This is a different kind of race for the governor. As Renacci will say, he’s not running against Mike DeWine; he’s running for Ohio. But this is a primary race that would generally be protected from challengers because they are typically low turnout elections. The people who show up are usually inspired by dark money. That’s how people like Mike DeWine get power and keep it. And it’s everything that’s wrong with Ohio. So to run against Mike DeWine is running for Ohio. But we’re talking about swamp creatures who are the only benefactors. We need in Ohio essentially what Trump was able to do at the federal level, and it takes people who are independent of that dark money to make it happen. Playing a conventional game of politics that sets up a specific media narrative would not make Ohio any less corrupt. It’s essentially the media that is in on it all, they set the parameters of the dark money game, and they all feed off each other. No, what we want in Ohio is freedom from those kinds of people. Jim Renacci is independently successful and is personal friends with President Trump. And so is Jim’s pick for Lt. Governor.
Of course, the media narrative of the Joe Knopp announcement was that he was a Christian filmmaker, which is true. But that doesn’t begin to tell the whole story of who Joe Knopp is. It’s like saying that Steven Spielberg is a liberal film director. That may be an aspect of who Steven Spielberg is, but it can’t be argued that Spielberg films generally reach out to all audiences. And that was certainly the case with Joe’s movie, The Trump I Know. The media doesn’t like people who make Christian movies that are every bit as good as Academy Award-winning films made in Hollywood. Joe is very much a product of Hollywood and a realization that the political left has, which makes them very uncomfortable, that they don’t control the entire movie-making industry. So to emphasize that Joe is a Christian for them is an attempt to limit his reach not only in the primary but also in the general election. Yet, all this conventional thinking forgets is that for the first time in the history of America, especially under the DeWine administration, churches were closed while abortion clinics were open. And DeWine put the abortion activist Amy Acton on his staff to essentially run Ohio for an entire year. Voters have had some cold water thrown in their faces, where the government interrupted their religion and showed the fangs of the state’s power. Ohio voters are primed to vote for an honest Christian crusader who loves President Trump and pledges to attack corruption without becoming consumed himself. Yes, picking Joe Knopp was an intelligent move for Jim Renacci. It’s not business as usual, and that’s the point.
I left the Renacci event happy. Finally, we would have a positive choice in Ohio by a few really good people who were independently successful and beyond the corruption of dark money. And to have a chance to remove DeWine and replace him with Renacci with such staff, people like Joe Knopp start to repair what has been broken in Ohio after the Covid shutdowns by DeWine. The best justice for all the bad things DeWine did would be to replace his place in the Swamp with the drain of Renacci and Knopp. These are people that real conservatives in Ohio can truly cheer for and feel good about voting for. Many of the years in the past when the voter turnout has been low, partly because the candidates are always swamp creatures like DeWine, which nobody gets excited about, options like these didn’t seem possible. But Renacci and Knopp, well, there’s something that people can get excited about. It’s great to have a choice finally, and in meeting Knopp, I can only say that he is one of the nicest people I have met this year. Such a good person, and such a nice family. To have people like that to vote for in an election is truly a treasure, and I think Ohio will enjoy the option. True, the dark money monster is out there, but I think these guys have a good chance of getting new voter turnout activated. And for that to be an option is a huge opportunity that will make 2022 a year of justice to remember.
Rich Hoffman
The Gunfighter's Guide: 