What Is There NOT to Like about President Trump, Unless You Are a Socialist

IT'S OFFICIAL -- THE ESTABLISHMENT PRESS IS "OUT TO GET" PRESIDENT TRUMP. That's what Ted Koppel says. And, it is not only the media. The "out to get Trump" cabal was omnipresent in the Obama administration and still exists in the Deep State. • • • THEY CALL THEMSELVES THE "RESISTANCE." Newsmax reported on Tuesday that : "Former ABC news anchor Ted Koppel says the establishment media is out to get President Donald Trump. 'I'm terribly concerned that when you talk about The New York Times these days, when you talk about The Washington Post these days, we're not talking about The New York Times of 50 years ago,' Koppel said during a discussion on 'The War on the Press' with former CBS correspondent Marvin Kalb at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on March 7. 'We are not talking about The Washington Post of 50 years ago. We're talking about organizations that I believe have, in fact, decided as organizations that Donald J. Trump is bad for the United States.' Koppel, who anchored ABC News' Nightline for 25 years, added that analysis and commentary published now on the front page of Times and Post outlets did not appear on the front page in the past. He also said Trump's perception that 'the establishment press is out to get him' is accurate. 'He's not mistaken in that perception and he's not mistaken when so many of the liberal media, for example, described themselves as belonging to the resistance. What does that mean?' he said." • • • GLENN BECK KNOWS WHAT IT MEANS. Real Clear Politics' Ian Schwartz wrote a Monday article about Glenn Beck's interview with Sean Hannity. Beck told Hannity : "If the Republicans don't win in this next election, I think we are officially at the end of the country as we know it. We may not survive even if we win, but we definitely don't if the Republicans lose with Donald Trump." • Hannity remembered Glenn Beck's time on Fox News and noted : "One of the things you talked a lot about was the dangers of radicalism and the dangers of socialism. I've never seen the threat this bad. A hundred people agree with the New Green Deal in the Democratic Party. Many of the 2020 candidates agree with it and are campaigning on it. I thought maybe it's time to go back and revisit some of those things you talked about and I talked about at the time. Beck answered : "Sean, I distinctively remember every day last year of my FOX show. I said, what was coming and I -- the last few steps where the radicals, the anarchist, the Islamists, the socialists would all gather together. They would not be working together, plotting together, but they would see the opportunity and they would all come together and work to destabilize Europe and America. And that is exactly what is happening. You have CAIR now in the halls of Congress all the time and I think that's who Nancy Pelosi was afraid of when they changed the anti-Semitism [resolution]..." • Here is an excerpt form their discussion -- "BECK: No, I'll go a step further for they were not unindicted conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation, they were started and the people that were in Omar's office last week or two ago weeks ago during that vote, and instrumental in changing, were actually from the Palestinian -- I think it's the Palestinian Council, which was started by the Muslim Brotherhood. They have a direct sister, which is Hamas. So, you have the Palestinian Council, you have Hamas over here, they're sister organizations, and the Palestinian Council needed a P.R. firm, if you will, for propaganda here in the United States, and that's why CAIR was started. And it's all very well-documented. That's who we have in. You also now have the Democratic socialists, and you remember this, Sean, if you said anyone was a Democratic socialist, you are called a racist. Well, race doesn't seem to be playing a role with socialists. It seems, as 'Newsweek' said when I first said this on FOX and now 'The New York Times' magazine has said this, we are all socialists now. When did everyone become a socialist? Well, they've always been socialists....I'm not talking about the people in Washington. I'm talking about the Democratic neighbor that I get along with right down the street. They don't believe in infanticide. They don't believe in destroying the free market system. They don't believe in all of the stuff that is coming out of the mouths of these radicals. What's going to shake them What's going to -- what's -- when are we going to have our labor party movement where you have that in England that the Socialist Party has noticed, wow, it looks like we are just full with radicals and anti-Semites, and members of the Labour Party in England are leaving the party saying this is too radical for me. When are the average people going to leave the Democratic Party or at least wake up.... that's exactly what this cult -- this cult of death, I think, is stirring up, this mob that will shut you down unless you agree with absolutely everything. And we lose the country if good decent people don't stand up on both sides." Hannity ended the interview by asking "What's the antidote." Glenn Beck answered : "Waking up. I don't know if there is an antidote, but I will tell you this. If the Republicans don't win in this next election, I think we are officially at the end of the country as we know it. We may not survive even if we win, but we definitely don't if the Democrats....It has to mean the re-election of Trump....I saw that he kept his promises. And I will tell you, there is no choice this time around. We must come together." • • • WHO ARE THE SOCIALIST DEMOCRATS? American Thinker's Russ Vaughn wrote on March 15 that : "Corrupt Chicago infected our nation's politics, with Obama as its agent. With every passing week, we're learning more about how the FBI and the Obama Justice Department did their best to ensure the election of Hillary Clinton by undermining Donald Trump. Try as Democrats might to prevent it, the truth is slowly coming into the light, thanks to some tenacious seekers of truth on the right side of the political spectrum. What has become crystal-clear in this forensic process is the reality that the Democratic Party, led by Barack Obama, is a corrupt criminal enterprise that if left unchecked will eventually poison the lifeblood of this country, a societal sepsis that, like most such systemic infections, may prove fatal to the body of America. What has brought us to this critical point in our nation's destiny? I submit that it is the malignant Chicago political machine and Chicago politics, introduced into the national bloodstream in the form of Barack Obama, a local community organizer whose pleasing demeanor and sonorous, mellifluous oratory, and nothing more, led to his phenomenal rise from political unknown to frontrunner for President. He was a product of the Chicago Machine, a political cartel quite willing to front this unknown young black man for President if it brought the machine's bosses greater national influence and power, which it did." • Vaughn notes that : "To head up a corrupt system of enforcement, a thoroughly corrupt leader is required, and the Democratic Party had a ready candidate waiting in the wings : senior legal advisor to the Obama campaign Eric Holder. If you tried, you couldn't devise a better agent for the toxic infection of the federal Justice Department and its enforcement arm, the FBI, than Eric Holder. In testimony before a congressional investigation of white voter suppression by Philadelphia Black Panthers, Holder made it clear with his 'my people' reference that he and his Justice Department were unquestionably skewed racially. It is only now that we are confirming our suspicions as to how thoroughly and corruptly he and his boss had skewed it politically. With the revelations coming out of congressional hearings into the FBI investigations into Donald Trump, we are learning just how despicably corrupt our national law enforcement has become, employing venal Chicago prosecutorial and policing methods on a national scale. The latest has an FBI lawyer telling congressional investigators that her agency's investigation of Hillary Clinton's all too obvious violations of federal security laws were thwarted by unnamed persons in the Obama Justice Department, persons who, as we all know, do not ever operate without the approval and direction of their superiors, a rule that holds true going all the way to the top." • • • A "MIASMA OF CORRUPTION." That's what Monica Showalter called it in her American Thinker article last Thursday. And, Showalter was talking about the Obamas and Michelle in particular : "Michelle Obama's got a heckuva political apparatus surrounding her even in President Obama's post-presidency, and it all comes with a strong odor of corruption. Here's the latest news making waves [note the headline comes form Chicago] : 'CHICAGO — After being contacted by a former senior Obama administration official, the Chicago-area's top prosecutor last month requested that the city police turn over their investigation of an alleged attack on 'Empire' actor Jussie Smollett to the FBI, according to texts and emails released by the Cook County State's Attorney's Office. Tina Tchen, who worked as former first lady Michelle Obama's chief of staff during her time in the White House, first contacted Kim Foxx by text on February 1 and said the actor's family had 'concerns' about the investigation, according to the communications. That's corrupt as heck. The political muscling of the Chicago cops (led by a black police chief, no less) from the Obama machinery suggests that the Obamas knew that the case was fraudy (much as the rest of us suspected from the start, given the odd circumstances of the claimed racial/anti-gay attack, in polar vortex weather, late at night, in left-wing Chicago), and thought their buddies in the FBI would do a better job of covering for them, keeping the case alive. Those are the same FBI buddies who allowed Hillary Clinton to be questioned by FBI agents over her illegal private server with aides complicit in the act serving as lawyers (unprecedented) and the foofaraw about the case against her opening and shutting a couple times, each without incident. The same FBI that employed the likes of FBI lovebirds Peter Strzok and Lisa Page to cook up that 'insurance plan' against the election of President Trump. There's no doubt that that Obamified agency has political players more interested in politics than law enforcement. And the Chicago cops did a credible job blowing apart the scam and charging Smollett with filing false police reports and other crimes. Did Michelle Obama know that this was coming, and did her minion seek to protect him? Smollett is a politically connected actor, given his mom's friendship with Angela Davis and other famous lefties. Did Michelle Obama want to keep the phony narrative going, about Smollett being the victim, for his sake and to whip up power for the Obama political machine, which thrives on this kind of divisive politics? Well, Obama himself sure did, given his behavior during another fraudy racial case -- in Ferguson. So right now, that's what it sounds like." • • • HILLARY WAS PROTECTED BY THE DOJ. This time is was about the Clinton Foundation. Fox News' Gregg Re reported last Friday that : "The Justice Department 'negotiated' an agreement with Hillary Clinton's legal team that ensured the FBI did not have access to emails on her private servers relating to the Clinton Foundation, former FBI special agent Peter Strzok testified during a closed-door appearance before the House Judiciary Committee last summer, according to a newly released transcript. Republicans late last year renewed their efforts to probe the Clinton Foundation, after tax documents showed a plunge in its incoming donations after Clinton’s 2016 presidential election. The numbers fueled longstanding allegations of possible 'pay-to-play' transactions at the organization, amid a Justice Department probe covering Foundation issues. Under questioning from Judiciary Committee General Counsel Zachary Somers, Strzok acknowledged that Clinton's private personal email servers contained a mixture of emails related to the Clinton Foundation, her work as Secretary of State and other matters. 'Were you given access to [Clinton Foundation-related] emails as part of the investigation?' Somers asked. 'We were not. We did not have access,' Strzok responded. 'My recollection is that the access to those emails were based on consent that was negotiated between the Department of Justice attorneys and counsel for Clinton.' Although the FBI eventually took possession of the servers, Strzok continued, the possession was 'based upon the negotiation of Department of Justice attorneys for consent.' 'A significant filter team' was employed at the FBI, Strzok said, to 'work through the various terms of the various consent agreements.' Limitations imposed on agents' searches included date ranges, and names of domains and people, Strzok said, among other categories. The agreement was reached, Strzok said, because 'according to the attorneys, we lacked probable cause to get a search warrant for those servers and projected that either it would take a very long time and/or it would be impossible to get to the point where we could obtain probable cause to get a warrant.' ” • Gregg Re noted that "Strzok did not elaborate on whether prosecutors made any effort to secure a search warrant, which could have delineated precisely what agents could and could not search. But Strzok later said that agents had access to the 'entire universe' of information on the servers when using search terms to probe their contents. He also told Somers that 'we had it voluntarily,' although it was unclear if he meant all emails on the servers -- including ones related to the Clinton Foundation." • Re says that former Utah Representative Jason Chaffetz, who chaired the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee until 2017 and is now a Fox News contributor, said the arrangement signaled that agents wanted willful blindness. 'They had no interest in pursuing the truth....What's bizarre about this, is in any other situation, there's no possible way they would allow the potential perpetrator to self-select what the FBI gets to see,' Chaffetz said, noting that the FBI was aware that the servers contained classified information in unclassified settings. 'The FBI should be the one to sort through those emails -- not the Clinton attorneys.' The DOJ's goal, Chaffetz said, was to 'make sure they hear no evil, see no evil -- they had no interest in pursuing the truth.' Chaffetz added that the DOJ's behavior, including its award of immunity to top Clinton aides early on in the investigation, signaled a clear double standard : 'They didn't go make a deal with anyone in Trump's orbit. They seized it. They used guns and agents -- and just went in there and took it. The Clinton Foundation isn't supposed to be communicating with the State Department anyway,' Chaffetz continued. 'The Foundation -- with her name on it -- is not supposed to be communicating with the senior officials at the State Department.' " • Gregg Re also noted that : "Earlier this week, Fox News exclusively reviewed an internal chart prepared by federal investigators working on the so-called 'Midyear Exam' probe into Clinton's emails. The chart contained the words 'NOTE : DOJ not willing to charge this' next to a key statute on the mishandling of classified information. The notation appeared to contradict former FBI Director James Comey's repeated claims that his team made its decision that Clinton should not face criminal charges independently." • Of course, Strzok, in his closed-door interview, accorsing to Re "denied that the DOJ exercised undue influence over the FBI, and insisted that lawyers at the DOJ were involved in an advisory capacity working with agents." BUT, Re states that : "Fox News also confirmed the chart served as a critical tip that provided the basis for Texas Republican Representative John Ratcliffe's explosive questioning of former FBI lawyer Lisa Page last year, in which Page agreed with Ratcliffe's characterization that the DOJ had told the FBI that 'you're not going to charge gross negligence.' A transcript of Page's remarks was published Tuesday as part of a major document release by the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, Georgia Representative Doug Collins [discussed in our blogs last week]." • • • DEMOCRAT CANDIDATES MAY BE WINGING THEIR DONATIONS. Western Journal published an article written by AP Reports on Monday about current Democrat candidates' boasts about their fundraising. These reports can be a little demoralizing for Republicans -- but perhaps they shouldn't be. Here is the Western Journal report : "Washington Governor Jay Inslee, little known outside his home state, boasts he raised over $1 million in the days after launching his White House bid. Former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper and others say they did, too. Impressive numbers, even if dwarfed by the $6 million or so reported by Bernie Sanders and now Beto O’Rourke. The seven-digit figures for the lesser-known Democratic hopefuls don’t lie, but they don’t tell the whole story either. Early bursts of donations don’t happen by accident, especially for candidates with little national name recognition such as Inslee, who hit his target thanks in part to an email list of donors he’s cultivated for months. He’s among a crowded field of more than a dozen Democrats who are feverishly trying to show they can raise big money and realistically challenge Republican President Donald Trump. With the first-quarter fundraising deadline looming, some are straining credulity to give the impression of a spontaneous groundswell of support. In addition to Inslee and Hickenlooper, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar and California Senator Kamala Harris have boasted they raised $1 million or more in the hours and days after launching their campaigns." • Western Journal says : "What that signifies is less clear. 'It’s a strange goal post for viability, and there are a lot of tricks you can use to come up with that number,' said Tim Lim, a Democratic strategist who worked for Hillary Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s campaigns. However, he added : 'It’s a great talking point.' " • How do candidates raise $1 million within 24, 48 or 72 hours? Western Journal says : "Candidates like Vermont Senator Sanders and former Texas Representative O’Rourke have used their star power to quickly raise astronomical sums. O’Rourke announced on Monday that he edged Sanders by pulling in $6.1 million in the 24 hours after his launch. But a wide range of tools are available to help the lesser-known White House hopefuls. They include rented fundraisings email lists, targeted social media ads (which all candidates use) and revenue sharing agreements, which allow interest groups to raise money for their own causes while splitting it with a favorite candidate. Fundraising commitments are often lined up in advance, while creative accounting maneuvers can be used to pad the bottom line. Senators have a leg up. They can take money from existing federal campaign accounts, while governors are largely barred from doing the same with their state accounts." • Western Journal uses Governor Inslee as the example : "Before his early March launch, Inslee spent months running targeted ads that asked Facebook users to fork over their email addresses to join his fight against climate change -- now the signature issue of his campaign. At the same time, Inslee, who was then head of the Democratic Governors Association, made prospecting trips to states including New York and California. He started collecting larger checks from conventional donors in the weeks before the launch. Then, shortly after announcing his run, his campaign blasted out thousands of fundraising emails and the online money started to roll in, which he juiced by making rounds on the talk show circuit. Within about three days, he reached the magic $1 million figure -- and his campaign issued a news release. The fundraising effort was described by two Inslee aides who insisted on anonymity in order to discuss the inner workings of his campaign." • Western Journal quoted Michael Duncan, a Republican digital strategist, who said "...numbers posted by lesser-known candidates are likely to be less grassroots and more 'the campaign equivalent of AstroTurf.' But, according to western Journal : "Duncan, who formerly handled digital strategy for the insurgent tea party group FreedomWorks, said it was a shrewd tactic. Particularly now that the Democratic National Committee is using online fundraising, with an emphasis on low-dollar contributions spread out across many donors to qualify for the debate stage. 'I would imagine the grassroots support is manufactured,' said Duncan, who also was an architect of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s digital strategy in 2015. 'I’d doubt they’d own a file of hundreds of thousands of Americans dying to give them $10.' " • Western Journal says : "Most campaigns won’t offer specifics on how they reached their mark. News releases sent out at the time shed some light, however. Harris offered the most detail. Her campaign announced in January that it raised $1.5 million in 24 hours, collecting an average donation of $37 from more than 38,000 people. From there, it gets more fuzzy. Klobuchar’s campaign said it raised $1 million in 48 hours from 'online and grassroots' supporters in all states, but did not break the numbers down further. Inslee launched his campaign on a Friday and announced the following Monday that he had reached the mark, with donations coming from all 50 states. Hickenlooper’s campaign said it reached the figure in less than 48 hours and received donations from all 50. His campaign wouldn’t offer specifics. But touting the number was a no-brainer, said spokeswoman Lauren Hitt. 'Of course we thought it was important in our launch to show he is the more-than-viable candidate we know,' she said. Though $1 million is a lot to most, raising that much isn’t as difficult as it may seem. It could be reached if about 357 donors cut checks for the $2,800 primary maximum. And lining up support from longtime donors in advance could go a long way toward getting a candidate close. Zac Moffatt, Mitt Romney’s 2012 digital director, said the focus now will be whether they can keep it up. 'The question would be : what is Act II?' he said." • • • AND WHO IS GIVING HIS MONEY AWAY TO AMERICAN CAUSES INSTEAD OF FUNDRAISING?? President Trump. We know that President Trump is not a normal politician -- he really isn't a politician at all. I was reminded of this a couple days ago when I was talking to a family from the UK about politics. The family member who was most supportive of President Trump -- despite the 24-hour cycle of Trump-bashing media coverage in the UK and Europe generally -- was the family's teenage son, who said : "I like him. He says what he thinks, not like other politicians who lie." • Well, non-politician Trump has just given away the latest payment of his presidential salary. The President tweeted the news and posted a copy of the latest check he has sent to fulfill his commitment of donating his salary to a worthy cause : “While the press doesn’t like writing about it, nor do I need them to, I donate my yearly Presidential salary of $400,000.00 to different agencies throughout the year, this to Homeland Security. If I didn’t do it there would be hell to pay from the FAKE NEWS MEDIA!” The check was for $100,000. • Western Journal reminded us that : "Before this latest donation, Trump in January donated part of his 2018 salary to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Trump’s older brother, Fred, suffered from alcohol-related problems and died in 1981 at the age of 43. In the past, the President has donated parts of his salary to government departments including Education, Health and Human Services, Transportation and Veterans Affairs. Trump has also donated part of his salary to the National Park Service. That donation was used to help repair buildings and fences at the Antietam National Battlefield in Maryland, TheHill reported. Many on Twitter said the gesture shows the difference between Trump and others. 'Cindy McCain is worth $100 million but still accepted a $174,000 'death gratuity' upon her husband’s death (which we taxpayers bankroll). Meanwhile, Trump donated his $400,000 presidential salary to federal agencies. And Ivanka and Jared both forgo their six-figure WH salaries.'....'So @realDonaldTrump (a capitalist) donates his paycheck to DHS but loudmouth AOC (a socialist who wants to tax Americans at 70%) keeps her entire paycheck...Money where your mouth is, babe?' " • When President Trump donated part of his salary to the Small Business Administration, he said it will be used to help veterans. SBA Administrator Linda McMahon said then, according to Western Journal and the White House transcript of an October 3 briefing : "This money is going to be used in our veterans program. We’re going to establish a seven-month intensive training program called ‘Emerging Leaders.’ It’s an adaptation of that program for our veterans, helping them transition from military life into private sector if they desire to start their own jobs and their own companies, and be entrepreneurs.” In May, after the President donated part of his salary to the VA, acting Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert Wilkie said the gesture was a small part of a larger picture, according to a White House briefing transcript from May 17 : “The President’s gift underscores his promise to do all that he can for veterans, which includes supporting those who care for our veterans -- not just those of us at VA, but the husbands, the wives, the families, and the community caregivers who are out there day in and day out making life easier for those who have borne the battle.” • • • DEAR READERS, we have the good fortune to be led by a President who has lowered taxes, increased jobs by unheard-of percentages, sorted out the ISIS grip on the Middle East, organized fair expense sharing at NATO, and is working every day to secure the southern border in order to prevent drugs and criminal gangs from entering the US illegally. WHAT is there not to like about this man??? The answer is simple enough -- he is a conservative and he is not a politician willing to play the Swamp game. So, the Trump-haters -- mostly socialists who follow the lead of the Democrat Party and its propagandist media in seeing every good deed of President Trump as another nail in their socialist coffin that contains a future for the American Republic and her citizens of government dependence and elimination of constitutional freedoms. They hate him because conservative principles work and when they are given the chance to do their best, as with President Trump, they show just how threadbare socialism really is. • One small but important aspect of conservative principles at work was this week's Supreme Court ruling siding with the Trump administration in a dispute over the federal government’s power to arrest certain non-citizens who commit crimes and hold them in immigration jails before a deportation proceeding. The 5-4 decision provoked a vigorous dissent from the Court’s liberals led by Justice Stephen Breyer, who said the majority was enabling the detention and possible deportation of foreign nationals for minor crimes they committed in the distant past. ACLU had argued that federal law imposes a strict time limit on when government officials can detain aliens for deportation after they are released from jail. The Daily Caller said : "Tuesday’s case arose when green card holders Mony Preap and Bassam Yusuf Khoury were arrested by federal immigration authorities years after they served criminal sentences for drug convictions. Preap and Khoury were detained without bail pending deportation....Preap and Khoury challenged their detention in federal court with two classes of similarly situated migrants. Arguing on their behalf, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said the government can only detain non-citizens with criminal records within 24 hours of their release from prison. A provision of federal law directs the secretary of Homeland Security to arrest criminal aliens 'when the alien is released.' The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the ACLU and ruled for the plaintiffs. The Court’s conservative majority reversed that decision in Tuesday’s ruling, finding federal law requires the detention of certain classes of aliens before removal. 'As we have held time and again, an official’s crucial duties are better carried out late than never,' Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority. The majority connected Tuesday’s case to the ongoing dispute over sanctuary jurisdictions, which refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. Alito said it is difficult for federal officials to discover when non-citizens will be released from prison, since certain states and localities will not provide that information. 'Under these circumstances, it is hard to believe that Congress made the secretary’s mandatory-detention authority vanish at the stroke of midnight after an alien’s release,' the opinion reads. Alito elsewhere said the 'when...released' language simply establishes when the federal government’s detention duty is triggered while 'exhorting the secretary to act quickly.' The decision was limited in one respect -- Alito cautioned that certain non-citizens who are detained long after serving their jail sentences may bring 'as applied' constitutional challenges to their arrest by immigration authorities." • By applying conservative constitutional principles to this case, the Trump administration has been freed to hold criminal illegal aliens in jail while reviewing their petitions for deportation. Thus, one level of potential criminal activity against American citizens has been removed. A Democrat President would never have tried to detain such criminal illegal aliens, let alone defend the Republic's right to do so. • It is in big things that we recognize President Trump's unique support for America -- trade fairness by dismantling NAFTA and other unfair trade treaties, demanding that NATO nations pay up or the US would walk, turning the US military loose to stop ISIS and destroy its pockets of control? BUT, it is in the little, almost unnoticed things -- detaining criminal illegal aliens, stopping to talk to a little boy who was at Arlington to visit his father's grave, going to Alabama to comfort and pray with Americans whose little town was ripped apart by a monster tornado -- it is in those little actions that we recognize a real American, a President who loves his country and her people. A President who can say, because he is not beholden to the media, far from it, when he routinely donates his salary to help his country, "the press doesn’t like writing about it, nor do I need them to." • Tell me, then, unless you are a socialist hell-bent on destroying America, what is there not to like about this President?