News & Politics

The man who served four U.S. ambassadors to the United Nations says Donald Trump is an easy choice over Hillary Clinton and says former GOP officials planning to vote for Hillary are exposing themselves as desperate to protect the system that has enriched them and advanced their careers.

And Richard Grenell says he is particularly disgusted by the decision of his former boss, John Negroponte, to stiff-arm the Republican nominee and line up behind Clinton.

Negroponte served in the George W. Bush administration, first as U.N. Ambassador, then as Ambassador to Iraq before eventually becoming the first Director of National Intelligence.  Earlier this month, Negroponte was one of 50 diplomatic and national security Republicans to issue an open letter opposing Trump’s White House bid.  Later, Negroponte announced he supported Clinton.

Grenell, who served as spokesman at the U.N. for Negroponte and Ambassadors John Danforth, John Bolton, and Zalmay Khalilzad,  says Negroponte’s decisions don’t surprise him at all.

“I’m not surprised that John Negroponte is supporting Hillary Clinton because he is a creature of Washington that has benefited from the system.  He likes the rules.  He has greatly succeeded by playing by those rules.  He’s a Washington insider,” said Grenell.

He also says no one should be fooled by Negroponte posturing himself as a loyal Republican.

“I heard him personally, on many occasions, mock the President of the United States and the vice-president, who appointed him to his position – that’s George Bush and Dick Cheney,” said Grenell.  “He mocked them and their policies, yet he continued to work for them and he took higher jobs from them.  So loyalty is not actually his strength.”

Grenell’s opinion of the others who signed the letter opposing Trump isn’t any higher.

“There are hundreds of experts who didn’t sign that letter.  So the 50 that did sign it, I’m not surprised.  Many of them on that list I’ve never heard of to be honest.  There are some on that list that I’m surprised are still calling themselves Republicans,” said Grenell.

He says many others are like Negroponte and are comfortable with the way Washington works right now.

“There are some on that list that I never believed would never vote for anybody but a mainstream politician that plays by the rules.  And then there are some that are going to lose a whole bunch of power if the rules are changed,” said Grenell.

Grenell says Donald Trump poses a serious threat to business as usual in Washington, making insiders like Negroponte very nervous and people like Grenell hopeful.

“I’m excited when I look at the possibilities that Donald Trump brings to Washington because he’s somebody new and different.  He’s not a politician and he’s not going to make decisions in the same way, which I have to say is the reason a lot of the D.C. types, whether they’re Republicans or Democrats are supporting Hillary Clinton,” he said.

“They like the rules.  The rules benefit them and so they don’t want the benefits to change.  Donald Trump is willing to look at Washington, D.C., and the way we run it in a  completely different way.  And that’s refreshing to me,” said Grenell.

Just looking at the day-to-day headlines convinces Grenell that a major shake-up is needed in our approach to foreign policy.  Over the weekend, over 50 people were killed in a terrorist attack at a wedding in Turkey.  Grenell says policy in Turkey is getting more complicated thanks to the autocratic actions of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, but he also says it’s yet another example of the Obama administration – and Hillary Clinton – dropping the ball.

“It also has to do with a lack of U.S. leadership.  When we see different situations like this bombing going on in Turkey, it is a sign that the United States needs to step up its leadership,” said Grenell.

He says the U.S. and Turkey both want to see Bashar al-Assad removed from power yet can’t seem to make any progress in that direction while Russia has no problems sending in tanks to protect Assad.

“We haven’t seen this in recent memory, where the Russians have moved from just talking tough against U.S. policy to actually implementing a military strategy to stand up against the United States, to stand up against Turkey, to really stand up against NATO and nothing be done about it,” said Grenell.

Grenell is very concerned about the rapid erosion of freedom in Turkey over the past eight years and especially since this summer’s failed coup against Erdogan.  He says Hillary Clinton also failed to challenge that accumulation of power.

“When Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, he was openly challenging U.S. policy on Israel and Gaza and that was allowed to happen.  I think the lesson that Erdogan has learned is that the world really isn’t watching.  The U.S. isn’t paying attention and he can do what he wants,” said Grenell.

He also asserts that Clinton can’t spot terrorism when it’s staring her in the face, most glaringly in the case of Boko Haram in Nigeria.

“She considered it.  She looked at the evidence.  There were people within the State Department  and within the U.S. government; Obama political appointees were lobbying her to put this group on the terror list.  She looked at the evidence and her judgment brought her to the point of saying, ‘I don’t think they should be placed on the terror list.  That was a disaster,” said Grenell.

According to Grenell, Clinton also deserves blame for the mess in Libya and the general rise in terrorism in the world.  He also says the recent revelations that the Obama administration paid $400 million to Iran at the exact same time our hostages were released also shows some clear differences between Clinton and Trump.

“Whether you call it ransom or not, that immediate payment is a policy that Obama defends and that Hillary defends.  She says it wasn’t ransom, that it was appropriate.  Donald Trump says, ‘No, we’re going to stop that sort of sneaky, secretive payment process.’  Whatever you call it, that sort of policy will not be implemented in the Trump administration.  Hillary Clinton, however, wants to continue that,” said Grenell.

In addition to Trump shaking up how the Washington foreign policy establishment does business, Grenell says the GOP nominee would bring huge changes to the foreign aid process and insist on zero-based budgeting and justified foreign aid.

“What Donald Trump believes is that in January of the new year, countries should have to come to the United States and to the State Department to say, ‘This is what we’re going to spend your tax dollars on if you give us foreign aid,'” said Grenell.  “Those types of changes will never happen with a Hillary Clinton.  They will happen with a Donald Trump.”

In the final analysis, Grenell says his choice in 2016 is an easy one.

“The choice in November for people is very clear.  It’s either you vote for Hillary Clinton and you get 5,000 liberal political appointees running the government, or you vote for Donald Trump and you get 5,000 conservative political appointees, with him, running the government,” said Grenell.

Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America are pleased to see Republican voter registration efforts outpacing the Democrats at this point.  They also unload on Hillary Clinton over the revelation that she failed to turn over nearly 15,000 documents that should have been deemed work-related.  And they get a good laugh out of Trump Campaign Manager Kellyanne Conway suggesting that Donald Trump does not hurl personal insults.

A conservative challenger to Arizona Sen. John McCain says the time has come to retire the five-term Republican both for his “dismal record” and simply for being in Washington too long.

Former GOP State Senator Dr. Kelli Ward is mounting a spirited challenge to McCain leading up to Arizona’s U.S. Senate primary on August 30, just one day after McCain turns 80 years old.  Polling is sparse on this race and Ward says it’s close but it’s anybody’s guess who is ahead.

“The polling is very difficult because there are so many new voters.  There are people who are inspired to vote because of the changes at the presidential level,” said Ward.  “I think it’s neck-and-neck.  I think it’s very telling that here now 10-11 days before the primary, John McCain is now  suddenly scrambling to buy ads to attack me himself, not just through his SuperPAC, but his own campaign,” said Ward.

While at least one poll over the past couple of months suggest a race within the margin of error, a new poll conducted by the firm of a former Arizona Republican Party official has McCain comfortably ahead, 50-29 percent.

Ward says McCain’s own actions prove those numbers are wrong.

“One of the polls out recently I think is completely bogus.  If he were that far ahead of me, why would he be spending hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, to attack me here in the homestretch,” said Ward.

Ward has two major reasons for trying to #RetireMcCain as her campaign’s hashtag proclaims: the senator’s record and his entrenched position in Washington’s political class.  However, she makes clear McCain’s record frustrates her most.

“Most importantly is his dismal record of voting for tax hikes and bailouts, massive spending, amnesty, liberal judges, and the fact he’s been in Washington for almost 40 years,” said Ward.

McCain won a House seat in 1982 and was first elected to the Senate four years later.  Ward says over three decades in Washington is more than enough.

“Our country was never designed to have a political ruling class that stayed in power for decades.  So it’s time to pass that torch and I want to give him the best eightieth birthday present ever – the gift of retirement,” said Ward.

The 47-year-old Ward says Arizona voters will not have to worry about chasing her out of Washington in 30 years.

“I am running on the term limits pledge.  I will not stay in Washington longer than two terms.  I think 12 years in Washington, D.C., is probably more than enough time for anyone to start an agenda, accomplish a lot of it and pave the way for the next generation to take the torch,” said Ward.

Ward is especially critical of McCain on border security.  When running for re-election in 2010, McCain aired an ad touting himself as committed to border security and stopping the flow of criminals and smugglers into the state.  The ad became famous for McCain saying, ‘Complete the danged fence.'”

Ward says McCain is a failure on the issue.

“We’re still having the drug trafficking, the home invasions, the illegal people flooding in and effecting every aspect of society, from healthcare  to education to public safety and correction to our economy to our very American culture.  It’s all under assault because of our open border,” said Ward.

After winning his fifth term, McCain played a leading role the Senate bill to reform immigration policy.  Ward says that action proves McCain cannot be trusted with securing our borders.

“The comprehensive immigration reform bill they tried to pass of with the Gang of Eight was an amnesty bill.  People aren’t going to stand for that.  We need a clean bill about border security first and foremost.  Then we will worry about cleaning up the mess that decades of an open border have left us with here in our country,” said Ward.

She says their positions going forward are also very different.

“John McCain is a big fan of open borders.  He wants to pull the wool over the eyes of the Republican voter and the voter in general, Republican and Democrat, to make them think he’s trying to keep them safe.  We all know that border security is national security and I’m ready to mix the mortar to fix the border,” said Ward.

Ward also contends that she would be a more effective voice in Washington to strengthen the military and provide better care for our veterans.  How does she make that case against the sitting chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee?

She says the world is not safer as a result of John McCain’s 34 years in Washington, especially in light of his support for numerous overseas interventions.  She believes McCain has more in common with Hillary Clinton on foreign policy.

“They share the foreign policy of invade the world, invite the world.  Invade the world through nation building and expensive occupation, invite the world through opening our borders and bring people into our country.  That policy has led to terrorist attacks across this world.  There are piles of bodies from Benghazi to Orlando.  That’s why we’ve got to change Washington, D.C. by sending the people we send there,” said Ward.

As voters in the Grand Canyon State make up their minds heading into the August 30 primary, Ward has a final message for them.

“I want them to know I’m going to mix the mortar to fix the border.  I’m going to heal the VA.  I will be a conservative champion for Arizona and for America in the United States Senate,” she said.

Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America have only good news today.  They applaud Donald Trump and Mike Pence for going to Louisiana to support flood victims and bring attention to their plight and applaud Trump for admitting many of his remarks in this campaign were uncalled for and hurtful.  They also welcome the exit of Paul Manafort from the Trump campaign.  And they enjoy Colin Powell’s refuting of a key point in Hillary Clinton’s flimsy email defense.  Finally, they react to the Ryan Lochte apology.

The recent violence and property destruction in Milwaukee is the result of of a false ideology embraced by President Obama and Hillary Clinton and this episode also further exposed the extent of media bias on this charged issue, according to best-selling author Heather Mac Donald.

Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and is author of the New York Times best-seller “The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe.”

On Saturday, violent protests broke out after a Milwaukee police officer shot and killed 23-year-old Sylville Smith.  Smith was running from a traffic stop and in possession of a stolen gun.  He was deemed a threat to the officer’s life and the officer opened fire.

Multiple businesses in Milwaukee were set on fire by angry protesters and several police vehicles were also damaged.  More violence took place on Sunday night, yet all of this warranted far less coverage than the national media devoted to police-involved shootings in Ferguson, Baton Rouge or Minneapolis.

Mac Donald thinks she knows why.

“I think the media is simply starting to cover up the effects of the Black Lives Matter movement,” she said.  “I think the media now is looking the other way and is almost trying to normalize that level of violence.”

When the media did cover the story, some of the reporting was discovered to be altering the facts.  CNN received intense criticism for selectively editing comments from Smith’s sister, Sherelle.  The CNN story depicted her as calling for peace, leaving out her plea Saturday night to burn down the suburbs.

“It’s appalling.  It makes it perfectly clear what their agenda is, and that is to promote a one-sided story that white racism is the biggest force affecting social relations today,” said Mac Donald.

“I think the whitewashing of this woman’s statements is an absolutely illuminating example of what is the reality of the media and their one-sided view of American society,” she added.

She says what’s even more alarming is that the actions of Black Lives Matter demonstrators and the media only make additional violence more likely.

“What we’re going through now is an ideological war on the cops.  Unless that rhetoric changes, you’re going to see more black lives lost because cops are backing off proactive policing under this non-stop assault that they’re racist,” said Mac Donald.

“These riots are, along with the assassination of police officers, the results of this campaign of hatred that has been launched against the police by Black Lives Matter activists and, sadly, by President Obama and by Hillary Clinton,” said Mac Donald.

Another divergence from past incidents is how prominent politicians responded to the violence.  President Obama and Hillary Clinton have said and written nothing while Donald Trump went to Milwaukee and delivered a law and order address in support of police that also blamed failed liberal policies for the crushing poverty in many black neighborhoods.

“I thought the speech was powerful, especially his acknowledgement that there is a false narrative about policing and his recognition that that narrative itself has consequences,” said Mac Donald.

Meanwhile, she is horrified by the silence from Obama and Clinton.

“This is anarchy.  It cannot go uncondemned by the political leaders.  For Hillary Clinton and President Obama to stay silent about this is just a complete dereliction of their responsibilities towards this country,” said Mac Donald.

She says it’s also hypocritical, as evidenced by no one getting violent in the wake of four homicides in Milwaukee in the 48 hours before the Smith shooting.

“The Black Lives Matter activists could not care less about the dozens of black children gunned down in drive-by shootings last year by black thugs.  The only time they move themselves to take over intersections, scream at cops, hurl invectives, is in those rare instances when a police officer shoots somebody who’s black, overwhelmingly when confronted by someone who is armed and dangerous,” said Mac Donald.

She says the statistics bear this out.  She says a much higher percentage of black Americans die by gunfire than whites or Hispanics but only four percent of them die from a police shooting.  In comparison, she says 12 percent of whites and Hispanics die from police shootings.

Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America enjoy watching Tim Kaine twist himself in knots trying to distance himself from his 2002 statement that Bill Clinton should have resigned over the Monica Lewinsky scandal.  They also wonder why the media and top political figures are largely ignoring the devastating floods in Louisiana.  And they discuss the increasingly discredited allegations that four U.S. Olympic swimmers were mugged in Rio.

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton both say they are committed to the destruction of ISIS and use similar language to detail their plans, but retired U.S. Air Force Lt. General Tom McInerney says there is a world of difference in what they mean.

“My Administration will aggressively pursue joint and coalition military operations to crush and destroy ISIS, international cooperation to cut- off their funding, expanded intelligence sharing, and cyberwarfare to disrupt and disable their propaganda and recruiting. We cannot allow the internet to be used as a recruiting tool, and for other purposes, by our enemy – we must shut down their access to this form of communication, and we must do so immediately,” said Trump earlier this week during a major national security address in Ohio.

Those words don’t sound much different than Hillary Clinton’s prescription for ISIS that she offered in her speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination.

“We will strike their sanctuaries from the air and support local forces taking them out on the ground.  We will surge our intelligence so we detect and prevent attacks before they happen.  We will disrupt their efforts online to reach and radicalize young people in our country,” said Clinton in that speech.

McInerney says the similar words to not signify a similar agenda.

“Unfortunately, Mrs. Clinton means the same thing that President Obama has done.  We’re now at two years that ISIS has had a caliphate in Iraq and Syria,” said McInerney.

The general says one obvious difference in thwarting ISIS can be found in the candidates’ approach to the refugee crisis afflicting Europe.  Clinton wants to exponentially increase the rate the U.S. accepts refugees while Trump this week called for “extreme vetting” to ensure anyone entering this country pledges allegiance to our Constitution.

But he says the biggest difference can be seen in how the two candidates approach the roots of radical Islam.

“We must use ideological warfare as well.  Just as we won the Cold War, in part, by exposing the evils of communism and the virtues of free markets, so too must we take on the ideology of Radical Islam,” said Trump on Monday.

“Islam is not our adversary,” Clinton said in November 2015 in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations. “Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing to do whatsoever with terrorism.”

McInerney says the divide could be more stark on this point.

“You’ve got to identify it.  It is radical Islam.  It is not violent extremism.  I know not the ideology of violent extremism, but I do know the ideology of radical Islam: that is the Quran, the Hadith, the sayings of the prophet,  and Sharia law.  Those three things are the pillars that drive their rules of engagement and their brutal, autocratic way of governing people,” said McInerney.

He says Hillary Clinton still won’t admit what makes our enemies tick.

“Mrs. Clinton and President Obama have not yet identified it.  She was secretary of state for four years and she still does not know the ideology.  As Sun Tzu said, ‘Know thy enemy,'” said McInerney.

On top of the Democrats’ failure to identify our enemy, McInerney is deeply frustrated by their refusal to kill the enemy.

“The air campaign for the last two years has been pathetic.  We have not destroyed ISIS.  When ISIS fled from a small town near the Turkish border in Syria, they were coming out by the hundreds.  We did not strike them because we were worried about collateral damage, meaning civilians.  Well, the laws of land warfare allow you to do that,” said McInerney.

“Our humanity to them has caused the inhumanity toward the genocide on Christians, on Yazidis and even on Muslims,” said McInerney.

In the end McInerney says he isn’t worried about Trump’s demeanor in comparison to Clinton’s record.

“His language and demeanor don’t worry me as much as Mrs. Clinton’s demeanor or actions,” said McInerney, referencing Benghazi, the civil war in Syria, the rise of ISIS in Libya and beginning the process that led to the nuclear deal with Iran.

“They are completely different,” he said.  “One is talk and one is action.”

Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America get a kick out of New Hampshire Democratis Senate hopeful Maggie Hassan repeatedly dodging CNN’s question of whether she thinks Hillary Clinton is honest and trustworthy.  They also sigh as Hillary now sports a nine point lead in Florida in a new Monmouth University poll.  They react to the news that Breitbart News boss Stephen Bannon now running the Trump campaign.  And they bid farewell to the legendary John McLaughlin.

As another major health insurance company exits the vast majority of Obamacare exchanges and many U.S. states are forecasting massive premium increases later this year, a leading health care expert says the Obamacare death spiral is already beginning.

Late Monday, Aetna announced it was pulling out of Obamacare exchanges in all but four U.S. states as a result of large financial losses.  The company reported $200 in pre-tax losses in the second quarter of 2016 alone.

“As a strong supporter of public exchanges as a means to meet the needs of the uninsured, we regret having to make this decision,” said Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini in a written statement.

Galen Institute President Grace-Marie Turner says Aetna’s decision to largely abandon the exchanges is a huge development.

“Aetna was all-in  in not only trying to get the law passed but also to try to make this work.  So with Aetna throwing in the towel, I think it really shows the way this law is structured, and particularly the way it’s been implemented, just does not work,” said Turner.

Turner says Aetna is hardly an outlier.  She says health insurers are getting crushed with financial losses from the health care law.

“[Aetna] estimates they’ve lost $400 million through their exchange business.  United Healthcare reported a week or two ago that they had lost $300 million.  The estimates are that altogether insurance companies lost four billion dollars in both 2014 and 2015,” said Turner.

She says numbers like that leave insurance executives no choice but to get out.

“They are very likely losing the same amount in 2016.  They are basically saying we can no longer justify to our shareholders participation in these failing exchanges,” said Turner.

The Aetna announcement also convinces Turner that we have now begun the Obamacare “death spiral.”

“That really is an indication we are in the death spiral.  That means you wind up with fewer and fewer healthy people in the pools and more and more sick people.  When that happens the premiums have to go up and up and up.  We’re seeing that already in the requests for premium increases next year – in some cases 40, 50 or 60 percent increases,” said Turner.

As distressing as this is, Turner says the frustration is far deeper when realizing she and other Obamacare opponents predicted this exact scenario.

“In our book, “Why Obamacare is Wrong for America,” we said this is what was going to happen because we could see that the law itself and particularly the regulations that have been developed since then were designed to destabilize the functional mechanisms of insurance markets.  That’s exactly what’s happening now,” said Turner.

And how did insurance companies go from being giddy about a law that required every adult to purchase health insurance to losing money by the hundreds of millions.  Turner says ill-conceived ideas like letting young adults stay on their parents’ polices until age 26 robbed the market place of the young, healthy people needed to balance out the many sick people flooding the system.

“That meant that you were going to have older, sicker pools.  Then they said you can buy health insurance basically at any time during the year with any of 30 different explanations and get in and out of the pool when you’re sick,” said Turner.

She says the law allows people to game the system in a very destructive way.

“People were going into the exchanges, purchasing coverage, getting this expensive treatment, dropping their insurance and then, if they felt like it, they’d get in the same pool the next year without having to pay any penalty,” said Turner.

Critics of Obamacare fear this predictable outcome will be used by big government proponents to contend private coverage cannot meet the health care needs of the American public and that a public option or even single-payer healthcare is the solution.

Turner says so long as Republicans control at least one chamber in Congress none of that will happen.  But she says the public, which has never liked or wanted Obamacare, is not about to endorse more government control of their health care.

“People have had just about enough government with Obamacare.  They realize that Washington is making the rules, taking away choices from individuals and doctors so that bureaucrats are making decisions, not only about what kind of health insurance they can have but what health insurance they must buy,” said Turner.

She says the American public will see the dire condition of the health care system at a very interesting time this year.

“This is really going to come home just before the November election, when people start to see their premium increases for next year,” said Turner.  “People are going to see it when they see that their premiums have gone from $500 a month to $800 a month.  That’s going to happen just before the election.”

Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America are pleased to see Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane convicted on all nine counts for leaking grand jury testimony and lying about it.  They also lament that Virginia won’t even be competitive in this year’s presidential race.  And they slam Hillary Clinton for saying she would not send U.S. troops to fight ISIS under any circumstances – apparently disregarding that troops are doing so right now.