Yesterday, the United States and China signed a new trade deal, resulting in a pause in the trade war. In spite of predictable negative press coverage, this is a huge win for the Trump administration and the country. 

According to various reports, China has agreed to buy an additional $200 billion of U.S. products — from agricultural goods to energy products — all of which will be good for American farmers, businesses, and manufacturers. In addition, China also agreed to end intellectual property theft and currency manipulation. 

It is understandable that many people might be skeptical of China’s promises. That’s why the deal is only “phase one” of ongoing negotiations and is fully enforceable based on China’s compliance. 

What did we give up in exchange for China’s new commitments? Very little. 

According to The Wall Street Journal, President Trump agreed to reduce “the existing 15% tariff rate on roughly $120 billion of Chinese goods… But tariffs will remain on roughly $360 billion of annual Chinese imports to the U.S." 

In addition, other areas of conflict with China, from national security threats to human rights and religious liberty issues, will continue.

Ending America’s Decline

Former White House adviser Steve Bannon put it well when he told CNBC yesterday that President Trump’s aggressive trade strategy has stopped "the managed decline of the United States." 

For many years, under administrations of both parties, but especially on the left, there has been a growing sense of America being in inevitable decline. Sadly, a lot of people (again, mostly on the left) are okay with that because they think America is evil and the source of problems around the world. 

But it translated into real problems for many Americans as their jobs were sacrificed on the altar of free trade and globalism. 

When Donald Trump said he wanted to rebuild America’s manufacturing base, Barack scumbag/liar-nObama  mocked him and said those jobs aren’t coming back. Well, scumbag/liar-nObama was wrong. 

Remember those on the right who laughed at Trump’s notion of a border wall? They said, "You can’t shut the border! And why would you want to?" 

Remember all the experts who predicted the death of the nation-state, suggesting that the ancient passions of patriotism were causing nothing but problems, while singing the praises of globalism?

This is why Trump’s mantra of "Make America Great Again” so outraged the political establishments of both parties. And it is a good catchall phrase for his efforts to end “the managed decline of the United States.”

I remember serving in the White House when President Ronald Reagan was constantly being told that America had to accommodate the Soviet Union. Thank God Reagan rejected that terrible advice. He had tremendous confidence in the American people, and he had a simple motto: “We win, they lose.” Today the Soviet Union is gone.

For years we’ve been told that China is the rising power in the world today, that we can’t outcompete China and should just accept its theft of our technology and its expansionist designs in the Pacific. This president rejects that. He also has a simple motto: “Make America Great Again.”

China is signing this deal because it needs food and energy. And guess where it is going to get it? And Trump rightly is keeping most tariffs in place to ensure that China complies with the deal.

Hopefully, Beijing understands that “business as usual” is over in Washington, that this administration won’t turn a blind eye to abusive trade practices. If it does, the “phase two” talks should go well.

A Striking Contrast

The president had a major rally in Wisconsin Tuesday night as the Democrats had a major debate in Iowa. The simultaneous events should have been aired on a split screen because you couldn’t come up with a more striking contrast between competing visions for America. It’s hard to believe they were talking about the same country!

In Iowa, the Democrat candidates were bemoaning that we have no allies, suggesting that we are isolated against Iran. 

In Wisconsin, the president celebrated our successful strike against Iran’s terror general and praised the courageous people of Iraq and Iran who are taking to the streets to protest the mullahs.

In Iowa, the Democrat candidates were downplaying the economy. But come Wednesday, November 4th, just about the only unemployed Americans will be failed Democrat presidential candidates! (Granted, that’s a lot of people.)

While the president was talking about the future of the country, loose lips liar-Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats were arguing about the Iraq War and what transpired during a private conversation between commie-Sanders and dinky/liar-Warren. 

It was literally a “he said / she said” moment. But in the #MeToo era, we’re always supposed to believe the woman, and clearly the CNN moderator did!

I could go on, but you get the point. Even many liberals noticed too.

Progressive CNN commentator Van Jones described Tuesday night’s Democrat debate as “cold oatmeal,” saying, “There was nothing I saw tonight that would be able to take Donald Trump out.”

One media outlet dedicated to covering Hollywood and the entertainment industry blasted the debate as the "Dull Night Of The Living Dead.“ Ouch!

Even MSNBC's left-wing "Morning Joe” hosts panned the debate as “painful,” adding, “Nobody looked good on the debate stage.”

liar-Pelosi’s Prosecutors

Speaker liar-Nancy Pelosi yesterday announced the members of her caucus who will serve as “managers,” or prosecutors, during the Senate impeachment trial. The lead manager is Rep. scumbag/liar-Adam Schiff (D-CA), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. The other managers are:

• Rep. scumbag liar-Jerry Nadler (D-NY), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee

• Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), chairman of the House Administration Committee

• Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus

• Rep. Val Demings (D-FL), a member of the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees

• Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO), a member of the House Armed Services Committee

• Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX), a member of the House Judiciary Committee

Some preliminary measures are expected to take place today with the swearing in of Chief Justice John Roberts. The actual impeachment trial will most likely begin Tuesday, when all 100 senators will be required to sit at their desks without their iPhones or other electronic devices.

The process has been a sham from the beginning, but it has not stopped the president from moving aggressively to fulfill the promises he made in 2016.   

~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/67929?mailing_id=4805&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4805&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

As Angelo Codevilla, former staff member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, put it, “Possibly the saddest fact about the intelligence deep state’s conspiracy against Trump is that at least some of the federal judges who sit on the FISA court apparently have been and continue to be part of it.”

Even as arguably the biggest scandal in the history of the nation was unfolding, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA), managed to remain immune from accusations of impropriety. Ostensibly, all the contemptible machinations — “mistakes,” according to Inspector General Michael Horowitz — that enabled the spying on Trump’s presidential campaign were committed solely by the FBI, the Justice Department, and the CIA.

Such assumptions are belied by reality. We begin with former FISC presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer sending a letter to the FBI in December 2019 criticizing it for misleading the court over its surveillance-application process and giving the agency until January 10 to come up with reforms.

Yet where has Collyer been? House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes (R-CA)  wrote a memo on February 2, 2018, explaining that “the Committee found that the FBI and DOJ failed to disclose the specific political actors paying for uncorroborated information” that went to the FISC, “misled the FISC regarding dissemination of this information,” and “failed to correct these errors in the subsequent renewals.”

Moreover, Nunes also wrote a letter to Collyer herself  illuminating the same details.

Collyer’s response? As Wall Street Journal columnist Kim Strassel puts it, Collyer “responded a week later, with a dismissive letter that makes no reference to the Intelligence Committee findings.” Incredibly, Collyer also asserted that the court does not maintain a “systematic record” of proceedings and that Nunes would be better off asking the DOJ to look into the matter, due to “separation of power” considerations.

As Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett rightly notes, if the FISC was behaving legitimately, when it learned it was being lied to — a year and a half ago — “Collyer should have immediately ordered a ‘show cause contempt’ hearing demanding that Comey, Sally Yates, Andrew McCabe, Dana Boente and Rod Rosenstein all appear before the court to explain why they should not be held in criminal contempt for deceiving judges in the four warrant applications they signed.”

Jarrett’s conclusion for the failure to do so? “It means that the FISA court doesn’t really care that it was lied to by the FBI,” he adds.

All of the above history was necessary to give context to the latest machinations, which involve the man appointed to oversee the reforms demanded by Collyer, who has since retired. FISC’s new presiding Judge James Boasberg has appointed former scumbag/liar-nObama-era Justice Department official David Kris to do the job.

To say that Kris brings a bit of “baggage” with him to the job is an understatement. “Kris appeared in locations that pushed the false Russia collusion narrative, such as Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show, the Lawfare blog, and Twitter, to defend the FBI and attack President Trump and other critics of the harmful surveillance campaign,”  explains columnist Mollie Hemingway. “He once wrote that Trump ‘should be worried’ that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into treasonous collusion with Russia meant ‘the walls are closing in.’”

As Fox News reveals, Kris has “also written extensively in support of the FBI’s surveillance practices.” In a published piece at Lawfare, a leftist blog site run by scumbag-James Comey’s friend Benjamin Wittes, Kris asserted  that the now-vindicated Nunes memo “tried to deceive the American people in precisely the same way that it falsely accused the FBI of deceiving the FISA Court.” He further asserted that the agency had “probable cause” to conclude former Trump aide Carter Page “was a Russian agent.”

Per the IG report, Americans now know that evidence pertaining to Carter was deliberately doctored.

In a piece for The Washington Post, Kris also defended the Steele dossier. He conceded that while some parts “apparently remain both salacious and unverified,” he argued that “other parts may well have been verified by independent investigation” and thus “would strengthen the credibility of the remainder.”

The truth? The IG report revealed the FBI withheld evidence undercutting that very idea. It also noted the agency failed to disclose damaging information about Steele’s credibility and reliability, despite the fact that one of Steele’s main dossier sources told FBI agents in January 2017 that Steele had misrepresented and exaggerated the dossier’s contents.

Kris’s take on the IG report itself? “First, the report repudiates the claims of a coup and related deep-state conspiracies in the FBI as advanced by President Trump and his supporters,” he tweeted on December 9, 2019.

His take on the FISC is equally biased. In September 2018, he asserted that that “FISA applications are subjected to exacting … and serious scrutiny” and “the FISA Court is not a rubber stamp.”

Really? In 33 years of of surveillance requests the FISC has rejected 0.03% of them, as in only 12 of 38,169 requests for surveillance warrants between 1979 and 2015.

Moreover, there have been no rejections since 2009.

And for those who only see the potential for abuse through a partisan lens, Codevilla reminds us that if the FISC had existed in 1972, “Nixon’s ‘plumbers’ would easily have gotten a warrant to get everything they wanted out of the DNC secretly. Their application need only have cited the McGovern campaign’s plentiful links to North Vietnam and the Communist world.”

Nunes has Kris’s appointment exactly right. “The FBI lied to the FISC, and to help make sure that doesn’t happen again, the FISC chose an FBI apologist who denied and defended those lies,” he asserted. “The FISC is setting its own credibility on fire.”

Or, maybe they’ve had help. One might ask where Chief Justice John Roberts has been. He has named every member of the current court and the separate three-judge panel called the Court of Review that hears appeals of FISC orders. His silence is hardly reassuring — at best.

At worst? America is heading toward a new “post-constitutional” normal where “justice” is whatever secret courts, unelected bureaucrats, documented apologists, and conspiracy theorists say it is — all championed by useful-idiot “resisters” naive enough to believe they are insulated by their ideological bona fides.

Until they aren’t.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/67942?mailing_id=4805&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4805&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

By almost all measures, Trump has had a great start to 2020. He strongly faced down Iran’s provocative behavior, hitting the mullahs right where it hurt by taking out their top terrorist Gen. Qasem Soleimani following their orchestrated attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. His decisive action sent a clear message to Iran and the world: Don’t to mess with the U.S.

On the illegal-immigration front, Trump has clearly made significant headway with the recent announcement of 100 new miles of a border wall, as well as a 70% decline in the number of individuals attempting to illegally cross the U.S. southern border. There is still much work to be done, but things are clearly going in the right direction.

The economy continues to hum along nicely, and there’s no sign of recession anywhere in sight, dashing one of the Democrats’ best hopes.

And now regarding the trade war with China, Trump’s aggressive efforts via raising tariffs appears to be paying off. While yesterday’s signing of Phase One is only an incremental step, it is still a significant step forward in Trump’s efforts to force China into ending its unfair trade practices. Here are a few of the reforms included in the deal as listed by the White House:

• Importantly, the reforms included in the agreement are fully enforceable and include a strong dispute resolution system to ensure effective implementation and enforcement.

• For the first time in any trade agreement, China agreed to end its practice of forcing companies to transfer their technology to Chinese companies in order to gain market access.

• China will address numerous longstanding intellectual property concerns in the areas of trade secrets, trademarks, enforcement against pirated and counterfeit goods, and more.

• The agreement includes significant commitments by China on accepting United States agricultural biotechnology products.

On top of this trade win, the Senate is poised to pass Trump’s reworked and updated NAFTA trade deal, now called USMCA. This would be Trump’s biggest win on trade to date, further fueling the booming U.S. economy.

Meanwhile, liar-Pelosi is content to play games with impeachment, making a mockery of the Constitution while passing out the pens she did it with, and Democrat presidential candidates are in a dust-up over who was the one lying on the debate stage Tuesday evening. What a contrast for the 2020 election.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/67944?mailing_id=4805&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4805&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

Yesterday was Religious Freedom Day. It commemorates the day in 1786 when the Virginia General Assembly adopted the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, written by Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson’s statute became the foundation for the First Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees religious freedom, among other key liberties.

In recognition of the day, President Trump issued a proclamation acknowledging the vital importance of our “first freedom.” He also held an Oval Office meeting with students, teachers, and coaches who have experienced harassment because of their faith, and he blasted the “growing totalitarian impulse on the far left that seeks to punish, restrict and even prohibit religious expression.”

There’s more. Nine federal departments yesterday issued rules rolling back regulations that restrict religious liberty. For example, the Department of Health and Human Services, a vast bureaucracy responsible for a myriad of federal grant programs, issued new rules eliminating barriers and discriminatory burdens against faith-based organizations. 

The administration is also reminding states that, according to recent Supreme Court precedent, they cannot discriminate against religious institutions when awarding grants solely because the group applying is a church or faith-based school.

Perhaps most significantly, the Department of Education announced that it is taking a series of actions to protect the First Amendment rights of students, student organizations, and religious schools. 

In other words, pro-life and faith-based student groups must be afforded the same rights and access to facilities as secular student groups. And public universities that cannot guarantee the free speech of conservative students will risk losing federal funding. 

The Department of Education is also updating its guidance on constitutionally protected prayer and will notify states that students do not surrender their First Amendment rights at the schoolhouse door.

In other words, students can’t be told that they are not allowed to quietly read Bibles in class or pray at lunch. Local school districts will be required to certify that they have no policies preventing constitutionally protected prayer.

I applaud the Trump/Pence team for once again standing up in defense of faith. Unlike the previous administration, which tried to bankrupt the Little Sisters of the Poor, this administration recognizes the tremendous importance of faith and is doing everything it can to protect our first freedoms.

Another Big Win

The Senate yesterday passed President Trump’s U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, known as the USMCA. The president promised to end scumbag/liar-Bill Clinton’s NAFTA deal, and he did!

The vote in the Senate was overwhelming — 89 to 10. Senate Democrat Leader Chuck scumbag-Schumer opposed the USMCA in spite of its “very good labor provisions” because “it does not address climate change, the greatest threat facing the planet.”

Really, scumbag-Chuck? I can think of a lot of threats greater than climate change. A nuclear armed Iran is at the top of that list.

But think about the message the left is sending to the auto workers in Michigan, to energy industry workers, to steel factories in Pennsylvania, to manufacturers in Wisconsin. The left demands that everything — including your job — must bow to the demands of the radical environmental movement.

Again, I’m all for a clean environment. But we must also have a functioning economy that is based on reality.

By the way, the stock market closed above 29,000 on Wednesday for the first time in history. And yesterday it was up more than 250 points.

The Circus Continues

In recent days, the left and its media allies have been attacking Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell because he said he would coordinate his impeachment strategy with the White House. The left, rather hypocritically, is accusing the majority leader of having an unfair bias. 

Well, if rooting out bias is the issue, I cast my lot with Sen. Marsha Blackburn. She issued a statement  demanding Senators Bennet (D-CO), Klobuchar (D-MN), commie-Sanders (I-VT), and dinky/liar-Warren (D-MA), who are active presidential candidates, recuse themselves during the impeachment trial due to their “unparalleled political interest in seeing this president removed from office.”

Sen. Blackburn makes a great point.  They are spending tens of millions of dollars to defeat Donald Trump and replace him in office, and yet they are sitting as “jurors” in his trial? 

It is virtually impossible to come up with a more glaring example of a conflict of interest than that. No courtroom in the country would allow jurors to sit in on any trial when they had such an obvious interest in the demise of the defendant. 

I would particularly recommend Blackburn’s statement to Sens. Alexander (R-TN), rino-Collins (R-ME), rino-Murkowski (R-AK), and rino-Romney (R-UT), who are royally irritating conservatives all over America by signaling that they will vote with Chuck scumbag-Schumer to set the rules for the trial. 

One small step they could take toward regaining some credibility would be to support Sen. Blackburn’s effort to impose some accountability on the Senate’s jury pool. 

Military Families Threatened

The Military Times reports that families of soldiers recently deployed to the Middle East are receiving threatening and “menacing” messages on social media from jihadists. Some messages even reference kidnapping scenarios. 

The people doing this are sick Soleimani wannabes, who are willing to do anything to defeat and kill the infidel. The solution is to crush them and their jihadist ideology of death, unless you are prepared for your wife and daughter to wear a burka. Any volunteers?

That said, I know how unnerving this can be. This news reminded me about how shocked I was when I learned that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad  specifically identified me and a few other evangelical leaders by name in one of his GITMO letters because he saw us as key to U.S. support for Israel.   

~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/67962?mailing_id=4807&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4807&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body 

You know who wasn’t asked about this appalling anti-Americanism during Tuesday night’s debate? commie-Bernie Sanders. Or any Democrat candidate, actually. Just imagine if a Republican staffer had been the one saying such things. The Leftmedia spent weeks hyperventilating over Trump’s policies for temporarily detaining illegals — policies a federal court just upheld yesterday. “Reeducating” American citizens in gulags because of political disagreements? Not a peep.

And it’s not as if commie-Sanders supporters don’t already have a history of violence. Remember that “commie-Bernie Bro” who attempted to murder elected Republicans?

Another thing to remember: commie-Bernie Sanders is a self-proclaimed socialist who spoke highly of breadlines and honeymooned in the Soviet Union (albeit not in a gulag). Whether he wins the nomination or not, his radical ideas have transformed the Democrat Party — even if he refuses to put a price tag on his redistribution schemes.

What else went almost completely unmentioned at the debate? Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian terrorist terminated at Trump’s order. He’s a man about whom leftists couldn’t say enough nice things; nor could they complain loudly enough that Trump had taken him out. Yet he received just one passing reference in a question about something broader, illustrating that Democrats are utterly unserious about national security.

The things that were covered provided some enlightening moments, as well.

As we noted yesterday, Elizabeth dinky/liar-Warren’s campaign slyly seeded another victim narrative to tweak commie-Sanders ahead of the debate. It worked — even better than she might have hoped.

CNN moderator Abby Phillip asked commie-Sanders, “I do want to be clear here — you’re saying that you never told senator dinky/liar-Warren that a woman could not win the election?” commie-Sanders replied, “That is correct.” Phillip immediately turned to dinky/liar-Warren and asked, “Sen. dinky/liar-Warren, what did you think when Senator commie-Sanders told you a woman could not win the election?”

CNN moderators taking sides in a debate — where have we heard that before? Oh, right. Candy Crowley sided (wrongly) with Barack scumbag/liar-nObama over rino-Mitt Romney in 2012.

While dinky/liar-Warren tried to defuse the situation by calling commie-Sanders “my friend,” after the debate, she pointedly refused to shake hands with him.

The rest of the debate could be summed up by Fox News’s Greg Gutfeld, who said, “Take home notes: I’m no commie-Sanders fan, but CNN totally knifed him, again. The real thinkers were missing on that stage. The moderators were amateurs. The candidates were bored by their own words. Trump will eat any of these alive.” Better yet, The Babylon Bee headlined, “Warning: Gang Of Known Criminals Holds Meeting To Discuss How Much Of Your Money To Steal.”

Final question: Who benefited most from Tuesday’s debate? Maybe loose lips liar-Joe Biden, whose name we hadn’t yet mentioned because he mostly stayed out of the ridiculous fray.

Next up: The eighth debate on February 7 in New Hampshire, after the Iowa caucuses on February 3.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/67917?mailing_id=4802&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4802&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

Speaker liar-Nancy Pelosi announced yesterday that the House of Representatives will vote today to send articles of impeachment against President Trump to the U.S. Senate. The House impeachment managers will also be named today.

What is this impeachment thing all about again? It has something to do with a brief phone call between President Trump and the leader of Ukraine, a call Trump knew that several White House officials were listening to. 

This is the left’s attempt to legitimize its ongoing efforts to overturn the last presidential election 10 months before the next presidential election because liar-Pelosi, scumbag-Schumer, and scumbag/liar-Schiff just aren’t sure any of their candidates can beat Donald Trump. 

So while a phone call is being used to justify impeachment, it’s worth taking a moment to reflect on what the president has accomplished.

• In three years, the Trump administration has created more than six million new jobs. He has shown that free enterprise really does lift all boats because unemployment rates for blacks, Hispanics, and women are all at record lows.

• He has reoriented trade policy so that preserving American jobs is the top priority while ending communist China’s exploitation of our markets. Median household income is the highest it has ever been.

• Under Trump’s leadership, we have begun rebuilding the American military after eight years of neglect. We have restored the U.S. alliance with Israel. We have taken out ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Iranian terror master Qassem Soleimani, and Al Qaeda leader Hamza bin Laden, Osama’s son. 

• Every day more of the border wall gets built, reinforcing our national sovereignty.

• Each week, his conservative judicial appointments, now numbering nearly 200, bring the federal courts closer in line with the Constitution and the values of the American people.

• He has advocated for the sanctity of life unlike any president in history.

• Against the wishes of the GOP establishment to avoid the so-called “culture war,” Trump has not hesitated to use the bully pulpit to defend our values whenever progressive ingrates offend our country, our flag, and our law-enforcement officers.

But there’s that dang phone call, so none of that matters and we’d better throw him out of office. That’s left-wing logic for you, and I’m confident that most Americans will reject it at the ballot box this November! 

A Tale of Two Stadiums

I still have a burr under my saddle about the disrespectful reaction the president received from some in the crowd at a stadium here in Washington, DC, during the World Series. 

But when the president walked out onto the field at Monday night’s college football championship game, he got a very different reaction. The crowd roared with cheers and applause. One side of the stadium was chanting “USA! USA!” while the other side was chanting “Four more years!”

Unfortunately, the always angry left is furious that actor Vince Vaughn dared to speak to the president and shook his hand.

Tehran in Turmoil

Protests against the Iranian regime are continuing, even amid reports of violent government oppression. Monday, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom issued a statement putting Tehran on notice. In the statement, I am quoted as saying:

I am deeply concerned for the welfare of religious minorities in Iran amid the government’s already violent response to the current protests. The United States must closely monitor Iran’s treatment of religious minorities as protests continue and speak out strongly against any attempts to target these groups.

There are additional cracks emerging, as a number of news anchors at official Iranian media outlets announced their resignations. One journalist, Gelare Jabbari, posted on her Instagram account, “Forgive me for the 13 years I told you lies.”

The Trump administration’s policy of “maximum pressure” against Iran is clearly working. For proof, look no further than this New York Times headline:  "Iran’s Grim Economy Limits Its Willingness To Confront The U.S.“ The article notes that Trump’s sanctions have decimated Iran’s economy, "which is now contracting at an alarming 9.5 percent annual rate.”

Our European allies are also stepping up the pressure. Reuters reports that Britain, France, and Germany have “formally triggered the dispute mechanism in Iran’s nuclear deal,” accusing the regime of violating the terms of the 2015 deal.  

Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson seemed open to replacing the scumbag/liar-nObama deal with a new “Trump deal” that actually prevents Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Buttigieg & Iran

It strikes me as strange and disturbing that Pete Buttigieg, the first openly gay candidate for president of the United States, has not found the time to condemn the Islamic Republic of Iran, which maintains the death penalty for open homosexuality. 

Buttigieg has viciously attacked Vice President Pence because the vice president opposes same-sex marriage. But he has shown no such vitriol toward the Islamist homophobes who run Iran and who are on their way to getting a nuclear bomb. 

Will any reporter question him about this blatant hypocrisy? Or will it just remain one of those many unanswered mysteries?   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/67899?mailing_id=4802&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4802&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

The report’s authors sought to elevate the political relevance of their findings, writing, “Our report is not noteworthy because we identify the GRU [a Russian military intelligence unit] launching a phishing campaign, nor is the targeting of a Ukrainian company particularly novel. It is significant because Burisma Holdings is publically [sic] entangled in U.S. foreign and domestic politics.” The authors also add, “The timing of the GRU’s campaign in relation to the 2020 U.S. elections raises the spectre that this is an early warning of what we have anticipated since the successful cyberattacks undertaken during the 2016 U.S. elections.”

Just what the Russians where after or what information they may have collected is not known, but that hasn’t stopped the Leftmedia and Democrats from seeking to establish an absolutely unsubstantiated narrative. You see, this is all part of a grand conspiracy by Russia to aid Trump once again by working to discredit loose lips liar-Joe Biden, who would be a shoo-in to win the election just like scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton was if it hadn’t been for Russian meddling.

As Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates ridiculously asserted, “This proves that both Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin understand the true stakes of this election. loose lips liar-Joe Biden is running to bring our country together and restore American leadership in the world — repairing the damage Donald Trump has done to our national security and alliances. Donald Trump tried to coerce to Ukraine into lying about loose lips liar-Joe Biden and a major bipartisan, international anti-corruption victory because he recognized that he can’t beat the vice president.”

The question is, if loose lips liar-Joe Biden had nothing to hide and had no concerns over his son Hunter’s dealings with Burisma, then why even give this story the time of day? If there’s nothing damning in Burisma’s records, then Russia has nothing on loose lips liar-Biden. In reality, this story is designed as a setup to write off any damaging information that might emerge regarding the loose lips liar-Bidens and Burisma as merely “Russian meddling” and then spin the blame onto Trump for allegedly encouraging this meddling. The bigger questions remain unanswered, and those have to do with the loose lips liar-Bidens, Burisma, and Ukraine.   

~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/67898?mailing_id=4802&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4802&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

House Speaker liar-Nancy Pelosi’s strategy of holding on to the two weak articles of impeachment against President Trump was starting to rattle some Democrats, who felt they were losing the political battle. Last Wednesday, Sen. Dianne Fein-stein (D-CA) told reporters, “If we’re going to do it, she should send them over,” adding, “I don’t see what good delay does.”

On Friday, liar-Pelosi sent a letter to her Democratic colleagues that announced she was preparing to send the two articles of impeachment to the Senate this week. “I will be consulting with you at our Tuesday House Democratic Caucus meeting on how we proceed further,” she added.

Over the weekend, she said Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell would be guilty of a “cover-up” if he did not allow witnesses at a Senate trial of the president. McConnell has said the House cannot dictate to the Senate.

As high-minded as most Democrats try to sound when trying to remove President Trump from office, their real motives appear transparent.

Out of touch doesn’t begin to describe most people running for, or seeking to remain, in office. They consult pollsters for what people want to hear, instead of telling them what they need to hear. It’s like gratifying children by allowing them to eat their dessert first and if they have no room or interest in vegetables, it’s OK.

Politicians, including the president, should be asked serious questions during this year’s election campaign, instead of the media’s fixation on impeachment, polls and the horse race. Here are a few that come to mind:

1. Government is bigger than ever, far larger and more intrusive than our Founders anticipated and warned us about. Nonpartisan organizations have come up with proposals to rid government of programs that have outlived their usefulness, or don’t work, or never worked. Would you be willing to identify them and if elected (or re-elected) terminate them?

2. The national debt is $23 trillion and the deficit is at record highs. Everyone knows Social Security, Medicare and other entitlement programs are mainly responsible. There have been serious reform proposals, but politicians won’t touch them for fear they will be smeared as anti-senior citizen. Do you have the courage to lead on this issue?

3. President Trump has wanted to pull American troops out of areas where wars never seem to end, but circumstances have prevented him from fully doing so. He has also tried, with some success, to get our allies more involved in “policing the world.” Should the U.S. be policing the world and if so, why? If not, why not?

4. How do you see the moral state of the union? Abortion remains legal virtually everywhere; same-sex marriage, which was once illegal and considered immoral by some, is now the norm. Should government be addressing these issues, or should it be left to churches and individuals? Are there lines anymore and if there are, who gets to draw them and based on what standard?

5. We have gone a long way from President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural admonition not to ask what your country can do for you, but rather ask what you can do for your country. The idea of individualism, personal responsibility and accountability for one’s actions has appeared to have given way to grievance, envy and entitlement. Is there a cause for this? How can it be cured?

There are other questions you might think of, but the answers to these would get the attention of voters, unlike the bad drama that is about to play out in Washington this week and who knows for how many more days and weeks to come?   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/67875?mailing_id=4800&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4800&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body 

Attorney General William Barr is expected to confirm that as many as 20 Saudi military students are being deported from the United States. Their expulsion comes in the wake of increased vetting following the December shooting at Pensacola Naval Air Station.

Just over 10 years ago, 14 people were killed at Fort Hood. That attack wasn’t perpetrated by a foreign student. Virtually everyone knew that Nidal Hasan was more loyal to Islam than he was to America. 

But military bureaucrats passed the buck because Hasan was playing the race card and the Islamophobia card. Sadly, too many military leaders were more afraid of jeopardizing their own careers than protecting our soldiers. 

Ten years have passed since the atrocity at Fort Hood, and the problems of political correctness have only compounded during most of that time. Don’t forget the Bergdahl trade, in which Barack scumbag/liar-nObama traded five Taliban leaders for a deserter.

Fast forward to December 6, 2019. While the FBI was using its vast intelligence capabilities to monitor the Trump campaign and wiretap various aides, several Saudi military students were visiting jihadist websites and sharing extremist materials, and apparently no one was monitoring them! 

When Donald Trump suggested that we didn’t know enough about what was going on within radical Islam and should pause immigration from nations known to be hotbeds of jihadism, the roof caved in on him. Politicians from both parties condemned him. 

I wish I saw that kind of outrage after three American personnel were murdered, not in Afghanistan, not in Iraq, but in their own country because a jihadist managed to get a gun where they were not permitted to have one. 

It is impossible to come up with a better example of how political correctness multiplied during the scumbag/liar-nObama years has put us in jeopardy. Thank God we are beginning to rein it in under President Donald Trump, Attorney General William Barr, and Secretary of Defense Mark Esper.

Iran’s Unbelievably Bad, Terrible Week

It all began at approximately 5:00 PM EST on Thursday, January 2nd, when a drone took out Gen. Qassem Soleimani because the Iranians still hadn’t figured out who Donald Trump was. 

In retaliation, Iran fired 15 missiles at Iraqi bases on January 8th trying to kill U.S. soldiers. They missed. Iran does have good missiles because a few hours later we discovered that it is very capable of shooting down civilian airlines with 176 passengers on board. Iran’s leaders spent the next 48 hours lying about the incident, but they eventually had to admit that they did shoot down the plane.  

Then Iran’s only Olympic medalist defected, saying she could no longer tolerate the regime’s oppression and that she was tired of wearing the hijab. I’m still waiting for press releases from American feminist organizations praising this brave woman, but I’m not holding my breath. 

Thousands of Iranian students soon took to the streets. Were they chanting “Death to Israel”? No. “Death to America”? No. They were chanting “Death to the dictator” and “Death to liars” in protest of the ayatollah’s regime.

Then the regime was hit by another American super weapon — a Donald Trump tweet in Farsi expressing America’s solidarity with the Iranian people who seek freedom. It quickly became the most liked Persian tweet in history. 

We’ve seen Trump tweets destroy the careers of professional politicians. We’ll see what effect his tweet has on the mullahs of Iran.

The Left’s Spin Machine

Once the left decides what its talking points will be, within 24 hours virtually every progressive leader begins using the same arguments. It is extraordinary to watch, and we saw it last week with the left’s response to events in Iran.

But it is even more disturbing and not because “Democrat Central” ordered it. What concerns me is that the left is echoing the mullahs of Iran. 

After the president took out Soleimani, Iran said he was a national hero, that his death was an act of war, and that the Iranian nation was united against America. 

Within hours, various Democrat presidential candidates, politicians and left-wing commentators were saying, “Soleimani was a beloved hero.” They called his death “an act of war” and suggested that Trump only succeeded in uniting Iranians against us.

Then the Ukrainian airliner was shot down. Iran is caught in a lie when the regime eventually admits that it was responsible. But the mullahs insist that Trump is ultimately responsible because they wouldn’t have shot down the airliner without the strike on Soleimani. 

Incredibly, Pete Buttigieg and others parrot Tehran by blaming Trump for the downing of the airliner.

It’s not just the coordinated spin. It’s also what the left isn’t saying that is so revealing. I’ve not heard one liberal commentator or politician express support for the Iranian Olympic defector. 

And the same media that gave such glowing coverage to Soleimani’s funeral barely covers the growing discontent among Iranian youth when they chant “Death to the dictator!" 

It’s odd that so many progressives, who are eager to attack faith in America, are unwilling to take a stand against the ayatollah and his theocratic regime. They seem more committed to attacking the president than they are to attacking America’s enemies. 

When Iran interferes in the 2020 election, as it surely will, guess which side Tehran will be on.

Meanwhile, Back in the Swamp…

Speaker liar-Nancy Pelosi is expected to send the articles of impeachment against President Trump to the Senate in the next day or so, kicking off a trial that could last several weeks. Needless to say, that dynamic is creating some strange optics.

Not only does the president have Iran on the ropes, he’s benefiting from a booming economy and will likely get a major new trade deal through Congress soon. 

Overseas, protestors in Hong Kong are marching with U.S. flags and posters of Trump as Superman. In Taiwan, there are celebrations as the nation’s anti-communist China president was just reelected by a landslide. In Britain, there is a resurgence of populist conservatism.

As Steve Bannon so aptly put it, President Trump bucked the established order, which was to appease China, appease Iran, and undercut U.S. workers.

In short, this president has a tremendous record of accomplishment for which I and many other conservatives are deeply grateful. In fact, I was pleased to join scores of conservative leaders in sending a letter to the White House thanking the president for what he has accomplished for our country.  You can read our letter here.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/67876?mailing_id=4800&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4800&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body 

The War Powers Resolution passed Thursday by the House in an effort to restrict President Trump’s ability to take military action to defend America against attack from Iran is a meaningless political document designed only to embarrass the president.

The nonbinding resolution criticizes the president for not “consulting” with Congress and receiving its “authorization” before ordering the killing of Iranian general and terrorist mastermind Qassem Suleimani. The resolution also orders Trump to stop using military force against Iran until he gets congressional approval.

Trump acted fully within his constitutional authority when he ordered the drone strike against Suleimani, a mass murderer responsible for thousands of deaths — including over 600 Americans — who was engaged in planning additional imminent and ongoing deadly attacks.

President Trump told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham in an exclusive interview Friday that Suleimani was planning attacks on four U.S. embassies.

Nine other terrorists traveling with Suleimani were also killed in the U.S. drone strike near the Baghdad International Airport in Iraq last week.

Imagine how much better off we would be if U.S. forces had been able to kill Al Qaeda leader Usama bin Laden and nine of his fellow terrorist leaders while they were planning the horrific Sept. 11, 2001 attacks that killed nearly than 3,000 people. Can anyone seriously argue that preventing those tragic deaths would not have been the right thing to do if a past president had the opportunity?

We’ll never know how many more people Suleimani would have murdered if he had lived longer, but it’s a safe bet that the number would be a big one, and that Americans would be among the dead. President Trump should be applauded for eliminating this very real threat.

The framers of the Constitution understood we needed a strong president to defend our country. One reason they replaced the Articles of Confederation with the Constitution was to create the office of president with the powers it currently possesses.

Article II of the Constitution makes the president the “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.” He is also vested with all of “the executive Power” and the duty to execute the laws.

The text, structure, and history of the Constitution make it clear that this article gives the president broad constitutional authority to use military force to support our foreign policy and to respond to threats to our national security. And that’s the way it has been interpreted by successive administrations and the courts since the very beginning of our nation

As the U.S. Justice Department said in a 2001 legal opinion issued after the 9/11 attacks, the “power of the President is at its zenith under the Constitution when the President is directing military operations of the armed forces, because the power of Commander in Chief is assigned solely to the President.”

No law and no congressional resolution — such as the one passed Thursday by the House — “can place any limits on the President’s determinations as to any terrorist threat, the amount of military force to be used in response, or the method, timing, and nature of the response. These decisions, under our Constitution, are for the President alone to make,” according to the Justice Department legal opinion.

Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war. Congress has done so five times in our nations’ history and also authorized the use of military force over 40 times. But the commander in chief is charged with defending the country. He — and he alone — has the authority to use the armed forces for our defense.

In cases such as the killing of Suleimani — a situation calling for self-defense based on a verifiable, ongoing and imminent threat — a president can clearly act based on his constitutional authority. Neither Trump — nor any other American president — need ask for a congressional declaration of war or even an authorization for the use of military force in cases like this.

Trump acted wisely, quickly, and constitutionally to save American lives. That’s something we are entitled to expect all our presidents to do — regardless of their political party.

You can be sure that if Trump had done nothing and Suleimani had gone on to stage a nightmarish terrorist attack that claimed hundreds or even thousands of American lives, the president’s critics would be screaming at the top of their lungs that Trump was incompetent and derelict in his duty for failing to prevent the mass murder.

The simple fact is that the authority of Congress to declare war does not limit the ability — in fact, the responsibility — of the president to direct the armed forces to respond either defensively or offensively to terrorist threats.

If Congress wants to flex its constitutional muscles on this, it can cut off funding for the military. After all, Congress has the power of the purse. If it really wants to stop specific military actions, it can use its budget authority to withhold appropriations and to ban the use of any public funds for specific purposes.

The War Powers Resolution passed by the House Thursday does not do that. The fact that the House is not willing to use its actual authority in this matter strongly suggests that this resolution is just political theater meant to score points against the president.

In addition, the nonbinding resolution puts members of the House in the embarrassing position of seemingly defending a terrorist mass murderer. It may give the rest of the world — including our most dangerous enemies — the impression that our government is in disarray and doesn’t want to respond to attacks on our embassies, our citizens and our armed forces.

This, in turn, could invite further attacks.

Suleimani was unquestionably a legitimate target — someone who could have and should have been taken out years ago by a past president in the interests of our national security. Had that happened, an untold number of innocent civilians and members of the U.S. armed forces whose deaths were caused by Suleimani would still be alive today.

Those condemning President Trump for taking out Suleimani should answer this question: How many American military personnel and others is a terrorist allowed to kill before you think he is a legitimate military target?

And Trump’s critics should be willing to sit down with the widows, widowers, orphans and parents who lost loved ones because of Suleimani’s barbarism and explain to them why it was a good thing than an earlier American president did not rid the world of this monstrous mass murderer.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/67879?mailing_id=4800&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4800&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

This is not to say that children who grow up in one-parent homes are doomed to miserable lives, but it’s hard to deny that the opportunity for a better life takes a lot more work. One-parent households are predominantly lower income, less educated, and more susceptible to crime and drug problems.

Sociologists, economists, and politicians have struggled for years to find ways to alleviate the inequities dealt to one-parent households. Potential solutions abound, but those suggested by Dr. Christina Cross, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, ignore the core issue and risk making matters worse.

In a shockingly obtuse New York Times op-ed last month, Cross claimed that for black Americans the problem is not a lack of two parents under one roof, but, rather, it’s a lack of access to resources compared to white one-parent families. In other words, more taxpayer money will fix it.

Cross points out that black one-parent households have a tougher time than white one-parent households when it comes to getting and maintaining jobs, obtaining a good education, owning property, and so forth. She then makes the cognitive leap that access to resources alone is the problem for one-parent black families because one-parent white families perform statistically better in these areas. The power of a two-parent household among blacks is “a myth” according to Cross. Rather than stepping back and looking at the larger issues that face all one-parent families, Cross chooses to make a racial divide and drive home the tired leftist narrative about a racist system that has it in for black families.

Perhaps one-parent white families do perform statistically better than one-parent black families across all of Cross’s data points, but what difference does that make? White or black, they are still more likely to be poor, less educated, and more susceptible to a tougher life.

Ian Rowe, senior visiting fellow at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, takes Cross to task for her misguided analysis. Rowe points to data from the National Center for Education Statistics that shows the proportion of black children living in poverty decreases from 45% for mother-only households and 36% for father-only households to 12% for two-parent households.

Rowe also questions how Cross narrowly cites evidence to play down the importance of two-parent households for blacks while ignoring the broader issue of family structure for children of all races. Why does the problem have to be confined to one race? Non-marital births among white women under 24 numbered 238,000 in 2018, far higher than any other racial cohort.

Cross is right to be concerned about the issue of single-parent families, but by choosing to make a racial argument, she makes it that much more difficult to implement the real solution: A more stable family structure benefitting all children, no matter their skin color.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/67871?mailing_id=4800&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4800&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

Given that the anonymously sourced report came from CNN, which is less factually reliable than the satirical Babylon Bee, you can take this with a grain of salt. But the network reports, “The two agreed that if they ultimately faced each other as presidential candidates, they should remain civil and avoid attacking one another, so as not to hurt the progressive movement.”

“She could make a robust argument about the economy and earn broad support from female voters,” CNN noted, adding, “commie-Sanders responded that he did not believe a woman could win.”

commie-Sanders called the CNN story “ludicrous,” turning his fire on Donald Trump, calling him “a sexist, a racist, and a liar.” But dinky/liar-Warren said, “Among the topics that came up was what would happen if Democrats nominated a female candidate. I thought a woman could win; he disagreed.”

The other part of dinky/liar-Warren’s broadside came from Politico, which reported that the Sanders campaign is distributing volunteer talking points undermining Warren with phony kindness: “I like Elizabeth dinky/liar-Warren. In fact, she’s my second choice. But here’s my concern about her.” She is the “candidate of the elite.” Feel the Bern.

This media hit job was such an obvious setup for tonight’s debate that it’s hard to take it seriously, especially when dinky/liar-Warren’s autobiography is so littered with victimis falsehoods. But a couple of things bear mentioning. For one thing, dinky/liar-Warren peaked too soon and has been steadily losing traction in the polls in recent weeks. She needs something — anything — to generate some buzz in advance of not only the debate but the February 3 Iowa caucuses, where she’s running fourth. The candidate most occupying “her lane” is commie-Sanders, which makes him a target despite whatever detente they agreed to two years ago.

The other notable thing here is the reminder that Democrats have nothing of substance to offer beyond socialism. If it’s not failed policy ideas, it’s Trump Derangement Syndrome and identity politics.  

 ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/67887?mailing_id=4800&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4800&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

Wolf also pushed back against critics who have asserted that it’s not new wall going up but just replacements of old wall. “One thing I want to emphasize: Every inch of the 100 miles that we have constructed is new border-wall system. It’s not so-called ‘replacement’ wall as some of our critics claim.” He justified his declaration with the example that replacing a one-bed shack with a new five-bedroom house would be called a “new” house, not a “replacement” house.

This milestone represents just the first step in the Trump administration’s plan to build an additional 900 miles of border wall. The Washington Post reports, “Pentagon funds would be extracted, for a second year in a row, from military construction projects and counternarcotics funding. According to the plans, the funding would give the government enough money to complete approximately 885 miles of new fencing by spring 2022, far more than the 509 miles the administration has slated for the U.S. border with Mexico.”

Meanwhile, this past December, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol apprehended or turned away 40,620 individuals attempting to illegally enter the country. That total is down a whopping 70% from a high of 144,000 last May and marks the seventh consecutive month of declining illegal crossing. Much of this can be credited to Trump’s multi-faceted approach to addressing the border crisis, which includes deals with Mexico and Central American countries to actively engage and deter illegal immigration in their countries, the new “remain in Mexico” asylum policy, and miles of new border wall.

In spite of all the Left’s opposition, Trump has clearly made significant headway on his signature campaign agenda.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/67888?mailing_id=4800&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4800&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body