New Air Force One Delivered!
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Another instance where the mass media and candidates for the Democrat 2020 ticket appear ready to stir racial tensions in order to get elected, create more division and ultimately turn citizen against citizen
Furthermore, Radical Corey Booker (Spartacus) and Bernie Sanders made a mockery of MLK Day by calling Trump a racist and Biden alluded to the fact that we have a president who encourages racial division.
MLK should be turning over in his grave at the sight of radical haters using his philosophy of non-violent brotherhood to stir up divisions among the racial make up of America.
Biden served with one of the most racially biased and divisive presidents in my life.
If that was not bad enough Kemala Harris announces she is running for president. She had to turn the day into politics? As a black woman you would think she would have ore respect for one of her own race.
Then we have the mis-reporting of of an episode between some Catholic students, native Americans and Blacks who call themselves Hebrew Israelites, whatever the hell that means..(See 1 and 1a below.)
I wrote in a memo right after the 2018 mid-term elections the 2020 election would soon begin, it would be nasty and dangerous. I believe it has begun and will be nastier than I thought.
If Democrats wish to bait Trump by calling him a racist and run a campaign of hate it will either blow back in their face or you can conclude Democrats are the true ones guilty of engaging in Russian collusion in order to rip our nation apart.
Just a reminder, sent by a dear friend and fellow memo reader. (See 1b below.)
Nor I have checked this for authenticity. It was sent from a dear friend and fellow memo reader. It is an e mail I would have sent had I the ability. (See 1b below.)
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I am re-posting Hanson's brilliant reversal of the Trump Witch Hunt when he turns it into the Obama Witch Hunt.
Is Obama The Manchurian Candidate after all? You decide. (See 2 below.)
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Dick
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1)
Here's What You Need To Know About The Confrontation Between Covington Catholic Students And Native American Protesters
A media disaster.
On Saturday, a video went viral, seemingly showing a group of Catholic high school students confronting and harassing a Native American protester who appeared to be peacefully playing a drum, but by Saturday night it was clear the confrontation wasn't the end of the story.
The three-minute video was posted online by a group of Native American protesters who claimed they were harassed and intimidated by a group of Covington Catholic High School students waiting for their bus near the Lincoln Memorial. The video is heavily clipped at the beginning and end, and shows only an apparent "confrontation" between a protester named Nathan Phillips and a Make America Great Again-hat wearing teen.
Phillips also did an interview with The Washington Post, where he accused the teens of harassing and intimidating him, and claimed the scene grew "ugly."
“It was getting ugly, and I was thinking: ‘I’ve got to find myself an exit out of this situation and finish my song at the Lincoln Memorial,’” Phillips told the paper. “I started going that way, and that guy in the hat stood in my way, and we were at an impasse. He just blocked my way and wouldn’t allow me to retreat.”
He and others accused the teens of chanting "build the wall" and hurling racial epithets at the group of Native Americans. Phillips said that the MAGA-hat wearing student closest to him taunted him — an assessment that was immediately adopted by most commentators, who compared the student to a white student taunting black customers at a Civil Rights lunch counter, and in some cases, even threatened the student outright.
The video and interview also drew widespread condemnation, not just from social justice warriors, but also from conservatives and March for Life attendees who took the video at face value — a decision that, by late Saturday, appeared to have been a major mistake.
Saturday night, a two-hour long, full video of the confrontation became widely available on social media, and that video shows a very different interaction than the one initally portrayed. The video, taken from the point of view of a second group of protesters who witnessed the interaction, shows that Phillips approached the teens — not the other way around, as Phillips claims — and that the teens were relatively peaceful during the incident, laughing and clapping along with Phillips' drumming, and occasionally asking questions like, "what is going on here?"
We now have a 2 hour raw recording of the MAGA kids incident.
We can see
No chanting "build the wall" as far as I saw
Native group approaches about an hour after the kids were already there
"Black Activists" are Black Hebrew Israelites yelling Fagg**facebook.com/Warrior4the12S…
The video also seems to show that the Covington High School kids were the victims of racial slurs: the group that recorded the video, a group called Black Hebrew Israelites, called the students "fa***ts," Reason's Robby Soave — who has done one of the most comprehensive investigations on the incident — reports.
"Far from engaging in racially motivated harassment, the group of mostly white, MAGA-hat-wearing male teenagers remained relatively calm and restrained despite being subjected to incessant racist, homophobic, and bigoted verbal abuse by members of the bizarre religious sect Black Hebrew Israelites, who were lurking nearby," Soave reports.
The kids rejected the homophobic chants and began to sing a school song, possibly to drown out the Black Hebrew Israelites.
It was at that point that the Native American protest descended. According to Phillips, it was to protect the Black Hebrew Israelites.
"There was that moment when I realized I've put myself between beast and prey," Phillips told the Detroit Free Press. "These young men were beastly and these old black individuals was their prey, and I stood in between them and so they needed their pounds of flesh and they were looking at me for that."
"Phillips put himself between the teens and the black nationalists, chanting and drumming as he marched straight into the middle of the group of young people. What followed was several minutes of confusion: The teens couldn't quite decide whether Phillips was on their side or not, but tentatively joined in his chanting. It's not at all clear this was intended as an act of mockery rather than solidarity," Soave continues.
Phillips and the students chanted together for a few minutes before the students appear to lose interest and filter away. During that time, though, Phillips claims he felt threatened, though separate videos seem to show that a handful of Native American protesters were taunting the students with racially tinged chants.
CNN is hamming this up.
You can choose to do something about that, or let them get away with that. archive.is/dFlQs
"You white people go back to Europe, this is not your land"
AND PEOPLE ARE YELLING AT #CovingtonCatholic FOR THIS?
WHY? WHY? pic.twitter.com/3T1ONMrwBK
Another video appears to show the student closest to Phillips gesturing to his fellow students to stand down on the protesters.
This kid, who's life is currently being destroyed, actually gestures to his friend to show Nathan Phillips respect during his drumming! All of it happening of course with another activist is screaming to go back to Europe because all he can do is be white? #CovingtonCatholic
A student from Covington spoke to a local reporter and gave an account that contradict's Phillips' but seems to fit more closely with the video evidence.
Response from Cov Cath student who says he was present at the event in question in Washington.@Local12
"We are an all-male school that loves to get hyped up," the student told a local Kentucky news station. "And as we have done for years prior, we decided to do some cheers to pass time. In the midst of our cheers, we were approached by a group of adults led by Nathan Phillips, with Phillips beating his drum. They forced their way to the center of our group. We initially thought this was a cultural display since he was beating along to our cheers and so we clapped to the beat."
The extended video also shows multiple students filming the interaction, so more video is guaranteed to appear. Phillips has continued to do interviews, smearing the students.
Late Sunday, major media organizations like the Associated Press and The New York Times finally began to call their initial stories on the incident into question.
Covington High, the students' school, says they will complete an independent investigation and dole out punishments as they deem necessary (including expulsion, if the evidence warrants it).
1a)
Democrats have announced that they will likely open another investigation into Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh to determine if he perjured himself or not.
According to Fox News:
It remains unclear whether Kavanaugh's accusers will be investigated for perjury and/or charged if Democrats find that Kavanaugh did not lie.
1a)
Dems Announce ANOTHER Kavanaugh
INVESTIGATION
By TTN Staff
Democrats have announced that they will likely open another investigation into Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh to determine if he perjured himself or not.
According to Fox News:
A freshman Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee told constituents the panel will “likely” investigate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh for purportedly committing perjury during his confirmation hearings last fall.
In a video sent out by conservative activist group America Rising, Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Colo., was recorded Friday saying he believes the Supreme Court justice committed perjury while under questioning from Congress -- though did not point to a specific statement.
“There’s no question [Kavanaugh] committed perjury during the confirmation hearings and so forth,” Neguse said, responding to a question about the possibility of impeaching Kavanaugh. “I think the Judiciary Committee is likely to take that up.”
Kavanaugh’s confirmation process last fall was nearly derailed by numerous accusations of sexual misconduct tied to the judge's time in high school at Georgetown Prep and college at Yale University.
It remains unclear whether Kavanaugh's accusers will be investigated for perjury and/or charged if Democrats find that Kavanaugh did not lie.
1b)
- Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) refused to take her oath of office on the Bible. Instead she used a law book. I don't know which law book, but I do know this: Long after the senator and whatever book she took her oath on are gone, the word of God will endure.
- Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) took her oath on what she called "Jefferson's Koran." She said, "Some of our Founding Fathers knew more about Islam than some members of Congress now." Obviously she doesn't know very much. Jefferson got a translation of the Koran so he could understand the Islamic Barbary Pirates against whom he would later, as president, wage war. Thus the phrase, "To the shores of Tripoli" in the Marines' Hymn. But she is probably right -- the Founders understood what many elites today do not: Radical Islam is a deadly threat to freedom.
- Unfortunately, Tlaib wasn't done. She later went to a reception sponsored by the radical group MoveOn.org. Referring to a conversation she had with her young son about her election, Rep. Tlaib declared, "We're gonna go in there and impeach the motherf---er.'"
- And there's more. The world map on the wall in Rep. Tlaib's office had a Post-It note on it labeled "Palestine" over the state of Israel.
- Rep. Tlaib is not the only newly elected member of Congress who is hostile to Israel. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) lied to her constituents about her support for efforts to boycott and sanction Israel. The election of these two Muslim women, along with socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez(D-NY), has been hailed by cultural and media elites as "the wave of the future." Just to be clear, they are celebrating the victory of anti-Semites. Some future.
- Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-VA) posted the transgender flag outside of her office. (Yes, they have a flag.)
- Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) introduced a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College.
- Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) introduced articles of impeachment against President Trump.
- Not to be out done, Nancy Pelosi made history herself by becoming the first woman to become Speaker of the House twice. And the first bill she pushed through the House late last night was an appropriation bill that gave an additional $12 billion in foreign aid to multiple countries and provided more money to promote abortions overseas, but did not provide one dime for better border security to protect American citizens.
1b)
6, 2018
Mr. Lebron James
The Los Angeles Lakers2275 E. Mariposa Ave.
El Segundo, CA 90245
Dear Mr. James,
No one in my circles discusses French Modernist artists. That comforts me. Such a conversation would expose me as an illiterate on French Modernism, just as I am an illiterate on how to cook.
When I know nothing of subjects, my mouth stays closed. That's at least one difference in us. You are an economics illiterate. You prove it often. The dishonest "reporters” who cover you want to be your buddy. They won't embarrass you by being honest journalists and treating your words as economics illiteracy.
When you call Trump "a bum," none of them will tell you that statistics rank him as one of our best presidents for black Americans. His tax cuts and freeing us from absurd regulations have resulted in -- after only 18 months -- the lowest unemployment numbers e for Hispanic and black Americans, and one of the lowest numbers for women.
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DURING THOSE 18 MONTHS, TRUMP'S POLICIES CREATED ABOUT FOUR TIMES THE MANUFACTURING JOBS CREATED DURING THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION’S LAST 18 MONTHS. Remember when Obama mistakenly told us "Our lost manufacturing jobs are not coming back.” Maybe manufacturing job growth depends on a president who knows what he's doing.
As a professional journalist, I cringe at some of Trump’s buffoonery, like repeating sentences and wearing us out with "great," “fantastic” and other empty adjectives. He is often coarse. He was not my candidate. But there’s no question his policies have helped many more minority Americans than Obama. It's not even close. Today, he’s working to free many black and Hispanic prisoners who, in his opinion, have been in prison too long for relatively minor offenses. Are you aware of that effort?
You need to look up Gross Domestic Product, adjusted for inflation, and learn what it means to everyday Americans. Learn what one GDP point means to employment, and see how Trump has kept the number climbing.
Your buddy Obama? In addition to being our worst foreign affairs president and worst military commander-in-chief, his economic numbers all deserved an "F". He is our ONLY eight-year president who failed to give us at least one 3% or higher year of adjusted GDP growth. EVERY other president achieved at least one year of 4.28% or higher growth. Aided by Vietnam spending, Johnson had an 8.48 year. The best peacetime year -- 7.83 -- belonged to Reagan, and Obama couldn't even score a 3! Look it up.
You say you would speak to Obama but not Trump? How tragically uninformed you are. Obama had BY FAR the worst debt accumulation record of all our presidents. His economic blunders added about $9 trillion to our debt. NO OTHER PRESIDENT EVEN CAME CLOSE. That indebtedness will fall to you and your children..
Poor families suffered most. Obama's awful job numbers forced a record number of people to take food stamps. Black household income under Obama fell steeply as black unemployment rose. Look that up, too.
But the worst part of what Trump inherited is that Obama, like Bush and Clinton before him, thought bribes and sweet talk were the best ways to deal with North Korea. As the North Koreans neared being able to wipe out Los Angeles with a nuclear-tipped missile, Trump became the first president to stand up boldly to the rogue nation. Notice North Korea, because of Trump, has stopped launching missiles over Japan? Notice North Korea has released political prisoners? Notice North Korea has begun to return remains of U.S. Service members? Absent sturdy spines, Clinton, Bush and Obama could not approach those major achievements.
Obama did not know many of those U.S. Tax dollars would help fund Hamas and Hezbollah terrorism? Of course he did. He just didn't care.
Remember the $800 billion of your, and everyone else's, tax dollars in his early stimulus for "shovel-ready jobs". Most of those tax dollars went to political cronies. He handed $500 million to Solyndra, a solar company run by boosters. The company soon went bankrupt. Our half-billion in tax money vanished with it.
Trump is often obnoxious, but people with courage can have that hang-up. Obama always talked big, then feebly stood by when Putin infringed on Ukraine and annexed Crimea .
But Obama's most cowardly move came when he warned Assad not to cross "the red line" in Syria. When Obama’s warning was ignored, which Assad knew would happen, Obama did nothing. Doesn’t that make him a "bum?"
It makes me sad that you, as someone with a national voice, would be so ignorant of economics and presidential decisions. I encourage you to do more reading and thinking as you watch the nation's GDP numbers rise and minority employment rise.
* Read about "Right To Try" which frees terminally ill people to sign a lawsuit waiver and take an experimental drug that might not be approved for many years. Democrats fought this sensible plan for years because it would cost them donations.
* Read about a Navy Obama left to Trump that struggled with about half its carrier aircraft unsafe to fly.
* Read about Trump's giving the VA the right to fire any employee who neglects or abuses a patient.
* Read about Trump's courage in challenging, actually demanding that, NATO partners to pay their fair share rather than keep mooching off the U.S.
You might also read the wisdom of two of the world’s brightest people, black intellectuals Dr. Thomas Sowell and Dr. Walter Williams. They have written many books. Sowell and Williams’ integrity, remarkable insights and clarity of expression cause their common sense to soar off the page to readers.
Or, you could ignore vital Trump decisions and remain an illiterate on both presidential achievement and economics. If you disdain knowledge and keep calling Trump or any other U.S. president a bum, people will begin to wonder who's the real bum.
Sincerely,
Hal Lundgren
4) Should The FBI Run The Country.
By Victor Davis Hanson
Since the media would doubtless answer that loaded question, “It depends on the president,” let us imagine the following scenario.
Return to 2008, when candidate Barack Obama had served only about three years in the U.S. Senate, his sum total of foreign policy experience. And he was running against the overseas old-hand, decorated veteran, and national icon John McCain—a bipartisan favorite in Washington, D.C.
During the campaign, unfounded rumors had swirled about the rookie Obama that he might ease sanctions on Iran, distance the United States from Israel, and alienate the moderate Arab regimes, such the Gulf monarchies and Egypt.
Stories also abounded that the Los Angeles Times had suppressed the release of a supposedly explosive “Khalidi tape,” in which Obama purportedly thanked the radical Rashid Khalidi for schooling him on the Middle East and correcting his earlier biases and blind spots, while praising the Palestinian activist for his support for armed resistance against Israel.
Imagine that all these tales in 2008 might have supposedly “worried” Bush lame-duck and pro-McCain U.S. intelligence officials, who informally met to discuss possible ways of gleaning more information about this still mostly unknown but scary Obama candidacy.
But most importantly, imagine that McCain’s opposition researchers had apprised the FBI of accusations (unproven, of course) that Obama had improperly set up a private back-channel envoy to Iran in 2008. Supposedly, Obama was trying secretly to reassure the theocracy (then the object of Bush Administration and allied efforts to ratchet up pressures to prevent its acquisition of nuclear weapons) of better treatment to come. The conspiratorial accusation would imply that if Iran held off Bush Administration pressures, Tehran might soon find a more conducive atmosphere from an incoming Obama Administration.Additional rumors of similar Logan Act “violations” would also swirl about Obama campaign efforts to convince the Iraqis not to seal a forces agreement with the departing Bush Administration.
Changing Status Quo Calls for a Federal Investigation
Further, conceive that at least one top Bush Justice Department deputy had a spouse working on the McCain opposition dossier on Obama, and that the same official had helped to circulate its scandalous anti-Obama contents around government circles.
Further, conceive that at least one top Bush Justice Department deputy had a spouse working on the McCain opposition dossier on Obama, and that the same official had helped to circulate its scandalous anti-Obama contents around government circles.
In this scenario, also picture that the anti-Obama FBI soon might have claimed that the Obama Iran mission story might have been not only an apparent violation of the Logan Act but also part of possible larger “conspiratorial” efforts to undermine current Bush Administration policies. And given Obama’s campaign rhetoric of downplaying the threats posed by Iran to the United States, and the likelihood he would reverse long-standing U.S. opposition to the theocracy, the FBI decided on its own in July 2008 that Obama himself posed a grave threat to national security.
More importantly, the FBI, by its director’s own later admission, would have conjectured that McCain was the likelier stronger candidate and thus would win the election, given his far greater experience than that of the novice Obama. And therefore, the FBI director further assumed he could conduct investigations against a presidential candidate on the theory that a defeated Obama would have no knowledge of its wayward investigatory surveillance, and that a soon-to-be President McCain would have no desire to air such skullduggery.
The Bush FBI would be further alarmed in 2008 that Obama would, in addition, reverse long-standing U.S. foreign policy by restoring relations with Venezuela, Cuba, and “resetting” policy with Russia. In short, the intelligence community might suspect that a President Obama would turn enemies into friends, and friends into enemies—and thus endanger the entire post-war order.
Envision as a result that the Bureau would have notified the CIA of its concerns about a likely Obama radical new change in U.S. foreign policy toward archenemy, theocratic Iran. The CIA director would then also begin tipping off important Republican senators of the dangers Obama posed. He would spice up his warnings with the preliminary “data” gleaned from shared FBI-inspired counterintelligence surveillance operations of the various members of the Obama campaign—specifically, FISA-court ordered surveillance focused on, say, the Iranian-born Valerie Jarrett.
Again, no proof of any collusion, but lots of worries that the outsider Obama would pose a level of danger to the status quo.
At about the same time, in the weeks before the election, the Bush FBI and Justice Department would have presented to the FISA court a dossier paid for by the McCain campaign—produced through the use of both law and opposition research firms that had hidden the improper use of McCain campaign fund payments, as well the fact that the anti-Obama dossier was compiled by a British retired spy, with a long known hostility to the Obama candidacy.
Unverified Claims, Anonymous Sources
In this continuing thought experiment, the FBI would not verify any of the dossier’s salacious accusations, which covered lurid accusations concerning Obama’s personal life, his college years, his real estate deals with Tony Rezko, contacts with the felon Bill Ayers and the firebrand Father Michael Pfleger, his full relations with the anti-Semitic and anti-American Reverend Jeremiah Wright and the Trinity church, his mysterious college-era trip to Pakistan and his Pakistani friends, his own references to prior drug use, and additional and assorted quite sensational and inflammatory rumors that had come up during the 2008 campaign.
In this continuing thought experiment, the FBI would not verify any of the dossier’s salacious accusations, which covered lurid accusations concerning Obama’s personal life, his college years, his real estate deals with Tony Rezko, contacts with the felon Bill Ayers and the firebrand Father Michael Pfleger, his full relations with the anti-Semitic and anti-American Reverend Jeremiah Wright and the Trinity church, his mysterious college-era trip to Pakistan and his Pakistani friends, his own references to prior drug use, and additional and assorted quite sensational and inflammatory rumors that had come up during the 2008 campaign.
Many of the dossier’s details had been earlier leaked to conservative journalists by the deputy director and general counsel of the FBI, with the intent of damaging the Obama campaign. The conservative media would legitimize its gossip and anti-Obama smears by using terminology such as “two unidentified FBI sources” and “an anonymous source at the DOJ.” During the closing stretch of the campaign, suddenly lurid details from the dossier would be published to suggest that Obama was either a foreign stooge or unfit personally for the nation’s highest office.
Nonetheless, the Bureau would still believe that the dossier was important enough to support further investigation into Obama’s radical and suspicious behavior during the campaign—including the possibility of conducting federal surveillance on his staffers through the FISA courts. Such warrants would be obtained and used to reverse-target Obama campaign officials through the excuse of focusing on Valerie Jarrett and her supposed Iranian ties.
In addition, imagine that in talks with the CIA, the FBI director decided to insert a government informant into the Obama campaign to ascertain whether his outreach to Iranian officials or his ideas about resetting the Middle East comprised a national security threat—and, given some of the salacious material in the McCain bought dossier, whether Obama himself might be compromised as some sort of Manchurian candidate by blackmailers working for Iranian or Russian intelligence.
Finally, after the stunning defeat of John McCain, both the CIA and FBI would have been worried that the incoming Obama Administration might soon learn that the intelligence services had warped the FISA process by not apprising the court that the dossier was unverified, much less that it was paid for by the McCain campaign and its author severed from FBI contact. And they were further anxious that members of the Bush Administration had deliberately unmasked names of surveilled Obama aides and advisors, and leaked them illegally to the press.
Suspicious Activities, Thickening Plots
As a result of partial disclosures of such intelligence community misbehavior, President Obama would have fired the FBI director, who in retaliation would have leaked confidential memos of his private talks that he had with President Obama himself—in hopes of creating enough outrage to lead to the appointment of a special prosecutor to review Obama campaign and administration suspicious activity abroad. The FBI would attempt to create such hysteria over the firing of the director and charges of Obama collusion that the rogue behavior of government agencies would be largely ignored.Meanwhile, imagine also that the FBI secretly continued with its prior counterintelligence investigations of the new president. The Bureau based its persistent surveillance on grounds of new worries during the transition and early months of Obama’s presidency that tended to fuel old suspicious of radical and dangerous new foreign policies.
As a result of partial disclosures of such intelligence community misbehavior, President Obama would have fired the FBI director, who in retaliation would have leaked confidential memos of his private talks that he had with President Obama himself—in hopes of creating enough outrage to lead to the appointment of a special prosecutor to review Obama campaign and administration suspicious activity abroad. The FBI would attempt to create such hysteria over the firing of the director and charges of Obama collusion that the rogue behavior of government agencies would be largely ignored.Meanwhile, imagine also that the FBI secretly continued with its prior counterintelligence investigations of the new president. The Bureau based its persistent surveillance on grounds of new worries during the transition and early months of Obama’s presidency that tended to fuel old suspicious of radical and dangerous new foreign policies.
The FBI noted that Obama’s first interview as president was with the Arab language Al-Arabiya, in which he sharply criticized past U.S. policies toward the Middle East; his June 2009 Cairo speech, in which he seemed to fault the West for much of the chaos in the Middle East while parroting Islamic “talking points” about Islam’s key contributions to Western culture; his silence when 1 million Iranians protested the theocracy during the so-called “Green Revolution”; and assorted loose gossip that he might be willing soon to trade billions of dollars for hostages and ease sanctions to conclude a so-called Iran deal.
Finally, also imagine that by 2012 under increasing pressure due to endless leaks, and Republican hostility, President Obama had relented and allowed the appointment of a special counsel, who turned out to be a friend of the fired FBI anti-Obama director. The counsel was charged with investigating whether Iran and radical Islamic groups had played an inordinate role in the 2008 campaign, and whether other foreign entities had exercised undue influence on the Obama campaign and administration.
Almost immediately, more leaks from the new special counsel’s team suggested that Obama himself might be also compromised by Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Accordingly, the counsel’s team quite expansively was suddenly also investigating the laxity shown the Russian government after its annexations of Crimea and eastern Ukraine; the administration’s unwillingness to provide arms to Ukrainian forces; the open mic quid pro quo pre-reelection promise to consider ending completely the U.S.-led efforts to install missile defense in Eastern Europe, should Putin stay quiet during the 2012 election campaign and thus give Obama space and flexibility and a boost in the elections; the strange decision to block U.S. oil companies from federal lands rich in natural gas and oil that enhanced Putin’s pivotal role in adjudicating world energy prices; and serial laxity in replying to continued Russian cyber attacks against private American companies and U.S. government institutions. Again, the effort would be to rebrand Obama’s legitimate but radical shifts in policy as criminal activity in a fashion designed to abort the Obama presidency or at least to shield public scrutiny from past FBI and CIA misdeeds.
During the 2012 Obama reelection campaign, Republican activists, former administration officials, and members of the Romney campaign would find access to some of the Bush-era surveillance dating back to 2008 and began leaking transcripts to the press. At the same time, the special counsel’s “dream team” (inordinately stocked with McCain and Romney contributors) would be rocked by scandal, once it was disclosed that in a series of texts two members of the investigatory team had expressed hatred for Obama, claimed that one could “smell” the presence of his supporters, and had hoped to derail his 2012 campaign. Some of their embarrassing texts would later mysteriously be proved to be unrecoverable, apparently erased or lost by the special counsel’s team.
Where Does It All Lead?
An exasperated Obama himself would have threatened to dismiss the special counsel as he serially complained that he had been an earlier victim of “wiretapping,” based on purchased smears by the McCain campaign, the use of a foreign former national intelligence officer to subvert his campaign, and the serial misconduct of the FBI that had illicitly surveiled his campaign and presidency on the bogus notion that his re-calibrations in the Middle East either amounted to treason, or were the result of blackmail by foreign powers who had evidence of the sort of behavior documented in the opposition-research dossier. Why, Obama would complain, was the special counsel team stocked inordinately with Bush conservatives, McCain donors, and even a few lawyers who had at times been McCain subordinates?
An exasperated Obama himself would have threatened to dismiss the special counsel as he serially complained that he had been an earlier victim of “wiretapping,” based on purchased smears by the McCain campaign, the use of a foreign former national intelligence officer to subvert his campaign, and the serial misconduct of the FBI that had illicitly surveiled his campaign and presidency on the bogus notion that his re-calibrations in the Middle East either amounted to treason, or were the result of blackmail by foreign powers who had evidence of the sort of behavior documented in the opposition-research dossier. Why, Obama would complain, was the special counsel team stocked inordinately with Bush conservatives, McCain donors, and even a few lawyers who had at times been McCain subordinates?
Obama was especially infuriated that Bush Administration officials in the FBI, Justice Department, CIA, State Department, and the National Security Council had worked with McCain campaign operatives to circulate the dossier on his prior friends and activities to media outlets. And why were former Bush CIA and FBI officials going on television to charge Obama with veritable treason?
The president was even more incensed that after his inauguration, the FBI had continued its FISA court surveillance of former campaign operatives, and persisted with surveillance of his own national security advisor.
For most of his presidency, an exasperated and harried President Obama tweeted incessantly that the FBI surveillance and special counsel investigation were constantly marked by leaks to Fox News and the conservative press on irrelevant issues and unproven stale gossip—such as old 2008 Obama campaign finance violations; ancient allegations that Michelle Obama had received favorable treatment at her University of Chicago hospital job once Obama had been elected senator; fossilized stories that Obama had still not paid taxes on the Rezko discounted gift of tangential property; tired narratives that in Obama’s prior senate campaign the sealed divorce records of both his primary and general election opponents had been mysteriously and unlawfully been leaked and published; new revelations that Obama’s own autobiography was little more than a mythography of composite sketches and made up narratives; and insinuations that ongoing scandals at the General Services Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, IRS, and the Environmental Protection Agency might have cross-fertilizations with the special counsel investigations. Racy elements within the fabricated so-called McCain dossier such as unproven drug use, alleged manic chain-smoking, and libelous, unproven personal liaisons, would be favorite gossip of journalists.
A number of former Obama associates—Bill Ayers, Tony Rezko, Jeremiah Wright, David Axelrod—were reportedly being leveraged by special counsel attorneys in exchange for limiting their own legal exposure in a variety of areas. A sleepless Obama often railed that both the FBI and the special counsel were conducting “witch hunts” and “fishing expeditions,” and that there had been no “collusion” with either Middle East or Russian interests.
Obama, in our thought experiment, would have charged that the role of the Bush-era FBI, CIA, DOJ, and special counsel’s team had become part of a “resistance” to delegitimize his presidency. Indeed, Obama charged that conservative interests had long wanted to abort his presidency by fueling past efforts to subvert the Electoral College in 2008, to invoke the Logan Act, the 25th Amendment, and the Emoluments Clause (based on rumors of negotiating lucrative post-presidential book and media contracts by leveraging his presidential tenure), as well as introducing articles of impeachment.
Celebrity talk of injuring Obama and his family would be daily events. Actor Robert De Niro talked of smashing Obama’s face, while Peter Fonda dreamed of caging his children. Johnny Depp alluded to assassination. It soon became a sick celebrity game to discover whether the president should be blown up, whipped, shot, burned, punched, or hanged.
Imagine that if all that had happened. Would the FBI, CIA, or FISA courts still exist in their current form? Would the media have any credibility? Would celebrities still be celebrities? Would there ever again be a special counsel? Would we still have a country?
Victor Davis Hanson is an American military historian, columnist, former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He was a professor of classics at California State University, Fresno, and is currently the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush. Hanson is also a farmer (growing raisin grapes on a family farm in Selma, California) and a critic of social trends related to farming and agrarianism. He is the author most recently of The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict was Fought and Won (Basic Books).
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