The saying that if you repeat something often enough people will think it’s true certainly is the case for the media reporting on President Donald Trump.

It has been reported so many times that Trump said that he fired FBI Director Jim Comey because the FBI was investigating possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia that everyone accepts it as true.

But – as Trump’s attorneys pointed out in their long memo to special prosecutor Bob Mueller, which was leaked to The New York Times – that isn’t what Trump said.

Trump’s attorneys – instead of pulling out one incomplete thought, which has been done time and time again – take a transcript of the entire interview Trump did with NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt and dissect it.

What happened was one incomplete answer from that interview was excerpted, and in that partial answer it appears Trump is saying that the Russian investigation is the reason he fired Comey, but the complete transcript proves that wasn’t what he was saying at all.

In fact, he said he knew that firing Comey might prolong the investigation, and when asked if he was doing this to stop the investigation, Trump said, “No, I’m not doing that. I think we have to get back to work. But I want to find out, I want to get to the bottom – if Russia hacked, if Russia did anything having to do with our election, I want to know about it.”

Then he said, “I’ll tell you this. If Russia or anybody else is trying to interfere with our elections, I think it’s a horrible thing and I want to get to the bottom of it. And I want to make sure it will never, ever happen.”

It would appear that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein didn’t read the entire interview and called for a special prosecutor based on what was being reported in the news, not what Trump actually said.

If that is the case, then Rosenstein should be fired – whatever the political cost – for incompetence. If Rosenstein read the entire interview and still hired a special prosecutor, he should be fired for malfeasance.

Trump is not a politician and he doesn’t speak in sound bites the way politicians have learned to speak. He speaks in incomplete sentences and incomplete thoughts like a normal human being.

The part of the interview that has been quoted repeatedly is when Trump said, “I was going to fire Comey knowing there was no good time to do it. And in fact when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, ‘You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story.’”

Taken out of context as it was, that quote appears to be damning, but taken in context with the additional statements, it was simply Trump saying what he thought. Comey needed to be fired and the whole Trump collusion with Russia accusation was a story made up by the Hillary Clinton campaign to try and explain how Hillary Clinton lost an election few in the country believed it was possible for her to lose.

In fact, at the end of that incomplete quote he added, “As far as I’m concerned, I want that thing to be absolutely done properly. When I did this now, I said I probably maybe confuse people. Maybe I’ll expand that, you know, I’ll lengthen the time because it should be over with. It should, in my opinion should’ve been over with a long time ago because it – all it is an excuse. But I said to myself I might even lengthen out the investigation. But I have to do the right thing for the American people. He’s the wrong man for that position.”

Trump also explained in more detail why he fired Comey. He said, “Look, he’s a showboat. He’s a grandstander. The FBI has been in turmoil. You know that, I know that, everybody knows that.”

It is absolutely incredible that a quote taken out of context has produced so much turmoil for the country and it never would have happened if the mainstream media didn’t hate Trump with such vigor that they’re willing to twist quotes and present Trump in the worst possible light.

It is no wonder Trump tweets so often. It gives him the ability to communicate with the American people without the filter of the media. Of course, the media then takes the tweets and presents them in every way possible to make Trump look bad. But with a tweet, Trump’s actual words are there for the American people to see and tweets are so short that it is difficult to take one part out of context and make it say something that is the opposite of what Trump actually said, which is what happened in this interview.

*****

Congressman Trey Gowdy is correct in saying that the FBI uses informants all the time. The FBI does and it has proven to be an effective method of acquiring information about gangs and criminal syndicates. But the question that needs to be answered about the Trump campaign is, what crime was being investigated.

The last time I checked it wasn’t a crime to run for president, even if you happen to be running against the siting president’s personal choice to succeed him – Hillary Clinton.

Also, Gowdy, a former US attorney, said he had never heard the term spy used. I don’t believe that Gowdy had never heard the term used because it is a term that is frequently used. It may not be used by the FBI, but then when an FBI agent is lying through his teeth the FBI calls it a “lack of candor.” I don’t think the rest of us out here in the real world are under any obligation to call lying “lacking of candor.” Or would it be “lack of candoring”?

The government uses all kinds of jargon that people don’t use in the real world. Part of the reason is to make themselves sound smart and better than the populace.

Attend a school board meeting anywhere in this country and see if you have any idea what the school board or top school administrators are talking about. I sent reporters to school board meetings for years and invariable they would come back from the first meeting and say that they had no idea what happened because they didn’t understand the jargon. After a few meetings they learned the jargon and then the hard part was keeping that jargon out of their stories because most people don’t know the terms that are commonplace in education.

The idea that if someone writes that a city has 3,171 employees is wrong because the term the city uses is FTE’s (full time equivalents) is absurd. The city or county can use any term it wants and people can use the terms they want.

Gowdy knows full well that there is nothing wrong with Trump using the same terms as people use and not the terms the FBI uses, but Washington is a strange place and there is no telling what kind of burr was under Gowdy’s saddle.

*****

The left is all in an uproar that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is going to alter the burdensome regulations regarding vehicle fuel economy.

Why is it any of the federal government’s business how many miles per gallon a car gets? If Americans want fuel efficient cars they are free to buy them. If they want to buy cars that get 2 miles per gallon they should be able to buy them also.

If pollution is the problem then the government would be looking at old cars instead of new ones.

Americans like big cars. When the fuel efficiency standards for automobiles forced the car manufactures to produce little tiny cars, Americans started buying trucks.

When I was growing up moms drove station wagons. Today moms drive SUVs, which are trucks converted to be passenger vehicles.

There is also the matter of safety. Big cars are safer than small cars.

Let the free market govern what kind of cars Americans drive. If they want to drive big gas guzzlers, why is that a federal issue?

*****

President Barack Obama is a master of misdirection. If he wasn’t, he never would have been elected president, twice.

The first time around he was the least prepared president we have had in modern times. Even Jimmy Carter had served as governor – an executive position – been an officer in the Navy and served in the George state legislature.

Obama graduated from Harvard Law School and his first real full-time job was as a US senator. And before he completed one term he was elected president. It’s incredible.

The second time he ran, the economy was in shambles and he was running against an experienced businessman. He managed to get the discussion on everything but the economy.

In this Russian collusion deal with Trump, it appears Obama may have tried for a bridge too far. The real collusion was between the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Obama White House, in particular the Justice Department and the FBI, but also the other intelligence services that were all working to get Hillary Clinton elected.

They were all spying on the Trump campaign, evidently from early on. They used the old trick of planting stories and then having the stories come back to them so they had to be investigated.

It all may have worked, if the Obama team had not decided to go after Trump with special prosecutor Mueller, who was the perfect pick for special prosecutor. Once Mueller decides that someone is a “bad man,” Mueller’s history shows he doesn’t care if he has any real evidence or not. If need be he uses evidence that he knows is planted and puts people in prison for crimes Mueller knows they didn’t commit. So once Mueller was on the scent, the Obama team thought they would at the very least get Trump to resign.

What Obama didn’t count on was the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Judiciary Committee. Both wanted actual evidence, and after all this time they still have not received all the records that they have requested. But they have demonstrated they are willing to subpoena documents and even start impeachment proceedings against those who refuse to follow the law.

Obama supporters have argued that Congress has no right to the documents, but the reality is that Congress was established by the Constitution. The FBI was established by Congress. It seems Congress has whatever oversight authority it says that it has. Congress could abolish the FBI, but the FBI could never abolish Congress. The FBI has a lot of power but that power is derived from Congress, not the other way around.

In the end, the congressional committees will get all the information they have requested, and so far that information has been incredibly damning of the FBI and the Obama holdovers in the Justice Department.

Trump has to take some of the blame for the situation. Trump came to Washington an extremely naive man. He thought that long-term Justice Department employees would work for the good of the country regardless of who was in the White House. He thought they would work for the president, whoever that president happened to be. He couldn’t have been more wrong, and, being Trump, it took him far too long to admit that he had been wrong.

Trump is just now getting around to solving the problem of the leaks from the White House. It’s like he thought he could stop the leaks by holding a staff meeting and asking people not to leak sensitive information to The New York Times and the leaks would stop.

But Trump is learning. He won’t make the same mistakes again. However, he is caught in a situation where he can’t clean house like he now knows he needs to until after the Mueller investigation is behind him.

Look at his recent hires compared to those he hired when he first came into office. They are a completely different type of person.

*****

It’s hilarious that the wind and solar industries are complaining about federal government intervention into the energy sector because Trump is advocating for coal and nuclear. The wind and solar industries only exist because of federal intervention in the form of enormous subsidies, and laws that force utilities to buy the electricity produced by wind and solar at a higher rate than it cost the utilities to produce their own electricity. Without federal and state support the wind and solar energy industry would not exist.

It seems what they are complaining about is the federal government not giving wind and solar exclusive support.

It seems only fair that those industries should be forced to exclusively use their own power, so at night or on overcast days the solar people would be without power and on calm or really windy days the wind people would have to use kerosene lanterns and cook and heat their homes with gas or maybe coal.

If you eliminate burning stuff and nuclear power from the energy sector, people are going to have to get used to intermittent electricity. God forbid if your iPhone battery runs out on a calm night. What about charging that electric car when you have no electricity at night?

I guess everyone could have their own gasoline or natural gas generator at home, but I believe that would be depending on burning something to create electricity.

People worried about global warming, climate change or whatever they are calling it this week should be 100 percent behind nuclear power because it doesn’t emit any greenhouse gases and produces electricity 24 hours a day, unlike wind and solar.

*****

Americans tend to think like teenagers. We have a problem and we think we are the only country in the world with that problem – like illegal immigration. The US has a huge problem with illegal immigrants and immigration, but we are not alone. Europe has a similar problem, and although Trump is vilified by the left for even considering building a wall to keep people who have no right to be here out, in Europe they are also building walls, both physical and legal.

Currently in the European Union, a migrant has to register in the first EU country they enter. This is great for Northern European countries and tough for Italy. Maybe in the US we should insist on the same thing. People migrating from Central America would have to register in the first foreign country they enter. For many that would be Mexico.

But we still need a wall of some kind – not to keep everyone out because it won’t – but to make it more difficult for people to enter the country illegally. Once they do enter illegally, when they are caught they need to be sent back across the border. If Mexico doesn’t want them because they aren’t Mexican, then Mexico needs to control its border better.

Our government needs to do a much better job of enforcing labor laws on employers who hire illegal workers. It’s not fair to the workers who often are paid less and receive fewer benefits than Americans because they are illegal and can’t complain. Having the option to hire illegal immigrants lowers the wages for Americans at the bottom of the labor ladder.

We do need a robust and enforceable guest worker program where people can legally cross the border and work, but then return to their home countries when their contract is up. With the US reaching full employment, this is more important than it was during the Obama years when unemployment was high.

Unemployment is now below 4 percent, which some experts say means everyone who wants a job has a job.

The Democrats are in favor of illegal immigration and granting amnesty to illegal immigrants, not because they are kind hearted people, but because they know that illegal immigrants, if allowed to become citizens and vote, will overwhelmingly vote Democrat. If the Democrats thought that illegal immigrants were going to become Republicans, they would be as opposed to illegal immigration as the Republicans are.

Everything in Washington is political and illegal immigration is no different.

*****

After getting a free ride for 20 years, former President Bill Clinton is finally being asked about his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky – and he doesn’t like it.

Bill Clinton is evidently still in denial because when asked about his impeachment he said, “Well, I knew it wouldn’t succeed.” But it did succeed. Bill Clinton was the second president in the history of the United States to be impeached and the second not to be removed from office. But he was impeached on two counts by a vote of the majority of the House of Representatives. He can deny it but he can’t change history.

After his trial in the Senate, 50 senators voted to remove him from office for obstruction of justice and 45 for perjury. It fell far short of the 67 votes needed to convict him and remove him from office, but if you consider that half the senators believed he should be removed from office, it was far more serious than Clinton would have people believe.

Clinton was also found in contempt of court had to pay a $90,000 fine and give up his law license in Arkansas for five years.

Paula Corbin Jones claimed that when Clinton was governor of Arkansas and she was a low level state employee Clinton exposed himself to her in a hotel room. Jones sued Clinton and Clinton settled the lawsuit, agreeing to pay Jones $850,000 but not admitting guilt.

He said he left the White House $16 million in debt but didn’t mention that before leaving the White House he and Hillary Clinton, who didn’t own a home, bought two multimillion dollar houses.

In typical Clinton fashion, Bill Clinton responds to his questioner that he doesn’t know all the facts. Bill Clinton is right; only he and Monica Lewinsky know all the facts on their relationship. But that doesn’t mean that people don’t know enough to make a judgment.

Bill Clinton was the most powerful man in the world and Lewinsky was a White House intern who was almost 30 years younger. It is interesting that at the time the affair was revealed, Lewinsky was rarely referred to as a White House intern because she had been transferred to the Pentagon to try and protect her from Clinton. But the affair – and it is a real stretch to call it an affair – started while she was a White House intern.

According to Lewinsky’s book, the so-called affair worked something like this: Clinton would call Lewinsky in the middle of the night. She would come to the Oval Office and service him, sometimes while he was on the phone. They would talk for a few minutes and she would leave. No money changed hands, so it wasn’t exactly prostitution; but otherwise it sounds a lot like it. It certainly wasn’t any kind of mutual relationship. He was the president of the United States and she was a White House intern, and then a low level federal employee who was allowed to see the president only because she provided him with sexual gratification.

Clinton denied the whole thing until Lewinsky produced the blue dress with absolute proof that she was telling the truth and Clinton was lying. He lied to the American people and he lied under oath.

What is absolutely astounding is that the mainstream media are so emboldened by the #metoo movement that Clinton is now being asked about it. For 20 years the mainstream media have acted as if none of it happened. Clinton has made thousands of public appearances and given countless interviews but he wasn’t asked about his sexual relationship with a White House intern or his impeachment.

No wonder Clinton got mad when finally asked. Clinton had no reason not to think that he could go on a tour to promote the book he co-wrote and make millions of dollars without being questioned about his past. But Clinton misjudged the mood of the American people, just as his wife misjudged the mood of the American people in 2016. Hillary Clinton thought that being Hillary Clinton was enough to get her elected president and that turned out to be false.

Bill Clinton thought that all was forgotten about his extremely public misbehavior while president and he was wrong.

Perhaps the American people have finally decided that they have had enough lies from the Clintons.

Who knows, maybe now Hillary Clinton will be asked about her part in covering up all of the previous sexual misdeeds of her husband. Perhaps the next interviewer will ask Bill Clinton about Juanita Broaddrick, who has been telling anyone who would listen that Bill Clinton raped her. Or maybe they will ask him why he paid Paula Corbin Jones $850,000 if what she was saying was all lies.

*****

Some people want to have a constitutional convention or a convention of the states to rewrite the US Constitution. Some good arguments can be made for rewriting the Construction. When it was written slavery was legal and women were not allowed to vote.

But the idea of the people we have running the country today rewriting the Constitution is terrifying. Imagine how long it would be. A relatively simple tax reform bill is 2,000 pages long. The Constitution would have to be at least 50,000 pages, maybe more.

But I do think that a lot of the problems in the country could be solved by simply repealing one amendment, and it’s one that nobody ever talks about but the one that seems to have put us where the federal government has moved into every aspect of our lives in a big way. I think that would not be possible without the 16th Amendment, which gives the federal government the power to levy income tax.

Before the ability to levy income tax was granted to the federal government, it was a relatively poor organization. Now it spends about $4 trillion a year – admittedly about a fourth of that is borrowed – but even $3 trillion is a lot of money.

What if the federal government only had $1 trillion to spend every year and the vast majority of that went to the federal government’s prime purpose, the military? It wouldn’t have the money to enforce laws about just about everything.

The states would have a lot more power than they have today. People who didn’t like the laws in one state could simply move to one that had laws they did like, or at least hated less.

It would never happen, but imagine a federal government that didn’t have a limitless amount of wealth. The founding fathers never imagined a federal government that would be as immensely powerful as the federal government is today, and much of that power is derived, not from the Constitution, but simply from money.

*****

The Democrats are already lining up to run against Trump in 2020, and it looks good for Trump.

Former Vice President Joe Biden is supposedly testing the waters. Hillary Clinton has never gotten out of the water and Sen. Elizabeth Warren has been running since Nov. 9, 2016, when Hillary Clinton finally conceded.

What is going to be really fun in 2020 is that according to the Democrats there is nothing wrong with the FBI placing informants in presidential campaigns and looking high and low for any evidence of wrongdoing. It will be a big help to the Trump campaign to have all of that information about what is going on in the campaigns of his Democratic opponents. And since the Democrats believe that it is perfectly acceptable for the president to use the FBI to spy on the presidential campaign of the opposing party, it’s hard to see how they can complain.

In fact, with the FBI spying on Hillary Clinton, the public might finally find out exactly what her health problems are. Healthy people do not completely collapse so they have to be dragged to a waiting Secret Service vehicle when the temperature is in the 70’s. The public might also find out why Hillary Clinton is dressing like it’s midwinter in June and what that thing is that pokes up under the back of her jacket. Maybe she is wearing a back brace because she has pneumonia again.

But it will be ever so much fun. Trump can get the reports from the FBI and tweet them out for the world to see. If Hillary Clinton is informed of the questions before a debate, as she was in 2016, everyone will know that she knows the questions and who told her.

It’s going to be really hard for anyone to beat Trump if he has the FBI and the intelligence apparatus of the United States working for him, and according to the Democrats there is no reason he shouldn’t have.

*****

What is the mainstream media’s problem with Melania Trump? She had surgery and then was out of sight for a while. Why is this even a story? We don’t know much about the surgery that she had, and if the past is any guide to the present we probably were not told the truth about what the surgery was, but she was in the hospital for five days.

People who have open heart surgery are released from the hospital after two days, so it seems safe to assume that it was serious surgery. After the surgery she went home to the White House to recuperate for a couple of weeks. How is that in the least unusual?

Melania Trump is an extremely attractive woman and also a woman who cares a great deal about how she looks. It seems perfectly normal for her to not want her picture blasted all over the world looking poorly. So perhaps she took a little longer before making a public appearance than some old bald fat guy who doesn’t give a hoot about how he looks, but that is not a crime.

If this goes on much longer the left will be demanding a special prosecutor to investigate where Melania Trump has been and exactly what she has been doing.