President Trump, It's Time to Wake Up, Smell the Stench, and Drain the Swamp

La Rochefoucauld said “hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue.” Today we might say that "Hypocrisy is the tribute Neo-Conservatives pay to Trump. • • • MAKE NO MISTAKE : TRUMP IS IN TROUBLE. The failure to repeal and replace Obamacare, which President Trump had so often promised to do, was a major defeat for his administration and for him personally. But, that is not the real news in the fiasco that occurred under Speaker Ryan's watch last Friday. The real disaster is that it is now clear that the Republican Party insiders in Congress do not support President Trump and do not have his back on anything that does not help them stay in power. We have elected a President to drain the swamp but he is being chewed to pieces by the GOP Neo-Con alligators lurking in its waters. The Neo-Con RINOs have forgotten, if they ever cared, who the real enemy of America is. Their return to Congress year after year suggests that their districts are filled with Republicans who do not pay attention to their elected officials' actions, or who agree with them. That makes Trump a double outsider, supported by the majority of the GOP base but rejected by his own party leadership. • What can Trump do??? That is the Big Question. Trump has to take control. Obama did it. He cleaned house. So should Trump. After the Obamacare non-vote, Trump should act decisively to salvage the situation now. He should call every GOP congressman into the Oval Office and let them know firmly that he is in charge, not the Freedom Caucus or John McCain and Lindsey Graham, and that they will be challenged by the GOP base in 2018 unless they get onboard with his agenda. • Breitbart News reminded us recently that House Speaker Paul Ryan “was caught on an audio file from October -- obtained by Breitbart News and published a couple weeks ago -- saying he is ‘not going to defend Donald Trump -- not now, not in the future.’ ” Did Trump know that?? Did Trump's staff tell him to be wary of Ryan?? Whatever the answers to those questions, Trump relied on Ryan to repeal and replace Obamacare. That is not Trump the Campaigner. That is not Trump the Business Dealmaker. That is Trump the fumbling junior politician being 'had' by practiced Washington RINO pro's • • • WHY ARE TRUMP'S ENEMIES STILL IN KEY POSITIONS? James Comey, for example. And the Justice Department’s civil rights division. American Thinker asks what Eric Treene is "still doing there? According to American Thinker, Eric Treene, Special Counsel for the Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, was treated in 2012 with condescension by Moslem Brotherhood operatives, making of Treene and Co. an errand boy, "asking them for email addresses of other contacts and setting them to perform the most menial 'gofer' duties. The DOJ even took lunch orders and picked up the tab, and in some cases asked them how much money they need for a little soiree they’re holding. It is astonishing." Yet Treene is still there, and doubtless still kowtowing. And he is not the only one, says American Thinker. A senior Trump administration official said last week : “We have members of the former administration at the highest levels who through their actions after January 20 have demonstrated their refusal to recognize the results of the general election. They have pursued, organized, and managed a comprehensive subversion of the new administration.” • The Washington Free Beacon reports that “in one instance, Trump administration officials found evidence that the administration’s executive order banning travel from certain Moslem-majority nations had been selectively altered to bring it more in line with Obama-era talking points. Several hours before the orders were set to be signed by Trump, officials noticed that language concerning ‘radical Islamic terrorism’ had been stripped from the order and replaced with Obama-era language about countering violent extremism. West Wing staffers quickly scrambled to rewrite the order to bring it back in line with Trump’s rhetoric.” • Things like this have to stop. Whoever did that should have been immediately identified and fired. Trump would have done it back in his Trump Tower days. What has happened to his feisty instinct for self-preservation?? It’s not too late for Trump. But it will be soon, if he doesn’t remember what and who got him elected in the first place, and get on with draining the swamp. • • • REPEAL AND REPLACE PAUL RYAN. I wish I had said that, but it was Eli Verschleiser, who quoted Ryan saying : “Doing big things is hard," in a press conference after the defeat of his bill to repeal and replace Obamacare. Verschleiser hammers Ryan : "Really? Then maybe the Speaker of the House -- and 2012 candidate for the second-highest job in the land -- should have picked an easier career. As Speaker, it was his job to round up the necessary votes to keep the commitments made by his majority for the past seven years since the Affordable Care Act became law. Perhaps the highest priority of the Republicans has been to repeal what many see as a disaster that creates more problems than it solves, hurts small businesses and is the embodiment of government meddling in private medicine. Premiums this year, for example, are set to rise 22 percent and insurers are opting out of the exchanges in droves. Crafting a bill that fixes those problems without creating worse ones isn’t easy, but the Republican Congress had plenty of time to work on it and build support among conservative policymakers and think tanks. Instead....they staked their own credibility and that of a President inexperienced in the legislative process on a risky, shortsighted gambit. With a President happy to sign the bill, the Speaker spent weeks negotiating, but in the end couldn’t deliver the 216 votes necessary. It’s like the old metaphor of a dog chasing a truck, left to wonder what happens once he catches it." • How can a Speaker so inept that he fumbled the first ball passed to him on the one-yard line be expected to handle tax reform, an issue so much more controversial and laden with 'pork barrel' gimmees from congressional godfathers? The answer is simple. Trump needs an adult in the Speaker's chair. He better find one quick -- and before he has another disastrous failure in the House, because a second legislative collapse would doom Trump to one term and torpedo real federal government reform to the depths of the swamp that Ryan and his Neo-Con cronies cannot seem, or do not want, to wade out of. • While there is no overt sign of a movement to replace Ryan, allies of the president are blaming Ryan, some privately and some openly. Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy, a longtime Trump friend, told Bloomberg News : “I think Paul Ryan did a major disservice to President Trump, I think the President was extremely courageous in taking on health care and trusted others to come through with a program he could sign off on.” There are lots of excuses floating around. Appearing on Meet the Press, Mick Mulvaney, Director of the Office of Management and Budget said this was a lesson that : “Washington is a lot more broken than President Trump thought it was...This place is a lot more rotten than we thought it was.” Get serious, Mulvaney. Trump had a pretty good idea what he was getting into. His campaign rhetoric was battleground tough. Maybe he had delusions that logic and reason would prevail. If that’s true, then where was Reince Priebus and the other GOP pro's to explain it to him?? Trump and his allies in Congress need to wake up and put in place leaders with the ability to skillfully expend precious presidential political capital for maximum impact, horse-trading with members to get legislation passed expeditiously, and before talking aobut bringing in Democrats. The time for talking about "Make America Great Again" is over. The rubber has hit the road. • • • THE PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRATS ARE ALIVE AND WELL. And, that brings me to Attorney General Jeff Sessions. He took on a very difficult task and so far, except for laying down the law to Sanctuary cities and states, his visible accomplishments are zero. Sessions does not have the leisure to spin out his Department of Justice agenda over four years. There is a 2018 mid-term election that could tilt the House into Democrat hands if the GOP does not do better than it is doing now. And that would lead to two things -- Hillary would be back in a flash as the 2020 presidential candidate and her campaign cry would be "Impeach Trump." • And, unless Sessions cleans house and starts to use the evidence that is piled knee-deep in his office to indict Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation, America will see another eight years of Obama II. • Newsmax published an interview last Sunday with former assistant FBI director James Kallstrom, who served during President Bill Clinton's administration. Kallstrom lashed out at "the felonious intelligence community leaks, saying it is 'disgusting' and 'disgraceful,' a 'fifth column' is embedded working against President Donald Trump." Kallstrom told The Cats Roundtable that : "From time to time there've been leaks, but nothing like today. We have a fifth column that's marching strong against our President, marching strong against our culture and the American way. And it is just disgusting." Kallstrom said "political appointments at high levels" have worked to discredit President Trump's election, adding : "I hope there is an investigation, and I hope we get to the bottom of it. How many people had that information? Where was it disseminated? Who made the decision to release the names of American citizens? We need to get to the bottom of it and get to the bottom of it quickly. And that's not a political thing. It doesn't matter what party you're from. This is about America and the rule of law." • Did AG Sessions hear that?? Is he "getting to the bottom" of the illegal 'unmasking' of Americans "incidentally intercepted" and then used as political pawns by the Obama cult and corrupt career embedded bureaucrats -- Kallstrom said the political embeds extend back to the Bill Clinton administration. Kallstrom said : "The Clinton people don't leave -- they don't leave until they're actually physically forced out of the building. For this group here, that's part of this fifth column, [you] have to blast them out with dynamite. They're going to do everything humanly possible to make the Donald Trump administration very difficult. Obama handed Trump a basketful of hand grenades with the pins pulled." • • • TRUMP IN BED WITH THE RUSSIANS? The continuing campaign to discredit President Trump is based on allegations that the Russians interfered in the US election. It is suggested that Hillary Clinton would have won the election if the Russians had not interfered. The ProgDems' mainstream media echoes accounts by Obama administration leftovers -- quoting anonymous sources, but without saying their information is "alleged." • On October 7, 2016, the director of national intelligence James Clapper issued a joint statement from the Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on election security. In it, they claimed that the hacked e-mails, "are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts." They added, "[W]e are not now in a position to attribute this activity to the Russian Government." This was enough for Representative Elijah Cummings to claim : "Experts agree that there is overwhelming evidence that Russia interfered with the 2016 Presidential election." California Representative Eric Swalwell claimed that Trump's denials are ridiculous : "He [Trump] is denying that the sun sets in the West." Senator John McCain called Russia's hacking "an unprecedented attack on our democracy" and suggested that it would be an act of war had Moscow's action's affected the results of the election. • The Washington insider narrative is that Trump is a tool of Putin. There is No Evidence for this. Instead, the evidence is that Obama illegally surveilled Trump and his team. But, the ProgDems are using the Russians as a tool to attack Trump and to oppose him on every issue. And, sadly, some of Trump's harshest critics are in his own party. Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham -- if their words reflect their positions -- would have been more comfortable working with a President Hillary Clinton than with a President Donald Trump. • • • JOHN PODESTA AND HILLARY LOVE RUSSIA. The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group has reported that Representative Louie Gohmert, a conservative House Republican from Texas, is calling for a congressional investigation of John Podesta’s role with Rusnano, a state-run company founded by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Rusnano is a special company formed by decree at the direction of Putin for a small group of Putin cronies called the “Kooperative Ozero,” that masterminded the takeover of big swaths of the Russian economy. The Ozero group are eight men, including Putin, who now run state-owned banks, the news media and oil and gas companies. • Podesta -- Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign chairman and former President Bill Clinton's White House chief of staff -- first made contact with the Rusnano in 2011, when he joined the boards and executive committees of three related entities, Boston-based Joule Unlimited, Rotterdam-based Joule Global Holdings, and Joule Global Stichting, the company’s controlling interest. All are high-tech renewable energy enterprises. Three months after Podesta’s arrival, Joule Unlimited accepted a 1 billion ruble investment from Rusnano -- that is $35 million in US Dollars. The firm also awarded a Joule board seat in February 2012 to Anatoly Chubais, Rusnano’s CEO, who has been called corrupt. Podesta has attempted to downplay his relationship with Joule and Rusnano, and with reason. One potential legal problem for him relates to the time he joined former President Barack Obama’s White House staff in 2014 as a senior counselor and failed to reveal his 2011 Joule stock vesting agreement in his government financial disclosure form. Then, he failed to disclose 75,000 common shares of Joule stock he received, as disclosed in a WikiLeaks email. After Podesta began working at the White House, his lawyer indicated in a January 6, 2014, email that he had not yet finished the legal work on the private transfer of the stock to a family-owned entity called Leonido Holdings, LLC. • American Thinker's John Deitrich laid out the story -- Gohmert’s call for an examination of Podesta’s Russian ties comes as Washington is in the grips of a set of allegations about Russian ties to President Donald Trump and his aides, as well as charges of Russian influence during the Presidential election. Gohmert is troubled about the Podesta-Russia connection, telling The Daily Caller News Foundation : “This certainly needs to be reviewed to see if there really is something nefarious going on with these activities.” Gohmert sits on the House Judiciary Committee and is vice chair of its subcommittee on crime, terrorism and homeland security. The Podesta-Russia connection also could rekindle a new round of questions about Clinton relationships with foreign figures -- in this case, Chubais. Anatoly Chubais, Russia’s deputy prime minister in the 1990s, in part owes his personal fortunes to Bill Clinton, who embraced him as a “reformer” in former President Boris Yeltsin’s government. Clinton’s ally instead created the new generation of oligarch tycoons who today rule Russia. Podesta’s role at Joule was largely unknown until last year when the nonprofit Government Accountability Institute (GAI) published a highly-detailed report on Russian ties to Podesta and the Clintons. An ongoing federal lawsuit -- Neas Ltd, v. Rusnano -- which is now before the US District Court for Northern California, suggests Podesta and others at Joule may have unwittingly assisted Rusnano in a scheme hatched to move billions of weak rubles into valuable US Dollars by parking them as “investments” in high-tech companies in Boston and in Silicon Valley. A deposition by Ilya Ponomarev, an architect of Russia’s innovation enterprises and the former chairman of the innovations subcommittee in the Russian Parliament, shed light on Rusnano’s plans in the United States. He says its primary objective “was the transformation of Rusnano from a state-owned corporation to an enterprise suitable for operations in the United States.” Ponomarev now lives in exile in the United States. Shortly after then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced her “reset” with Russia, state-owned Russian companies began targeting American companies in Boston and Silicon Valley as investment opportunities. In May 2010, under Hillary Clinton’s leadership, the Department of State facilitated a visit by 22 American hi-tech and venture capital firms to Skolkovo, Russia’s version of Silicon Valley, according to GAI. Rusnano appears to have been a leader in the Russian investment move into the United States. Chubais created a Rusnano “investment fund” and set up a so-called “Russian Innovation Center” in Silicon Valley, according to the Neas lawsuit. The Russian company opened in Palo Alto a company called DJF Venture Fund, a venture capital fund that advised the Russian company. Rusnano targeted Boston where Joule’s US operations were centered. In 2010, Chubais joined a Rusnano “road show” and gave a presentation at MIT. A Rusnano managing director also addressed the Harvard Faculty Club. An October 5, 2011, Rusnano presentation by Dmitry Akhanov, Rusnano USA President, promised American businessmen “cheap money.” Rusnano alluded to $4.6 billion in government contributions and $5.7 billion in state guarantees. Lucia Ziobro, the special agent in charge at the FBI’s Boston field office, issued an “extraordinary warning” to Boston-area high-tech firms in 2014 about Russian investors in startups like Joule : “The FBI believes the true motives of the Russian partners, who are often funded by their government, is to gain access to classified, sensitive and emerging technology from the companies.” Podesta’s emails also show how in 2015 he continued to help Rusnano even though he had left Joule’s boards. • Are AG Sessions and FBI Director Comey paying attention to John Podesta's Russian ties? David Satter, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Wall Street Journal reporter who covered Russia, called Chubais as “a very shady figure....Chubais was in charge of the whole privatization process during the 1990’s under Yeltsin which was notoriously corrupt. Billions of dollars in property changed hands under conditions that were unethical, illegal, criminal. He was in charge of that whole process,” according to Satter. • • • DEAR READERS, if the Clintons and Obama are not brought to account for their illegal acts, they will return and retake the US government from President Trump and the Americans who believe in constitutional rule of law. If Trump does not get rid of the Obama and Clinton embedded leftovers in the federal bureaucracy, there will be little chance of beating off the ProgDem attacks on President Trump and his program to drain the swamp. The resurgence of Barack and Hillary will quickly follow. Trump's cabinet secretaries are in place. Their housecleaning should be well underway. There is no time to lose becquse 2018 looms large. And, Attorney General Sessions must kick-start the ongoing investigations of Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation -- that is the only way to rid America of its 21st century Crime Family for good. • President Trump, it is time to wake up, smell the stench, and drain the swamp.