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Illegals are costly:
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https://www.city-journal.org/
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Is the FBI concerned?
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https://www.nysun.com/article/+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A turnaround.
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Billionaire Democrat Changes Mind About Trump
Venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya says 'Trump Derangement Syndrome' blocks people from seeing that many of Trump's policies were solid.
Billionaire Democrat Changes Mind About Trump
By Janice Hisle
Former President Donald Trump's peace-nurturing policies look "pretty incredible" in the wake of violence erupting in the Middle East, a billionaire Democrat says.
During last week's episode of the All-In Podcast, prominent venture capital investor Chamath Palihapitiya, who previously called the former Republican president "an idiot," says it is time to re-evaluate President Trump's accomplishments.
Commenting just days after Hamas, an Iran-backed terrorist group, invaded Israel and raped, killed, and kidnapped innocent civilians, Mr. Palihapitiya lauded the Trump Administration for its foreign-policy gains.
US Assesses Israel Not Responsible for Hospital Blast in Gaza
Labeling himself "a Democrat who has been left 'homeless,' who is now definitely in the center, but probably leaning increasingly Right," Mr. Palihapitiya said that "Trump Derangement Syndrome" has blinded people to the Trump administration's achievements.
"What those guys did was pretty incredible, in hindsight," Mr. Palihapitiya said.
The podcast moderator, fellow tech investor Jason Calacanis, said he's "no fan of Trump" but chimed in: "It's a miracle, actually, when you look at it, what they did."
Mr. Palihapitiya, a former Facebook executive, listed several accomplishments of the former president's team, including brokering the Abraham Accords. That 2020 agreement forged cooperation among Middle Eastern nations that have clashed over investments, tourism, energy, and other key issues.
President Trump's administration made strides toward a peace deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, Mr. Palihapitiya noted.
'We Killed the Message'
President Trump received several Nobel Peace Prize nominations for his foreign-policy efforts.
"To really be able to, like, find long-lasting peace is just a real example for the world," said Mr. Palihapitiya, who was born on the South Asian island of Sri Lanka.
Because of the violence in the Middle East, "this is a moment where you have to start to re-underwrite" the former president's policies and actions, Mr. Palihapitiya said.
Nine months ago, Mr. Palihapitiya called President Trump "an idiot savant, minus the savant" on that same podcast, which he hosts with three well-known friends. That remark was made during a discussion of the former president's legal troubles over his alleged mishandling of documents with classified markings.
Those issues notwithstanding, Mr. Palihapitiya says: "So much of the work that happened in that administration turns out to have been right. And that's what's so frustrating for me."
"The work on the border wall, we didn't like the messenger, so we killed the message. Turned out it was right," he said. Ditto for "issuing long-term debt to refinance when rates were at zero," along with the Trump administration's proposal to restructure the Middle East.
"When are we going to stop shooting ourselves in the foot? And when are we going to actually see and take the time to look past who is saying things and actually listen to them, word-for-word?" Mr. Palihapitiya asked.
Seeking additional comment, The Epoch Times left a message for Mr. Palihapitiya at a phone number listed for his California-based business, Social Capital, but received no return call before publication.
Praise for Trump's Son-In-Law
The All-In podcasters applauded the former president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who is Jewish, for his work in the Middle East.
He played a key role in the Abraham Accords.
Mr. Kushner also conducted extensive world history research for the "Peace to Prosperity" plan, the Trump White House's 2020 blueprint for revamping the political and economic frameworks of Israel and the Hamas-controlled regions.
The plan, which has not been implemented, was intended to resolve the complex, longstanding economic, governmental, and religious conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. It advocated a "two-state solution" to the problem.
Aiming to guarantee civil and political rights for both sides, the plan would have recognized Israel as the "nation-state of the Jewish people" and created "defensible borders for the State of Israel" for land west of the Jordan River. It also called for a newly created State of Palestine through "significant territorial expansion, allocating land roughly comparable in size to the West Bank and Gaza."
While Mr. Calacanis said it was "weird" or "bizarre" that a president's son-in-law or another relative would help formulate foreign policy, Mr. Palihapitiya disagreed.
He pointed to Mr. Kushner's recent four-hour interview with The Lex Fridman Podcast and said: "You know, it's not weird."
The podcast makes clear that Mr. Kushner "is incredibly thoughtful and incredibly competent," Mr. Palihapitiya said.
White House Senior Adviser Jared Kushner speaks to journalists after U.S. Ambassador David Friedman unveiled a plaque at the U.S. embassy designating the Kushner Courtyard, in Jerusalem, on Dec. 21, 2020. (Maya Alleruzzo/Pool/AP Photo)
During the podcast with Mr. Fridman, Mr. Kushner commended his father-in-law for strengthening the United States' relationship with Israel. President Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital and moved the U.S. Embassy there, a feat that past U.S. presidents pledged repeatedly but failed to enact.
President Trump broke down “false barriers that people had erected” and demonstrated that most Middle Easterners “just want to live better lives,” regardless of their nationality or religion, Mr. Kushner said.
In 2018, after learning that Iran was secretly developing nuclear weapons, President Trump withdrew from the 2015 Iran nuclear arms deal.
He also imposed economic sanctions, blocking certain financial transactions and exports, including oil.
After government officials declared that President Trump's opponent, Democrat Joe Biden, had won the hotly disputed 2020 election, Mr. Kushner aided in the transition to the Biden administration.
Biden Backs Away
“We left them a place where we had tremendous momentum in the Middle East,” Mr. Kushner said. However, he said the Biden Administration changed gears.
Instead of building on the Middle East peace process, President Biden wanted to focus on "the three C's:" the COVID-19 pandemic, "climate change," and China.
After his installment in office, President Biden loosened sanctions on Iran. He also cut back U.S. oil production, increasing the nation's reliance on oil from foreign nations such as Iran. These actions enriched and emboldened Iran, a nation with a history of funding terrorist organizations, Mr. Kushner said.
Further, Mr. Kushner said the United States failed to respond in a timely manner to crises that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) faced, Mr. Kushner said. In January 2022, Iran-backed Houthi rebels, based in Yemen, launched rockets into Abu Dhabi.
In the aftermath, "they basically don't get a call from the United States for 17 days," Mr. Kushner said.
President Joe Biden (R) and UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan (L) attend a bilateral meeting at a hotel in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on July 16, 2022. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
President Joe Biden (R) and UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan (L) attend a bilateral meeting at a hotel in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on July 16, 2022. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
That failure to act, coupled with other actions, alienated "the first Muslim country to stand up with the United States," Mr. Kushner said.
The Biden Administration "severely degraded the trust that we built with our allies," Mr. Kushner said.
President Trump, in a speech last week, accused President Biden of strengthening Iran and creating a climate ripe for the terrorist attack on Israel.
The Epoch Times asked The White House to comment on criticisms of his Middle East policies and actions, but received no response before publication.
United States ties with the UAE and Saudi Arabia were "frayed," Reuters reported last year.
The news agency added: "Gulf states have chafed at perceived declining U.S. commitment to their security in the face of Iran's missile program and network of regional proxies."
'Two-State Solution' A Must?
Looking to the future, entrepreneur and political commentator David Sacks, who also appears on the All-In Podcast along with Mr. Palihapitiya, points out that there is no quick fix for the Middle East.
"Hamas is now deeply embedded in a civilian population of over 2 million that's densely packed. How do you root them out? It's going to take decades," he said, fearing that the general population in that region is supportive of Hamas.
The situation is delicate, he said. "If you take measures that are perceived as too drastic by the rest of the world, then you will inflame the opinion of other countries, you'll turn it against Israel," Mr. Sacks said.
"I think that the US should only affirm its support for Israel. It should only denounce the atrocity that happened" during the Oct. 7 Hamas ambush of Israel, Mr. Sacks said.
He encourages the Biden administration to reinforce its support for the proposed "two-state solution."
"The Palestinians are eventually gonna have to have their own state," Mr. Sacks said. "There's simply no way around that."
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Jason Riley could well be the next Tom Sowell.
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Hamas War Shows Us What American Universities Stand For
Some students celebrate and many presidents equivocate. No wonder trust in higher ed is down.
By Jason L. Riley
According to a Gallup survey published in July, public confidence in the usefulness of a college education has been in something of a free fall for most of the past decade. In 2015, 57% of Americans expressed a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher ed. Today, that’s down to 36%.
Moreover, trust in college has fallen broadly. It’s down among men and women, among Democrats and Republicans, and among people with and without a college degree. The cost of attending college, which rose by 169% between 1980 and 2020, according to a Georgetown study, surely is a major factor in this trend. But so are radical campus politics, such as those displayed at some of our most prestigious institutions of learning since Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel earlier this month.
The Israeli civilians who were abducted, tortured and killed—including women, children and senior citizens—weren’t bystanders caught in the crossfire. They were the intended targets. Entire families were executed in their homes. NBC News reported that documents recovered from the bodies of terrorists mapped the locations of elementary schools and youth centers and instructed the gunmen to “kill as many as possible” and “capture hostages.” Denouncing the perpetrators of these wicked acts shouldn’t be difficult, yet the response on too many campuses has been to fault Israel for the atrocities or to equivocate.
A coalition of more than 30 left-wing student groups at Harvard issued an open letter stating that the Israeli “regime” was “entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” It has taken Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, three tries (and counting) to issue a statement distancing the administration from the letter and making it clear that the university condemns the terrorist attacks. Worse, Ms. Gay acted only after being pressured to do so by former Harvard president Larry Summers and some of the school’s biggest donors.
University of Pennsylvania president M. Elizabeth Magill likewise needed multiple attempts to issue a forceful statement on the terror attacks. She, too, found her moral compass only after megadonors to Penn said they were closing their checkbooks and urging other philanthropists to do the same. “In an updated statement following the backlash, Magill condemned Hamas, and emphasized the University’s position on anti-Semitism,” the Daily Mail reported. “She referred to the violence from Hamas as a ‘terrorist assault,’ a change from her initial statement.”
If your school is so ethically adrift that it needs to emphasize its position on anti-Semitism, something is very wrong. And if Americans increasingly are hesitant to leave impressionable youths in the care of institutions run by people who have trouble rebuking openly genocidal terror campaigns, who can blame them?
Hamas has never hidden its intentions. It is an Islamist organization dedicated to eradicating Israel by killing the Jewish people who live there. Hamas isn’t interested in a “two-state solution” or any other compromise. Its objective, stated explicitly in its founding documents, is the annihilation of the Jewish state. Period.
Ben Sasse, president of the University of Florida, takes Hamas at its word and was one of the few college leaders who was unequivocal in his response to the attacks: “I will not tiptoe around this simple fact: What Hamas did is evil and there is no defense for terrorism. This shouldn’t be hard,” he wrote. Apparently, however, calling out evil is harder than you might think, not only for administrators and students but also for faculty members.
A Cornell history professor appearing at a pro-Palestinian rally this week referred to Hamas’s butchery as “exhilarating” and “energizing.” Columbia political scientist Joseph Massad described the attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,400 people, including at least 30 U.S. citizens, as “awesome” and a “major achievement of the resistance.” And CNN reports that a Stanford instructor was suspended after students reported that he singled out Jews in his class by asking them to raise their hands, accused them of being “colonizers,” and played down the significance of the Holocaust’s body count.
Academia has been an incubator of leftist causes going back at least as far as the 1960s. Since that time, however, double standards have proliferated in admissions and faculty hiring. Ideology has become more important than scholarship, and political correctness dominates decision-making to the point that calling an act of terror an act of terror is to risk upsetting significant numbers of students and faculty. Many administrators are captive to those on campus who believe that higher education is about indoctrination and thought control rather than open inquiry, civil engagement and the rational examination of competing viewpoints.
The old joke among college presidents is that A students become their professors, while C students become their donors. We’re starting to see some donors throw their weight around. Let’s hope it continues.
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