Trump has already driven Trump-Haters insane with his antics and accomplishments. Will he get the opportunity to drive a judicial appointment stake through leftist hearts?
I can think of few things more significant for America "righting" itself than another highly qualified Jurist being appointed to The Supreme Court so that our third branch can return to it's historical role of interpreting rather than legislating.
In this regard, Mitch McConnell will also play a most significant role.(See 1 below.)
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Haley hits the nail squarely again. (See 2 and 2a below.)
And:
Another good deed by Trump: "President Trump will pardon conservative filmmaker and icon Dinesh D'Souza, according to Fox News. Dinesh D'Souza was convicted in 2012 of giving an excessive campaign contribution to Wendy Long, a friend from college, who was running for U.S. Senate."
This pardon rectifies another disgusting attempt by radical liberals and an Obama politicized Justice Department to intimidate conservative's of their freedoms.
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Kasich on entitlements.
After reckless/clueless progressives along with gutless professed conservatives drive us onto the banks of bankruptcy remaining traditional conservatives will be blamed for being heartless.
You cannot win against committed Democrats who place winning over everything else and then claim they are defending the downtrodden because they, and only they, care.(See 3 below.)
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I am fortunate to have some good doctors. My problem is trying to reach/connect with them. I doubt any of my doctors have ever called their own office to arrange an appointment or to reach one of their nurses/staff member.
It is easier to reach God, takes less time and I have never had my phone call disconnected while angels place me on hold. Why? Because sometimes even my prayers are answered. Just having fun at my doctor's expense.
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Yes, so much bad started in the '60's. (See 4 below.)
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Rove is correct. China is going to continue stealing and then eating our lunch. They are ahead of us regarding 5G technology, and stem cell biotech because of America's religious restraints etc. (See 5 below.)
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An inside look provided for in the green room. (See 6 below.)
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The leader of N Korea is not stupid. In fact, he has played his cards authoritatively well. Yes, he has done so at the expense of his citizens.
I suspect his goal is to strike a peace deal that ends the state of war with S Korea and he gets assurances he can live with protecting and guaranteeing him and his family's security and continued control of their government. If he can get this nailed down, and in a manner he trusts, I suspect he will be willing to accommodate Trump's goal - de-nuclearization.
China should also like this and would probably get behind this accommodation and push. Just my own thinking .No insights from any source.
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Apparently there has been a significant shift in American's trust in the mass media. In 1987, 25% of Americans thought the mass media were liberal and now 90% hold these views and this explains why fake news has become a popular way to describe their reporting. The mass media mostly brought this conviction on themselves beginning with professors responsible for teaching future media types, then having the intellectual socialist impact of their professors re-enforced by media organizations hiring policies and finally the owners emphasizing entertainment as the best road to profits.
Again, these are my thoughts.
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Dick
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1) Liberals' worst nightmare: a second supreme court pick for Trump
A future conservative nominee could affect issues ranging from women’s reproductive health to LGBT rights
Any vacancy on the court prior to 2020 would almost certainly be filled by Donald Trump. Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/AP
Any vacancy on the court prior to 2020 would almost certainly be filled by Donald Trump. Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/APWhen Donald Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to the supreme court just weeks after taking office, the newly minted US president made good on a central promise of his campaign – to replace the late justice Antonin Scalia with a bonafide conservative.
That moment foreshadowed what is shaping up to be among the most indelible of Trump’s triumphs – the reshaping of the federal judiciary with the appointment of dozens of judges with an ideological bent toward the administration’s agenda.
The Republicans are working with Trump to make a record-breaking number of appointments to federal courts. These new, mostly young white males will be in a position to rule on legislation that could reshape America for years.
But the most contentious appointment would be a second nomination to the highest court in the land. The supreme court has over decades delivered landmark decisions on issues ranging from abortion to affirmative action and same-sex marriage. The potential for Trump to install another justice on the nine-seat bench, some legal experts argue, could have profound consequences on issues ranging from women’s reproductive health to LGBT rights.
With speculation mounting over the possible retirement of supreme court justice Anthony Kennedy, Trump could have a lasting impact on reshaping America’s most important court.
“If President Trump fills another vacancy on the court it will have an enormous effect,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of Berkeley School of Law at the University of California.
“It will create the most conservative court since the mid-1930s,” he added.
“It would mean a majority to overrule Roe v Wade and to allow states to prohibit abortions, to eliminate all forms of affirmative action, to eliminate constitutional limits on illegal police conduct.”
The president himself underscored the power of future vacancies earlier this year, when he tweeted that Republicans “must ALWAYS hold the Supreme Court!”.
THE SECOND AMENDMENT WILL NEVER BE REPEALED! As much as Democrats would like to see this happen, and despite the words yesterday of former Supreme Court Justice Stevens, NO WAY. We need more Republicans in 2018 and must ALWAYS hold the Supreme Court!
While the likelihood of a pending vacancy is far from confirmed, judicial watchers have set their sights on Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a progressive icon who turned 85 this year, and Kennedy, a critical swing vote who has been the subject of retirement rumors for the second straight year.While it is not unusual for presidents to appoint supreme court justices with similar ideological leanings, Trump’s comments all but reinforced that he is unlikely to nominate a consensus pick if provided the opportunity. In November, the president updated his shortlist of candidates for a hypothetical vacancy, adding to a roster of proven judicial conservatives.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the oldest sitting judge at age 85, was appointed by Bill Clinton in 1993. Photograph: J. Scott Applewhite/APAny vacancy prior to 2020 would almost certainly be filled by Trump, and a rules change adopted by Republicans during the Gorsuch nomination fight enabled the Senate to confirm supreme court justices with a simple majority vote.
Under the current balance of the court, Kennedy and the chief justice, John Roberts, though conservative appointees, have at times sided with the bench’s liberal justices.
Kennedy was the architect of several major decisions pertaining to LGBT rights, most notably the supreme court’s milestone ruling in 2015 establishing same-sex marriage as the law of the land. He is being closely watched as the likely deciding vote on the court’s highly anticipated decision regarding a case of a baker in the state of Colorado who refused to provide a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.
Camilla Taylor, the director of constitutional litigation at Lambda Legal, a national civil rights group focused on LGBT issues, said Kennedy’s previous decisions in the LGBT community’s favor “helped bring our relationships and our families out of the shadows and recognized the full humanity and citizenship of our community on the court”.
Taylor voiced concern that a second Trump supreme court nominee would present “an immediate and unambiguous threat to the LGBT community.”
“Another conservative Trump justice would jeopardize our right to marry who we love, and also our fundamental equality under the law including protections from discrimination in housing, public accommodations, employment and education.”
Some nonetheless argue that if the speculation around Kennedy’s departure proved true, it would not fundamentally alter the supreme court.
Brian Fitzpatrick, a professor of law at Vanderbilt University Law School, said Republican vows to overturn Roe v Wade, the supreme court’s 1973 ruling that legalized abortion in the US, are more designed to energize conservative voters than they are grounded in reality.
“Even if we have a more conservative replacement for Kennedy, the conservatives are not going to overrule the right to an abortion, they’re not going to overrule gay marriage,” Fitzpatrick said.
“The reality is the big cases where he goes with the liberals are cases that I doubt the conservatives have the stomach to reverse, even if they had the votes next year,”
“That would be too dramatic a change in our society,” he added. “It would cause all kinds of turmoil and backlash in the political system.”
“People like Chief Justice Roberts, he’s a very institutionally minded person. He’s not going to risk the supreme court’s credibility and consistently by operating it like a weathervane.”
If Trump were to oversee a supreme court vacancy, a prevailing question remains as to whether Democrats in the Senate would force a similar blockade of the seat as Republicans did under former president Obama - should they retake the Senate in November’s elections
Democratic wounds have yet to heal over the refusal of Republicans to grant Merrick Garland, Obama’s nominee to replace Scalia in 2016, a hearing or a vote.
The Republican opposition came despite the fact that Garland held a reputation as a widely respected centrist judge on the US appeals court.
If we get a vacancy on the supreme court this year, we'll deal with it
Mitch McConnellProgressives now believe Democrats should give any future Trump nominee what has become known in Washington as “the Garland treatment”.
Prominent Democrats have signaled reservations about resorting to the same tactics, which they argue would risk further eroding institutional norms. But Senator Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, suggested an overtly partisan pick by Trump would not receive much of an audience with Democrats.
“The question is who you put up,” Warren said in an interview with Pod Save America, a political podcast hosted by former Obama aides.
“The people that George W Bush would put in wouldn’t be exactly the same as the people that Barack Obama would put in. But they’d be along the same road.”
Warren noted that the climate had changed, even as she conceded it was counterproductive to follow in McConnell’s footsteps and state from the outset that Democrats would block any Trump nominee regardless of background.
“I think that’s wrong,” she said. “But I do think you send a Neil Gorsuch to us, and the answer is no. We do hearings, we do it substantively, but the answer would be no.”
McConnell, for his part, has said any supreme court vacancy this term would be dealt with expeditiously and before the midterm elections.
“It would be a top priority,” he told NPR last week.
“If we get a vacancy on the supreme court this year, we’ll deal with it.”
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2)
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WASHINGTON -- Nikki Haley, US President Donald Trump's envoy to the UN, tore into the organization on Wednesday for what she characterized as a lackadaisical response to the firing of over 70 rockets on Israel from Gaza the day before.
Claiming a double standard, and questioning why Israeli military actions against Hamas, recognized as a terrorist organization, rile world opinion more so than the reverse, Haley called on the Security Council to condemn the attack as an act of terrorism. The Gazan volleys were "a clear escalation of violence," Haley said, accusing the council of being "disconnected" from the realities on the ground. "The people of Gaza do not need protection from an external force. The people of Gaza need protection from Hamas."
The US had called an emergency session of the council for Wednesday over the rocket firings, hoping to secure a statement of condemnation. But Kuwait, a non-permanent member, blocked the move, and is rather offering a conflicting resolution calling for "international protection" for the Palestinian people.
Kuwait's resolution “calls for the consideration of measures to guarantee the safety and protection of the Palestinian civilian population,” according to a draft obtained by Agence France-Presse. Kuwait has already vowed to veto any measure proposed by the US condemning the Gazan attacks on Israel, one of which struck a kindergarten. "It is outrageous for the Security Council to fail to condemn Hamas rockets attacks against Israeli civilians," Haley said. "You would think no one would want to side with Hamas over its rocket launches. But the statement was blocked." "Apparently some council members didn't think Hamas launching rockets qualified as terrorism," she continued, but "the United States begs to differ." Israel’s envoy to the UN dismissed a draft of Kuwait's resolution before the Security Council meeting as a “cynical” and “shameful” ploy. “We have no intention for escalation, but if someone will attack Israel, we will attack them back,” Israel’s Ambassador Danny Danon told reporters at the council. While representatives from Britain, France and the UN "unequivocally condemned" the rocket attacks, Paris' envoy also linked Tuesday's volleys with Palestinian protests that took place earlier in the month around the US opening of its embassy in Jerusalem. The IDF response to those riots on the Israeli border resulted in dozens of Palestinians deaths and hundreds more wounded. "There is a real risk of a cycle of violence which the players in question could quickly lose control of," France's ambassador Francois Delattre told the council. "This situation is sadly predictable." Speaking by satellite to the council from Jerusalem, the UN's special coordinator for Middle East peace, Nickolay Mladenov, warned that Israel and Gaza remain on "the brink of war," and said that Hamas's rocket firings "cannot be justified under any circumstances." He noted that, while Israel's "retaliatory" strikes against Hamas did not result in any civilian infrastructure damage in Gaza, Hamas' own rockets damaged Gazan power lines, which would take days to repair. 2a) Obama’s foreign-policy hell: The 1980s just won’t stop calling
By Post Editorial Board
Barack Obama Getty Images
President Obama must be ruing his famous dig at Mitt Romney — you know, “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back.”
Because Obama now faces overseas woes scarily reminiscent of the ’80s — and his defense secretary just said as much.
The zing came in the third presidential debate in 2012. “A few months ago,” Obama told Romney, “when you were asked what is the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia, not al Qaeda.”
Then came the laugh-line about the ’80s asking for their foreign policy back — and the jibe, “The Cold War has been over for 20 years.”
Fast forward to last Tuesday, and Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s talk on the Pentagon budget at Washington’s Economics Club.
America faces five national-security threats, he said. Heading the list: the need “to deter Russian aggression” in Europe, which “we haven’t had to worry about . . . for 25 years.”
Oops. Back in 2012, Obama was promising Vladimir Putin he could be “more flexible” after he was re-elected. The years since have brought Putin’s response: Crimea annexed; Russian troops and proxies waging war on Ukraine’s government; Russian carpet-bombing of Syrian rebels, including US-allied ones, to prop up Bashar al-Assad’s bloody rule in Syria . . .
One of the two candidates clearly saw that coming — and it wasn’t Barack Obama.
So now Team Obama has belatedly caught up with Mitt Romney’s geopolitical foresight. Four years late.
A recent RAND study found that, should NATO try to answer a Russian military move in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, NATO forces would lose — in days.
But Ash Carter can’t even find the cash to restore the two combat brigades (of four total) that Obama pulled out of Europe in the wake of Hillary Clinton’s supposed “reset” with Russia.
US forces aren’t much better prepared to handle the next three blast-from-the-past threats on Carter’s list — China, Iran and North Korea.
Good news: When you get to the defense secretary’s No. 5 concern, you finally lose that vintage-’80s vibe. Bad news: It’s ISIS, which Carter warns is “metastasizing in Afghanistan, Africa and elsewhere.”
Obama once wrote off the Islamic State as a “JV team.” Even now, he’s leaving it to the next president to make good on his vow to “ultimately destroy” ISIS.
As Obama considers all these geopolitical threats and mulls his (self-limited) options, here’s a suggestion: Ask Mitt Romney for advice
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3) Entitlements Will Eat America’s Economy
As we did in the 1990s, lawmakers should put aside partisanship and get to work on reform.
By John R. Kasich
When I was chairman of the House Budget Committee in 1997, Republicans and Democrats in Washington saw past our differences to balance the federal budget for the first time in decades. Working together, we managed to follow up that success with three more balanced budgets. Yet it’s been 17 years since lawmakers and the White House approved a spending plan that didn’t add to the national debt.
Rather than tackling their budget responsibilities head-on, each successive Congress and administration has passed temporary, stopgap spending bills. In fact, Washington set a record for that policy of avoidance in 2017 by passing six short-term extensions in less than a year.
Then it got worse. The latest spending bill, approved in February, did more than continue to fund the federal government; it also set America on a course to add at least $1 trillion a year to the national debt by 2020. That lawmakers could approve such a spending spree at a time when the national debt surged past $21 trillion should set off alarm bells for families across the nation.
It took almost 200 years for the federal government to accumulate its first $1 trillion in debt. The next $20 trillion took less than four decades.
What can the country do to dig itself out of this massive fiscal hole? What can it learn from a time—only 20 years ago—when the nation and its leaders pulled together to balance the budget?
The answer is clear. Republicans and Democrats in Congress must put aside divisive (and pointless) sound-bite politics and at long last get serious about meaningful spending restraint and entitlement reforms. Those discussions should begin with proposals to deal with the costs of Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security, which are the greatest contributors to spending and debt. Congressional leaders from both parties must pledge to vote on a package of meaningful reforms.
Why is entitlement reform so important? Because government spending and increased borrowing—driven by entitlements—continue to gobble up America’s gross domestic product, putting economic growth at risk. Without growth, the debt can’t be paid down. While raising the debt ceiling will give the federal government temporary relief from the specter of default and unpaid bills, it is by no means an acceptable long-term solution. America simply can’t allow this debt to grow—or even to remain at present levels—unless the goal is to strangle economic growth, push interest rates higher and put fiscal well-being and national security at risk.
Tackling the growing costs of entitlements doesn’t mean Americans must turn their backs on those who have fallen on hard times and need help. As governor of Ohio, I oversaw an effort that reformed our Medicaid program dramatically. Without denying coverage to those who relied on it, we cut annual growth from a 9% yearly average in 2009-11 to an average of less than 2% since 2016. Success is possible.
For Congress, solutions demand throwing aside political gamesmanship and finding a willingness to act. That may be difficult in the current political climate, but it can be done. Remember the example of 1997, when a bipartisan coalition in Congress worked with a Democratic president to reform the welfare system, rein in military spending, and balance the federal budget. There were, of course, disagreements along the way, but they never overshadowed the shared goal of seeing that the nation found a way to live within its means.
Time is running short and America’s time bomb of debt continues to tick. We’ve made progress before, so there is no reason we can’t do it again. It is long past time for leaders on both sides of the aisle to learn from the past and commit to the future.
Mr. Kasich is governor of Ohio.
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4) The Year Politics Collapsed The class of 1968 included Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump.
The modern era of American politics—defined by polarization and nonstop intensity—began with the cataclysmic events of 1968, now celebrating, if that’s the right word, its 50th anniversary.
Everyone says the pace of events in the Trump presidency is overwhelming. Compared with 1968, the past year has been a walk in the park.
Nineteen sixty-eight was one of the greatest anni horribiles ever to happen inside the U.S., producing war, assassinations and riots.
During the 2008 Democratic primaries, Sen. Barack Obama, who turned 7 in 1968, took a generational shot at Sen. Hillary Clinton, who turned 21 at Wellesley: “Senator Clinton and others, they have been fighting some of the same fights since the ’60s.”
Well yes, it’s the fight that will never end.
It is impossible to understand the relevance of that year without a timeline.
Jan. 23: The USS Pueblo and its 82 survivors are captured and taken hostage by North Korea. On Jan. 30, North Vietnam launches the notorious Tet Offensive, including an invasion of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. March 12, Minnesota’s Democratic Sen. Eugene McCarthy comes within a few hundred votes in the New Hampshire primary of upsetting President Lyndon B. Johnson. Within three weeks, Johnson announces he will not seek his party’s presidential nomination.
Four days later, Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis. Urban riots break out across the U.S. April 23: Students occupy offices at Columbia University until police storm the building a week later. June 3: Andy Warhol is shot in New York by Valerie Solanas, author of the SCUM Manifesto, or “Society for Cutting Up Men.”
Then, on June 5, while running for the Democratic presidential nomination, Robert F. Kennedy is assassinated at a Los Angeles hotel.
Aug. 8, Republicans nominate Richard Nixon. Two weeks later, the Soviet Union invades Czechoslovakia.
In late summer during the Democratic Convention in Chicago, police fight a pitched battle with antiwar protesters in Grant Park. In October, at the Summer Olympics in Mexico City, Americans Tommie Smith and John Carlos raise gloved fists as a black-power salute during a medal ceremony.
On Nov. 5, Nixon defeats Hubert Humphrey and a third-party populist, former and future Alabama Gov. George Wallace, who in the spirit of the times told a group of antiwar protesters: “I was killing fascists when you punks were in diapers.”
Also there is this: The graduations of 1968 included Bill Clinton (Georgetown), George W. Bush (Yale) and Donald J. Trump (Penn).
Historians have tried to decipher this one year’s volcanic eruptions. For some, it was the emerging political power of televised images; Vietnam was called “the living-room war.” There was also pot, and the pill.
Generally underemphasized by historians is that 1968’s politics had one other fuel source: rock ’n’ roll music.
The songs ran constantly in the background, producing a manic energy. But the sounds also smoothed and softened the reality of these events. A 1968 would not have happened if driven by the music of 1948, 1958 or 1978.
The Rolling Stones recorded “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” James Brown released, “Say It Loud—I’m Black and I’m Proud,” and Steppenwolf raved through “Born to Be Wild.”
It wasn’t all a rush. People could bliss out on musical pillows like “Hey Jude” by the Beatles, Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay,” Janis Joplin’s “Piece of My Heart” or Simon and Garfunkel’s dreamy “Scarborough Fair.”
The music, mayhem and merriment were inseparable. It was a year in which the idea of inhibition died. It hasn’t returned and likely never will.
Nineteen sixty-eight marked the start of political polarization. Contrary to current myth, the civil-rights legislation of a few years before was bipartisan. With the Vietnam War, unity began to unravel.
The late 1960s saw the beginning of left-liberal moral triumphalism. The opposition was no longer just wrong. It was morally suspect. For a new generation of Democrats, which increasingly included the theretofore politically neutral press, the Vietnam War was opposed as, simply, “a bright shining lie.”
A kind of political religiosity infused matters of sex, race and even foreign policy, and pushed the parties apart. The 1968 Kerner Commission Report on the urban riots in 1965-67 announced that America was “moving toward two societies.”
Some 10 years later, inevitably, the religious right emerged. And here we are today, fractured by politics and technology into myriad cultural subsets of separations that began in 1968. The Trump divide was a long time coming.
Nearly every chronicle of 1968 omits the last thing that happened that year. On Dec. 21, Apollo 8 lifted off. On Christmas Day, as it orbited the moon, its commander, Col. Frank Borman, read from the Book of Genesis and said: “From the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck and merry Christmas, and God bless all of you—all of you on the good Earth.”
It was, until it ended, a more innocent time.
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5) Trump Should Play the Long Game on Trade
While the U.S. fixates on steel, China seeks to dominate 21st-century technology.
By Karl Rove
If Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s goal when he flies into Beijing Saturday is merely to pressure the Chinese to buy more American goods, the Trump administration is wasting an opportunity.
A pledge by China to reduce its trade surplus with the U.S. is difficult to enforce and easily discarded. It distracts from the underlying problems in the U.S. trading relationship with China while giving the Chinese more time to dominate the technologies of the future.
Rather than short-term tweaks to the balance of trade, the administration should seek long-term policy changes that level the playing field and strengthen the rule of law. This requires focusing on four critical issues.
First, the U.S. should insist on an end to China’s trade-related investment measures. The Chinese use TRIMs to pressure foreign companies into transferring intellectual property to Chinese partners or licensing it on a noncommercial basis as a condition of doing business in China. TRIMs amount to a sophisticated shakedown with Chinese bureaucrats playing the role of white-collar extortionists.
Second, the U.S. should demand the elimination of limits on foreign ownership of Chinese companies. These foreign-equity caps provide another avenue for the seizure of U.S. intellectual property. The Chinese joint-venture partner, often aided by a TRIM, may coerce the transfer of a foreign partner’s technology.
Third, the U.S. should press for changes in Chinese procurement rules that require goods sold to the Chinese government to be made in China. For U.S. companies, this can only be done in combination with a Chinese partner, which then gains control of any technology used in the manufacturing process.
Rules prohibiting practices like these are routinely included in trade agreement like the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the European Union’s free-trade agreements. Working with allies, the U.S. can and should extend them to China.
Finally, the U.S. must press—both in bilateral negotiations with China and in the World Trade Organization—to end China’s trade-distorting subsidies to state-owned enterprises. China has been clear about its desire to dominate key technological domains with long-term economic, military, and strategic significance. The “Made in China 2025” targets include artificial intelligence, quantum computing, advanced semiconductors, 5G, the Internet of Things, robotics and electric vehicles.
China provides key companies with low-cost capital, energy and other resources that give them an unfair advantage over non-Chinese enterprises, especially in sales to the Third World. Because they have state subsidies, for example, Huawei and ZTE already undercut companies like Ericsson, Fujitsu and Nokia , grabbing business across the globe that would go to non-Chinese businesses if the playing field were level and enhancing Chinese dominance in telecom.
While China aims to command the industries of the future, the Trump administration is pursuing trade policies to reclaim America’s share of the last century’s economy by fixating on goods like steel, aluminum and internal-combustion cars. While important, these industries employ an ever-declining number of Americans and generate a diminishing share of gross domestic product. Instead of trying to protect these industries by taxing American businesses and consumers with high tariffs, the administration should safeguard the U.S. competitive edge in the digital economy, data analytics, biotechnology, nanotechnology and other likely drivers of 21st-century economic growth.
The Chinese are happy to engage in drawn-out discussions about limiting steel and aluminum sales to the U.S. and reducing tariffs on imported American automobiles. This buys them time to develop crushing advantages in technology that will matter much more in the coming decades. Chinese negotiators would be smart to tell Mr. Ross they are reducing their 25% tariff on imported U.S.-made automobiles. That—combined with a promise to buy more U.S. goods packed with valuable technologies—would be a small price to pay to keep the Trump administration’s attention away from more important issues.
U.S. policy makers should remember that 70% of Americans see foreign trade as “an opportunity for economic growth through increased U.S. exports,” according to Gallup’s February 2018 World Affairs poll, while only 25%—the lowest since the question was first asked in 1992—see it as “a threat to the economy from foreign imports.”
America’s trade negotiators should play the long game. The Chinese are. One lesson of American history is that U.S. workers and innovators have always been able to compete with anyone when the rules are fair. That should be the Trump administration’s principal trade goal.
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6) It All Comes Out in the Greenroom
If you think liberal talking heads are obsessed with Trump, you should hear what they say in private.
As a Republican media consultant, I’m routinely invited to represent the right-leaning view on left-leaning news outlets, including CNN, MSNBC and NPR. Usually I’m invited to appear alongside two liberal panelists, a liberal show host, and a viewing audience rooting for my competitors. I’m not expected to take a dive, but everything is arranged to make it hard for me to win the argument.
Truth be told, I enjoy the challenge. The real reward, however, is the time spent beforehand in the greenroom. Hours waiting to go on air have given me a unique opportunity to meet a bunch of liberal journalists, activists, progressive politicians and Hollywood celebrities. They have all been friendly.
What have I learned from observing the other side of the political universe up close? Liberals are united in the belief that the election of Donald Trump constituted a cataclysmic anomaly in the political cosmos. They believe in their hearts that this cataclysm was instigated by an outside agent using cyber chicanery. Equally clear is their newfound collective purpose in life—to rectify this horrific reality any way they can.
I’ve listened in on numerous conversations about how voter manipulation is the only plausible explanation for Mr. Trump’s victory. One segment producer explained to me that despite the more than $1 billion in total marketing dollars spent on the presidential race—and almost two years of daily news coverage of the campaigns—it was the approximately $200,000 that might or might not have been spent by the Russians on social media that tipped the race in Mr. Trump’s favor. If so, those were the most effective ads in political history, despite the spelling mistakes.
The conversations I’ve heard regarding the president’s mental state have been even more bizarre. I’ve heard it all—he is on medication that causes erratic behavior, he has a mental illness, he has been brainwashed or blackmailed by the Russians.
Mind you, these aren’t presented as far-fetched theories. They are treated like realistic explanations for every tweet, speech and political move the president makes.
I’ve also noticed a remarkable shift in the context of questions asked by talk-show hosts in the Trump era. Questions today are often loaded in an editorial manner. Assumptions and conjecture are spoken like accepted truths. During a recent appearance I was told in advance to expect discussion of the “fact” that Republican politicians who have committed crimes no longer need to worry about being chased from office. On another show the host asked, “Is President Trump guilty or crazy?”
The smartest, most connected, and most quoted person in all of Washington this year is somebody called “Unnamed Source.” This fellow’s unmatched knowledge has regularly led CNN to deploy the “Breaking News” chyron, once reserved for truly developing stories like terrorist attacks and outbreaks of pandemic disease. What will the network do if it ever turns up a real smoking gun—say, a videotape in which President Trump is caught secretly confiding to the Russian president that he will have more flexibility to negotiate after he’s re-elected?
It isn’t only the hosts and the guests. Even the people who book these shows are often eager to promote an anti-Trump narrative. It was considered a major coup when CBS scored a “60 Minutes” exclusive interview with porn star Stormy Daniels. Not only did the interview produce no new information, but “60 Minutes,” like most news organizations, somehow forgot to mention that Ms. Daniels was recruited in 2009, apparently by national Democrats, to run as a Republican for U.S. Senate in Louisiana.
Bookers are especially on the lookout for Republican strategists willing to bash President Trump. Doing so not only gets you invited back, it can lead to becoming a paid contributor. You could even get your own show.
The most serious and unfair consequence of all this is that President Trump’s successes have gone under-reported. Historic unemployment numbers, the destruction of Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, and a potential breakthrough regarding nuclear negotiations with North Korea have all been pre-empted in favor of coverage of more important events—like James Comey’s vaudevillian book tour. Welcome to the new normal.
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