Rewriting history is fun and allows people to make heroes into goats and goats into heroes.

President Donald J. Trump is now being ravaged in the press for not being tough with Russia. Some people are verbally abusing Trump because Russia took Crimea and Trump didn’t do anything about it.

When Russia took Crimea in 2014, Trump was a businessman in New York. The man who was president of the United States and commander in chief of the most powerful military in the world was Barack Obama.

What did Obama do to aid Ukraine in its fight against Russia? Obama froze the US bank accounts of friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin, many of whom didn’t have US bank accounts. But, because of Obama’s bold, decisive action, if these friends of Putin had suddenly decided they wanted to open a Christmas savings account at Wells Fargo, they would not have been able to do so, unless they were to put on a fake mustache and use a different name.

Obama ignored an agreement between Ukraine and the US, Russia and the United Kingdom that Ukraine’s borders would be protected in return for Ukraine turning over its nuclear weapons. At the time, Ukraine had the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world.

Ukraine kept its part of the agreement and surrendered its nuclear arsenal, but Russia, the US and the UK did not keep up theirs. Russia was the largest violator of the agreement because it seized Crimea, but the US under Obama stood by and did virtually nothing to defend Ukraine.

Nor did the US respond when Russia attacked the eastern border of Ukraine.

Putin did whatever he wanted when Obama was in the White House, and yet, the mainstream media in the US is declaring Trump soft on Russia.

Trump, unlike Obama, has to deal with the reality that Russia has controlled Crimea for four years.It’s the world as Obama left it.

It was Obama who was caught on an open mike telling Putin that he would have more flexibility after the US elections. There is no evidence that Trump said anything similar to Putin.

In fact, so far nobody other than Putin and the interpreters knows what Trump said to Putin in their meeting. The whole theory that Trump was soft on Putin is based on the press conference, not on the meeting.

Some Democrats are even demanding Trump’s interpreter be called before Congress to testify about what was said in the meeting. If they knew what was said in the meeting they wouldn’t need to interrogate the interpreter. They don’t know, but the mainstream media are universally reporting that Trump bowed down to Putin. It was in fact Obama who while president kept bowing down to foreign leaders.

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It also seems to have been completely forgotten that any Russian meddling in the 2016 election took place on Obama’s watch.

The US Intelligence agencies knew that the Russians were attempting to hack into campaign sites and did virtually nothing about it because the intelligence agencies under the direction of Obama were too busy surveiling the Trump campaign to worry about what the Russians were doing.

So how is it Trump’s fault if Obama didn’t protect the US election system from tampering by the Russians? Perhaps instead of getting Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants to perform electronic surveillance of people in the Trump campaign, if the FBI and other US intelligence agencies had concentrated on counteracting the attempts by Russia to influence the election there would be nothing to talk about now.

But somehow the mainstream media have completely ignored the complicity of the Obama administration in any Russian tampering and are blaming it on Trump who at the time was a candidate with no power other than the power to persuade people to vote for him, which he did extremely well.

Does anyone think that if Hillary Clinton had won the election that she would be blamed for Russian tampering with the electoral process?

It is a little frightening to think that when the history of this era is written, historians will go back and read the accounts in the mainstream media to determine what happened because what the mainstream media are reporting is based on their hatred of Trump, not on reality.

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Even for the mainstream media, it’s a stretch to say that the summit with Putin was a failure when all they know about it was what happened during the press conference, where American reporters proved that they have no interest in foreign affairs, averting a nuclear war, settling issues in the Middle East or anything other than the purported but completely unproven collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election.

It is an incredible example of the unrestrained power of the media that when Hillary Clinton lost, when she took a brief break from uncontrollable weeping, she said the only way she could have lost is if Trump cheated by colluding with the Russians.

If there had been any half bright journalists who were not a Hillary worshipers they might have asked how it was that Obama beat her so badly in 2008 or how in primary after primary Sen. Bernie Sanders cleaned her clock.

The truth is that if the Democratic primary had been a fair election, Hillary Clinton would have most likely lost. But after Sen. George McGovern got the nomination in 1972, the Democratic hierarchy decided that the people couldn’t be trusted to select the Democratic candidate, and there are so many super delegates now who are appointed, not elected, that the Democratic National Committee, not the members of the Democratic Party, select the presidential candidate.

Considering that fact, Hillary Clinton would have won the nomination in 2008 despite losing in primary after primary if it had not been that the Democratic big-wigs couldn’t vote against the first black man with a reasonable chance of becoming president because it would be akin to political suicide in the Democratic Party, which wins races primarily because of the overwhelming support of black voters.

But, of course, when Hillary shouted “Russian collusion,” the only people around her were Hillary worshippers and the result is special prosecutor Robert Mueller, who has made a specialty of indicting Russians who he knows he can never bring to trial. It makes it look like he’s doing something to justify the millions of dollars he is spending and he doesn’t have to prove anything.

Next he might indict Putin. Why not? Why not indict every Russian with a computer?

 

Peter Strzok in his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee expects the committee and the American people to believe that he is not human but is some form of being better than humans. Everyone has bias and Strzok revealed his bias, not only in his text messages but in his testimony about the president of the United States, who happens to be his boss.

He described Trump’s behavior as “horrible, disgusting.” So Strzok is in charge of investigating the two presidential candidates – one of whom he thinks is wonderful and would never knowingly do anything wrong. The entire investigation is run on that presumption.

The FBI didn’t follow its own protocols and procedures when it investigated Hillary Clinton and it determined the outcome of the investigation long before the key witnesses were interviewed or, to be more precise, long before the investigation began.

Strzok also made the bizarre statement that he has always told the truth. He tried to come back later and qualify that as always telling the truth under oath, which is not really saying much at all.

But for a man who had an extremely public romantic affair with his co-worker Lisa Page, it exhibits some kind of weird mental condition for him to state under oath that he has always told the truth. People who have affairs have to lie all the time, and not only to their spouses. I seriously doubt that Strzok told his boss that he and Page were going to be late coming back from a meeting because they were going to stop off in a motel for a quickie before getting back to work.

North Carolina 6th District Congressman Mark Walker did a good job when he had the opportunity to question Strzok about the vast number of text messages he sent and received from Page on FBI phones while at work.

As Walker pointed out, other people have to wait until after work to carry on non-work related communications, but Strzok and Page texted back and forth continuously.

It was also revealed during his testimony that Strzok got to choose the text messages and emails from his personal computer that he turned over to the inspector general.

That is certainly an interesting way to conduct and investigation. When the FBI investigates someone outside the agency, they take everything, even material protected by lawyer-client privilege, and the FBI decides what it needs, not the person being investigated. But when the FBI investigates one of their own, the person being investigated gets to decide what to turn over to the investigators. It’s a pretty sweet deal.

 

So after Trump is out of the country and three days before Trump is scheduled to meet with Putin, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announces that indictments have been filed against 12 Russian citizens for attempting to meddle in the 2016 US election.

It could not possibly be a coincidence. It’s not like Rosenstein didn’t know when Air Force One took off or when Trump was meeting with Putin.

Rosenstein could have been sitting on these indictments for weeks or months, and by that same token he could have sat on them for weeks or months longer.

The Russian constitution prohibits the extradition of Russian citizens, so there is no chance that Rosenstein and his bosom buddy Mueller are ever going to be able to get anybody in court. This was a publicity stunt so that the Democrats can claim that Mueller’s investigation is doing something other than spending money, as well as an attempt to give Trump a black eye.

Of course, Mueller got in trouble doing this earlier when he indicted 13 Russian companies and one of them showed up in court demanding they be given the evidence Mueller had. So far Mueller has refused to provide that evidence, which by law he has to do.

So for that company either Mueller is going to have to turn over the evidence or drop the charges. The smart money says drop the charges because it will be less embarrassing than producing the flimsy evidence that Mueller thought would never see the light of day.

Putin had a great answer for Mueller. He will certainly allow US prosecutors to be present while these men are questioned by Russian authorities, but only if the US allows Russian prosecutors to be present while American citizens are questioned.

Wouldn’t that be fun? Putin could have Mueller indicted in Russia and then send some prosecutors to the US to participate in his interrogation.

 

In the press conference with Trump, Putin absolutely denied that Russia meddled in the 2016 election. There is way too much evidence that Russia did meddle and we know that Russia meddles in US elections and the US meddles in the elections in Russia and in other countries.

One of the reasons that Putin wanted Trump to win is that, while Bill Clinton was president, Clinton worked hard to try and get Putin’s opponent to win. Putin didn’t like that and evidently he holds a grudge.

But it goes with the territory to try and affect the outcome of elections of foreign governments. It was no secret that President Obama worked against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This is not news.

Usually great effort is made not to get caught because, if you do get caught and your man loses, then foreign relations are a bit touchy for a few years.

But the idea that other countries don’t try to affect the outcome of elections is just wrong. Putin wanted Trump to win and tried to help him.

The leap that Mueller, Rosenstein and the Democrats are trying to make is that because Putin wanted Trump to win that is somehow Trump’s fault and Trump entered into an illegal conspiracy with Putin.

So far, despite an investigation that has been going on for almost two years, no evidence has been reported that any link between the Trump campaign and Putin has been found.

 

When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went to Russia to “reset” the relationship – despite the fact that she made a fool of herself with a sophomoric prop where her staff was so totally incompetent they couldn’t even get the one word, “reset,” right on the big red button – it was universally proclaimed by the mainstream media to be a great and wonderful thing.

The fact that Obama wanted to have a better relationship with Russia according to the mainstream media showed his brilliance in foreign policy. When Trump sits down for a meeting with Putin he is called a traitor.

It appears once again it’s not what was done but who is doing it that matters.

Trump repeated what Putin said, that he didn’t attempt to meddle in the US election, and Trump added, “I don’t know why he would.” Now Trump says he meant to say, “I don’t know why he wouldn’t,” and that actually makes a lot more sense.

If you look at the way the emails for Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta were hacked, it could have been by any 12-year-old. He opened a phishing email. Anyone who gets more than two emails a day has received one of these. Most of us are smart enough not to open them. Podesta isn’t that bright.

But that didn’t take the intelligence service of the Russian government to do, and, of course, once whomever it was got in, they were in and all his emails were available.

Trump, more than most people, has good reason not to trust the US intelligence agencies. They spied on his campaign. They unmasked members of his campaign whose communications were caught by legitimate foreign surveillance practices – but unmasking is supposed to be a big deal. Why would the ambassador to the UN need to unmask members of the Trump campaign?

Once they were unmasked, Obama altered the protocols so that the information could be shared with far more people than is the common practice.

Then, once Trump was in office, the US intelligence services leaked everything they could about Trump.

Trump may trust some of the people he appointed, but he made a huge mistake in not cleaning out intelligence agencies of those who were loyal to Obama and not loyal to the country.

I don’t see anything wrong with Trump having some doubt about what these people have said. Many of them hate Trump and have done everything in their considerable power to undermine his presidency.

Plus, Trump was standing on the stage with Putin. What was he supposed to do? Throw away all the good will that the two had developed in their four-hour meeting by calling Putin a big liar on an international stage. It’s hard to see how that would be helpful.

But it didn’t matter what Trump said or did, the mainstream media hate Trump with a passion that is usually reserved for ex-spouses and child abusers.

These are people who are usually for peace at any cost and suddenly what they want is war with Russia over meddling in a campaign.

The US and Russia have some extremely difficult issues that can either be worked out by war or by negotiations. The two countries have to reach some agreement on Syria and the Middle East. So far both countries have done a pretty good job of staying out of the others way.

North Korea borders Russia. Trump’s efforts in North Korea need Russian support if they are to be successful.

It is far better for the US and the world for Putin and Trump to have a good working relationship. But according to the mainstream media, the very fact that Trump met with Putin proves that Trump is a traitor.

 

Trump had to walk the original statement back because of the tidal wave of attacks that it caused. The mainstream media continually talked about the bipartisan attacks.

And the attacks were from both parties – and one reason is that elected officials in both parties hate Trump.

The swamp isn’t controlled by one party. Those folks getting rich off the taxpayers in Washington belong to both political parties. They are all feeding at the same trough and they know it. One of the reasons that Trump has to drain the swamp is because, although they quibble amongst themselves for the cameras, when someone from the outside questions them they circle the wagons and defend each other.

Sen. John McCain hates Trump with a passion and it would appear that Trump doesn’t think much of McCain either.

Trump made fun of just about everyone he ran against and some of them are not forgive-and-forget types of people. They see themselves as great statesmen, and to have someone publicly belittle them was too much for their fragile egos to handle.

You also have folks like Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, who don’t like Trump at all. Ryan is a member of the swamp. He doesn’t like Trump coming in an upsetting a really lucrative gig for him and his friends.

Trump didn’t go to Washington to make friends with the people that he believes have been ruining the country. He went to Washington to try and rescue the country, and the people he is rescuing the country from don’t appreciate it.

But I have really bad news for those folks in Washington: So far Trump is winning, and I think winning on a level that they don’t even understand because they have been spending far too much time inside the Beltway and have forgotten that most Americans don’t live in Washington and don’t trust the people who do.

 

People who are so concerned about Russia meddling in the 2016 election should be thankful that in the US we have the Electoral College. I

f presidents were elected by popular vote, then for a foreign power to get in and change the votes in one or two large states could have a huge impact. But under the Electoral College system, there are 51 separate elections. One in each state and one in the District of Columbia, which has three Electoral College votes.

A foreign operative would have to pick the correct battleground states, hack into their system, whatever it was, and change votes.

The US intelligence agencies agree that no votes were changed by any foreign entity. Meddling in the election evidently meant hacking into email accounts, running Facebook ads and other such mischief. The idea that an election where each candidate is spending over $1 billion on campaigning could be affected by a couple of Facebook ads is absurd.

And if they believed the poll numbers like just about everyone else, they must have thought it was a lost cause. Why would they waste much time or energy in meddling in an election that nearly everyone was saying was already won?

 

Remember back when the proposed Trump tax cuts were going to destroy the federal government? The theory was based on the belief that lowering the tax rate would not increase economic activity and would simply reduce the amount of revenue that the federal government collected. It turned out that economics doesn’t work like that, and because of the tax decrease the federal government is collecting more money in tax revenue, not less.

Trump says his tariffs are going to work the same way. By imposing high tariffs the result will be more free trade, not less, because other countries will reduce tariffs on American goods and then the US will reduce its own tariffs.

If free trade is the objective, and it seems to be a fairly universal belief that it is, then isn’t increasing tariffs in an attempt to reach that goal worth a try? The US has for years tried leading by example, shouting, “Look at us. We allow your goods in the US without tariffs. Now you should do the same for us.” And that hasn’t worked very well.

 

The mainstream media are all over Trump for not being nicer to our allies. From a military perspective, what good are allies who won’t spend their own money for their defense?

The NATO countries claim to be our dear allies and friends, but what they really want is for the US to spend untold dollars to protect them while they put their own money into economic development and infrastructure.

Germany is one of the most economically successful countries in the world and it spends 1.2 percent of its budget on the military. Germany has soldiers training with wooden rifles because it doesn’t have enough real rifles to provide one for each soldier. It uses civilian cars in military exercises because it doesn’t have enough tanks and armored vehicles to carry out a military exercise.

Germany can put its money into its economy because the US is providing military protection. Trump is correct: In today’s world that is absurd.

The US should certainly continue to offer to come to the aid of NATO countries that are attacked, but that doesn’t mean provide all the military defense for Europe.

Trump is a businessman, and from a business standpoint it makes no sense. The NATO nations have been getting a free ride on the backs of American taxpayers, and then, when it comes to competing economically, what do NATO nations do to American goods? They put tariffs on them to make it more difficult for the US to sell goods in Europe.

Trump may not be able to level the playing field, but he is certainly working at making it more level. Imagine the boon to the American economy if the US didn’t have to spend so much on protecting NATO countries and if NATO countries opened their doors to American goods.