Media Attacks Trump on Russia Hacking, but Ignores Real News about British Military Weakness and Russian Military Build-up

There is no question that the longer the Russian hacking story stays in the mainstream media's focus, the more opportunity Progressive Democrat losers have to argue that Trump is a flawed President elected by Russia. We've heard all that and are tired of the MSM song and dance. But it stays in their repertoire, nevertheless. • • • PRIEBUS TALKS TO FBI AND THE MSM GOES BALLSITIC. The Washington Examiner reported on Sunday that "the war between the White House and CNN escalated to nuclear Friday when Trump spokesman Sean Spicer blasted the cable network as 'pathetic' for running a story about pressure on the FBI over alleged contacts with Russia that his team had spent hours explaining as wrong. In a background 'gaggle' with reporters Friday, Spicer directly challenged CNN's Joe Johns, telling him that he was 'disgusted with the way CNN handled the story,' according to a White House official in the session. Other words from Spicer included 'irresponsible and pathetic,' 'disgraceful,' and 'indefensible.' • There isn't much left to say after the Spicer unloading on CNN -- except "yes." • The issue is CNN's promotion of a story Thursday and Friday that the White House pressured the FBI to challenge an earlier New York Times story on alleged calls between Russian intelligence officials and Trump's campaign team. The White House said that the FBI told the White House that the report was wrong. And during a meeting on another topic, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus asked FBI officials to dispute the Times story. They declined, and instead authorized Priebus to say it was wrong last week. • End of 'story?' Not for CNN. The story was revived by CNN's pressure report and the suggestion that the White House violated a standing practice of not discussing pending cases with the FBI. CNN commentator Joe Johns raised the rule, which CNN pundits have been beating on TV, and Spicer explained that it includes a "carve out" for public affairs. Thus, it was OK to talk about it because Priebus and the FBI officials were discussing the Times story, not any investigation into contacts. Spicer told Johns to "get his facts straight," adding : "I know this is a CNN issue. You guys have a credibility problem." • End of the 'story?" Not for CNN -- they never learn, do they? It stood by its story. And that led to Democrats and Trump critics, and their propagandists in the MSM, to jump on the CNN angle. The Democratic National Committee compared it to Watergate -- yes, once more, when the Prog-Dems run out of words for the GOP and President Trump, Watergate is always their fallback position. • Trump and the White House have repeatedly denied they had discussions with Russian officials during the campaign, but critics and some in the media keep the story alive because they are supporters of Hillary Clinton and want to believe she was hurt by email leaks, some from her own campaign manager and the Democratic National Committee, that were reportedly orchestrated by Russians. The AP on Friday wrote up the administration's timeline in a report that included the news that it was the FBI that reached out to the White House about clearing up the Times story : "White House officials said it was the FBI that first raised concerns about the Times reporting but told Priebus the bureau could not weigh in publicly on the matter. The officials said [Deputy Director Andrew] McCabe and [FBI Director James] Comey instead gave Priebus the go-ahead to discredit the story publicly, something the FBI has not confirmed." But the AP report didn't stop CNN from later running a headline claiming that it was the White House that pressured the FBI. "We didn't do that," Spicer said at the gaggle. • • • THE AP REPORT ON THE FBI STORY. The AP's Julie Pace wrote : "The White House on Friday defended chief of staff Reince Priebus against accusations he breached a government firewall when he asked FBI Director James Comey to publicly dispute media reports that Trump campaign advisors had been frequently in touch with Russian intelligence agents. President Donald Trump's spokesman, Sean Spicer, argued Priebus had little choice but to seek Comey's assistance in rebutting what Spicer said were inaccurate reports about contacts during last year's presidential campaign. The FBI did not issue the statement requested by Priebus and has given no sign one is forthcoming. 'I don't know what else we were supposed to do,' Spicer said. The Justice Department has policies in place to limit communications between the White House and the FBI about pending investigations. Trump officials on Friday not only confirmed contacts between Priebus and the FBI, but engaged in an extraordinary public airing of those private conversations. Spicer said it was the FBI that first approached the White House about the veracity of a New York Times story asserting that Trump advisors had contacts with Russian intelligence officials during the presidential campaign. Spicer said Priebus, at a previously scheduled meeting, then asked both FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe if they would condemn the story publicly, which they declined to do. 'The chief of staff said, well, you've put us in a very difficult situation,' Spicer said. 'You've told us that a story that made some fairly significant accusations was not true. And now you want us to just sit out there.' The FBI would not comment on the matter or verify the White House account. The CIA also declined to comment." • The AP reported that the White House also asked for help from Republicans on Capitol Hill to talk to reporters about the New York Times story. Jack Langer, a spokesman for Representative Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said the White House asked Nunes to speak with one reporter. THE KEY COMMENT from Langer was that he said the chairman told the journalist the same thing that he has said publicly many times before - that he had asked but not received any information from intelligence officials that would warrant a committee investigation of any American citizens' contacts with Russian intelligence officials. Langer acknowledged that this could make it harder to convince people that the House investigation into the matter will be independent and free of political bias, but he said the White House did not tell Nunes what to tell the reporter, or give him "talking points." • The ranking Democrat on the committee, California Representative Adam Schiff, said if the White House indeed contrived to have intelligence officials contradict unfavorable news reports, it threatens the independence of the intelligence community : "Intelligence professionals are not there to serve as the president's PR firm. For its part, the intelligence community must resist improper efforts like these by the administration to politicize its role." • The Washington Post reported Friday that the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee also was enlisted by the White House. The newspaper quoted Senator Richard Burr, saying he had conversations about Russia-related news reports with the White House and engaged with news organizations to dispute articles by The New York Times and CNN. • The ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner of Virginia, said Friday night that he had called CIA Director Mike Pompeo and Burr to express his "grave concerns about what this means for the independence" of the congressional investigation already underway. Warner said he emphasized to the two that he would "not accept any process that is undermined by political interference." He said if the Senate Intelligence Committee cannot conduct a proper probe, he will support whomever can do it. • • • TRUMP AND THE INTEL COMMUNITY. Trump has accused intelligence officials of releasing classified information about him to the media, stating in a tweet Friday morning that the FBI was "totally unable to stop the national security 'leakers' that have permeated our government for a long time." • House Democrat Leader Nancy Pelosi accused Priebus of "an outrageous breach of the FBI's independence" and called on the Justice Department's inspector general to look into all conversations Priebus and other White House officials have held with the FBI on ongoing investigations. Pelosi said : "The rule of law depends on the FBI's complete independence, free from political pressure from the targets of its investigations." • THE DEMOCRATS SEEM TO HAVE FORGOTTEN the day last summer when Bill Clinton boarded Attorney Genral Loretta Lynch's plane and spent 38 minutes talking about "golf and grandchildren" while the DOJ's FBI was investigating Clinton's wife, Hillary, who was exxonerated by FBI Director Comey a few days later, after Lynch recused herself from deciding the Hillary email server case because of her talk with Bill. Recused -- but what Bill told her about her future under a 'President Hillary' or what Lynch told Comey, remains a mystery. • • • THE RUSSIAN HACKING. President Trump has been shadowed by questions about possible ties to Russia since winning the election. US intelligence agencies have "concluded" that Russia meddled in the campaign in an effort to help Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton. That there is no proof of this, that there has been no evidence presented anywhere to support the contention, is unimportant to the Prog-Dems and MSM, who are using the Russian gambit to try to bring down the Trump presidency prematurely. • • • THE MEDIA PERSISTS IN IT WAR ON TRUMP. Trump has been vociferously critical of the press, spending a large part of his 77-minute a press conference last week in teaching the media how to ask questions, reminding them of their low approval ratings, and leveraging national press coverage to skewer the press corps. Trump supporters love it. His base adores his direct words. And for good reason -- Trump is telling the political media what consumers have been saying all along -- you are biased. We would think that after a month of public humiliation for their obvious preferences for all things Progressive, Democrat and Clintonian, that after being exposed as biased in the extreme in a profession where bias should not even exist, members of the political media set would start asking themselves questions. But, no -- they persist -- seeing no need to mull over how they ended up becoming an “enemy of the American people.” Instead, they have taken the opposite approach -- and it has made them the laughingstock of the vast majority of Americans. They are so out of touch that the editor-in-chief of Reuters had to specifically instruct reporters in this frightening, new post-Obama world to : “get out into the country and learn more about how people live, what they think, what helps and hurts them, and how the government and its actions appear to them, not to us.” They should’ve been doing exactly that all along. The the self-important whining, the “un-American” hyperbole -- it all reinforces what Americans already believe about the media, and that is exactly what President Trump is saying. • • • A REAL ISSUE RELATING TO RUSSIA. In their continuing obsession with bringing down President Trump, the MSM has missed some really important news about Russia. • Reuters reported last week that the very Trump administration the media accuse of being in bed with Russia condemned an attack on special monitoring missions in eastern Ukraine and called on Russia and the separatist forces it backs to immediately observe the ceasefire under the Minsk agreements. The Trump State Department said : ‎"We condemn Friday's targeting of OSCE special monitoring mission (SMM) monitors and the seizure of a SMM unmanned aerial vehicle by combined-Russian separatist forces. It is imperative that these forces halt their attacks on civilian infrastructure, including the Donetsk water filtration station. We call on Russia and the separatist forces it backs to immediately observe the cease-fire, withdraw all heavy weapons, and allow full and unfettered access to the OSCE monitors." • The UK's National Interest journal reported on Saturday that a British military report states : "Russia could defeat the British Army's single combat-ready division 'in an afternoon.' " The headline blared “Over by Teatime,” when the British tabloid The Sun reported on the military evaluation. The Centre for Historical Analysis and Conflict Research (CHACR), a British Army think tank run by the Sandhurst military academy, held a two-day conference of active-duty and retired officers, which concluded that budget cuts have so depleted the army that it could be destroyed by a “competent enemy” such as Russia. Apparently, the British army is down to just 83,000 active-duty soldiers, from 102,000 in 2010. This means that Britain can field just one “war-fighting” division (compared to three million men and forty-six divisions in 1945). And even deployment of that sole division isn’t guaranteed, because of shortages of transport ships, cargo aircraft and tank transporter vehicles, according to CHACR. The Sunday Times said : “The last time the UK sent a division to war was in 2003 before the invasion of Iraq but experts believe it would currently not be able to deploy much more than a brigade of between 5,000 and 10,000 troops." The Times said that as the British Army shifts from small-unit counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, to potential big-unit mechanized warfare in eastern Europe, that combat-ready division is supposed to expand from thirty thousand soldiers to fifty thousand soldiers : "In other words, the bulk of Britain’s active-duty soldiers will be concentrated in a single oversized division, which doesn’t leave a great deal of depth and resilience when confronting Russia’s army of 750,000 active soldiers." The Times added : "Such brittleness may hamstring the British government from committing troops to operations. “The ‘prospect of losing the division in an afternoon’ will weigh heavily on the chain of command...as politicians appreciate the stakes involved in committing the division to battle.” The CHACR report acknowledged that Britain isn’t likely to fight a division-sized land battle today, but it also pointed out that it wasn’t inconceivable either. National Interest asked : “This raises an important question : is the British Army ready for such a possibility? If one merely sees preparedness through net manpower and kinetic force capacity, the answer might be a simple ‘no’: the British Army is at its smallest and has faced years of budget cuts.” • The British Ministry of Defense responded to the outcry with a bland statement that Britain is capable of deploying a division-sized force. Not surprisingly, the CHACR report was played up by Russian media such as RT and Sputnik News, as well as Iran’s PressTV. But, says National Interest : "Of course, when an army -- British, American or anyone else’s -- suffers budget cuts, there are always dire warnings coming out of the military–think tank complex. The greater shock would have been if the report had lauded Britain’s army for being in fine shape. Nor is it likely that Britain would fight a big land battle alone, rather than as part of a coalition that would include the United States. Nonetheless, Britain has the world’s fifth-largest economy, as well as an increasingly muscular foreign policy that has deployed troops to eastern Europe and the Middle East. And it can only muster a single combat division on short notice. What would Churchill have said?" • If we know Sir Winston at all, we know that he would have said now what he said in the 1930s to the British Parliament -- get ready because they are coming. • • • THE RUSSIAN MILITARY BUILD-UP CONTINUES. The Diplomat reported on February 24 that Russian TASS news agency has said : "the majority of missile units within the Russian Ground Forces (RGF) have been retrofitted with the short-range nuclear-capable road-mobile 9K720 Iskander-M ballistic missile system as the obsolete Soviet-era OTR-21 tactical missiles are being phased out." TASS was quoting the head of the RGF, Colonel-General Oleg Salyukov, who told reporters on February 22 that : "work continues in the ground forces to re-arm military units and formations with the modern types of armament and military hardware. The ground forces’ missile formations are switching over in a planned procedure from the Tochka-U tactical missile complex to the Iskander-M system. As of today, over 80 percent of missile formations have received the new missile systems.” The general noted that two more missile units will be re-armed with the Iskander-M ballistic missile in 2017. • Separately, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced on February 22 in the lower house of the Russian Parliament that the RGF will complete the switch to the new ballistic missile system by the end of 2017 : “We’ll complete the rearmament and the switchover to Iskander complexes across the country this year. Some of our [radar] stations are on experimental combat duty today but this year all of them will switch over to the mode of combat alert and we’ll fully cover the entire perimeter, all the country’s radar field for missiles of all types, all trajectories, including ballistic paths.” The Diplomat quotes an RGF spokesperson as saying that the RGF last test fired an Iskander-M missile in August 2016 during a large-scale military exercise in Russia’s Far East : “The launch was carried out from a training site in the Jewish Autonomous Area. The missile hit a target at a proving ground in the Amur region 300 kilometers away.” In February 2017, RGF reportedly fired four Iskander-M ballistic missiles against targets in Syria’s Idlib province, according to US press reports. • The two-stage solid propellant missile allegedly has a range of 400-500 kilometers (310 miles) and its nuclear-capable single warhead can carry a payload of about 700 kilograms. It has been specifically designed to evade Western missile defenses and reportedly is able to operate in temperatures ranging from -50 to 50 degrees Celsius (-58 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit). The tactical ballistic missile can be deployed to destroy many different targets, including missile and multiple launch rocket systems, artillery batteries, as well as command posts and communications centers. It can be armed with a variety of different warheads. The total number of 9K720 Iskander-M missile systems currently deployed in the RGF is estimated to be over 100. A shorter-range export variant of the 9K720 Iskander-M missile system has been offered to China, India, and South Korea. However, only the domestic version of the missile can be armed with a nuclear warhead. • • • DEAR READERS, instead of trying to bring down President Trump, the MSM ought to be reporting about his plans to return the US military to the superior position it held since the Second World War, until Obama began demolishing it. Instead of attacking Trump, the MSM ought to be supporting his calls for NATO allies to beef up their defenses to agreed levels. If the US is going to have to be prepared to defend Europe again -- this time in Ukraine and the Baltics -- at least Europe must be prepared to do its fair share to save itself. • And, doesn't that make Trump's efforts to open a new dialogue with Russia -- ignored by Obama and squelched by his accusing Russia of hacking -- a very reasonable and logical thing to do?? Now, if only the MSM could grasp that...