Radio America Online News Bureau

Archives for March 2019

What Will Trump Do in Venezuela?

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President Trump is very clear about what he thinks should happen in Venezuela, but what is he prepared to do if it doesn’t?

For weeks, Trump has declared Juan Guaido to be the legitimate interim president in Venezuela.  But Nicholas Maduro is still in power and now the Russians are sending military personnel to shore up Maduro.

American Foreign Policy Senior Vice President Ilan Berman says Trump has the right policy but that doesn’t mean he will get what he wants.

“I think it’s a good declaratory policy.  The problem is just because we say it doesn’t make it so,” said Berman.

Listen to the full podcast to hear Berman address some of the lingering questions in this standoff.  Why is Russia butting into the crisis in Venezuela?  What are America’s national security interests in all this?  And what happens if Russia ignores Trump’s demand to get out?

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Rahm Bills Smollett, ‘Economist’ Clueless on Conservatism, Foxx’s ‘Colloquial’ Recusal

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Rob Long of National Review Online and Greg Corombos of Radio America applaud Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel for sending Jussie Smollett a bill for more than $130,000 to cover the costs of the police to investigate his hate crime hoax.  They also shake their heads as the supposedly moderate “Economist” magazine labels Ben Shapiro a “sage of the alt-right” but then changes it to call him a “radical conservative.”  And they have a lot of fun with the news that Illinois State’s Attorney Kim Foxx didn’t really recuse herself from the Smollett case in the legal sense, just in the “colloquial” sense.

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Adam Schiff Rebuffs Calls for Resignation

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During a House Intelligence Committee hearing on Russian election interference, Chairman Adam Schiff rejected calls from House Republicans to step down after the Mueller investigation found no evidence of collusion between the Trump Campaign and Russia. Radio America’s Christian Whittle reports.

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Trump Warns Russia, GOP Still Without Health Plan, McAuliffe 2020?

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Rob Long of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America applaud President Trump for telling the Russians to get out of Venezuela but worry about what might happen if they don’t.  They also groan as congressional Republicans still don’t have a strategy on health care if Obamacare gets struck down in the courts.  And they ask if even politics is becoming a 1990’s rerun after longtime DNC chairman and former Virginia Gov.Terry McAuliffe hints he will run in 2020.

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DOJ Joins Effort to Overturn Obamacare

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The effort to strike down the Affordable Care Act just got a powerful new ally, as the Justice Department now says the courts should find the 2010 law unconstitutional, and one of the lawyers spearheading the case is thrilled with the news.

“The Trump Justice Department is doing its job to uphold the Constitution,” said Rob Henneke of the Texas Public Policy Foundation. “I commend the Trump administration Department of Justice looking at the reasoning of the court and choosing to defend the rule of law and now seeking to uphold the correct opinion.”

Henneke joined Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton last year in arguing that a federal district judge should rule against Obamacare.  Judge Reed O’Connor agreed, and his decision is now being challenged at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

Also known as Obamacare, the ACA survived a 2012 Supreme Court battle, when Chief Justice John Roberts admitted the ACA violated the Commerce Clause of the Constitution but allowed the law to stand because the penalties Americans paid to the government for failing to purchase health insurance fell under the power of Congress to levy taxes.

The 2017 tax reform enacted a zero dollar penalty for defying the individual mandate.  So critics like Henneke say there’s no longer a tax and revenue reason to keep the law.

Supporters of the ACA suggest conservatives are hypocritical for two major reasons.  First, they say critics of the Obama Justice Department were incensed when it refused to enforce laws it didn’t like, such as the Defense of Marriage Act, but are only too happy to fight against existing laws now.

Henneke rejects the accusation.

“This duty to defend is a made up doctrine from only the last couple of decades.  It’s not the role of the Department of Justice to win at any cost.  Their role is to seek justice and uphold the Constitution,” said Henneke.

Listen to the full podcast to hear Henneke explain why ACA defenders are also wrong to accuse Republicans of abandoning Americans with pre-existing conditions if the law were struck down.  He also explains where the case stands at the appellate level.

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Lee Roasts Green New Deal, Smollett Charges Dropped, Biden Panders to Progressives

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America laugh as Utah Sen. Mike Lee hilariously demonstrates the absurdity of the Green New Deal with a picture of Ronald Reagan riding a velociraptor and Star Wars references during a floor speech. They also dig into what happened in Chicago after state prosecutors abruptly dropped all charges against “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett. And they also rip Biden for attempting to win over progressives by condemning “white man’s culture” and saying he wish he could have done something more during the Anita Hill hearing.

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Smollett Charges Dropped: Is Privilege to Blame?

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Prosecutors in Chicago stunned the nation Tuesday by dropping all charges against actor Jussie Smollett while still asserting that Smollett faked a hate crime against himself and cost the Chicago Police Department hundreds of hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars to investigate the case.

“We did not exonerate Mr. Smollett. The charges were dropped in return for Mr. Smollett’s agreement to do community service and forfeit his $10,000 bond to the City of Chicago. Without the completion of these terms, the charges would not have been dropped. This outcome was met under the same criteria that would occur for and is available to any defendant with similar circumstances,” said Tandra Simonton of the Cook County State’s Attorney Office.

Law professor and attorney Horace Cooper, who is also co-chair of the black conservative Project 21 Advisory Board, is appalled by the decision.

“There is nothing I have witnessed in my time…where a prosecution is completely dropped – not deferred but completely dropped – without an acknowledgement of some sort of act of contrition and without any new information coming in to call into question the substance of the original allegations,” said Cooper.

Cooper further asserts the Smollett case proves there is unfair privilege in the U.S., just not in the way that many activists suggest.

“What’s revealing to some people is that this differential between what happens with main street Americans and those who are penthouse Americans: it isn’t actually a function of race.  It is a function of wealth and status,” said Cooper.

He says news that former Michelle Obama chief of staff Tina Tchen spoke with prosecutors also proves his point.

“If you and I were charged, the former first lady’s lawyer’s friends will not be calling on our behalf.  There is nothing like this for main street America,” added Cooper.

Even Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel blasted the decision to drop the charges, pointing out that a grand jury agreed to charge Smollett on 16 counts after seeing just a fraction of the evidence.  He’s also aghast that Smollett was allowed to go free and once again proclaim his innocence.

Cooper points out that Smollett had the opportunity to plead guilty to one count on the initial indictment and likely walk away with a slap on the wrist.  It was only after the actor doubled down on his story that the grand jury returned 16 counts against him.

Listen to the full podcast to hear Cooper explain what option the Chicago Police Department can still pursue in the courts, and why he believes hate crime laws are a bad idea and actually encourage people to play the victim even when no crime has occurred.

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Avenatti Arrested, Impeachment Off the Table, Bad Week for Brennan

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America settle in for three schadenfreude martinis today, kicking things off with the news that attention-seeking lawyer Michael Avenatti is charged with attempting to extort Nike for $20 million and stealing the damages awarded to his clients. They also welcome the news that House Democrats will not be pursuing the impeachment of President Trump. And they blast former CIA director John Brennan for joining “the resistance” and damaging not only his reputation, but also the reputation of the intelligence community, by perpetuating the Russia collusion conspiracy.

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McCarthy: Mueller ‘Derelict’ for Leaving Question on Obstruction

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Special Counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence of the Trump campaign conspiring with Russia to influence the 2016 campaign but is apparently more ambiguous about whether the president obstructed justice during the investigation.

According to the letter Attorney General William Barr sent to Congress, Mueller ultimately made no recommendation on whether to there was a prosecutable case on obstruction.

Former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy says Mueller probably realized quite early in his investigation that there was no evidence of Trump and his team colluding with Russians, but McCarthy believes Mueller dropped the ball on obstruction.

“That was his only job,” said McCarthy.  “Really, if you think about it, his only job was to do what he refrained from doing, which is to draw a traditional prosecutorial conclusion about whether there is enough evidence to indict or not.”

“Mueller was derelict in not drawing a conclusion on the obstruction aspect of the investigation,” he added.

He also shed light on what the job of a prosecutor is.

“Prosecutors never exonerate anyone.  What prosecutors do is they make a decision about whether to charge or to decline to charge, based on whether there’s enough evidence and whether a case meets – in this case –  Justice Department standards,” said McCarthy.

McCarthy also believes the Mueller probe was launched on the faulty theory that Trump fired FBI Director James Comey in May 2017 because he must have something to hide and not because he wanted to exercise powers granted to him in the Constitution.

In addition, McCarthy says the prosecution has delivered it’s report and now the defense ought to get a turn, meaning there ought to be a robust investigation of the former Obama administration officials at the FBI, Justice Department, CIA and elsewhere that pushed the idea Russia and the Trump campaign were in cahoots.

Listen to the full podcast with a legal analyst who actually had this story right from the beginning, as McCarthy elaborates on what should come next, whether Trump critics will find any success continuing the probe in Congress or in the courts, and the damage the media did in pushing the Trump-Russia narrative.

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It’s Mueller Time

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America are glad to see the Mueller report conclude that neither Donald Trump not anyone else in his campaign conspired with Russia to influence the 2016 elections. They also get a kick out of Trump critics frantically moving the goalposts to claim the new attorney general is doing Trump’s bidding or that the real action is in Congress or with the federal prosecutors in New York. And they shake their heads at the overall performance of the mainstream media in covering this story since the last presidential campaign.

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