The Patriot Post Digest 5-19-2017

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The Patriot Post Digest 5-19-2017
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Mid-Day Digest

May 19, 2017

IN TODAY’S EDITION

Even the most tenuous of connections are enough for a Leftmedia hit piece on Trump.
Trump embarks on his first foreign trip with a few objectives in mind.
Impeachment? Delusional Democrats have no case.
Daily Features: Top Headlines, Cartoons, Columnists and Short Cuts.

THE FOUNDATION

“Man is not made to be trusted for life, if secured against all liability to account.” —Thomas Jefferson (1823)

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Media Collusion Against Trump1

By Mark Alexander

My friend Foster Friess, a former Army intel officer and successful business/investment entrepreneur, sent a note this morning critical of a headline in The Wall Street Journal.

Foster, who now heads an initiative called “Return to Civility,” rightly objected to a hit-piece on Donald Trump entitled, “Moscow Bank Aided Trump Partner’s Deal.” The WSJ has now slightly softened that headline to read, “Russian State-Run Bank Financed Deal Involving Trump Hotel Partner2,” but as Foster noted, the report still asserts, “VEB, a Russian state-run bank … financed a deal involving Donald Trump’s onetime partner…” Got that? A lead headline on a Russian bank that has a connection to a “onetime partner” of Trump.

And the “connection” soon fades to nothing. The WSJ then notes the former partner’s funding came from proceeds of a sale of a separate company the former partner sold “involving” the Russian VEB bank. In other words, Trump knows a guy who once used a Russian bank.

The Patriot Post has been exposing mass media malpractice3 for two decades, and most recently the devolution of the once-respectable Washington Post into the abyss of tabloid journalism4. Unfortunately, The Wall Street Journal has also been going down that same Leftmedia dezinformatsiya path in recent months — because ad revenues trump the truth.

I note that earlier this week, the Washington Post, New York Times, Reuters, CNN and Wall Street Journal were all regurgitating “news” from the same echo-chamber memos in regard to the unsourced Trump/Russia “security breach” and the Trump/Comey/Flynn accusations. In a 12-hour period, they each published the charges as if a matter of proven fact.

On the Trump/Russia issue: “Trump revealed highly classified information to Russian foreign minister and ambassador” (Washington Post), “Trump Revealed Highly Classified Intelligence to Russia” (New York Times), “Trump revealed intelligence secrets to Russians” (Reuters), “Trump shared classified info with Russians” (CNN), “Trump Shared Intelligence Secrets With Russians” (Wall Street Journal).

On the Trump/Comey/Flynn accusations: “Trump asked Comey to shut down Flynn investigation” (Washington Post), “Trump Asked Comey To Drop Flynn Investigation” (New York Times), “Trump asked Comey to end investigation of Michael Flynn” (Reuters), “Trump asked Comey to end Flynn investigation” (CNN), “Trump Asked Comey to Drop Flynn Investigation” (Wall Street Journal).

This is not journalism. This is cheap checkout-line tabloid trash.

Trump Sanctions Iran and Embarks to the Middle East5

It should come as a shock to no one that Iran’s leadership, despite because of Barack Obama’s highly touted but foolish and deceitful nuclear deal6, has continued in its nefarious ways. On Wednesday, the Trump administration levied new sanctions on Iran after learning that the mullahs have continued to push forward on developing a ballistic missile program and for their continued support of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad in the way of providing explosives.

A senior Trump administration official stated, “President Trump is determined to hold Tehran accountable for its dangerous and aggressive behavior that is destabilizing the Middle East, while making it clear to the Iranian people that he stands with them — not with the regime that has oppressed them for so long.”

Trump has yet to pull the U.S. out of the Obama-Iran nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, that lifted severely restrictive sanctions from the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism. But Trump’s State Department continues to conduct its review of the deal.

While Trump heads off on his first foreign trip, he is looking to set a distinctly different tone from that of his predecessor. His first stop will be in Saudi Arabia, where he will look to firm up America’s commitment to standing by our allies in the Middle East in resisting Iran’s aggression. It’s no coincidence that the Iran announcement was followed two days later by a trip to Riyadh. Those new sanctions give more weight to Trump’s words, and spending time with Iran’s greatest Islamic regional opponent sends a strong message to Tehran.

Top Headlines7

House may need to vote again on GOP ObamaCare repeal bill. (Bloomberg8.)

Trump administration announces plans to renegotiate NAFTA. (ABC News9)

FCC votes to advance net neutrality repeal. (The Hill10)

Trump seeking replacements for some of his senior team. (CBS News11)

More than seven million voter registrations are duplicated in multiple states. (The Washington Free Beacon12)

House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz retiring next month. (Chaffetz press release13)

California professor bans college Republicans from Women’s History Month events. (Washington Examiner14)

U.S. strikes Syria militia threatening U.S.-backed forces. (The Washington Free Beacon15)

Judge: Lerner’s Tea Party-targeting testimony can stay secret for now. (The Washington Times16)

Woodward: Reporters “binge drinking the anti-Trump Kool-Aid.” (Washington Examiner17)

Policy: The one change the government could make to drive down college prices. (The Daily Signal18.)

Policy: Health care reform: Mission possible. (Washington Examiner19)

For more, visit Patriot Headline Report20.

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
Impeachment: Delusional Dems Don’t Have a Case21

By Brian Mark Weber

If you’re like most Americans who work hard all day, raise your children, pay your taxes, and follow the law, you’re probably troubled by the evening news reports of a constitutional crisis22 over something President Donald Trump told former FBI Director James Comey. Sounds pretty ominous, doesn’t it? Let’s back up a little bit here and put this in perspective.

The Constitution23 stipulates that a president can be removed from office for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Our Founding Fathers knew that politics is a complex and nasty affair, but they entrusted future elected leaders to bring about such charges only in the most serious of situations.

Impeachment was never designed to be used as a political weapon, or to bring down an opposing president simply because there’s a mechanism to do so. Thankfully, the impeachment process isn’t easy. Nonetheless, just about every modern president has been threatened with impeachment.

Philip Wegmann writes24 in the Washington Examiner, “The last five presidents have been threatened with impeachment, and four of them actually had impeachment resolutions drawn up against them. In every instance but one, the talk was idle and the resolutions equally meaningless.”

In most cases, there’s no evidence to back up the accusations. Even when the process actually results in impeachment, as in the case of Bill Clinton, conviction (and thus removal from office) is far from imminent. In fact, no president has been removed. Andrew Johnson was the only other to be impeached, but he was acquitted, and Richard Nixon resigned before he could be impeached.

Overall, it seems that the threshold for drawing up charges is lowered significantly when Republicans are in office. As Rush Limbaugh often says, when it comes to Republicans in the White House, it’s the “seriousness of the charge,” not the actual evidence, that gets Democrats banging the drums of impeachment.

Such is the case with Donald Trump. As liberal law professor Jonathan Turley opines25 in The Hill, “Some commentators seem to be alleging criminal conduct in office or calling for impeachment before Trump completed the words of his inaugural oath of office. Not surprising, within minutes of the New York Times report26 [on James Comey and Michael Flynn], the response was a chorus of breathless ‘gotcha’ announcements. But this memo is neither the Pentagon Papers nor the Watergate tapes. Indeed, it raises as many questions for Comey as it does Trump in terms of the alleged underlying conduct.”

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The Patriot Post Digest 5-19-2017
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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For Democrats, the shock to their system has been threefold: Donald Trump won the election, Hillary Clinton somehow lost it, and the legacy of Barack Obama is in tatters. Since the moment Trump was sworn in as president — no, since the moment Hillary reluctantly conceded the election; scratch that, since he won the GOP nomination — the number one objective of Democrats and their Leftmedia allies has been to destroy him.

To Trump’s opponents, the beauty is that no evidence is needed. When there is collusion between the press and the political class, any number of high crimes and misdemeanors can be dredged up. Since Watergate, every journalism student in America has dreamt of being the next Carl Bernstein or Bob Woodward, and the media in general yearn for another opportunity to bring down a Republican president.

Think about it. How many times did we read or hear journalists and reporters bringing up Watergate during the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush? Too many to recall. But when Barack Obama surreptitiously27 shipped a plane load of ransom cash to the Iranians, used the Department of Justice to spy on reporters and their families, or paved the way for the IRS to trample the First Amendment rights of conservatives, it was considered business as usual. No questions asked.

So given the politics of all this talk of removing the president from office, and given that modern-day Republican presidents are routinely threatened with impeachment, the chances of the Republican House voting to do so are ridiculously small based on the evidence we have at the moment. Which is to say, none.

Still, Democrats know full well it’s not evidence they need to bring down Trump’s presidency. All they need is to get the American public to believe something sordid has happened, and then weak-kneed Republicans on Capitol Hill will fall all over themselves to appear forthright and cooperative.

Don’t believe it? Democrats are poised to poll28 Americans to see if they’re falling for the impeachment scam. And we’re already hearing the name Joe Lieberman being mentioned as a serious candidate to replace Comey at the FBI.

All Trump’s opponents have is an anonymous source claiming that the president asked Comey to stop investigating Michael Flynn — the day after Flynn was fired, by the way. That might be a serious charge, except Comey himself testified29 under oath to the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 3 that no one in the administration ever pressured him to end an investigation.

It doesn’t take a constitutional scholar to see there’s no obstruction of justice here. There’s no treason, no bribery, no high crimes and no misdemeanors. Those all did indeed occur during the Obama years, except Republicans were too worried about being called racists to protect the Constitution they swore an oath to defend.

Remember Bush Derangement Syndrome? What we have here is a full-on case of psychosis. And that’s just among the mainstream media.

So when you’re watching the news and you hear about Donald Trump’s latest threat to our constitutional republic, take a deep breath and wait for the evidence. And wait. And wait. Democrats want you to think there’s an impeachable crime so they won’t have to honor the results of a legitimate election. But in order to overturn that election, they need to convince enough of us that the president is a criminal. Now that’s a high crime.

MORE ANALYSIS FROM THE PATRIOT POST

Will School Choice Be Mired in the Swamp?30 — An early report on Trump’s education budget has the leftist education-media complex in a tizzy about “disastrous cuts.”
McCarthy Jokes About Russia, WaPo Takes Him Seriously31 — Just when you think the Post can’t fall for another phony scandal, out comes this pathetic story.
Democrats Seek to Stop Swamp-Draining Regulatory Repeal32 — Democrats introduce bill designed to stop Trump and the Republicans from continuing their deregulation crusade.

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

Charles Krauthammer: The Guardrails Can’t Contain Trump33
Jonah Goldberg: Roger Ailes, One of a Kind34
Hans von Spakovsky: How to Get Our Immigration Courts Back to Enforcing Federal Law35

For more, visit Right Opinion36.

OPINION IN BRIEF

Charles Krauthammer: “Republicans are beginning to panic. One sign is the notion now circulating that, perhaps to fend off ultimate impeachment, Trump be dumped by way of 25th Amendment. That’s the post-Kennedy assassination measure that provides for removing an incapacitated president on the decision of the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet. This is the worst idea since Leno at 10 p.m. It perverts the very intent of the amendment. It was meant for a stroke, not stupidity; for Alzheimer’s, not narcissism. Otherwise, what it authorizes is a coup — willful overthrow by the leader’s own closest associates. I thought we had progressed beyond the Tudors and the Stuarts. Moreover, this would be seen by millions as an establishment usurpation to get rid of a disruptive outsider. It would be the most destabilizing event in American political history — the gratuitous overthrow of an essential constant in American politics, namely the fixedness of the presidential term (save for high crimes and misdemeanors). Trump’s behavior is deeply disturbing but hardly surprising. His mercurial nature is not the product of a post-inaugural adder sting at Mar-a-Lago. It’s been there all along. And the American electorate chose him nonetheless. What to do? Strengthen the guardrails. Redouble oversight of this errant president. Follow the facts, especially the Comey memos. And let the chips fall where they may. But no tricks, constitutional or otherwise.”

SHORT CUTS

Insight: “The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.” —John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006)

Braying Jenny: “I really do believe that much of what you saw coming out of Trump’s mouth was a play from Putin’s playbook. I think that when you saw him … calling Hillary ‘Crooked’ [and saying] ‘Lock Her Up! Lock Her Up!’ … I think that was developed strategically with people from the Kremlin, with Putin.” —Maxine Waters

Village Idiots: “If President Trump wishes to reach out to ordinary Muslims in the Middle East and around the world, he should avoid the pejorative terminology, anti-Muslim stereotypes and counterproductive policies promoted by Islamophobic advisers such as Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka.” —CAIR national executive director Nihad Awad

All together now: It’s a spending problem! “Somebody’s going to have to pay the bills to keep the government running. A generation ago, corporations paid 30% of what it costs to run the federal government. Today, corporations pay less than 10%. … The way I see it, taxes and the whole debate around taxes is ultimately going to be about who pays a fair share to keep this government running and that’s the question we need to look at on the corporate side and on the individual side.” —Elizabeth Warren

Non Compos Mentis: “We are the new Jews of the 21st century that Hitler pursued. We don’t carry the yellow star of David … we carry red hearts that are filled with desire to fight for human dignity. And we are going to defeat them, these 21st century Nazis.” —Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro on his own socialist cabal being victims

And last… “The Left wouldn’t be so upset about Trump sharing classified secrets if he had kept them on a unsecured server in a Colorado bathroom.” —Twitter satirist @hale_razor

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Managing Editor Nate Jackson

Join us in daily prayer for our Patriots in uniform — Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen — standing in harm’s way in defense of Liberty, and for their families.