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The president was correct yesterday when he described Congressman Schiff as a liar and a fraud.
STEPHEN KRUISER:
“…The press remains eternally indignant about the fact that Trump refuses to just shut up and go away already…
President Trump’s approval ticked up to 49 percent — its highest mark this year, according to a new Hill-HarrisX survey released on Wednesday.
The figure marks a 2-point increase from a Sept. 11-12 poll, but a 2-point decrease from its previous peak of 51 percent last August.
Trump’s disapproval rating, meanwhile, dropped to 51 percent, which marks his lowest level so far this year.
The nationwide survey was conducted on Sept. 28 and 29, less than a week after House Democrats launched a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump over concerns raised in a whistleblower’s complaint about the president’s communications with Ukraine.
Body blow!
Eric Felten:
“…Unlike most whistleblowers, the CIA analyst was not a witness to events. Instead, he functioned as a kind of investigative reporter who worked sources to develop the information detailed in the complaint. While some have praised the informer for unearthing questionable behavior by the president, some experts in national security law say that the whistleblower and his sources may have violated regulations aimed at preserving state secrets…”
WSJ Editorial:
“…The impeachment process is barely underway and already some constitutional norms are being trampled without a note of media notice or political concern. To wit, can a whistleblower inside the intelligence bureaucracy override a President’s right to executive privilege merely with an accusation?
That seems to be the default view among Democrats and the press as they luxuriate in news about Donald Trump’s conversations with foreign leaders. First it was the call with Ukraine’s President. Then on Monday the leak was what Mr. Trump told Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Now Democrats want to see the transcripts of other phone calls with other leaders.
“This is a coverup,” declared Nancy Pelosi last week, but if that’s true it is the most incompetent coverup in presidential history. Mr. Trump can’t seem to have any conversation that doesn’t leak, in part or whole, or that can’t be demanded by Congress as if everyone in the executive branch works for the House Speaker. Mr. Trump has released the Ukraine transcript and the whistleblower complaint, and he’s still accused of a coverup.
Last week’s inquisition of acting director of national intelligence Joseph Maguire by House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff captures the prevailing disdain for the separation of powers when Mr. Trump is the political target. Mr. Maguire, who has an impeccable reputation, had received the whistleblower complaint as part of his duties. He then acted responsibly by seeking legal advice about whether the document was subject to executive privilege. . . .
According to the Justice Department’s analysis of the whistleblower’s complaint, there was no “crime or fraud.” But Mr. Schiff treats the whistleblower’s complaint as enough to override any claim of a President’s right to have confidential communications with foreign leaders…”
Click over to read the whole thing. I highly recommend it.
STEPHEN KRUISER:
“…The first thing is a carryover from yesterday. Impeachment fever is getting hotter in the Dems’ brains every day and they are not just going to overreach, they are going to WAY overreach. There’s a prime example of the lunacy in Tuesday’s New York Times. An op-ed titled “Trump Has Disqualified Himself From Running in 2020” is the most hysteria-riddled nonsense they’ve posted yet.
The beauty of that is that none of the coastal media bubble people understand how off-putting their ravings are to at least half of the country. It’s a gift that keeps on giving and won’t be going away anytime soon.
An even bigger boon to Trump is Elizabeth Warren’s rise in the polls. Ultimately, she’s the best-case scenario candidate for the president to face next year. While many in the media are convincing themselves that progressivism is where all of the Democrats are now, that is far from true. A nominee from the fringe won’t win back any of the heartland voters that they lost in 2016…
…Perhaps the best thing working in Trump’s favor at the moment is the fact that Hillary Clinton is on another book tour, constantly in front of cameras and reminding normal people of the bullet America dodged in 2016…
…There are many days now when it seems as if the Democrats and their media monkeys are doing more to get the president re-elected than he is doing for himself…”
It is one thing to make 300 pizzas in an hour. It is another thing to sell them to humans who are willing to eat them.
My personal review of articles and commentary over the last few weeks confirms again, and without any doubt, that we have the worst media and political class since the American Civil War.
Biased, self-centered, without discipline, dumb.
“…last week. On a single day, in New York, President Trump signed an historic trade deal with Japan.
Across the pond in Geneva, Switzerland, I led a White House delegation. We were able to get the most sweeping reform of an international organization in our history.
And it was crickets in the media despite the fact that those two deals alone — those two Trumpian victories — will generate billions of dollars for farmers, ranchers, workers, manufacturers — and really create thousands of jobs.
Instead, we got the second impeachment circus in three years. And — and make no mistake about this, Maria, make no mistake about this — this is nothing less than an attempted coup d’etat, an end run around the ballot box.
And I see all these polls out there. Here’s — here’s like the poll question. Maybe Fox can do a poll on this. It’s to the American people. Should the impeachment process be used to depose a duly elected president when they can’t beat him at the ballot box?
I’d call that the Al Green question…”
Sean Davis:
“…On Monday, the intelligence community inspector general (ICIG) admitted that it did alter its forms and policies governing whistleblower complaints, and that it did so in response to the anti-Trump complaint filed on Aug. 12, 2019. The Federalist first reported the sudden changes last Friday. While many in the media falsely claimed the ICIG’s stunning admission debunked The Federalist’s report, the admission from the ICIG completely affirmed the reporting on the secretive change to whistleblower rules following the filing of an anti-Trump complaint in August.
The ICIG also disclosed for the first time that the anti-Trump complainant filed his complaint using the previously authorized form, the guidance for which explicitly stated the ICIG’s previous requirement for firsthand evidence for credible complaints. The Federalist reported last week that it was not known which form, if any, the complainant used, as the complaint that was declassified and released to the public last week was written as a letter to the two chairmen of the congressional intelligence committees.
In its press release, the ICIG also explicitly admitted it changed its policies because of the anti-Trump complaint, raising significant questions about whether the watchdog cooked its own books to justify its treatment of the anti-Trump complaint…”
You can’t make this stuff up! Cost of an education at UI? Your child’s mental well being.
Jason Chaffetz:
“…He wasn’t supposed to release the transcripts. Or the whistleblower report. He was expected to do what any president would have done – what President Obama always did. Hide the evidence.
As House Democrats rolled out their latest meticulously choreographed, perfectly timed, and broadly coordinated attack on President Trump, they weren’t counting on the president’s unprecedented transparency. Nobody releases a transcript of calls between heads of state. But Donald Trump did.
In the process, he screwed up the narrative. Again…
…Having been on the House Oversight Committee during the duration of the Obama presidency, I can attest that the administration fought every document request every time, releasing only the bare minimum. No excuse was too thin to withhold documents or testimony.
In contrast, President Trump did the unthinkable: he actually waived both executive privilege and attorney-client privilege for the Mueller investigation. What other president would allow his general counsel to be interviewed for more than 30 hours?
Donald Trump does. He should be winning awards for his openness and transparency. We’ve never seen anything like it before. And it’s messing with the Democrats’ narrative…”
Wacky lefties are everywhere!
Brexit Derangement Syndrome. The new BDS.
Jon Gabriel:
“…Following political news on Twitter is often compared to drinking from a firehose. This is true on a slow day let alone the past week-plus of impeachment fever. Since the first Ukraine story hit, major media outlets have torn into Trump like piranhas on an ox carcass.
Reporters have declared “we’ve got him this time” every day since 2015; they don’t want to miss their latest chance, damn the facts. And there are so many, ahem, “facts.” Each hour, another blockbuster hits. It takes about 90 minutes to prove many of these scoops false or at least questionable. By then, another blockbuster has hit, and another, and another.
It’s a firehose, alright. A firehose of … a word Ricochet’s vaunted Code of Conduct does not allow me to post on this family-friendly website. Let’s just say the media uncorked a hydrant spraying taurine excreta throughout the Beltway and beyond. The fountain of feculence is hitting everyone in Trump’s orbit, from staffers to foreign leaders.
The torrent of sewage is so intense, it’s splashing back on Trump’s accusers in the media and politics. Before Adam Schiff can shake the night soil off his too-tight suit, reporters uncap new firehoses showering more steer stool in every direction.
No one’s even holding the hoses at this point; they’re spasmodic snakes, spraying dung in every direction from Kyiv to Canberra. Everyone will come out looking awful; Democrats, Republicans, pundits — you name it. Instead of a logical impeachment roll-out to win support among moderates and a few errant Republicans, the common voter will likely damn everyone involved.
Yes, Trump’s Ukraine call was questionable but it certainly doesn’t rise to the level of impeachment. Hunter Biden’s cashing in on his dad’s name is obviously corrupt; most Democratic voters would agree with that. Investigating foreign influence on our elections is a good thing, whether it’s coming from Democrats or Republicans.
Impeachment has been the left’s goal since December 2016 — before Trump took office. Ukraine is just another bite of the apple after the Mueller report failed so spectacularly.
The media hysteria over Ukraine feels a lot like the recent Greta hysteria. There’s no time to absorb facts, discuss options, or weigh pros and cons. We need to act now or else!
Hysteria is a poor strategy. It didn’t work for climate change or Kavanaugh or the many other panics we’ve been subjected to since Trump took office. How Trump’s detractors think this will end well is beyond me…”
“…The mission of the CIA is to investigate outside this country, activities that are detrimental to this country, not inside this country,” Rollins said on ‘Lou Dobbs Tonight.’ “The role of the investigation here is the FBI. The whole idea of putting DNI (a Director of National Intelligence) together was to make sure to coordinate. There is a National Resource Division of the CIA that follows up. If there’s a spy network somewhere, they coordinate with the FBI. That’s the only ones who do domestic work. Then they have to have permission by the attorney general or the DNI head…
…What the president needs to do is pull his CIA director tomorrow and FBI director and his DNI, acting, and say who signed off on this. Someone signed off on this in order for this person to move this thing forward. If they didn’t, then let’s throw them in jail for falsification of a document…”
“…Obama let this happen. When that article appeared in the ‘Times,’ any honest president would have called his vice president in and say Joe, what are you doing? I sent you there to straighten out corruption and you have your son who has no capabilities getting millions from a crook in the Ukraine or they may have said because of ‘The Washington Post’ and all of the swamp media allow us to commit crimes and go after them for nonsense, we can get away with it. And I believe that’s true. These people are enablers. That’s why yesterday they actually put out a document demanding that their co-conspirators, the press, silence me. Why do you think they are silencing me? Because I’m not making any points?
They are silencing me because I showed up with an affidavit yesterday and an accuser who is willing to stand up and point the finger at Joe Biden and say you’re a crook. And I have the proof and I have the documents and I’ve got — the witness will say the corroboration because there are more witnesses where he came from and they are not going to escape this, Sean.
The American people are fair people and they don’t like what they see which is a family, the Biden family, that has been using as an asset for themselves, his public office, going back to his brother who was selling his Senate office when he was a lobbyist in health care. It’s scandal after scandal covered up by a compliant crooked press…”