Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of National Review enjoy Marco Rubio’s demolition of Patrick Murphy in the Florida U.S. Senate debate. They also discuss the real threat of voter fraud and the extent we know it’s happening as Donald Trump warns of a rigged election. And they have fun as Politico’s Glenn Thrush is caught by Wikileaks referring to himself as a hack to John Podesta and asking Podesta not to tell anyone Thrush allowed him to look over his story and make changes.
Largely lost in the media focus on the presidential race, Russia is taking a series of provocative steps that a leading military expert believes are designed to expose NATO as unwilling to defend its own members and ultimately shatter the western alliance.
In just the past few weeks, Russia has reportedly conducted a massive emergency drill involving 40 million civilians, moved nuclear-capable ballistic missiles to an area that puts many European capitals in range, ordered officials serving in foreign countries to send their family members home, and state-run television is repeatedly asking civilians if they are ready for nuclear war.
Is this all just very elaborate propaganda or is Russia about to make a major move?
Retired U.S. Navy Captain Chuck Nash says it’s all about Russia putting pressure on the West.
“This is the continuing pressure that Russia is putting against NATO and the West. Moving the missiles into Kaliningrad, into the oblast there, is a direct pressure/threat/intimidation of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, the Baltic States,” said Nash.
He says Russia has both the capability and the intent of gathering more of the territory it once held as the USSR. But Nash believes Russian President Vladimir Putin is being strategic in order to build an argument for achieving his next objective.
However, Nash says the real goal, regardless of the territory involved, is to neuter the defense commitments of NATO towards its members.
“Shattering NATO would be Putin’s best opportunity in the relatively few days he has remaining with a weak administration in the U.S.,” said Nash.
Nash says Putin is playing the long game and making life slowly more miserable for his adversaries.
“It’s sort of like a vise. He’s slowly tightening the vise, not to do something so quickly that it would cause an immediate reaction or a harsh reaction,” said Nash, noting that Adolf Hitler tested Europe’s resolve in the 1930s by moving German forces into the demilitarized zone crafted at the end of World War I. Europe’s decision to do nothing gave Hitler all the motivation he needed to push forward with his plan to conquer the continent.
Nash says the slow play also seems to be Putin’s strategy.
“He understands that as long as he doesn’t do anything really dramatic – the only really dramatic thing was re-annexing the Crimea, nothing happened. Now he’s putting the pressure on. He’s continuing to tighten the vise. The U.S. has withdrawn. Our political system appears to be in chaos from a foreign perspective,” said Nash.
After the fall of the Iron Curtain, NATO expanded by admitting some former Eastern Bloc nations, including former Soviet republics like the Baltics. While a fundamental bedrock of NATO is it’s Article 5 vow that an attack on one member is seen as an attack on all, Nash says Putin is betting that NATO’s old guard won’t put up much of a fight its the junior members.
“Do they see these newbie NATO countries as true peers, where they are willing to go to war against Russia on the behest of these guys, or does the whole NATO treaty fall apart?” asked Nash.
In the long run, Nash expects Putin to make a regional pitch to NATO members that a partnership among neighbors makes more sense than an alliance with the U.S.
“I doubt there will be overt military action. I think he is continuing to embarrass and show U.S. weakness to cause those fracture lines within NATO to open and deepen,” said Nash.
“He’s trying to shake the resolve of NATO and say to the Europeans, ‘Look, we control your gas. We’re the Europeans. The Americans are taking care of themselves. This thing is a mess. Let’s just get along over here, shall we? That way we won’t have to go to war with each other. I think a lot of the NATO allies would be very amenable to that siren song,” said Nash.
He says Obama administration failures to shore up relations with countries from North Africa to the Middle East are putting Russia in a stronger position and the U.S. getting left behind.
“We’ve withdrawn from the region and [those nations] are looking for who’s going to be the dominant power, who’s got the credibility. Unfortunately, we have unraveled decades worth of good work to have those countries align with the United States. It’s all unraveled in the last eight years,” said Nash.
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America react to reports that Donald Trump’s son-in-law has engaged in talks about Trump starting a cable news channel. They also slam CNN’s Chris Cuomo for falsely telling viewers it’s a crime for them to read Wikileaks emails for themselves so they need to rely on the media to tell them what’s important. And they groan as a third of U.S. millennials believe George W. Bush killed more people than Joseph Stalin did.
Liberty University students are standing by their public criticism of school president Jerry Falwell, Jr., for what they say is “inexorably associating” the school with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
On Thursday, a group called Liberty United Against Trump released a nine-paragraph letter rebuking Falwell for his enthusiastic backing of Trump and carrying the name of Liberty University with him.
“In the months since Jerry Falwell Jr. endorsed him, Donald Trump has been inexorably associated with Liberty University. We are Liberty students who are disappointed with President Falwell’s endorsement and are tired of being associated with one of the worst presidential candidates in American history. Donald Trump does not represent our values and we want nothing to do with him, the statement begins.
“Associating any politician with Christianity is damaging to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But Donald Trump is not just any politician. He has made his name by maligning others and bragging about his sins. Not only is Donald Trump a bad candidate for president, he is actively promoting the very things that we as Christians ought to oppose,” the statement says.
Liberty United Against Trump spokesman Dustin Wahl says students, who firmly rejected Trump in the primary, are fed up with Falwell associating them with Trump.
“It’s about the fact we don’t want to associate Donald Trump with Christianity, most importantly, and then also with Liberty University,” said Wahl, noting that Falwell has traveled to campaign for Trump and also spoke at the Republican National Convention.
“He carries the banner of Liberty University when he goes. That’s why people know who President Falwell is,” said Wahl.
Wahl acknowledges and seems to largely agree with the argument that Hillary Clinton will be aggressively hostile to the values Liberty holds dear. However, he says the amount of passion Falwell has for Trump’s campaign is troubling to him.
“There’s quite a difference between casting a ballot for the lesser of two evils and being kind of frustrated about it than what Falwell has been doing, which is loudly and proudly supporting Donald Trump,” said Wahl.
Wahl says students have been frustrated with Falwell since the primary season, but Trump’s comments about women in the recently released Access Hollywood tape from 2005 demanded the group dissociate from Falwell. who continues to back Trump.
“Our motto is ‘Training Champions for Christ,’ and that is supposed to be our message. Our message isn’t supposed to be endorsing any political candidate, but especially not one who directly opposes everything that we’re taught and everything we’re supposed to stand for and believe,” said Wahl.
And while stating the gospel of Christ cannot be stopped by any man, Wahl says Falwell’s actions make the work more difficult.
“It’s difficult to advance the message of Jesus Christ of salvation from our sins when we’re tying ourselves directly to a man who is not only sinful, because we’re all sinful, but who proudly preaches his sin,” said Wahl.
He says Falwell and others who defend Trump risk being branded as hypocrites.
“It’s pretty disappointing when the same people who used to say that character matters when Bill Clinton has his problems are now saying that character doesn’t matter when it comes to voting for the highest office in the land,” said Wahl.
Falwell quickly responded to the student statement.
“I am proud of these few students for speaking their minds. It is a testament to the fact that Liberty University promotes the free expression of ideas unlike many major universities where political correctness prevents conservative students from speaking out. However, I am afraid the statement is false in several respects,” stated Falwell.
Falwell stated that Trump has much more support on campus than his critics are willing to admit. He also says many of the people in Liberty United Against Trump aren’t even students and that he is always clear that he is not speaking for the university when he advocates for Trump.
He also claims his actions are biblical.
“I am only fulfilling my obligation as a citizen to ‘render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s’ by expressing my personal opinion about who I believe is best suited to lead our nation in a time of crisis,” stated Falwell, referring to Mark 12:17.
Wahl is not impressed.
“I’m not a biblical scholar but I think there’s a strong argument to be made that’s he’s maybe taking that verse out of context. I believe that had a little more to do with taxes than , not so much with endorsing a specific presidential candidate,” said Wahl.
He says even Trump supporters on campus are applauding Trump opponents for speaking out.
“We’ve received word from all kinds of Trump supporters here on campus and other places that are proud of what we’re doing. Even though they’re voting for Donald Trump, they say, ‘Look, we don’t want Liberty to be associated with a man like Trump. I personally think Hillary Clinton is worse. But I don’t want my degree tied to someone like Donald Trump even though I’m choosing to vote for him for president,'” said Wahl.
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America applaud Jim’s colleague, David French, for ripping the Democrats who are horrified over Donald Trump’s actions but were only too eager to defend Bill Clinton in the 1990’s. They’re also a bit uneasy as Russia moves missiles around, asks their people if they’re ready for nuclear war and makes other ominous moves. And they react to a poll showing Trump’s lead in Texas is now at the margin of error.
Much attention is given to the Republican figures publicly turning their back on Donald Trump but there is also an active movement of Democrats enthusiastically backing the GOP nominee because they are convinced nothing will change if Hillary Clinton becomes president.
It’s called the Trumpcrats PAC. Executive Director Christian Rickers was a strong Bernie Sanders supporter during the Democratic primaries and determined that he would abandon the Democrats this year if his candidate did not prevail.
“Early on I decided if he was not going to win the primary, that I was not going to support Hillary Clinton. She is a career politician,” said Rickers.
Rickers says just seeing the economic decline in his own community convinced him that Hillary Clinton was the wrong choice to lead our country for the next four years.
“I came from a town with 25 manufacturing facilities 20 years ago and now it has one. Nobody is more responsible for that than the Clintons and the trade policies they’ve advocated over the years. We’ve just learned that Ford is leaving town and going to Mexico and taking all the jobs there, Carrier air conditioning and Maytag. When is this going to stop?” said Rickers.
He says the Clintons are responsible for pushing American companies to set up shop in other countries.
“We have policies in our country that incentivize our American corporations to take jobs overseas. That makes absolutely no sense to me. Why in the world would we incentivize American businesses to go overseas? Hillary Clinton’s going to do more of the same,” said Rickers.
“Donald Trump is going to reverse those policies, renegotiate the trade policies that are killing jobs in the country. I think that’s the most important thing we could do,” said Rickers.
Rickers applauds Trump for not only taking those positions but for making them a focal point of the campaign.
“Donald Trump has said he’s going to do something to bring the jobs back. That’s what most people care about. They want to be able to provide for their families,” said Rickers.
The Trumpocrats PAC is busy convincing voters in blue collar swing states like Pennsylvania and Ohio to ditch their instinct to vote for Democrats.
“We’re going through the Rust Belt, Pennsylvania all through Ohio. We’ve had millions of voters who have signed up and said they are Democrats who are supporting Donald Trump. It’s going to make the difference in the election,” said Rickers.
And who are the people making this switch?
“These are blue collar people who don’t have the benefits they used to have. They don’t have the health care they used to have, no pensions anymore, no security for their families. They’re fed up with it and Washington’s not going to fix it with Hillary Clinton. Everybody knows that if she’s elected, we’re going to get more of the same. That’s why we’re having so many Democrats who are now Trumpocrats,” said Rickers.
Rickers is encouraged that more than 100,000 Pennsylvania Democrats have switched their registration to Republican, compared to about 20,000 who flipped the other way. He says the numbers are even bigger in Ohio and the movement is huge around the nation but the mainstream media doesn’t want to acknowledge it.
“I’ve been on Fox News and Fox Business a couple dozen times. We’ve gotten a lot of good feedback from that but no invitation from MSNBC or CNN or major network shows because they don’t want to report about it,” said Rickers.
It’s not just the media who don’t like the Trumpocrats movement. Loyal Democrats are not at all pleased with efforts to siphon votes away from Clinton.
“If you think the Trump supporters are nasty and they call them deplorable, you ought to see the Clinton supporters. We had a tomato thrown at us the other day at the rally near Pittsburgh,” said Rickers.
“They’re really nasty people, man. The Clintons have been doing this for years. They take a hatchet job on anybody who’s their opponent. It’s gutter politics. They’re experts at it and we need to fight back,” said Rickers.
While some of the national and battleground state polls show Trump losing ground in recent days, Rickers fully expects the race to ebb and flow all the way to November 8.
“I don’t think anybody really knows how this thing is going to shake out. That’s why people need to stay tuned, hang in there, support what we’re doing at the Trumpocrats PAC, support all the candidates that are up and down the ballot,” said Rickers.
Rickers says the Trumpocrats PAC is focused almost entirely on the presidential race but also encourages voters to support other candidates on the ballot who will advance their ideals.
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America react to Liberty University students denouncing Jerry Falwell, Jr. for making the school synonymous with Donald Trump. They also discuss reports of Trump pulling mostly or entirely out of Virginia, making his road to victory more difficult. They have fun with the Clinton team’s contradictory explanations for all the embarrassing emails coming out from Wikileaks. And they they note Bob Dylan’s winning of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Top Clinton campaign officials are under fire after the latest batch of emails from Wikileaks referred to the Catholic Church as a “Middle Ages dictatorship,” suggested some conservatives convert to Catholicism out of political expedience and that Clinton’s campaign chairman considered the creation of nominally Catholic organizations to erode support for the church itself.
Two exchanges among the latest batch of 1,200 emails released by Wikileaks are drawing the most scrutiny on this issue. The first came in in 2011 in an email from John Halpin of the Center for American Progress to John Podesta and Jennifer Palmieri. Podesta is now Clinton’s campaign chairman and Palmieri is a top spokeswoman.
After mocking News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch for having his Catholic children baptized in the Jordan River, Halpin broadens the discussion.
“Many of the most powerful elements of the conservative movement are all Catholic (many converts) from the SC and think tanks to the media and social groups,” wrote Halpin.
“It’s an amazing bastardization of the faith. They must be attracted to the systematic thought and severely backwards gender relations and must be totally unaware of Christian democracy,” he continued.
“I imagine they think it is the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion. Their rich friends wouldn’t understand if they became evangelicals,” replied Palmieri.
In a 2012 email, Podesta corresponds with Voices for Progress President Sandy Newman. Newman was looking for ways to build a movement to weaken the power of the Catholic church in the political debates over contraception, particularly with respect to the contraception mandate imposed as part of President Obama’s new health care law.
“We created Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good to organize for a moment like this. But I think it lacks the leadership to do so now. Likewise Catholics United. Like most Spring movements, I think this one will have to be bottom up,” wrote Podesta, noting that former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend would be a good choice to lead such a movement.
Republican Vice Presidential nominee Mike Pence immediately slammed the emails on Wednesday.
“Hillary Clinton should denounce those bigoted, anti-Catholic, anti-evangelical remarks and her campaign staff should apologize to people of faith and do it now,” said Pence.
For many observant Catholicsm the contents of these email exchanges are deeply troubling.
“It’s hard to know where to start, to be honest,” said Maureen Ferguson, senior policy adviser at The Catholic Association.
However, she says her first reaction was oddly one of gratitude.
“We should all be grateful that we’re getting a preview of this before Election Day, so that we can go into the voting booth with very clear eyes knowing what a Hillary Clinton administration would look like,” said Ferguson.
“People at the highest level in her campaign are just displaying blatant bias and discriminatory attitudes towards people of faith. The way that they’re mocking Catholics and evangelicals, there is obviously no respect here for those who cherish their first amendment freedom of religion,” she added.
While appalled at the comments, Ferguson says no one should be expect the Clinton team to think otherwise.
“On the one hand, it’s very surprising and stark to read these attitudes in black and white, but on the other hand we should not be surprised. This anti-Catholic, anti-people of faith bias comes on the heels of eight years of an administration which has been systematically undermining our religious liberty,” said Ferguson.
She points specifically to the Obama administration’s imposing of the contraception mandate.
“Remember the HHS mandate on contraceptives, telling Catholic nuns that had to be paying for contraceptives. This is using the heavy hand of the federal government, threatening massive government fines on a group of nuns (Little Sisters of the Poor) who are serving the elderly poor, unless they get in line with this liberal agenda,” said Ferguson.
She also says Hillary Clinton has also laid down the gauntlet on religious freedom. In April 2015, Clinton told the Women in the World Summit that biblical and moral opposition to abortion would be in the cross hairs of her administration.
“Laws have to backed up with resources and political will and deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed,” said Clinton.
Ferguson is especially galled at Podesta for wanting to create nominally-Catholic groups to challenge Catholic authorities on cultural issues.
“He admits to having been a part of creating these groups called Catholic Alliance for the Common Good and another one called Catholics United. Their specific purpose is to undermine the Catholic Church,” said Ferguson.
She says this is nothing new for Democrats.
“We all became familiar over the years with Catholics for a Free Choice, which was a pro-abortion group that put the name ‘Catholic’ on it it to undermine the Catholic position in defense of the sanctity of human life. In these emails, John Podesta even admits to creating these two liberal Catholic front groups as a way to subversively attack the church,” said Ferguson.
Ferguson admits this has been a tough election season for many observant Catholics, being repulsed by Clinton’s positions on a host of issues vitally important to them and by Donald Trump’s behavior past and present.
“I think so many of us Catholics feel quite homeless in this election,” she said.
But that does not mean both options are equally terrible in her eyes.
“I think most people wish we had different choices in this election, but we should at least be clear-eyed about what a Hillary Clinton administration would look like. It would be full of people who are aggressively attacking our freedom of religion,” said Ferguson.
“Trump has made a lot of pledges on religious liberty and a lot of the people around him and a lot of the people around him, like Mike Pence for example, have come out very strongly. He has a history of very good positions on life and religious liberty and issues related to the family,” said Ferguson.
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America discuss email proof that the Clinton State Department rewarded Clinton Foundation friends and donors. They also groan that Republicans seem to be losing ground on the generic congressional ballot. And they react to independent Evan McMullin polling close to Hillary and Trump in Utah.
Major mainstream media outlets now have some explaining to do after the latest Wikileaks email release reveals reporters, editors, and contributors not just advocating for Hillary Clinton but apparently colluding with the campaign.
Emails show Univision Chairman Haim Saban urging the Clinton campaign to hit Donald Trump harder over immigration, the New York Times giving the campaign veto power over which interview quotes could be used in a profile of the candidate, the Boston Globe trying to time a Clinton opinion piece to do the most good in New Hampshire and CNBC’s John Harwood uring Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta to watch out for then-GOP candidate Dr. Ben Carson.
The documents also show Democratic National Committee official and CNN contributor Donna Brazile tipping off the Clinton campaign to a potentially difficult CNN town hall question on capital punishment during the Democratic primary season. Brazile adamantly denies doing that.
Mainstream media outlets are often accused of siding with Democratic candidates and policies, but evidence of active collaboration takes the concern to a new level.
“It’s the smoking gun,” said Independent Women’s Forum Senior Fellow Gayle Trotter, who is also a regular panelist on the Fox News Channel’s “Media Buzz” program.
“These revelations from the Wikileaks information show at the highest echelons of the New York Times , the Boston Globe, there is an effort to collude or give an assist to Hillary Clinton, which shows that these institutions are not unbiased. They are using their positions of power to influence the voters,” said Trotter.
She says the biggest surprise may be how much Democratic officials and the media worked behind the scenes to favor Clinton over primary rival Sen. Bernie Sanders.
“This goes beyond the partisan nature of Democrats vs. Republicans. These stories show there’s even collusion among the candidate choices on the Democratic side,” said Trotter.
Trotter says there has always been good reason for the public to be wary of the mainstream media and this just validates that suspicion.
“Definitely take everything with a grain of salt. Any of this breathless reporting of any of the candidates and what they say and what they do, they should understand there is a real effort behind the scenes to influence people’s votes,” said Trotter.
“Regardless of what you think about the different candidates or which policies you favor, I think all voters should be aware they are not getting straight news. They are getting news with an agenda,” said Trotter.
Trotter says Sunday’s debate is a clear example of media bias, where moderators Anderson Cooper of CNN and Martha Raddatz of ABC interjected to challenge Trump far more than when Clinton was speaking. But she says actions like those, by themselves, don’t prove collusion.
“It wouldn’t necessarily show there was an active effort to assist a certain candidate. You could just think, ‘Anderson Cooper and Martha Raddatz have their biases. It comes out in the way they do their jobs but it’s maybe subconscious for them. They’re not actively doing it,'” said Trotter.
However, she says the lid is blown off that supposition when you see the New York Times agreeing to spike a Clinton quote in which she frets that the gay rights movement got results a lot faster than civil rights and the feminism movement.
“You can see through these emails that it’s not just subconscious bias but it’s an active effort on the behalf of these favored candidates by the media elite,” said Trotter.
Trotter believes media figures would be wise to admit their mistakes and vow to do better instead of issuing denials like Brazile’s. Trotter urges people to email or tweet the reporters or editors involved and let them know their conduct was unacceptable. She says Americans must demand better.
“This should be unacceptable from a profession whose job it is to inform the democratic public, so that we can exercise our most cherished freedom to vote,” said Trotter.
