Trump Hits the Swamp as Hard as He Can without Congress, But the Deep State Is Still Protecting Obama and Hillary

THE REAL NEWS FOR THSI MONDAY IS THAT TRUMP AND CONGRESS DISAGREE. Profoundly. • • • NEWT GINGRICH SAYS THE SWAMP IS REALLY UNHAPPY. TheHill reported on sunday that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says the Washington establishment is enraged with President Trump because he is following through on his promise to "drain the Swamp." Gingrich told New York radio's John Catsimatidis that : "Donald Trump really is draining the swamp, and the alligators are really unhappy. This guy is actually doing what he said he would do: We're getting conservative judges nominated. We are getting regulations rolled back. We're getting a much more aggressive pro-American trade policy and pro-American foreign policy. The other side sees this as the end of their way of life." Newt pointed to the release of American hostages held by the Taliban by Pakistani troops this week as a concrete result of Trump's foreign policy shift : “The Pakistanis understand how much tougher and how much more aggressive the Trump Administration is than the Obama Administration. And I think they're trying to find some way to appease us because they know that we are very angry at them. Remember, they had bin Laden in their country for a decade. As a result, they’re scrambling to find a way to appease us." Trump praised the release of the hostages in an announcement at the White House on Friday : “This is a positive moment for our country's relationship with Pakistan...a sign that it is honoring America's wishes for it to do more to provide security in the region. It’s very important. I think a lot of countries are beginning to respect the United States of America once again." • • • McMASTER OF IRAN. General McMaster, President Trump's national security advisor, told "Fox News Sunday" that the President's threat to cancel the multination Iran deal laid out a marker for US allies and Iran to fix the "weak" deal : "What the President has done is, he has set out a marker, a marker to Iran, our allies and our partners that we have to fix fundamental flaws in this deal. It is a weak deal that is being weakly monitored, and so the resident has made clear he will not permit this deal to provide cover for what we know is a horrible regime to develop a nuclear weapon. ¨McMaster's comments come days after Trump threatened to terminate the agreement, which was brokered under the Obama administration. The President on Friday threatened to kill the deal if Congress did not come back with "satisfactory" changes. The move was met with criticism with Democrats, as well as key European allies. But, European news reported on Sunday that while Germany, France and Britain said in joint statement : "We encourage the US administration and Congress to consider the implications to the security of the US and its allies,” they added that they share the administration’s concerns with Iran’s ballistic missile activity and support for shia Islamist extremist organizations region-wide. • Not exactly the total denunciatin that mainstream media is reporting about allied responses to the Trump decision. • • • BEN CARSON ON OBAMACARE. Carson News reported on Sunday that David Bossie, the former deputy campaign manager for President Donald Trump, defended the President's executive order on Obamacare and said Congress' failure to act forced the issue. "This has been a major frustration for the President," Bossie said Friday on Fox News' "Fox and Friends" morning show. "This is not what he wanted to do, obviously. He wanted to have Congress fix it. He wanted to repeal and replace. I think that this President has said, 'I made a promise to the American people and now I'm going to keep it.' " And Bossie said Trump has every intention of living up to his promises : "He has said from Day 1, since his first day of his candidacy, [that] Obamacare is failing. It is imploding on itself. People, the American people, have no choices in 3/4 of the counties in America today -- no choices, only one provider. The premiums, whether it's in Arizona or any other state, have skyrocketed." • The GOP Congres has failed miserably to step up to Obamacare, or Iran, failing to come through on its own campaign promises to end the Iran deal and repeal and replace Obamacare. So, as Newt Gingrich says, President Trump is doing all he can by executive order to undo the bad Obama decisions and set America and the world back on a better, safer path. • • • A SURPRISE POLL. On Sunday, TheHill reported that a new poll shows that a majority of Americans is in favor of President Trump making deals with Democrats. The CBS/YouGov poll was released on Sunday. About 90% of Trump's supporters said they are either in favor of or would accept Trump striking a deal with Democrats. AND, a majority of Americans who oppose Trump also said they would like or accept Democrats working with Trump. Pollsters found that most respondents said they believe that Trump’s relationship with Republicans in Congress isn’t strong -- 39% of Republicans said their representatives don’t like Trump and are actively trying to undermine him. Another 37% of Republicans said they think those same GOP lawmakers also don’t like the President, and only “pretend" to pass legislation. • • • EXECUTIVE ORDERS. American Thinker's Silvio Canto, Jr. wrote an article published on Sunday about the battle of executive orders. Canto said : "During the Obama years, we warned Democrats that they would regret the day a GOP president sat in the White House. I remember telling a friend that the next GOP President could play this executive order game just as well. I followed by saying President Obama should request all of those changes to Obamacare, or even DACA, from Congress so that they would be the law of the land, not up to the discretion of the executive. Maybe the Democrats believed their "demographics" theories too much and thought it would be impossible for a GOP candidate to win 270 votes. Perhaps they were all too busy buying their outfits for Mrs. Clinton's historic inauguration. No matter what, the future is here, and President Trump is one by one by scratching those Obama executive orders. At this pace, President Obama's résumé will be a total blank under "accomplishments." It will simply say he was inaugurated in 2009, was re-elected in 2012 and left office in 2017. There will be very little in between because he did so much by executive order rather than laws passed by Congress. 'The Blank Presidency' may be the title of a future book about this time in office." Canto cites President Trump's use of his pen to delete the things President Obama added to the law without consulting Congress, pointing out Betsy McCaughey's book "Beating ObamaCare," in which she explained : "Trump has now seized the initiative, after congressional Republicans fell flat on their faces and failed to address the pain Obamacare is inflicting on consumers stuck in the individual insurance market. The President should keep going. What's next? Trump should use his discretion to stop enforcing the tax penalty on those who don't buy Obamacare-compliant plans, including buyers of short-term plans. Then he should cancel the sweetheart deal his predecessor weaseled for members of Congress and their staff members. Even though the Affordable Care Act requires them to buy coverage on Obamacare exchanges, Obama arranged for them to have a choice of 57 gold plans and have John Q. Public pick up most of their costs. It's an outrage. Once members of Congress are feeling the same pain as everyone else, they'll be more focused on repealing and replacing the dysfunctional health law. In the meantime, Trump is wisely providing relief where it counts the most – in people's wallets." Canto praises McCaugheyn saying : "Yes, Trump has seized the initiative because so much of the law's burdens were imposed by executive order, from the contraceptive ruling to the subsidies to insurance companies. President Trump's moves will not fix the problem until Obamacare is totally repealed. However, it is a lesson to all : govern by executive order, and the next guy will do the same thing and delete your executive orders!" • This is why it is so important to support President Trump as he pressures Congress to live up to its promise to repeal and replace Obamacare, and to elect people to Congress in 2108 who will follow up on campaign pledges instead of arriving in the Swamp, ordering their deluxe gold-plated Obamacare-for-Congress package, and forgetting why and how much America is suffering under the catastrophe of Obamacare. • • • TRUMP SHOULD PRESSURE FOR ACTION ON THE OBAMA SCANDALS. James Varney of RealClearInvestigations, wrote last week that : "When Donald Trump took office promising to 'drain the Swamp,' many Americans expected him to release an avalanche of information and kick-start investigations into scandals from the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton’s campaign. That hasn’t happened. The only moment so far is the Justice Department’s recent decision not to pursue criminal charges against Lois Lerner, the IRS official at the center of alleged efforts to muzzle conservative advocacy groups. " Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch says : “There has been a remarkable lack of accountability. Today, you would think government is defending the Hillary Clinton administration.” Varney says some of the controversies from the Obama administration are being actively investigated, including the “unmasking” of Trump associates in intelligence reports. But, says Varney : "Political storms with still-unanswered questions have faded from prominence, in part because Obama is no longer in power and the Trump era has been tumultuous. The lack of action also suggests a deeper issue : how the permanent state [the eep State] protects itself. Even a new administration vowing change inevitably becomes part of it." GOP Representative Darrell Issa, former chairman of the House Oversight Committee, says : "There is always an institutional prerogative involved, meaning protecting the bureaucracy. All of the information should have been turned over on Day One of the new administration, but they want to protect the privilege. They want to preserve the right to withhold information and documents for some other scandal that’s bound to occur on their watch.” • But, outside groups are keeping several Obama era scandals alive. These groups, funded by citizens, have become a force in American politics. Varney says they're "armed with highly trained lawyers and the Freedom of Information Act." The groups include Judicial Watch, for example, which has almost single-handedly kept the Hillary Clinton email story alive through public-records litigation, after Trump stepped back from his campaign vow to seek a special prosecutor to deliver on the demands of his followers to “Lock her up!” • Congress isn’t completely on the sidelines, says Varney, but some of its work remains a matter of conjecture because it is being done in closed sessions of Senate and House oversight panels : "Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee, wary of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian election meddling, believe the unmasking affair warrants the appointment of another special prosecutor, a request it recently sent to the Department of Justice along with a long list of unanswered queries." The Comittee wrote in its letter : “These questions cannot, for history’s sake, and for the preservation of an impartial system of justice, be allowed to die on the vine." • • • VARNEY LIST OF OPEN OBAMA SCANDALS. • Iran Nuclear Deal -- Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry didn't include ballistic missiles in the deal; ballistic missiles raise the possibility of Iran cooperating with North Korea. Sanctions relief was immediate, removing incentives for Iran to comply later; and the US flew $1.7 billion in cash as settlements, $400 million of which coincided with the release of four Americans detained in Iran, in what looked like ransom. But, President Trump did not recertify Iran’s compliance on October 14 and asked Congress and US allies who signed the deal to weigh in on how to proceed to make Iran comply with tougher terms that will actually prevent its becoming a nuclear power, if it is not already one. • “Unmasking” and Domestic Surveillance -- Varney says Obama officials requested that the identities of Trump associates swept up in intelligence agencies’ intercepts of foreigners’ phone calls and emails be revealed, or “unmasked,” including members of Congress, opponents of the Iran nuclear deal and journalists. A 2011 Obama administration loophole allowed the National Security Agency to conduct “backdoor searches” of “incidental collection” of US citizens’ communications. The investigation is ongoing in Congress, but behind closed doors. Many potential witnesses have yet to testify, including former UN Ambassador Samantha Power, who reportedly sought hundreds of unmaskings in the closing months of the Obama administration, and whose authority for requesting unmasking isn’t clear. In September, CNN reported that the FBI had former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort wiretapped before and after the election. Apart from congressional inquiries, investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson is suing the DOJ for what she alleges was the deliberate and illegal hacking of her work computers as she investigated federal law enforcement operations under Obama. The DOJ under Trump has continued to fight her, she says. • Trump-Russia Dossier -- Lurid opposition research against Trump led to allegations of a complicit Russian role in his campaign. Fusion GPS, was supposedly bankrolled first by “Never Trump” Republican interests, then by Democrats after his nomination. Who paid for the Fusion GPS dossier and the FBI’s role remain unclear. The Justice Department is resisting Senate investigators who want to know more about the FBI’s interactions with Christopher Steele, a former British spy hired by Fusion to dig up Russian dirt for the dossier. A few weeks before the 2016 election, Steele took his information to the FBI, which agreed “to pay him to continue his work," according to a Washington Post report. Although the dossier raised questions that helped lead to Mueller’s appointment, it provided nothing concrete regarding collusion between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign. Glenn Simpson, founding partner of Fusion GPS, spoke privately with Senate Judiciary Committee staffers for more than 10 hours in August. Details of the meeting have not been released, but Simpson’s lawyer said Fusion GPS “stands by” its work. • Hillary Clinton Email Affair -- Hillary Clinton’s use of an unsecured private server while Secretary of State, rather than the official email system, led, despite her denials, to her receiving, and perhaps sending, top-secret information via her unsecure server. Aides deleted tens of thousands of emails that she claimed were personal. Hillary says none of this was illegal. Many disagree, noting that several other public officials, including General David Petraeus, were punished for mishandling classified information. The email affair intertwines with other matters, such as Benghazi, the DNC hack that led to disclosures from her emails, and a separate outside hack of Democratic National Committee email publicized by WikiLeaks that included revelations of preferential treatment for donors to the Clinton Foundation while she was Secretary of State, and the Tarmac rendezvous of Attorney General Loretta Lynch with Bill Clinton five days before FBI agents interviewed Hillary regarding her email. At the height of Hillary’s run for the presidency, Congress and the FBI revealed that the Clinton camp claimed that some 30,000 of its emails had been lost. Also lost was a laptop. Her team used “Bleach Bit” software to wipe her server clean. Her attorney team who lacked security clearance to view classified material culled the emails before turning them over to investigators, and they are now being investigated in a Maryland attorney disciplinary proceeding. In April 2016, Obama interposed himself in the affair, declaring that Clinton’s use of a private server had not endangered national security, and we later learned he was communicating with her via her email. In July 2016, FBI Director James Comey confirmed that top-secret emails had been found in Clinton’s communications and that she acted “extremely carelessly” with classified material. Nevertheless, he said that because she did not intend to break the law, no criminal case would be brought against her. Then, with Trump hammering her on the campaign trail as “Crooked Hillary,” Comey announced that the investigation had been reopened to examine emails forwarded by top Clinton aide Huma Abedin to a home computer used by her husband, disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner. Three days before the presidential election, Comey closed the reopened investigation, again with no action against Clinton, who lost the election to Trump, after once seeming to be a shoo-in. In her new book, “What Happened,” she blames the “email craziness” as a major factor. Some groups and individuals have continued to look into the email scandal. Judicial Watch has numerous lawsuits pending, and on September 14 said the latest release of State Department documents provided more examples of classified information transmitted on unsecured devices and “many incidents of Hillary Clinton donors receiving special favors from the State Department.” • The Comey Memo -- FBI Director Comey's 2016 memo exonerating Hillary Clinton of criminal wrongdoing regarding her emails was drafted before the FBI’s investigation was complete, that is, before agents had interviewed Clinton and some of her closest aides. Comey critics believe this suggests the fix was in for Clinton. GOP Senators Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham announced on August 31 that former Comey aides had testified about the draft memo, and the Senate Judiciary Committee, has requested more information about it. Trump was quick to call attention to the disclosure, tweeting that it reflects “a rigged system!” If Comey prematurely cleared Hillary Clinton of wrongdoing, it would undermine his credibility as a witness in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump-Russia affair -- including into the President’s firing of Comey. • IRS Targeting Affair -- The Internal Revenue Service heavily scrutinized and stalled nonprofits’ applications for tax-exempt status of conservative groups before the 2010 and 2012 elections, effectively taking them out of the campaigns. Lois Lerner, director of the IRS Exempt Organizations Unit, initially blamed the targeting on lower-level "front line people" in the IRS Cincinnati office. This was false. Congressional investigators were blocked by hostile IRS witnesses and claims of lost emails. Obama publicly declared there was “not even a smidgen of corruption” in the affair. But, two inspectors general reports have found that far more conservative groups than liberal ones received extra scrutiny, usually by officials in Washington. Recently, federal judges have ruled in favor of plaintiffs suing the IRS. The American Center for Law and Justice is representing 36 plaintiffs in a case where the federal judge has ordered the IRS to turn over information explaining why applications were stalled and to identify who made those decisions. High-level IRS officials have resigned or retired. Republicans have called unsuccessfully for the ouster of Commissioner John Koskinen. The Trump Justice Department in September decided not to prosecute Lerner, who had retired with full pension benefits after declaring her innocence and then invoking her Fifth Amendment rights before Congress. “This is exactly what frustrates the American people about Washington,” said GOP Represnetative Jim Jordan. • Fast and Furious. This was the federal operation that allowed weapons from the US to pass into the hands of suspected gun smugglers so the arms could be traced to Mexican drug cartels. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives lost track of hundreds of firearms, many of which have been linked to crimes. Two of the lost guns were recovered in the Arizona desert near the scene of the fatal shooting of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December 2010, drawing intense scrutiny to the program from Republicans and media, especially conservative outlets. In March 2011, Obama declared that if “a serious mistake” had been made, “then we’ll find out and we’ll hold somebody accountable,” but, in June 2012, his administration invoked executive privilege to withhold documents from congressional committees. As a result, Attorney General Eric Holder became the first Cabinet member ever held in contempt of Congress. Some aspects of the case remain before US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson. Stonewalling allowed the Obama administration to run out the clock on a major scandal, Congressman Issa claims. While Jackson “often gave us the decision we were entitled to,” Issa said, “it took forever.” Fewer than half of the 2,000 or so firearms purchased and monitored by the ATF have been recovered. Similarly, while some purchasers were arrested and indicted, the operation did not lead to the arrest of any high-level targets within the Mexican drug cartels. In August 2011, the acting head of ATF, Kenneth Melson, and the US Attorney for Arizona, Dennis Burke, resigned. Since then, all investigations seem to have ceased. • Benghazi. Four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were killed in a coordinated attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on the 2012 anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. President Obama’s whereabouts and actions that night aren’t clear. The administration did not respond to Stevens’ persistent calls for more security before the attack and no aid was sent to the consulate during the attack. Afterward, administration officials, notably national security advisor Susan Rice, on four Sunday talk shows, described the attack as a spontaneous eruption of popular anger fomented by an anti-Islamic video produced by an Egyptian-born Coptic Christian resident of the United States. That filmmaker was detained by US authorities for nearly a year. Congress held multiple hearings and various committees looked at the attacks, while the Obama administration dismissed them as a political witch hunt. An exasperated former Secretary of State Clinton famously asked at one hearing : “What difference, at this point, does it make?” During the attack, both Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta ordered some military assets to deploy to Benghazi but for unknown reasons those orders were never carried out. The US vow to bring the perpetrators to justice bore some fruit in 2014 when American commandos seized Ahmed Abu Khattala, the alleged ringleader of the Benghazi attack, in a raid in Libya. The most comprehensive investigation, led by Representative Trey Gowdy, voted on its final report in July 2016. Gowdy’s committee uncovered evidence that Obama officials, including Hillary Clinton, knew from the start that the attack was a planned act of terror. The evidence suggests they blamed the video to limit the political fallout from the attacks as Obama campaigned for re-election. Abu Khattala's trial began recently in Washington. • • • DEAR READERS, President Trump is doing as much as he can to force Congress to act to repeal and replace Obamacare and to assume its role in "consenting" to foreign treaties by acting in the Iran nuclear deal. But, the long list of open Obama scandals suggests there are politically-motivated delays in pushing ahead with other Obama scandals. Is it the Deep State that is still embedded in the federal apparatus in Washington that is keeping Attorney General Sessions from moving forward with indictments? President Trump needs to appoint a watchdog who will force these investigations forward and give American citizens the resolution of each matter so widely sought and fully deserved. • American Thinker published an article by Scott S. Powell last week. In it, Powell discusses the America of today and the warnings of George Orwell in Animal Farm and 1984 about "how freedom is lost to totalitarianism and the intolerance that accompanies it. 'Big Brother,' a term still casually used to describe an all-knowing governing authority, comes right out of 1984. Orwell describes a state in which all subjects are continually reminded that 'Big Brother is watching you,' by way of constant surveillance through the pervasive use of 'telescreens' by the ruling class." Powell writes : "Orwell described the scope of the totalitarian enterprise, noting in one section of 1984 that 'Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, and every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.' ” • In 1984, Orwell said : “Who controls the past controls the future.” Orwell coined the concepts and terms “newspeak, doublethink and thought police” that are now what we experience as political correctness. Powell explains : "Newspeak is the distorted reality accomplished by manipulating the meaning of language and words, while doublethink is the conditioned mental attitude to ignore reality and common sense and substitute and embrace a distorted or false narrative. The 'thought police' of 1984 are now the enforcers of political correctness in the mainstream media and college campuses across the country....the whole aim of newspeak and doublethink is to narrow the range of thought.” Political correctness has the same goal, says Powell, and that’s why its adherents are so intolerant -- seeking to shut down and silence people with whom they disagree on college campuses, clamoring for removal of historic statues and monuments so they can rewrite history and control the future, and demanding that people with opposing views on such subjects as climate change and gay marriage be silenced, fined or arrested. • Americans used to think that 1984 would never come to America. Then, they thought it would try to enter but be rebuffed. Today, the cold reality is that 1984 has entered America, making dissent from Progressive PC dangerous -- loss of jobs, political ostracism, character assassination, attacks on family and friends -- all are considered fair by the "thought police" embedded in the Swamp and its Deep State. And, asks Powell : "what if the universities and the educational system and the major television and print media institutions embrace the groupthink that ingratiates them with the ruling elite? What if the culture shapers in Hollywood and the advertising industry...follow a similar path in participating in and reinforcing the same groupthink norms? And what if the rise of social media promotes a kind of groupthink conformity that effectively marginalizes and silences opposing views?" • Is it happening now in America?? There are many examples that seem to say, "Yes" -- NSA’s tracking and recording all email, text and telephone communication in the US; Big Brother's social media and consumer giants, Google, Facebook, and Amazon, knowing almost everything about people’s preferences through their artificial intelligence peering into individuals' 'telescreen' computers and smartphones; social media's great power to narrow the range of acceptable thought...where those who support a politically correct view are praised...while dissenters remain silent, seeking the smaller Swamp-ridiculed conservative blogs and online media outlets that give their point of view a chance to be discussed. For Powell : "What comfortable and disengaged Americans have forgotten is that there are determined enemies within and there is an internal war being waged against the values and institutions that made America a great nation....[with] little to no discussion of the doubling of national debt in just 9 years to over $20 trillion, and unfunded entitlement liabilities now five times greater than that -- conditions inviting financial collapse of the US....the establishment’s reluctance to prosecute fellow establishment law breakers in government, which has effectively created a two-tiered justice system....[the] accommodation of extremist anti-American groups as though they have a legitimate role to play in reform and influence on policy-making -- whether in taking down historic monuments, creating sanctuary cities and controlling the nation’s borders, establishing police protocols in law enforcement, fighting wars overseas, or restructuring the economy at home. The hostility to the Trump Presidency by the establishment elite in both political parties, the media, teachers’ unions, university faculties, and Hollywood is probably a contrary indicator. "It likely tells us more about the real state of corruption in government, the establishment media, and popular culture than it does about Trump....A society committed to maintaining liberty, prosperity, and opportunity for all needs to focus on real threats, a key one of which is now the loss of freedom of speech and the assault on the First Amendment." • Patrick Henry of Virginia was a gifted orator, and a passionate American revolutionary leader best known for his declaration, “Give me liberty or give me death.” But his lasting contribution to freedom was his determined and successful fight to have the Bill of Rights amended to the Constitution because of his conviction that the First Amendment and nine others were absolutely necessary to protect individual liberty against the power and abuse of centralized government. Orwell reminds us today, says Powell, of the critical importance of the First Amendment, noting 'if liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.' Exactly the opposite of the current trajectory and what the politically correct crowd wants." • That is why President Trump needs our support on Obamacare and the Iran nuclear deal. It is also why we need to remind him that the long list of Obama scandals and potential crimes needs to be examined under judicial precepts and rules in order to give America the comfort of knowing what happened and whether it rose to criminal behavior or was Progressive political warfare against America -- deadly serious but meant to be dealt with in the political, as opposed to the judicial, arena. Nobody 'gives us liberty' -- we have to earn it every day.