Greg Corombos of Radio America and Ian Tuttle of National Review discuss the selection of RNC Chairman Reince Priebus as Donald Trump incoming chief of staff. They also react to Stephen Bannon being named as chief strategist and counselor in the Trump administration. And they discuss Democrats planning to push Nancy Pelosi for leader of House Democrats and possibly firebrand liberal Keith Ellison for DNC chairman.
The Capitol Steps parody troupe reveals the succinct and quite effective message that propelled Donald Trump to the White House. Our guest is Capitol Steps star and co-founder Elaina Newport.
Project Veritas rocked the 2016 presidential race with a series of undercover videos of Democrats admitting to stoking violence at Donald Trump rallies, acknowledging voter fraud and much more. But its leader says Donald Trump’s victory strikes a huge blow to the power of the mainstream media and scores a big win for citizen journalism.
In a statement released Thursday, Project Veritas Founder and President James O’Keefe declared the media among the biggest losers of this election cycle.
“Perhaps the most stunning admission of last night was the power shift in this country. It was deeply moving to see what citizens can do despite the overwhelming forces working them against them. It isn’t the politicians, not the established press, not the lobbyists or the pundits, but the PEOPLE, that have the power now,” said O’Keefe.
In a subsequent interview Friday, O’Keefe says dethroning the mainstream media may be the most significant outcome of his efforts this year.
“I think just what it means for our media landscape, to have broken these stories and have done so in the way it was done, being covered eventually by these organizations and having high-level people resign . These people were close to the president and close to Hillary,” said O’Keefe.
He says the mainstream media initially tried to ignore the Project Veritas stories, but the grassroots activists would not be denied.
“Brian Stelter of CNN, the media ‘Reliable Sources’ guy was saying, ‘Well, we have an audience of 1.25 million people.’ Me and my fellow citizens were tweeting back at Brian, ‘Fifteen million people have viewed those YouTube videos. We got 57 million Twitter impressions in seven days. We were the number one trending thing during the presidential debate,” said O’Keefe.
While the media did eventually cover some of the videos, O’Keefe is especially gratified by the end run around the mainstream press after years of them casting him as a villain.
“I’ve been in the trenches in the media. I’ve been fighting these people for years. They’ve been lying about me and people like me. They’ve been celebrating when the government tries to prosecute me for things I didn’t even do. So I’ve been through this battle for years and years and years,” said O’Keefe.
At one point Twitter, suspended his account over one of the Project Veritas videos, but a legion of allies quickly got his access restored.
“The people sent 30,000 emails to Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, and then they re-instated me,” said O’Keefe.
O’Keefe believes social media is the key to making sure important stories reach the public when the mainstream media will not touch them. While vocal liberals like Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) and Dorsey run those sites, O’Keefe says any efforts to censor him always end up backfiring.
“They can’t retaliate without that retaliation being itself a big story. They’ve done it to Milo Yiannapoulos. He’s sort of a right-wing rabble-rouser, an Alt-Right guy. They kicked him off but they just made him more famous. It doesn’t work because it just enhances the platform,” said O’Keefe.
He says his own experience of being targeted by Twitter proves the point.
“I had 60,000 followers. Now I’m at 220 (thousand) in the course of 30 days. They try to shut you down but they only give you a platform because the citizens go, ‘What is he saying that they want to ban?'” said O’Keefe.
O’Keefe believes the American voters were responding less to the person of Donald Trump in this election than they were rebelling against a dishonest media and political system.
“Trump was a symptom of something much greater than Trump. Trump is a representation of a power shift and it is all about the media, because the media lost all credibility in my opinion. Everything they’ve said has been wrong,” said O’Keefe.
“Will they admit they’ve been wrong? I don’t think so. But I think many people in this country are going to think to themselves, ‘I don’t trust them anymore,'” he added.
The last Project Veritas videos many saw were of O’Keefe on the lookout for voter fraud in Philadelphia on Election Day. He says what he and his colleagues saw was blatantly illegal.
“We were in North Philadelphia going from poll to poll. We would walk in there and we would see election judges quite literally say – this is on video it’s on YouTube. They were saying, ‘Vote for Hillary.’ These were election judges. That is a felony. You can’t do that,” said O’Keefe.
“You can’t electioneer. You can’t give people sample ballots literally at the place where you vote. You can’t do that. But these people were doing it and they were doing it in spades,” said O’Keefe.
Project Veritas also reported on election official in parts of Chicago forbidding Republican poll watchers from being present, another violation of the law.
Yet when the videos were posted, O’Keefe says the mainstream media directed its outrage at him.
“Everyone in the mainstream media was attacking me on Tuesday of this week, saying that I’m trying to intimidate voters for doing my job as a journalist. It’s not just about the fraud we expose…it’s that the media machine is attacking me and the local district attorney in Philadelphia is being told by all these people, ‘Prosecute O’Keefe,'” he said.
It’s that kind of blatant bias, he says, that the American people have rejected in this election.
“This is reason why Trump is the President of the United States, because many large numbers of people in this country look at that whole paradigm and say, ‘I don’t want to live in that country. I don’t want to live in that world. I don’t want to live in a world where they play identity politics and attack the little guy and put citizen journalists in jail and censor people,'” said O’Keefe.
“This is what it means. It is a power shift and it is historic,” said O’Keefe.
And what’s next for O’Keefe and Project Veritas?
“I’m going to take a week and I’m going to sleep because my adrenaline has been running so hard for the last 30 days that my body is about to shut down,” said O’Keefe.
“In the next few days, you’re going to see some more aftermath and then my team and I will get about a week or two of rest. And then we’ll start the next step of our journey,” he said.
Greg Corombos of Radio America and David French of National Review applaud TNT sports anchor Ernie Johnson for reacting to the 2016 election by trusting God, praying for Trump and pledging to do his part to make America better. They also sigh at reports that the Clintons are grooming Chelsea for a congressional bid in New York. And they react to liberal activists in Oregon and California leading efforts to secede from the U.S. because Trump won the election.
After intense Republican friction over Donald Trump’s candidacy, the vast majority of conservatives eventually voted for their party’s nominee for the sake of defeating Hillary Clinton and preserving the Supreme Court.
In the process, the conservatives also find themselves in a new coalition that a longtime conservative activist says is a major upgrade to the way the GOP has operated for the past century.
While much has been made of the million of new voters Trump attracted to the GOP, he also had to work harder than most nominees to rally his own party.
For much of the campaign, Trump lagged behind Clinton in getting conservative and Republican voters to line up behind him in the general election. But by election night, exit polls showed 90 percent of Republicans did just that.
Longtime conservative activist and ConservativeHQ.com Chairman Richard Viguerie says there’s two big reasons Republicans came home.
“The top two things that united conservatives and brought them home to support Trump and the Republican ticket was Hillary Clinton and the Supreme Court vacancy,” said Viguerie.
“They really understood the Supreme Court and not just one appointment. She would set the Supreme Court on a direction to be controlled by the left wing for 30 or more years. It just terrified conservatives,” said Viguerie.
He says conservatives wanted nothing to do with the rest of Clinton’s vision for the U.S. either.
“They knew she was a leftist and the Democratic Party is growing more left wing every day. We could expect a country that we wouldn’t recognize in four years. It really terrified conservatives at the grass roots level,” he said.
According to Viguerie, Trump has successfully created a new base for the Republican Party, a major departure from what has existed since the early part of the 20th century.
“The old coalition on the Republican side was the establishment Republicans and the constitutional, grassroots conservatives. Conservatives were the junior partner in that relationship,” said Viguerie.
“We have a new coalition now, and that’s the Trump populist and the constitutional grassroots conservatives. That’s going to be a governing coalition for many years to come. I think it’s going to be exciting to watch this new coalition without being interfered with by the Bushes of the world and the Mitt Romney wing of the party,” said Viguerie.
He says the Trump campaign itself was actually more conservative than those run on behalf of Barry Goldwater in 1964 and Ronald Reagan in 1980.
“The conservatives were involved in the (1964) campaign but it was basically run by the Republican establishment. 1980 was Reagan’s first election victory. He won that. It was a conservative victory, but the Republican establishment basically ran the campaign,” said Viguerie.
To the contrary, he points out that the final three months of the Trump campaign were run by longtime conservative fixtures KellyAnne Conway, Steve Bannon and David Bossie.
“No presidential campaign in my lifetime has looked like this. Personnel is policy. The people around him, the people who brought him over the finish line is us. It’s the conservative movement,” said Viguerie.
Viguerie would not publicly mention conservative cabinet possibilities he would like to see Trump nominate, but he expects strong conservatives to “dominate” the key positions. He says conservatives would be smart to spend their time trying to stop Trump from making bad choices.
“The focus for conservatives publicly should be who we don’t want. We recognize that people like Chris Christie are going to have some role in the administration but you do not want someone like him in the attorney general’s office,” said Viguerie. “We need to make sure Donald Trump understands there’s certain people just beyond the pale.”
As for the top early legislative priorities, Viguerie says the first job is to make sure the lame duck session of Congress has little impact.
“We don’t want any serious legislation done in the lame duck, just a clean continuing resolution and to defer spending decisions to the new administration,” he said.
When Trump does get a chance to put his stamp on federal spending, Viguerie wants to see an end to federal funding of liberal activism. He says conservative groups don’t get taxpayer money and they don’t want it. He says liberals should not get it either.
On the policy front, Viguerie says the repeal and replacement of Obamacare must be at the top of the list.
“That’s a promise that the Republicans have been making for six years. Now they need to deliver and repeal Obamacare and replace it with something much better. I’d be surprised, shocked, and disappointed if Republicans don’t do that early on in the new administration,” said Viguerie.
Greg Corombos of Radio America and David French of National Review applaud Democrats for suddenly recognizing and appreciating things like federalism, freedom of dissent, and the separation of powers now that Republicans are headed back to the White House. They also slam the anti-Trump protesters for blocking traffic and engaging in violence and the colleges offering safe spaces, counseling, and even crayons and Play-Doh to students bothered by Trump’s win. And they discuss the liberal calls for abolishing the Electoral College.
Donald J. Trump stunned the political world to win the 2016 presidential election Tuesday night, not only defeating Hillary Clinton but winning states that hadn’t voted for a Republican since the 1980s.
In addition to piling up wins in Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, and Iowa, Trump scored unexpected wins in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. He currently holds a small lead in Michigan.
Independent Women’s Forum Senior Fellow Gayle Trotter, who is also a regular panelist on the Fox News Channel’s “Media Buzz” program, says many Americans who feel ignored and disrespected found a champion in Trump.
“He tapped into a groundswell of the people and he was able to take the issues that so many Americans feel have been shoved down in importance,” said Trotter.
Why did they trust Trump?
“He promised them that he would listen to them and that he wouldn’t say one thing and do another thing. I think that’s the problem that Americans have seen with politicians on the right and the left,” said Trotter.
Trotter says Trump successfully maintained a balance of convincing voters that he was not part of the problem in Washington but was competent to fix them.
“He listened to the American people. He could do a really strong argument that he was not part of the Washington cartel. On top of that, he was able to tell the American people that he wasn’t some kind of rube who didn’t understand how government worked but he was outside of it. He convinced the American people that he was not only able to fix it, but he meant what he said,” stated Trotter.
It’s those people, whom Trump refers to as “forgotten,” that are now handing him the keys to the Oval Office.
“Donald Trump has promised a vision of America that has been swelling from the bottom up, and now he has a mandate to achieve it,” said Trotter, noting that Trump will take office with Republicans controlling both the House and Senate.
Trotter says many people had their lives changed by Trump’s win, from FBI agents dealing with political pressure while pursuing the truth to coal miners trying to save their livelihoods to the men and women of our military who need more help.
In addition to Trump resonating in forgotten corners of the United States, Trotter says he benefited from running against a deeply flawed opponent in Hillary Clinton.
“I think Americans were as tired of her and the corruption that has surrounded her time in office, and which surrounded her time as first lady, not only of the United States but as First Lady of Arkansas. She was probably one of the absolute weakest candidates that the Democratic Party could have put up against Donald Trump,” said Trotter.
Clinton and the media spent a lot of time discussing Trump’s character issues, from controversial statement to his interaction with women. Trotter says voters knew Clinton did not hold the moral high ground in this campaign.
“It was a perfect storm of Hillary Clinton not being able to stand up and challenge Donald Trump on character issues. But also she was not seen as being a person who’s not honest about what she believed in and what she was going to do while she was in office,” said Trotter.
In the midst of Trump’s victory, other analysts saw a more sinister reason for Trump’s win.
“This was a whitelash against a changing country. It was a whitelash against a black president in part. And that’s the part where the pain comes,” said former Obama adviser and CNN contributor Van Jones.
Trotter vigorously rejects that analysis.
“He is so wrong. He couldn’t be more wrong. He is doubling down on the Democratic Party and the left’s identity politics trying to divide the nation, trying to understand how someone in their party who was the inevitable candidate could not pull it off,” said Trotter.
Speaking of the media, Trotter says there needs to be a serious investigation into the alliance between Democrats and major media outlets after revelations exposed through WikiLeaks.
“There really should be a blue ribbon panel that investigates the collusion of the mainstream media with the Hillary Clinton campaign,” said Trotter.
As for the Democrats, Trotter says ditching identity politics and and working in more of a good faith effort toward solving problems would serve the party well in the years to come.
We were wrong. Very wrong. Greg Corombos of Radio America and Ian Tuttle of National Review discuss Donald Trump’s convincing win in the 2016 presidential election and why he won. We also discuss Republicans defying the odds to keep majorities in the House and Senate. And they observe how liberals in the media came to grips with Tuesday’s surprising results.
While the nation focuses on the 2016 elections, the frustration over FBI Director Jim Comey’s handling of the Hillary Clinton server investigation still rages, now with calls for a different person to spearhead the probe.
“Do you know what it’s time for? A special counsel,” said former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Victoria Toensing, who is also a former federal prosecutor.
Toensing notes that such a move must come from the attorney general. And while Loretta Lynch has reportedly hindered the FBI’s investigation into Clinton, Toensing says public pressure can accomplish big things.
“There should be such an outcry that she has no choice,” said Toensing, who believes the push for a special prosecutor could be bipartisan.
“Republicans and Democrats alike should welcome a special counsel,” she said.
“It’s, in concept, an independent prosecutor or an independent investigator. It should be somebody like a retired federal judge, who doesn’t have any political affiliations, hasn’t come on TV and said, ‘I’m for Trump or I’m for Hillary. Somebody who could be entirely neutral. That person would then conduct the investigation. I think that’s the only way we can have faith in what’s going on in this matter,” said Toensing.
She says impartiality was standard operation procedure during her time at the Justice Department.
“The whole time I was in the Justice Department, there was never anybody protected or gone after because of their political affiliation,” said Toensing.
Toensing points to a high-profile case involving her husband, former U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova, during the Reagan years.
“When my husband, Joseph diGenova, was the U.S. Attorney in the District of Columbia, he indicted Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Thayer. He indicted a number two person in a Republican government. This is unheard of,” said Toensing.
On Sunday, Comey sent word to lawmakers that review of emails found on a newly discovered device, believed to be from a probe into the actions of former Rep. Anthony Weiner, did not change his recommendation that Clinton should face no charges for her handling of classified information. Reports suggest there were 650,000 emails to review.
“He’s just a miracle worker, isn’t he? Six hundred fifty thousand emails in just a few days when the State Department says it can’t go through a thousand a month. You have to wonder or scratch your head. The FBI must really be good,” mused Toensing.
While also referring to Comey as a “clown,” she believes Comey is simply in over his head.
“I don’t think he knows what he’s doing. It doesn’t make any kind of sense. He must have gotten political pressure. And, of course, it gives us no confidence in anything else he’s going to decide,” said Toensing.
Toensing points out Comey’s reputation has “ping-ponged” multiple times this year depending on people’s views on Clinton innocence or guilt. She says Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s secret meeting with Bill Clinton on the airport tarmac in Arizona back in the summer, shows she cannot be trusted either.
“So we have an FBI director that we don’t have any confidence in. We have an attorney general, who met with the husband of the person that she was investigating,” said Toensing.
Toensing also points out that another FBI investigation into the Clintons seems to be proceeding at full speed concerning pay-to-play allegations at the Clinton Foundation.
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America offer their predictions for Election Day 2016. Jim and Greg state their final electoral college results and go over each of the key swing states. They also predict the final balance in the U.S. Senate come January and go through each of those key races. And they discuss what the numbers in the U.S House of Representatives will look like.
