According to news reports, special prosecutor Bob Mueller has threatened to subpoena President Donald Trump if he doesn’t agree to be questioned by Mueller.
If it comes down to that, I hope that Trump refuses and takes the case to the Supreme Court. Mueller was appointed special prosecutor, not supreme dictator. If he has found evidence of illegal collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, he should put his cards on the table and Trump can decide whether or not to answer his inquiries.
If this is simply a fishing expedition, which is what it appears to be, then Trump should refuse and let the Supreme Court decide whether or not a special prosecutor has unlimited power.
Mueller doesn’t appear to have any evidence of illegal collusion by the Trump campaign and is now after Trump for obstruction of justice based on illegally leaked classified memos by Mueller’s good friend fired FBI Director Jim Comey.
What this boils down to is the classic disgruntled former employee attempting to get back at his old boss. It’s nothing new. It happens in every business with more than a couple of employees. What makes this different is that the disgruntled former employee has a cadre of powerful friends such as Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed his friend Mueller to investigate the firing of their mutual friend Comey.
For Attorney General Jeff Sessions to say hello to the Russian ambassador at an event and to meet with him about Senate business is a conflict of interest so severe that Sessions had to recuse himself from the investigation into Russian collusion. But Rosenstein, Mueller and Comey being buddies is no conflict of interest. The ways of Washington boggle the mind.
This is nothing but the deep state or the swamp trying to oust Trump who said he was going to drain the swamp. Trump had every right to fire Comey, and if he had been a little more aware of how Washington works when he was elected, he would have fired Comey, Rosenstein, former acting Attorney General Sally Yates and a long list of other left-wing operatives in his administration on day one.
Trump is actually being punished for trying to work with people who not only didn’t want to work with him but were working behind the scenes to oust him from office.
The best course of action for Trump at this point might be to fire Sessions, get an attorney general who supports him and who will rein Mueller in or fire him outright.
*****
It appears that to become a card-carrying member of the White House press corps, you have to check your brain at the door.
Presidents, even Republican presidents, have traditionally attended the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. The reason is not that other presidents liked the press corps more than Trump, but because other presidents needed the press corps. Presidents like Ronald Reagan and the Bush boys knew that going to the dinner and telling some jokes at their own expense would win them a few days or weeks of less critical press coverage. Reporters, even White House reporters, are humans, and having laughed with the president for a few hours makes a difference.
Trump doesn’t need the press corps because he communicates directly with the people through tweets and it looks like regular call-ins to Fox News. Trump constantly calls the mainstream media “the most dishonest people in the world” and they constantly prove him right. If Trump had gone and made some jokes at his own expense, then the mainstream media fact checkers would no doubt have fact checked Trump’s jokes and they all would have been deemed false.
And the White House press corps came through with a great present for Trump far better than anything he would have received had he been there. They allowed a comedian to perform who was so vile, so gross and so inappropriate that even a few honest card carrying Hillary Clinton lovers said she went too far.
Michelle Wolf didn’t try to offend everyone, but she did go out of her way to offend anyone with a sense of decency. Abortion is not funny. It’s not appropriate to make fun of a woman’s appearance. In the beginning, Wolf received some scattered laughter, but as she grew more profane and politically biased, she even lost the liberal audience and took to trying to explain her jokes to the audience – always a sign a comedian is losing the crowd.
So she attacked Trump, Trump’s ideas and Trump’s staff – particularly the women.
Proving exactly what Trump has said all along to be absolutely true, the White House press corps is far too partisan and anti-Trump to report fairly on the Trump administration.
The White House Correspondents’ Association hired Wolf. One would hope that they did a little research and knew exactly what kind of jokes she would tell. The White House Correspondents’ Association got what they wanted – someone who would relentlessly attack Trump and anyone associated with Trump.
I suppose when they listened to her without Sarah Sanders, Kellyanne Conway or anyone with even a moderate political bent in the room, they all thought she was hilariously funny. I hope that when they heard her on Saturday night they had enough sense to be embarrassed. She wasn’t funny unless you’re the kind of person who thinks torturing small animals is funny.
But to any American who was thinking that maybe this Trump guy is on to something, she proved that Trump is. She proved that there is no way that Trump can hope to get fair or honest reporting from the mainstream media that crowd into the White House briefing room every day.
Where are the apologies from the mainstream media outlets who participated in hiring Wolf and giving her far more exposure than she deserves? Maybe someone has apologized, but most are silent. Why? Because they didn’t think it was that bad. They think that Trump and the people who work for him got what they deserved.
And Trump got more proof that when he points to the press and says, “Those are the most dishonest people on earth,” he’s right.
If there is a White House Correspondents’ Dinner next year, not only should Trump not attend, he should ask that no one who works for the White House attend. Let the White House correspondents do whatever they want to do, but don’t help them give the event some validity.
*****
Trump politically can’t afford to fire special prosecutor Mueller, but there are other options. Mueller could be forced to recuse himself from his own investigation because of his close personal and professional ties with fired FBI Director Comey.
Or this is a better one: Trump should have some tough attorneys in the Justice Department figure out how to arrest Mueller. Certainly there must some honest, non-Barack Obama-loving attorneys in the Justice Department. He would have to get them out from under Attorney General Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein, but Mueller and his team are really good at finding reasons to arrest people that have nothing to do with the investigation they are conducting. Why not do the same to them?
Or maybe Trump needs to bypass the Justice Department all together and have Mueller arrested by law enforcement in some state. Or they could do what the FBI under Mueller did to the daughter of former Congressman Curt Weldon on the eve of an election he lost. They could just get a warrant from a friendly judge and go into Mueller’s house and take all the computers, phones and every piece of paper they can find. No charges would ever be brought, but the media would be alerted to the raid so Mueller could be on television in his bathrobe. Maybe he would even lose control and start yelling, “Do you know who I am?” or something catchy like that, which would be captured by law enforcement on their videos and then leaked to the media.
If Trump doesn’t act, Mueller is going to bring some charges against Trump because Mueller has a long history of first deciding that someone is guilty and then finding some charges to file against them.
Mueller apparently has no conscience about his actions. He put four men in Massachusetts in jail for life for murders he knew they didn’t commit. Mueller knew they didn’t commit the murders because an informant for the FBI or the informant’s men did commit them. The men Mueller put in prison were criminals, there is no doubt about that, so evidently Mueller didn’t care that he put them in prison where two of them died for murders he knew they didn’t commit. Eventually, two got out and received $100 million from the federal government. Mueller and Comey, who were both involved, were promoted.
Deputy FBI Director Andy McCabe was fired for simply telling lies to FBI authorities three or four times, and a couple of those were under oath. McCabe must have been thinking, “They fired me for that? I’ve done much worse than that.” Why hasn’t McCabe been arrested and why hasn’t his house been searched?
Comey leaked classified information, which is a felony. Why hasn’t he been arrested? Mueller has arrested Trump associates for far less, but evidently he doesn’t arrest Trump’s enemies, only his friends.
*****
I don’t think that patience is one of Trump’s strong suits, but in the entire Russian collusion probe he has been amazingly patient. He has said all along that there was no collusion between his campaign and the Russian government. He has repeatedly called the investigation of special prosecutor Mueller a “witch hunt,” but he has not stopped the investigation.
After a year, Mueller has gone far enough. He is no longer investigating anything that is remotely connected to Russian collusion, but he and his team of partisan Hillary Clinton supporters are looking for any dirt they can dig up on Trump.
Mueller was not hired to find any questionable activity of Trump during his long career as a businessman. Whether or not he had sex with some woman over a decade ago and whether or not his lawyer settled a claim out of court with her is really none of Mueller’s business.
At this point, it appears that the judge handling the case of former National Security Advisor retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn believes Flynn was railroaded by the Mueller team. Since members of his team are known for and have been reprimanded by the courts for just such activity, it’s not a stretch to think they are doing what they have done in the past.
If federal District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan didn’t believe that Flynn was getting a raw deal, why did he order Mueller’s team to hand over all its exculpatory evidence to Flynn’s attorneys during the sentencing phase of the trial? It is a highly unusual move. Sullivan has every right to order it, but it wouldn’t make any sense unless Sullivan had reason to believe that it will cause Flynn to ask the court to allow him to change his plea.
The evidence of collusion by Mueller’s team is strong. Why did Judge Rudolph Contreras, who is a close personal friend of FBI agent Peter Strzok, recuse himself from the sentencing phase of the case? How could it be acceptable for him to preside over the acceptance of the guilty plea but not over the sentencing?
Although it is difficult for Trump to get Sessions to come out from hiding under his desk, it is time for Trump to order Sessions to either start acting like the attorney general or go home to Alabama. Sessions recused himself from the Russian collusion investigation because he talked to Russians during the campaign. As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, you would expect Sessions to be speaking with ambassadors on a regular basis. He shouldn’t have recused himself for doing his job as a US senator.
But Sessions didn’t recuse himself from the Stormy Daniels case or from anything involving Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen. It’s time for Sessions to assert himself and state that since the special prosecutor is no longer investigating anything that is even remotely related to Russian collusion he is no longer recused from dealing with the special prosecutor. Then he needs to thank Mueller for his work and send him home.
Following that, he needs to offer Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein the choice of resigning to spend more time with his family or being fired and possibly brought up on charges of obstructing justice.
Then Sessions needs to call FBI Director Chris Wray into his office and ask why agent Strzok and attorney Lisa Page are still employed by the FBI. The fact that they sent 50,000 texts to each other is a pretty good indication that the two were more interested in their relationship than doing their jobs. The texts also indicate that the two scheduled their workdays, not around work, but around when they could meet. Having an affair with a co-worker is one thing, having two workers who appear to be using their jobs as a way to spend time together is another.
If that isn’t enough, there is more than enough evidence that the two were plotting to at the very least cause problems for their boss, the president of the United States, and some texts could be interpreted as seeking ways to remove him from office.
Sessions remains Trump’s biggest mistake so far in his presidency and it is time for Sessions to take action to fix some of the problems he created.
*****
The mainstream media are baffled by Trump’s foreign policy, which is understandable. His predecessor said the biggest issue facing the world was climate change – what was called global warming until the globe refused to cooperate in warming.
Trump sees the world through an entirely different lens and his goal in foreign relations is not to hamper American industry by excessive regulations on carbon production but to put American interests first.
For Trump it doesn’t matter if the country he is dealing with is a friend or an enemy, his first and foremost concern is what is best for Americans. It greatly simplifies his foreign policy efforts. If it is good for the United States he supports it, if it isn’t good for the United States he’s against it, whether it is trade, immigration or military aggression.
It seems like this would be the goal of all American presidents, but it hasn’t been. Obama put global issues ahead of American interests. Obama’s efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of the country put American industries at a huge disadvantage, particularly when competing with emerging economies where their was little if any concern about carbon production.
Trump is working to level the playing field as far as trade goes. If another country, whether friend or foe, puts high tariffs on US goods, then Trump’s plan is to put high tariffs on their goods coming into the US. He is also unwilling to cede the US right to determine its own trade policies to a third party that doesn’t put US interests first.
It all seems relatively simple, but it has the folks in Washington baffled.
*****
The US Senate is an extremely exclusive club in an era when exclusive clubs are falling by the wayside. The Senate club only has 100 members and the only way to join is to win a majority of votes in one of the 50 states. Whether a senator wins from California, the largest state with a population of 39 million, or Wyoming, the smallest with a population of 600,000, each senator has exactly the same amount of power once they join the club.
The problem in the Senate is an odd one in politics these days: It is too collegial to get anything done. When Sen. John McCain was running for president in 2008, his first choice for a vice presidential running mate was his good buddy Sen. Joe Lieberman, who, as luck would have it, is a Democrat and is the same senator that Al Gore picked to be his running mate.
Lieberman was evidently well loved in the Senate, but the very idea that a Republican running for president would pick a Democrat as his running mate is a good indication that the Senate is simply too focused on the Senate as a club and not nearly focused enough on the Senate as a governing body.
It’s great to have friends across the aisle, but it is also crucial to remember that while they are friends they are on a different team. Imagine a defensive back in the NFL whose best friend is a wide receiver on another team. The defensive back plays hard against most opponents but refuses to tackle his buddy on the other team. That defensive back would not last long in the NFL. But that is what is happening with the Senate Republicans. It’s a good comparison because the Democrats are not nearly so clubby when they have the majority. No Republicans voted for Obamacare and no concessions were made to try and get a Republican vote. The Democrats didn’t need a Republican vote and completely ignored the Republicans.
When the Democrats couldn’t get the far-left judges nominated by Obama through the Senate, they simply changed the rules so that Obama could appoint whomever he wanted.
But the Republicans, now in a similar position with Trump appointees, is hesitant to extend what the Democrats did to cover more appointments.
And then there is the filibuster. The filibuster rule is just that – a rule. It can be changed by a majority vote of the Senate. The Republicans have a majority and could eliminate that rule so that it no longer required 60 votes to get a bill through the Senate. But the Republicans won’t do it.
The Republicans are not going to control the Senate forever, although it appears they will most likely still control the Senate after the 2018 elections. But if and when the Democrats do get control again, it is likely, judging from their past behavior, that they will throw the filibuster rule out the window, taking away most of the power of the minority party in the Senate.
Then what will the Republican senators say about the great traditions of the Senate? Perhaps the filibuster rule was a good one when it was initiated, but if the Republicans in Congress hope to get anything done in the next three years, assuming they maintain majorities in both Houses, then they have to change the rules.
*****
When Trump called North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un “Little Rocket Man,” the left and the mainstream media said that any chance of negotiating with North Korea was over.
When Trump pointed out to Little Rocket Man that the US had a lot more nuclear weapons than North Korea, and that there was no doubt that our nuclear weapons actually worked, the left and the mainstream media said that there was no chance Kim Jong Un would ever negotiate anything with the US again, and they predicted an attack by North Korea.
But take a look at what actually happened. Kim Jong Un sent athletes and cheerleaders to the Olympic Games in South Korea and now, in an historic first, Kim Jong Un has crossed over into South Korea and South Korean President Moon Jae-in has crossed over into North Korea. Kim Jong Un has also agreed to meet with Trump and is discussing denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.
These are historic breakthroughs and they were brought about, not through the appeasement practiced by Presidents Bill Clinton, George Bush and Obama. Not by sending former President Jimmy Carter to North Korea to grovel and apologize for all the ills in the world, which according to Carter are the fault of the US. No, they were brought about by the rhetoric of Trump, who simply reminded Kim Jong Un of the realities of the world.
The US could, without much effort, obliterate North Korea from the face of the earth. North Korea, by contrast, could fire its entire nuclear arsenal at the US and, even if the missiles actually reached the US, and even if the bombs actually exploded, it would be a tragedy for the US, the loss of life would be mourned, but there is no way that Kim Jong Un could bring the US to its knees. And if he did attack the US, Kim Jong Un and much of his country would be turned to ash.
Kim Jong Un is no dummy. He knew he could do whatever he wanted and Obama was not going to mess with him. Look at the message Obama sent when Syrian President Bashar al-Assad did exactly what Obama told him would result in US military reprisal. Assad crossed the line and nothing happened except some barrels of some chemical were loaded on a Russian ship and supposedly destroyed. Assad probably has lots of barrels and who knows what was actually in them. But there was no military reprisal.
Look what Obama did when Putin invaded Ukraine and took Crimea by force. Obama froze the bank account of some people that Putin knew. Not much of a loss for Russia when they got Crimea in the bargain.
But with Trump, Kim Jong Un realized he was dealing with an entirely different kind of US president – a president who was not going to sit back and allow the most powerful nation in the world to be bullied by a third rate dictator. The result is that Kim Jong Un wants to negotiate.
Isn’t that amazing. It seems that negotiating from strength really does work.
*****
This should be in News of the Weird, but leftwing activists who double as mainstream media journalists, and to be the latter you have to be the former, are beating each other up over the fact that they didn’t support Hillary Clinton enough.
Wow. It’s hard to believe that even the far left would think that stronger support for Hillary Clinton was possible. I suppose The New York Times and The Washington Post could have run huge banner headlines for the entire week before the election reading, “Vote Hillary Clinton.” They did just about everything else.
They didn’t report that whether she was tired, sick, lazy or wildly overconfident, she didn’t campaign very hard. They didn’t report that she had a lot of trouble attracting people to her campaign events or that she didn’t have anything much to say when she did appear at campaign events.
The fact that she had frequent coughing fits and couldn’t go up or down even a couple of steps without assistance was overlooked by the mainstream media. Can you imagine if Trump had started having strange coughing fits when he spoke and had to be assisted up a couple of steps by men on either side? It would have been front-page news.
What if Trump had collapsed at an event and had to be carried to the waiting Secret Service vehicle and then that vehicle didn’t take him to the hospital but to his daughter’s apartment? The speculation in the mainstream media would have been all any of the talking heads talked about for weeks. The would have had medical expert after medical expert on talking about the evidence that Trump was suffering from terminal syphilis or that his behavior was consistent with someone who had had one too many shock therapy treatments. Or maybe that it was evidence that he was a heroin addict. The mainstream media would not have talked or written about anything else.
But Hillary Clinton had pneumonia, a perfectly respectable disease, and the mainstream media accepted that it wasn’t anything to worry about because the Hillary Clinton campaign said that it wasn’t. Why she still can’t go up or down a flight of stairs without help, since you have to assume she no longer has pneumonia, could be questioned, but the mainstream media aren’t going to do it.
*****
All this talk of Russian collusion and Obama’s huge fear of angering Russia by interfering in Syria gives the impression that Russia is a major world power, which is exactly the impression Russian President Vladimir Putin wants people to have.
The reality is that Russia’s economy is about the half the size of the economy of California. It’s not even one of the top 10 economies in the world. The US spends $554.2 billion a year on its military. Russia spends $69.2 billion. The two countries economically and militarily are not even in the same ballpark.
A lot of Americans think of Russia as kind of a new name for the Soviet Union, but it isn’t. Russia is just a piece of the Soviet Union. If Obama had had four more years as president, Russia might have expanded its reach like it did when Obama allowed Russia to take over Crimea, which is legally a part of Ukraine.
The fact that the US had a treaty with Ukraine to protect it was conveniently ignored by Obama and by the mainstream media. The US convinced Ukraine to give up its nuclear arsenal in return for a guarantee of protection from the US. Ukraine did give up its nuclear arsenal, and when attacked by Russia, Obama decided not to honor the treaty.
Since Trump has been president Putin hasn’t attacked any other countries and it doesn’t appear likely that he will.
