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Tyler O’Neil:
“…On Friday morning, President Donald Trump told Fox & Friends that spygate — the Obama administration’s surveillance on the Trump campaign during the 2016 election based on the false pretense of Trump being in league with Russia — will be “perhaps the biggest scandal in the history of our country.” He said Attorney General Bill Barr’s investigation of FISA abuses and U.S. Attorney John Durham’s criminal investigation will prove “historic,” and he predicted that the investigations will implicate former President Barack Obama himself.
“Now, what you’re going to see, I predict, will be perhaps the biggest scandal in the history of our country, political scandal,” Trump said. “You have a FISA report coming out which the word is, it’s historic, that is what the word is. That’s what I hear. And if it’s historic, you will see something. And then perhaps even more importantly you have Durham coming out shortly thereafter. He is the U.S. Attorney and he is already announced it’s criminal.”
“You know, a lot of people say deep state. I don’t like to use the word ‘deep state.’ I just say they’re really bad and sick people,” the president added.
Peter Doocy noted that Trump had previously suggested “that this might go much higher than the Department of Justice or the FBI during the Obama Administration.” He asked the president if spygate “could actually go up into the West Wing of the Obama administration.”
Trump said it traces back to “the highest levels of government. They were spying on my campaign. That is my opinion.”
“How high did it go, Mr. President? How high did it go?” Doocy pressed.
“I think personally, I think it goes all the way,” Trump responded.
“I hate to say it. I think it’s a disgrace. They thought I was going to win and they said, ‘How can we stop him?’ They wrote up the phony, fake dossier, the disgusting fake dossier, and they tried to have it put out prior to the election just to show you how incompetent they were,” he said. “They spent millions and millions of dollars, Hillary Clinton paid for it, and the Democrats.”…”
SCOTT JOHNSON:
“…The GOP members of the House Intelligence Committee performed like all-stars in the Schiff impeachment theater, the stalwart Ranking Member Devin Nunes foremost among them. We have previously recognized Rep. Elise Stefanik for her work during the Schiff show. The rest of the GOP members also excelled. I would like to recognize them by name: Mike Conaway (Texas), Mike Turner (Ohio), Brad Wenstrup (Ohio), Chris Stewart (Utah), Will Hurd (Texas), John Ratcliffe (Texas), and Jim Jordan (Ohio). Thanks to one and all for a job well done…”
JOHN HINDERAKER:
“…The indictment of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that was announced today did not come as a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention. Israeli politics have become less workable and less democratic over time. What we are seeing here is an attempted coup by the Israeli version of the Deep State…”
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON:
“…For most of the last three years, Donald Trump’s critics have scoffed at supposed “conspiracy theories” that claimed a “deep state” of bureaucrats were aborting the Trump presidency. We have been told the word “coup” is hyperbole that reveals the paranoid minds of Trump supporters.
Yet oddly, many people brag that they are proud members of a deep state and occasionally boast about the idea of a coup.
Recently, former acting CIA chief John McLaughlin proclaimed in a public forum, “Thank God for the deep state.” Former CIA director John Brennan agreed and praised the “deep state people” for their opposition to Trump.
Far from denying the danger of an unelected careerist bureaucracy that seeks to overturn presidential policies, New York Times columnists have praised its efforts to nullify the Trump agenda.
On the first day of the impeachment inquiry, House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff called his initial two witnesses, career State Department diplomats William Taylor Jr. and George Kent. Far from providing damning evidence of criminal presidential behavior, Taylor and Kent mostly confined themselves to three topics: their own sterling résumés, their lack of any firsthand knowledge of incriminating Trump action, and their poorly hidden disgust with the manner and substance of Trump’s foreign policy…
…Trump’s opponents often have praised the deep state precisely because unelected career officials are seen as the most effective way to sabotage and stymie his agenda.
A “coup” is no longer proof of right-wing paranoia, but increasingly a part of the general progressive discourse of resistance to Trump.
In these upside-down times, patriotism is being redefined as removing a president before a constitutionally mandated election…”
“…A new Emerson poll finds President Trump’s approval has increased in the last month with 48% approval and 47% disapproval, a bounce from 43% approval in the last Emerson National poll in October. Support for impeachment has flipped since October from 48% support with 44% opposing to now 45% opposed and 43% in support. The biggest swing is among Independents, who oppose impeachment now 49% to 34%, which is a reversal from October where they supported impeachment 48% to 39%.
The impeachment hearings are being watched or followed by 69% of voters. A plurality (26%) is getting their information from Fox News, 24% are getting their information from 1 of the 3 network stations (ABC, NBC, CBS), 16% are watching CNN, 15% MSNBC and 19% are going somewhere else for their information…”
“…Rep. Devin Nunes, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, criticized the impeachment proceedings as a “show trial” in his closing statement at the end of Thursday’s hearing. Nunes spoke following testimony from Fiona Hill, the White House’s former Russia adviser, and David Holmes, a top staffer at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine in a public hearing as part of the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. The impeachment inquiry has focused on a July 25 phone call in which Trump asked the president of Ukraine to investigate the former vice president and 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.
Nunes listed the events of the past three years as an orchestrated “coup” against President Trump.
“What you’ve seen in this room over the past two weeks is a show trial,” Nunes said. “Like any good show trial, the verdict was decided before the trial ever began.”…”
I&I Editorial:
“…Despite the establishment media’s declarations that U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland provided the smoking gun proving that President Donald Trump conditioned military aid to Ukraine on its government investigating the energy company Burisma and the 2016 election, Sondland soon told us this was merely his “presumption.”
We already knew from the transcript of the July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that aid being conditional on investigating the Bidens was a stretch, certainly nothing near the evidence that would be needed in any respectable court.
Witnesses and Democrats on Rep. Adam Schiff’s House Intelligence Committee made much of unofficial channels being used to conduct foreign policy, such as the efforts of Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani – hardly a surprise since these witnesses are all part of the official foreign policy bureaucracy that includes more than 77,000 employees of the State Department alone, each of whom is all too happy to justify their collective existence.
As Assistant Defense Secretary Laura Cooper said in her private deposition earlier in the month, and reiterated on Wednesday, “my sense is that all of the senior leaders of the U.S. national security departments and agencies were all unified … in their view that this assistance was essential.” Cooper added that “they were trying to find ways to engage the president on this.”
The president ultimately agreed it was essential. But why would they be trying to engage the president? Because they wanted to convince the only “official” in the executive branch who really matters, the one who – unlike them – is bestowed by the Constitution with massive power in executing the foreign policy of the United States. The one for whom they work – as advisers whose advice the president is entitled to heed or ignore, or anything in between, at will.
Those who think such near-total control is irresponsible might want to consider the observations of Edward Samuel Corwin, a famed president of the American Political Science Association brought into the Princeton University faculty in 1905 by Woodrow Wilson, and author in 1940 of “The President, Office and Powers.”
As Corwin opined: “A solitary genius who valued the opportunity for reflection above that for counsel, Lincoln came to regard Congress as a more or less necessary nuisance and the Cabinet as a usually unnecessary one.” That’s Honest Abe, not Tweeting Don…”
No words to describe the criminal barbarity of this government
https://youtu.be/DIoxH6CQFz4