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Trump, Don’t Listen to Pelosi: Give the State of the Union to the People
Newly-gaveled Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has sent a letter to President Donald Trump asking him to postpone the State of the Union address until after the partial government shutdown ends, or at least submit it in writing. I strongly disagree with Pelosi.
Pelosi’s stated reason is that the Secret Service can’t protect the president from his mortal enemies in the Congress due to the partial government shutdown. This is baloney. Pelosi’s real fear is that Trump will use the State of the Union to blast the intransigent Democrats for their refusal to protect American citizens and that Trump will do so effectively.
My colleague Jon Gabriel would like to do away with the “pretentious pageantry of the [State of the Union] address” and I wholeheartedly agree on that part. However, the president absolutely should deliver the State of the Union, just not in the Capitol to a joint session of Congress. Instead, Trump should do what Trump does best and deliver the address in a stadium somewhere in the heart of the country surrounded by tens of thousands of fellow Americans.
Yes, the Constitution states that the president “shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” But it does not specify the mode of conveying this information to Congress. As Jon noted, all presidents from Thomas Jefferson to William Taft submitted their information of the State of the Union in writing.
A Trump State of the Union delivered in a large stadium in real America will be broadcast live and recorded. Members of Congress will be free to attend in person (if they dare), or watch at home on their televisions or on YouTube and other video services. The Trump Administration could also deliver DVD boxsets to each member of Congress afterward.
President Trump, ditch the joint session of Congress and take the State of the Union to the People.
The Criminal Corruption at the Top Levels of the FBI Is Being Exposed
Former FBI general counsel James A. Baker is the subject of a criminal investigation for leaking information to the media. Fox News’ Catherine Herridge reports:
The former top lawyer at the FBI has been under federal investigation for leaking to the media, a letter from House Republicans revealed Tuesday.
The letter from GOP Reps. Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows cited the transcript of a congressional interview with former General Counsel James Baker and his lawyer last fall, where the probe conducted by seasoned U.S. Attorney John Durham was confirmed.
“You may or may not know, [Baker has] been the subject of a leak investigation … a criminal leak investigation that’s still active at the Justice Department,” lawyer Daniel Levin told lawmakers, as he pushed back on questions about his client’s conversations with reporters.
Read the whole article here. Despite the similar names, James A. Baker is not to be confused with James A. Baker III, who served in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.
It’s not clear what Baker may have leaked to the media. Baker was demoted and reassigned to a different position within the FBI in 2017 and then later resigned.
Other former top FBI officials have similarly left or been dismissed from the FBI in disgrace, including Peter Strzok, the former Deputy Assistant Director of the Counterintelligence Division. Strzok was fired in August 2018 after the Justice Department Inspector General filed a report that detailed Strzok’s extreme anti-Trump, pro-Hillary Clinton bias.
Former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe was fired in 2018 for lying repeatedly to investigators about leaking to the media and was referred by the Inspector General for criminal prosecution.
Former FBI director James Comey was also fired in May 2017 for being an insufferable boob whom everyone on both sides of the aisle hated. Comey infamously broke FBI protocol repeatedly by usurping authority from the attorney general (Loretta Lynch) and announcing the existence of criminal investigations (into Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump). He also mislead Donald Trump over the nature of the Steele Dossier, and was also in charge of the FBI when the bureau knowingly used unverified documents (the aforementioned Steele Dossier) to mislead a federal judge in order to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on American citizen, Carter Page. Although the FBI swore they had reason to believe Page was committing criminal acts on behalf of a foreign nation, Page has never been charged with any crime, despite being spied on for a year. This is because the FBI was not actually interested in Page. Spying on Page allowed the FBI to gain access to the communications of the Trump campaign, their real target.
Last week the New York Times reported that the FBI opened a criminal investigation in May 2017 into the sitting president of United States based on nothing more than policy disagreements they had with Donald Trump. This unconstitutional, Banana Republic-style investigation, an attempt to criminalize political positions and undo elections, was launched when Andrew McCabe was the acting FBI director, James A. Baker was the FBI’s general counsel, and Peter Strzok was the number 2 agent in the Counterintelligence Division.
Fortunately these particular corrupt individuals are no longer in positions of power. I hope they will all be prosecuted and spend considerable amounts of time in prison.
Ted Cruz’s Beard Solves Border Wall Funding Crisis
Ted Cruz introduces the EL CHAPO Act to fund the border wall and end the partial government shutdown.
Jim Acosta Proves Walls Work!
CNN’s Jim “Look at Me, I’m Jim Acosta” Acosta is in McAllen, TX, today to cover President Donald Trump’s visit to the southern border. Although Jim holds himself in high self-regard, Jim has little self-awareness. He is a committed Leftist, sworn to oppose all things Trump, so he posted a video to Twitter that he thinks proves there’s no crisis at the border:
I found some steel slats down on the border. But I don’t see anything resembling a national emergency situation.. at least not in the McAllen TX area of the border where Trump will be today. pic.twitter.com/KRoLdszLUu
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) January 10, 2019
Yes, Jim, there are “no migrants trying to rush toward this fence.” I wonder why that is. Maybe because there’s a physical barrier on that section of the border and they wouldn’t be able to get through right there. Just a thought, Jim.
Trump Oval Office Address (With Response from Chuck & Nancy)
Here is Donald Trump’s address to the nation from the Oval Office:
And here is the response from Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer:
Original post:
As we know, President Donald Trump will address the nation this evening at 9PM ET from the Oval Office, his first such address during his administration. He’ll be talking about border security. It’s expected to be a short address, and we’ll post the video as soon as its available and also publish the audio to the POTUS POD podcast here at Ricochet. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer will be delivering a response afterward as well, and we’ll be sure to post that video as well. As someone once said: We provide the information, you draw your own conclusions. Actually I think that someone said it more pithily.
In any case, what do you think Trump is going to say? Will he declare a state of emergency in order to build the wall without congressional approval for funding? Will Chuck and Nancy talk longer than the president in their response? How long is the shut down going to last? (Does anyone care?) Let us know in the comments, and check back for the videos at some point after 9:30PM.
Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Known Russian, Charged With Obstruction (Not Collusion™)
In a developing news story, Fox News reported that Natalia Veselnitskaya, who is (gasp!) Russian, has been charged in absentia this morning in federal court in the Southern District of New York with obstruction of justice “in connection to a civil money laundering and forfeiture case involving a Russian tax refund fraud scheme, first uncovered by the late Sergei Magnitsky.”
I have no idea what that means but it’s clear it has nothing to do with Donald Trump. This is despite the fact that the only reason this is a news item anyone will pay attention to is that Veselnitskaya was one of several people connected to the Democrat opposition research firm Fusion GPS that met with Donald Trump, Jr; Paul Manafort; and Jared Kushner in Trump Tower, June 2016. This was the meeting that, when it was first reported on by the very fake news, we were promised proved collusion™, except that it didn’t.
In fact, Veselnitskaya was in the country to lobby against the Magnitsky Act, named after the aforementioned Sergei Magnitsky. Who was she working with in her anti-Magnitsky Act endeavors? Fusion GPS, the same firm that produced the phony Steele Dossier, which was compiled by former British spook Christopher Steele using information fed to him by Russian intelligence officers.
Another Russian (gasp!) at the Trump Tower meeting was Rinat Akhmetshin, a former Russian (gasp!) spy. Wow, Don Jr. met with a Russian (gasp!) spy! That’s pretty bad. Yeah, bad, but not for Don Jr. According to Spygate, written by Dan Bongino and former Ricochet contributor Denise McCallister:
The [New York] Times also reports that Akhmetshin made his way from Russian spy to Washington lobbyist through “Edward Lieberman, a lawyer with corporate and political clients in former Soviet counties who was married to President Bill Clinton’s former deputy chief of staff, Evelyn S. Lieberman, who died in 2015.”
Veselnitskaya also brought a translator, Anatoli Samochrnov, to the meeting because she reportedly does not speak English. CBS News reported in July 2017, that the US Department of State confirmed Samochornov “has worked with the State Department’s Office of Language Services as an interpreter.” Although Samochornov himself is not a State Department employee, Huffington Post reported, also in July 2017, that he worked on a contract basis for the State Department from 2001 to 2016 and that his wife is a State Department employee. HuffPo reported that Samochevnov is a registered Democrat.
Fusion GPS was lobbying to overturn the Magnitsky Act at the same time they were hired by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign to invent dirt on Donald Trump. And that’s what they did and the Trump Tower meeting was part of the effort to make it look like there was a connection between Trump and the Russians (gasp!). It was a happy coincidence for Fusion that they could combine both efforts in the Trump Tower meeting.
I also find it extremely suspicious that the charge is being filed today, the morning of Donald Trump’s first address to the nation from the Oval Office. This is not the first time that federal prosecutors have taken actions that appear to be timed for political purposes. Robert Mueller indicted a number of Russians (gasp!) right before Trump had a meeting with Putin back in July 2018. The political nature of those indictments was laid bare when some of the indicted Russians unexpectedly showed up (through counsel) to defend themselves in court and Mueller scrambled to delay proceedings. The point of the indictments clearly wasn’t to bring anyone to justice but instead to embarrass and undermine Trump.
Mueller is a political actor. His job is to hamstring Donald Trump’s administration as best he can for as long as he can. The Southern District of New York is also packed with leftists who hate Trump and are looking for ways to harm his presidency. Today’s indictment by the SDNY likely will not come to anything. Veselnitskaya is said to be in Russia. She will never return to the United States. The SDNY made this move today not to bring Veselnitskaya to justice, for whatever it is she’s accused of doing, but instead to distract from Trump speech tonight.
I think Trump should fire Mueller and everyone in the upper levels of the Southern District of New York. There would be political ramifications for such an act, of course. But there have also been political costs to allowing rogue federal prosecutors to try to overturn the results of the 2016 election.
Ruth Ginsburg’s Going to Die (or Resign) — Can the Left Handle It?
Ruth Bader Ginsberg was missing from the bench on Monday as the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for several cases. This absence raises speculation about her health. It’s the first time she’s missed oral arguments in 25 years. That seems impressive, but on the other hand it also seems like a basic requirement of the job. In any case, the 85-year-old far-left justice is recovering from surgery she underwent last month to remove two cancerous tumors from her lungs. Ginsburg’s tumors were found after she fell in her office in November and broke two ribs, an ironically fortunate event, as it turned out.
We all wish her well health-wise. At least I do. My mother died from cancer that was present in her lungs. But let’s not fool ourselves: Ginsburg’s 85. Even without the cancer she’s at the end of her time on the court. There’s a very high probability (not certainty) that she will either resign due to health reasons or go join her friend the great Antonin Scalia in the hereafter within the next six years. And that means that President Trump is going to nominate her replacement. And when that happens Democrats are going to lose their everlasting skeet balls.
Why is she even on the court any more? She could have resigned while Obama was president (certainly in his first term, but also in the first two years of his second term) and had him replace her with another Leftist. I think the reason she didn’t is she thought Hillary Clinton would run for president and win. Who knows. This is a little mind-reading by me, but perhaps she wanted the first female president to nominate her replacement.
But she didn’t resign under Obama and now Donald Trump is president (thank God) and if she resigns now or passes away then he will not nominate a Leftist to replace her.
If you thought the Brett Kavanaugh hearings were something then wait until Trump replaces Ginsburg with someone who actually likes the United States Constitution. (Ginsburg prefers the constitution of South Africa.)
The Democrats accused Kavanaugh, with zero evidence, of being a serial rapist. And he was replacing Anthony Kennedy in a lateral move on the ideological spread. By the way, if anything puts the lie to Chief Justice John Roberts pious insistence that “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” it’s the insane reaction of the Left to Brett Kavanaugh. And don’t forget, the Democrats also filibustered the nomination of Neil Gorsuch, the first filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee in history.
So the question is: What new depths will Democrats and Bill Kristol sink to when Trump nominates Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s replacement?
Conservative Intellectuals Exit Stage Left
I cancelled my long-time subscription to The Weekly Standard earlier this year after one too many anti-Trump editorials. I probably would have canceled it sooner but I kept on forgetting, on account of my not reading the magazine regularly anymore, even though it showed up every week in my mailbox. The last issue that I received asserted that the June 2016 Trump Tower Meeting “wasn’t evidence of the campaign colluding with Russia, but it was evidence that some of Trump’s top advisers were willing to collude.” The same editorial reassured its readers that, “Mueller is everything we value in a public servant—honest, competent, utterly averse to partisan hackery.”
The recent dissolution of The Weekly Standard has brought much hand-wringing and back-patting from our intellectual betters. Reportedly, The Standard’s subscription base has dropped by 10 percent or more in each of the last five years. Their subscription base would already have been a tiny sliver of the Republican electorate.
That in itself is not a knock on the Standard or any other publication. The fact is that there are tens of millions of Republican voters (Trump received almost 63 million voters) and even the mighty Fox News draws a peak audience of 3-4 million viewers in prime time. With the Standard’s subscription base necessarily being far smaller, could they really afford during the last three years to alienate the 85-90 percent of Republican voters, like me, who voted for and approve of President Trump’s job performance?
It’s not just that the Standard routinely maligned the current Republican president, their writers dripped condescension toward the (millions of) voters who support not just the president, but the policies they put him in office to enact. And unlike many Republican officeholders, Trump is actually keeping far more of his promises than many of his voters even expected.
My decision to stop paying for the privilege of being told repeatedly that I’m a degenerate for voting for Trump was recently reaffirmed by a piece written by former Ricochet editor Mollie Hemingway at The Federalist: “NeverTrump Clings to Russia Collusion Conspiracy Theory Despite Lack of Evidence.” In it, Mollie writes:
The Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes wrote an article headlined “How Trump’s Lies About Russia Were Exposed.” …Hayes accuses Trump of lying without ever pointing to a specific lie that was told. Hayes merely lists a number of Trump’s denials and says, “Virtually all of those statements were misleading. Many of them were lies,” without specifying which is which. If there’s a smoking gun here, he ought to be able to say what it is.
The second-to-last cover article at The Weekly Standard was a puff piece on Sen. Cory Booker, titled “See Cory Run,” which includes anecdotes about Booker feeding the homeless, the fact that he’s more Native American than Elizabeth Warren (No surprise there — I think my cat is, too), and that “Yiddishisms and Jewish liturgy dot his speeches.”
Booker’s a political force to be reckoned with, for sure, his imaginary friend “T-bone” and Roman slave loincloth grandstanding (“I am Spartacus”) notwithstanding. But when your magazine is lauding one of the most liberal Democrat members of the US Senate while accusing the Republican president of lying and holding desperately to the fantasy that the Trump campaign treasonously conspired with a foreign nation to steal an election from Hillary Clinton, whom your editor-in-chief endorsed, perhaps you can forgive me if I need to lie down for a while to recover from nearly passing out due to extreme eye-rolling.
Maybe I should say that I don’t care whether the SS Weekly Standard sinks or floats. I’m not gloating at their failure, but neither am I in any way surprised. When you publish things I don’t want to read, I’ll first of all stop reading, and then stop paying for it eventually, once I remember.
David Brooks, who’s an opinion columnist, I guess, at the New York Times, wrote recently, “I’ve only been around Phil Anschutz [owner of the Standard] a few times. My impressions on those occasions was that he was a run-of-the-mill arrogant billionaire.”
Because Brooks has met a bunch of billionaires, enough to ferret out the run-of-the-mill arrogant ones, because he’s better than you and me, and totally not arrogant. Anschutz “murdered [the Standard] out of greed and vengeance.” According to Brooks, the Standard’s owner “wants to hurt the employees and harvest the subscription list so they could make money off of it… at the height of the Christmas season, and so cause maximum pain to his former employees and their families.”
This is the type of vulture capitalist attack that was leveled at Mitt Romney by Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and other Leftists. It’s intellectually lazy garbage, the type of claptrap that Brooks, a pretend conservative, is kept at the New York Times to level at the Right.
Megan McArdle, writing last week in the Washington Post before the Standard’s demise, argued that the “conservative intellectuals” of The Weekly Standard, and other anti-Trump Republicans, are to be congratulated for staying consistent in their condemnation of Donald Trump and that we should “admire how many of the movement’s leading intellectuals held their ground, even as a substantial portion of the conservative base moved away.”
But did the base really move away? McArdle acknowledges that “refusing to support Trump meant conceding control of the Supreme Court and the regulatory agencies to left-wing blocs cemented by Hillary Clinton’s nominees.”
The base didn’t move (it wouldn’t be much of a base if it did). The “conservative intellectuals” preferred Hillary frickin’ Clinton over the Republican nominee for president. In doing so, these “conservative intellectuals,” Bill Kristol most prominently, revealed that they hold the GOP base in contempt, and then they stomped off stage left. Good riddance.
I fibbed, by the way. I’m glad The Weekly Standard failed. Don’t worry, the writers will do just fine with their new jobs at The Nation and The Atlantic, so long as they make a full cultural-revolution-style apology, à la Max Boot, for everything they formerly claimed to believe in. The base, meanwhile, abides.
Kavanaugh Clears Committee
The Judiciary Committee has voted on party lines 11-10 to send Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the full senate.
Bangor. You’re Saying It Wrong
Even if you’re not from New England, you’ve probably heard of Bangor, Maine. You might even think you know how to pronounce it, but you probably don’t. When my wife was in grad school on the West Coast a theater professor corrected her pronunciation of Bangor. “It’s pronounced Bang-er,” this know-nothing academic said, probably with a fake Oxford accent, while drinking tea. And definitely while wearing some stupid reading glasses perched on the tip of her nose, you know the kind, with the chain around the back of her neck. She was probably wearing a cardigan, too, even though it was Southern California. I don’t know; I wasn’t there. I’m just guessing.
The only problem with this declaration of pronunciational certitude was that my wife grew up in Bangor, and, no, it is not pronounced “Bang-er,” or “Bang-ah,” or anything other than “Bangor,” whether or not Johnny Cash has been there (or everywhere, man). Roger Miller may be the king of the road, but his midnight train’s destination is Bangor, Maine.
On the most recent episode of his Behind the Blue Wall podcast here at Ricochet, Michael Graham says, “The fact is that to succeed fiscally you need more competitive skills now than ever because there are more competitors in the world than ever, more people have access to education and technology so that they can compete with you from wherever they are, in Bangalore or Bangladesh or Bang-er, Maine. Well, maybe not Bang-er, Maine.” Yeah, because there’s no such place as Bang-er, Maine, Michael “Gray-ham.” (Wait, that’s pretty much how you pronounce his name… “Gram!” “Gr-Hamm.”) Look, all you have to do is say “Bangalore.” Now remove the “al” from the middle of the word: “Bangore.”
It takes some real moxie to pass yourself off as a New Englander, Michael Hamburger, when you probably can’t even pronounce “Piscataqua.” Mattamiscontis? Kancamagus? Do you even like Moxie?!
OK, try pronouncing these New England place names:
- Coos (“Co-oss”)
- Bowdoin (“Bow-Din”)
- Calais (“Calous”)
- Berlin (“BER-lin” not “ber-LIN”)
- Meduxnekeag (Look, it doesn’t matter if I know how to pronounce it, let’s get back to making fun of Michael.)
Remember, it’s only embarrassing if you can’t pronounce New England names. It’s totally understandable and excusable to mispronounce weird names from other parts of the country. Like, Nevada. I never did figure that one out.
Check out Michael’s podcast, “Behind the Blue Whale,” every week here at the Ricochet Audio Network. (Subscribe on iTunes!)
E.U. Agrees to Lower Tariffs on U.S. Goods
Just in, from Bloomberg News:
President Donald Trump reached an agreement Wednesday with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker aimed at averting a transatlantic trade war, easing tensions stoked by Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on car imports.
The two sides agreed to expand European imports of U.S. liquified natural gas and soybeans and lower industrial tariffs on both sides, Trump said. The U.S. and European Union will “hold off on other tariffs” while negotiations proceed, Juncker said.
Students React to Donald Trump’s Supreme Court Nominee… Before He Names One
This video from Campus Reform is almost toocringe-worthy to watch all the way through as college students denounce President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee — who hadn’t been named yet — as “racist,” a “white supremacist,” and a “threat to people who look like me.” When asked what qualities a Supreme Court justice should have, one student replies: “Black. A black woman.”
You know, if you ever get asked a question on the street by someone with a microphone and you don’t know the answer, then it’s OK to say, “I don’t know.” You’ll look a lot less dumb than if you just make something up.
From the Comey Memos: Trump Didn’t Stay Overnight in Moscow; Assumed Hotel Room was “Wired”
Disgraced former FBI director, and egomaniacal blowhard James Comey told Clinton donor and apparatchik George Stephanopoulus last week that it’s “possible” the peeing prostitute claims are true. Well, The Comey Memos™ have been released in part, slightly redacted. The biggest revelation to me is that Trump, “always assumed hotels rooms he stayed in when he travels are wired in some way,” and that:
He said he had spoken to people who had been on the Miss Universe trip with him and they had reminded him that he didn’t stay over night in Russia for that. He said he arrived in the morning, did events, then showered and dressed for the pageant at the hotel (he didn’t say the hotel name) and left for the pageant. Afterwards, he returned only to get his things because they departed for New York by plane that same night.
Comey recorded Trump repeating this in a subsequent memo:
He then explained, as he did at our dinner, that he hadn’t stayed overnight in Russia during the Miss Universe trip.
Ever since BuzzFeed published what we now know to be the Hillary Clinton and DNC-funded “dossier” concocted by foreign-national Christopher Steele with information provided by Russian propagandists, I’ve wondered why reporters did not verify what seemed to be one of the few verifiable claims in the document: Did Trump stay in a specific room in a specific hotel in Moscow on a specific night? Furthermore, had the Obamas previously stayed in that same room?
I think the answer is that it was one of the few verifiable claims in the dossier and the media prefers not to verify it.
Trump Should Fire Rosenstein, then Sessions
President Trump should fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, get him replaced with someone trustworthy and competent, and then fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Rosenstein’s replacement would then be the acting attorney general.
Rosenstein is untrustworthy. In one of his first acts after being confirmed to his position by the Senate, he wrote a memo to Sessions in which he advised that the then-FBI director, James Comey, should be fired. Sessions forwarded the memo to Trump, and Trump followed Rosenstein’s advice and fired Comey. Rosenstein then used Trump’s firing of Comey as the reason to launch a special counsel investigation into Trump. Rosenstein, in appointing Robert Mueller, did not bother to cite any potential crimes to be investigated, which is required by the special-counsel law. This is because no crime is being investigated. “Collusion” is not a crime. What is being investigated is Trump.
Rosenstein also signed the extension of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) warrant application, which he had to have known was based on bogus information that had been paid for by the Clinton campaign. Rosenstein later begged Speaker of the House Paul Ryan to block the release of a memo written by the House Intelligence Committee that exposed some of the FISA-warrant abuses.
The special-counsel investigation is threatening our entire judicial system — Mueller has now twice violated attorney-client privilege, all with Rosenstein’s approval. Last year Mueller forced Paul Manafort’s attorney to testify against him in front of a grand jury. Yesterday we learned that the FBI, at Mueller’s behest, raided the office, home, and hotel room of the president’s personal attorney, Michael D. Cohen.
As a side note, in the bogus anti-Trump “dossier,” disgraced former British spy Christopher Steele claimed that Cohen had traveled to Prague to meet with Russians. The only problem with that was that Cohen’s passport showed no such travel to the Czech Republic, and social-media posts by his daughter show pictures of him in Los Angeles at the time Steele claimed Cohen was in Prague.
According to Cohen’s own attorney, as quoted in multiple news sources, the FBI seized “privileged communications between my client, Michael Cohen, and his clients.” Cohen’s clients who have no direct relationship to Trump at all, but merely share the same attorney, now have their records in the hands of crazed partisan hacks whose goal is not the enforcement of the law but finding some bit of information that they can leak to a rabidly biased media, all with the ultimate goal of overturning the results of the 2016 election.
All of this has happened with Rosenstein’s blessing. His actions show that his goal is to bring down Trump at any cost.
Less needs to be said about Sessions, who is simply, and sadly, incompetent. He recused himself (at the “legal” advice of Obama holdovers in the Department of Justice, no less!) from involvement in the broad-reaching and vaguely defined investigation into “Russian involvement” in the 2016 campaigns (both Trump and Clinton). He, therefore, doesn’t have control over his own department and is allowing Rosenstein to usurp his authority.
We’re told that Mueller ransacked Manafort’s home in July 2017. Manafort was Trump’s campaign chairman for about two months in 2017, but Mueller has indicted Manafort over actions Manafort allegedly took dating back to 2006 when advising the former president of Ukraine. In other words, for things that have nothing whatsoever to do with Mueller’s mandate, indeterminate as it is, and certainly nothing to do with Donald Trump.
Not to worry, though, because we found out last week that Mueller went to Rosenstein in August 2016 and got retroactive authority to break down Manafort’s door in July 2016 and busted into his bedroom while he and his wife were in bed in their pajamas (an FBI agent is said to have patted Mrs. Manafort down, while she lay in bed, to make sure she wasn’t concealing a weapon, according to a source cited by the Washington Times).
Ex post facto treatment is no less offensive to the sensibilities of a free people than the evisceration of the right to speak freely with an attorney, but these things obviously don’t mean much to Mueller and Rosenstein, as their actions prove. In addition, Rosenstein exceeded his authority by granting Mueller the retroactive “authority” to investigate Manafort on things entirely unrelated to supposed “Russian collusion.” Sessions didn’t recuse himself from any investigation into financial dealings in Ukraine over a decade ago.
Trump, as well as all future presidents, deserves to have people working for him who will support his agenda, not people actively seeking to destroy his presidency or incompetently and passively allowing others to pursue such a nihilist goal.
Trump should fire Rosenstein immediately, replace him with someone competent and trustworthy, then fire Sessions. The new acting attorney general can then put a leash on Mueller.
Updated post to correct the dates when Mueller raided Manafort’s home and then retroactively got permission from Rosenstein to do so. It was 2017, not 2016.
Donald Trump at CPAC Over the Years
I watched Donald Trump’s speech at CPAC this weekend. After the video finished playing, one of the suggested videos was, “CPAC 2013 — Donald Trump.” I watched it. The future president said, “make America great again” twice. He talked about North Korea and improving our military strength. He said if illegal aliens gained citizenship they would all vote for Democrats. He criticized our trade policies with “Chi-Nah.” In short, it was a preview of not only his campaign but his presidency.
So then I watched his 2011 CPAC speech. He… talked about our trade imbalance with Chi-Nah, declared himself pro-life and pro-gun, and promised if he were ever president he would not raise taxes and would enact policies to rebuild our country, “so that our country can be great again.” I found the consistency interesting.
Here are all of Donald Trump’s CPAC speeches that I could find:
2011:
2013:
2014:
2015:
2017:
.
Desperate Journalist (the Band) Would Like You Not to Listen to Their Music?
Desperate Journlalist is a British post-punk rock band. Ricochet editor-in-chief Jon Gabriel named the band’s song “Hollow,” off their 2017 album Grow Up, as his song of the week on the most recent episode of The Conservatarians podcast. Jon also added the song to his The Conservatarians 2018 Spotify play list. Caz Helbert, who is the band’s drummer, would like you to please not listen to their music, however. In an email to Ricochet Saturday afternoon, she wrote:
Hi
I’m from the band Desperate Journalist which you mentioned on your website and featured in your Spotify playlist. Can I kindly ask you to remove us from the playlist? We would rather not be associated with a political movement.
Thanks,
Caz
I find this truly amazing. Why wouldn’t she want you to listen to her music? I mean, Desperate Journalist’s music is on YouTube, Spotify, Pandora, and Bandcamp for anyone in the world to listen to. Here’s Desperate Journalist’s official music video for “Hollow,” which is publicly available on YouTube, but that they don’t want you to listen to if you’re, I guess, an American conservative or libertarian?
I always assumed musicians wanted people to listen to their music. Helbert’s email left me totally flabbergasted, especially since the act of demanding separation from a “political movement” is itself a highly political statement. I wondered if the rest of the band shared her opinion. Do they give concert-goers an ideological litmus test before they judge them good enough to listen to their music? So I contacted Desperate Journalist by Facebook messenger and asked, “Don’t you want to have as many people as possible listen to your music?”
“Not necessarily, no, and not at any cost,” wrote back Simon Drowner, who plays bass guitar for Desperate Journalist, and who was kind enough to reply to my inquiry. “We’re a small indie band from the UK,” he went on. “What relevance does our music have to American Conservative/Libertarian politics?”
Maybe Jon Gabriel just likes it, and it’s as simple as that? Maybe Desperate Journalist can’t control who listens to their music? What does it “cost” them to be listened to by conservative libertarians in Arizona?
Drowner ended his message by writing: “If you actually do like us as a band (which is presumably why we’re in contact in the first place) maybe you could just respect our wishes and let us get on with playing music.”
Do you like Desperate Journalist’s music? To be totally honest, I don’t share Jon’s taste in music. I’d never heard of Desperate Journalist until yesterday, and their music is not my cup of tea. But that doesn’t have anything to do with politics. One of my favorite bands is Audioslave, and most of the band members were insane wannabe socialists. (They played a concert in Cuba!)
Desperate Journalist, made up of Jo Bevan (vocals), Simon Drowner (bass guitar), Rob Hardy (guitar), and Caroline “Caz” Helbert (drums) is from North London, and their debut album Desperate Journalist was released in 2014.
If you like Desperate Journalist, then why don’t you buy one of their albums? And if you’re in Europe, check out one of their concerts this summer.
UPDATE: Please see the band’s response in the comments. Also, I’m not sure how to interpret this tweet in conjunction with the comments from the band here on Ricochet:
Kate Braestrup Book Reading & Mini Ricochet Meetup
Ricochet’s favorite Unitarian minister and Maine Warden Service chaplain, @katebraestrup, came to New Hampshire this past weekend for my town library’s “Book & Author” talk series. She charmed the crowd, of course. Afterward, joined by @pedroig, we had a Mini Ricochet Meetup.
This Is What a Successful Presidency Looks Like
With the one-year anniversary of Donald Trump’s inauguration, it’s worth reflecting on his accomplishments as president. Just the other day I told my colleague Fred Cole that Donald Trump “is a successful conservative Republican president.” That sounds great to those of us who are conservative Republicans; an honest analysis of the past year also shows that it’s a reality.
In a Ricochet post earlier, Fred focused on the failure of Congress to repeal Obamacare or to fund a wall on the border with Mexico as examples of why Trump’s presidency is, in his view, a failure. This is silly, simply put. Those are Congress’s failures, not Trump’s. Fred acknowledges this while trying to brush it aside: “Yes, Congress passes laws, but Presidents set the agenda.” Congress passes laws, period. But John McCain cared more about sticking it to Trump than he did about helping his constituents and other Americans across the country. Despite the failures of Congress, Trump has had many successes. Some he has accomplished through the appropriate use of his executive power alone, and some with legislation passed by Congress that he has signed into law.
Trump not only nominated Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court; he has put more judges in place in his first year in office than any other president in history. Trump’s partnership with the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society in selecting judicial nominees is reassuring to conservatives who long for judges to respect the Constitution and the rule of law. If Mitch McConnell had not blocked President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland, then Gorsuch would not be on the Supreme Court. However, if Trump had not won the presidency, it would not have mattered.
Trump has done much to restore the balance of powers between the branches of government by unravelling unconstitutional Executive Orders issued by Barack Obama that usurped the authority of Congress. In addition, Trump is reducing the influence of the federal government in everyday Americans’ lives. The EPA is on track to being reduced in personnel size by 50 percent by the end of Trump’s first term. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos recently announced the end of Common Core. Trump reversed Obama’s last-minute illegal land grab in Utah. He has also directed that for every one new federal regulation, two regulations must be eliminated. As a result, the growth of regulations has been significantly reduced, lifting a weight from the necks of businesses and consumers across the country.
He has allowed the military to do its job. As a result, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis changed the strategy in the fight against ISIS from attrition to annihilation, a sharp contrast to Obama’s complacency. ISIS has been more than decimated. Trump also recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and has begun the process of moving the American embassy. Nikki Haley has been a fierce advocate for America and a defender of Israel at the corrupt and decrepit United Nations. NATO has been strengthened by Trump’s insistence that other member-nations increase their defense spending. Although rogue activist judges in liberal jurisdictions attempted to block Trump’s ability to implement a travel ban, despite his clear constitutional and statutory authority, the Supreme Court eventually overturned the lower-court rulings. Trump’s travel ban went into effect without incident.
Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which cut federal income tax rates and doubled the standard deduction, reducing the federal tax burden for all federal taxpayers. In addition, the tax bill cut the top corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent and included incentives for companies to bring cash back to the United States from overseas. Companies across the country, both large and small, have responded by issuing bonuses to their employees, and Apple has announced it will be bringing $350 billion dollars back to the United States from offshore. It will pay a $38 billion tax bill, give $2,500 bonuses to employees, and plans to further invest $30 billion in the United States, and hire an additional 20,000 employees.
The TCJA also included the repeal of the individual mandate, which will cripple Obamacare and free millions of people from an immoral tax.
As I already mentioned, both economic and environmental regulations are being dismantled. In addition to getting rid of regulations, Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement, a costly international boondoggle that would not have done one thing for the climate while being a drain on America’s economy.
The TCJA also opened up a small section of the (extremely large) Alaska Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling. In addition, Trump signed an Executive Order last April instructing Interior Department Secretary Ryan Zinke to study the expansion of leases for off-shore drilling. Zinke announced at the beginning of January a draft proposal to open up 90 percent of the Outer Continental Shelf to oil and gas drilling. By comparison, 94 percent of the OCS is currently off-limits to drilling.
Donald Trump has had a very successful year, and so has America.
Your Doppelgänger in Art
The Google Arts & Culture app (available in Google Play and the iTunes Store) has been sweeping the internet the past few days, due to its “face match” feature that lets you upload a selfie in order to find a portrait of your doppelgänger in art.
The results can be uncannily accurate, as you can see to the right. In the spirit of culture & arts, share your results in the comments below. (But don’t forget that this post is public.)
Attempted Suicide Bomb Terrorist Attack in New York City
According to a live press conference that I just watched, there was a suicide bomb terrorist attack in New York City this morning. Mayor Bill De Blasio described it as “an attempted terrorist attack.” At about 7:20 AM, police responded to reports of an explosion at a below-ground walkway near 42nd Street and 8th Avenue (i.e.., under Times Square). When they arrived, they found a seriously injured 27-year-old Akayed Ullah. In addition, three others who were nearby received minor injuries. Ullah was wearing an improvised, low-tech pipe bomb that was attached to his body with velcro and zip ties. The attack was captured on security footage, and the police say that Ullah intentionally exploded the device, which means he tried to carry out a suicide attack. The video, in the tweet below, shows that Ullah set off his bomb in a crowded passageway with dozens of commuters walking all around him. The potential for death and injury was clearly very high.
BREAKING VIDEO: Moment of explosion at 42nd St and 8th Avenue in Manhattan pic.twitter.com/JwygdnnwNb
— New York City Alerts (@NYCityAlerts) December 11, 2017
.@POTUS has been briefed on the explosion in New York City
— Stephanie Grisham (@PressSec) December 11, 2017
Press conference begins at 9:15 in this video:
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