Radio America Online News Bureau

President Trump

Trump’s Asia Trip, Processing the Ray Moore Story, Hannity Fans Bash Keurigs

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America discuss President Trump’s Asia trip and how most of the visits suggested a good working relationship with key leaders.  Jim offers his take on the Roy Moore saga, pointing out that we often think we know political figures and are shocked when allegations come forward, but he says the truth is we know very little about them at all.  And they shake their heads as Sean Hannity fans publicly destroy their Keurig coffee machines after the company pulls advertising for Hannity’s TV show over his coverage of the Roy Moore story.

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GOP Thrashed in Virginia, Dems Romp in NJ & NYC, Flake’s Redundant Gun Bill

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America break down how the Democrats easily swept the statewide races in Virginia and even reversed a huge GOP majority in the state assembly.  They also discuss easy wins by Democrats in New Jersey and New York City, where the Republicans hardly appear to be a factor anymore.  And they roll their eyes as Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake proposes a law to ban gun sales to people convicted of domestic violence – because that exact law already exists.

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Hillary Rigged the System, Northam’s Troubling Ties, Trump’s Twitter Turned Off

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David French of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America discuss former Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Donna Brazile’s revelations that Hillary Clinton funded and controlled virtually every aspect of the 2016 Democratic primaries, concluding that the system was rigged against Bernie Sanders.  They also pop some popcorn after Virginia election filings show the Ralph Northam campaign considered media work from the Latino Victory Fund an in-kind contribution, which seems to include the horrific ad showing a supporter of Ed Gillespie trying to murder dark-skinned children.  And they are stunned and a bit amused as a departing Twitter employee briefly shuts down President Trump’s Twitter account.

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Tax Cut Bill Revealed, Trump’s Execution Tweets, Northam’s Epic Flip-Flop

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America largely cheer the House Republican tax plan, which cuts business and individual tax rates, kills the death tax and simplifies the system.  They also sigh as President Trump tweets out his desire to see this week’s Manhattan terrorist face capital punishment, a public statement many Americans agree with but could complicate federal prosecution of the murderer.  And they highlight the latest development in Virginia Democrat Ralph Northam’s no good, very bad week, as the candidate for governor flip-flops and suddenly supports banning sanctuary cities in Virginia.

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Judge Halts Most of Trump Ban on Transgenders in Military

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A federal judge is placing injunctions on two critical aspects of President Trump’s ban on transgenders serving openly in the military, but a key supporter of Trump’s policy says the judge is jumping the gun since no has been harmed by the policy and appears to be sympathetic to the media’s perspective that this is a civil rights issue.

On Monday, Federal Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly placed an injunction on Trump’s reinstatement of the ban and also blocked any ban on recruitment of transgenders.  However, Kollar-Kotelly did not block Trump’s order not to use taxpayer dollars to pay for gender reassignment surgery and related treatments.

Kollar-Kotelly is a Clinton nominee to the federal bench, but was also a Reagan nominee for the D.C Superior Court earlier in her career.  She gained widespread notoriety years ago as the judge in the government’s prolonged antitrust suit against Microsoft.  The case is Jane Doe v. Donald Trump, as multiple unnamed transgender service members are behind the suit.

But given that the Obama administration unilaterally ended the ban on transgenders serving in the military, does the law side with Trump in his efforts to put the ban back in place?  Family Research Council Senior Fellow in Policy Studies Peter Sprigg thinks so.

“I certainly think that this is an executive branch decision and not one for the courts to interfere with,” said Sprigg.

“This was a policy decision on the part of the Obama administration to reverse the longstanding policy that excluded transgender persons from the military.  It is a policy decision of the Trump administration to reverse that.  This is really not a constitutional issue, although the judge tries to frame it that way,” said Sprigg.

Sprigg believes the sympathetic media coverage of LGBT issues is influencing judges like Kollar-Kotelly.

“I think that the judge has internalized the way that the media covers this, which is that it’s a civil rights issue.  It’s a matter of discrimination.  It’s a matter of irrational animus towards people because of who they are.  They’re simply failing to look at the real issues,” said Sprigg.

So what are the real issues?  First of all, Sprigg says no one has standing to challenge the ban yet.

“The presidential memorandum (issued in August) basically said, ‘We are going to have the Pentagon look at this and make plans for how to undo the Obama policy and to report back on those by March 23, 2018.

“At the moment, the practice of the military remains as it was after July of 2016 under the Obama administration.  In other words, people who came out as transgender are serving as openly transgender service members in the military, right now are continuing to do so even following the president’s announcement and will continue to do so until March of next year,” said Sprigg.

Sprigg says there is also no grounds to contest the ban on recruitment yet.

“No one has ever been recruited into the military as a transgender person.  That policy was supposed to begin on July 1 of this year.  Secretary of Defense James Mattis had already postponed that policy by six months before the president announced his decision on the overall policy,” said Sprigg.

“The July 2016 status quo is still in place right now.  Therefore, these plaintiffs don’t really have an injury they can point to,” said Sprigg.

Once the timetables play out, the debate will continue.  The argument in favor of allowing transgenders to serve is that anyone who is willing to serve and can meet the requirements ought to be given the chance to serve.

Sprigg says there are three compelling reasons to bring back the ban.

“[It’s] not because of any sort of discrimination or animus towards them because of who they are.  It is for very specific medical reasons, both because of mental health and physical health considerations.

“People who identify as transgender do suffer from a mental disorder that is known as gender dysphoria.  That has always been a disqualifying condition from a mental health perspective,” said Sprigg, who says there are physical standards in play as well.

“People who have had sex reassignment surgery are disqualified from a physical health perspective, as is anyone who has some sort of abnormality or mutilation of the genitalia for any reason,” said Sprigg.

He also points out that the military refuses to deploy anyone undergoing specialized medical treatment, and hormone treatments associated with gender reassignment would render service members unable to be deployed.

Sprigg says the judge doesn’t seem to care about why the previous policy existed.

“Although she quoted the previous policy about the physical and mental health issues when she actually analyzed whether this policy was justified, she didn’t address those issues at all. For the most part, the media does not address those issues either,” said Sprigg.

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‘This Has Nothing to do with Collusion’

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The political world is abuzz Monday with the news of multi-count indictments against two Trump campaign officials and a guilty plea of a third, but a former federal prosecutor says virtually none of the charges are related to the Trump campaign and none of it comes anywhere close to collusion with the Russians.

After teasing the media with word that indictments could be coming down as soon as Monday, Special Counsel Robert Mueller ordered former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Manafort’s longtime business associate, Richard Gates, to turn themselves in.

By late morning, a 12-count indictment was revealed against the men on charges ranging from conspiracy against the United States to tax fraud and money laundering.  Soon after that, Mueller’s office revealed that Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty earlier in October to charges of making false statements.

Reaction was swift and wide-ranging.  Many in the media and political operatives on the left posited that Monday’s announcements are just the tip of the iceberg that could result in major political and legal problems for other Trump advisers and even some family members.  Supporters of the president say the only charges filed so far have nothing to do with the original purpose of Mueller’s probe.

Former U.S. Attorney Joe diGenova says the latter argument is the big takeaway from Monday.

“This has nothing to do with collusion with the Russians.  That’s number one.  It involves previous work that Manafort did for the Ukranian government and various Ukranian organizations, which he failed to report to the U.S. government because he was doing work on their behalf, lobbying the U.S. government in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act,” said diGenova.

“It has nothing to do with the campaign and it involves activities from 2006-2015, before [Manafort] got anywhere near the Trump campaign,” said diGenova.

As for Papadopoulos, diGenova says those crimes also had nothing to do with the Trump campaign.

“He was actually questioned about connections – while he was working for the campaign – with Russians, all of which he admitted do and which were perfectly legal.  But he lied to the bureau about those connections and pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his activities, both before and while he was working for the campaign,” said diGenova.

But diGenova says it is critical to note that Papadopoulos was not charged with anything else.

“That touches on the campaign but it does not involve any illegal activity by the campaign or by Mr. Papadopoulos while he was a member of the campaign.  It’r really quite bizarre.  It’s an example of the old adage: it isn’t the crime, it’s the cover up,” said diGenova.

The mainstream media is actively suggesting that the conversations Papadopoulos had with Russians is the beginning of the evidence needed to show collusion.  diGenova says there is a fundamental misunderstanding about the communication campaigns can have with foreign governments.

“It’s not illegal to talk to a foreign government during a campaign.  It’s not illegal to have meetings with foreigners or foreign governments during a campaign.  It’s not illegal to travel overseas to meet with foreign governments or foreign officials, all of which Mr. Papadopoulos did,” said diGenova.

“The other stuff that people are making out of this is nothing that campaign hasn’t already admitted to.  They admitted that they met with people from Russia.  Some of it was pretty goofy stuff.  Some of it was minor in terms of policy.

“But so far, there is no evidence in either one of these indictments of anything involving the word collusion,” said diGenova.

As for the charges against Manafort, diGenova says those are very serious.  He says allegations of not paying taxes on the money he earned and effectively laundering it through overseas real estate deals not only put him in legal jeopardy but he effectively forced his accountants and lawyers to unwittingly pass false information on to the government as well.

Ultimately, diGenova expects Manafort to accept a plea bargain.  He says he’d be very surprised to see the case go to trial.

So do these charges fit the instructions given to Mueller to investigate Russian involvement in the 2016 elections or is this too far afield?  diGenova says the Justice Department never gave Mueller any specific crime to investigate, leaving his mission very open ended.

“I think it was a mistake to give such a broad mandate to Mr. Mueller.  That’s not Mr. Mueller’s fault.  That’s a decision the Department of Justice made and I think it was a bad one,” said diGenova.

However, diGenova still believes the most important questions about shady connections between the U.S. and Russia revolve around the transfer of 20 percent of U.S. uranium reserves to Russia near the same time major donations were made to the Clinton Foundation.  He wants a special counsel appointed to investigate that case.

But diGenova says the revelations of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee paying millions of dollars for a former British intelligence officer to mine his Russian sources for dirt on Donald Trump is the biggest bombshell of all.

“The dossier could be in the jurisdiction of Robert Mueller.  But if it isn’t, that certainly needs to be investigated by another special counsel or the Department of Justice,” said diGenova.

“I think the most serious stuff that’s come out recently is the dossier.  I think that is directly related to the campaign and the use of Russian influence to try and discredit a candidate,” said diGenova.

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McCarthy Breaks Down Dossier Revelations

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The revelation that Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee funded the ongoing production of the infamous anti-Trump dossier leads former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy to assert there are even more critical questions that need answers now.

On Tuesday, the Washington Post revealed that after months of denying any connection to the dossier, it is now confirmed that the Clinton campaign and the DNC provided part of the funding for the ongoing work into the dossier after the still unknown Republican who first started the project backed down.

The Post story points out the funding from the Democrats and the Clinton team ran from April-October 2016.  It was only after the Democrats got involved that former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele was brought onto the investigation.

In addition, the report states the FBI briefly picked up the tab for the work on the dossier to continue even after Election Day.  The bureau dropped the effort after Steele’s identity was made public.

McCarthy says some things are now clearer about this controversy.

“What we now know is that the source of all this, to the extent that it was funded, were obviously opponents of Donald Trump.

“Apparently, it was initially a Republican outfit or rival of Trump’s that started this ball rolling.  Around April or so of 2016, the effort was taken up by the Clinton campaign and the DNC through a law firm called Perkins Coie,” said McCarthy.

As the Washington Post explained, the Washington-based research firm Fusion GPS was already working on the dossier when the Democrats and the Clinton campaign started funding the effort.  Perkins Coie did the finances, paying Fusion GPS from the Clinton campaign and the DNC through the law office.

And McCarthy says that’s not the only odd role played by Perkins Coie in the sordid 2016 campaign.

“That…is the same law firm that retained Crowdstrike, which is the cybersecurity outfit that examined the Democrat National Committee servers when they learned that they were hacked, also around April of 2016.  I think it’s a very interesting coincidence that these two scandals seem to be colliding at this point,” said McCarthy.

The reaction to the Democrats being deeply connected to the dossier is drawing an interesting response from the left.  Just months after accusing Trump campaign officials of collusion and possible treason for being willing to meet with Russians at Trump Tower to get a look at opposition research on Clinton, they say there’s nothing to see in Clinton and the DNC funding an effort, based largely on Russian contacts, to torpedo Donald Trump.

“The first I learned of Christopher Steele or saw any dossier was after the election,” former Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon told the Post.

“But if I had gotten handed it last fall, I would have had no problem passing it along and urging reporters to look into it.Opposition research happens on every campaign, and here you had probably the most shadowy guy ever running for president, and the FBI certainly has seen fit to look into it. I probably would have volunteered to go to Europe myself to try and verify if it would have helped get more of this out there before the election,” said Fallon.

McCarthy says the differing responses are jarring.

“The media acts horrified that Trump would be doing opposition research on Hillary and with respect to this story on the dossier, we’re now supposed to see it as politics as usual.  So there is a double standard in the coverage,” said McCarthy.

However, McCarthy is not letting the Trump team off the hook.  He says they created their own public relations nightmare.

“The biggest problem the Trumps had is that they weren’t forthcoming about the reason for the meeting.  When they were originally asked about it, they said there had never been any such meeting.  Then when it turned out there was a meeting, they said it was about one thing and then when it turned out the New York Times had their emails, they came clean about what the meeting was about,” said McCarthy.

McCarthy says there are many critical questions going forward.  For him, the most important issues concern the federal government use of a dossier funded by partisans to instigate surveillance on Trump associates.

“Specifically, there’s a claim that they’ve used information that was in this dossier that we now know was paid for by the Clinton campaign.  The report is that they used information from that dossier in presenting their warrant application to the FISA court and then they were given authority to do this eavesdropping,” said McCarthy.

He says that may or may not constitute a scandal depending upon the facts.

“That’s not necessarily a scandal, as long as they corroborated whatever information from the dossier they used before they brought it to the court and as long as they had a good faith reason for the people they wanted to surveil were actually acting as Russian agents.

“If any of those things isn’t true, that would be a big problem,” said McCarthy.

He says another key question is what the court was told about how and where the feds go their intelligence.

“It would also be very useful to know what representations did they make about the source of the information that they got from the dossier, assuming they did that as reported,” said McCarthy.

The dossier story is just one headache for the Clintons and their associates.  In the past week, reports also reveal special counsel Robert Mueller is now conducting a criminal inquiry into the Podesta Group, which has close ties to Clintons.  John Podesta served as chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.

In addition, congressional hearings will soon be held to follow up on revelations that the FBI conducted an undercover investigation into the Russian bribery scheme to steer U.S. nuclear policy in Moscow’s favor, including the awarding of 20 percent of America’s uranium supply to the Russians.  Despite years worth of evidence, the FBI did not intervene to stop the Uranium One contract.

McCarthy says there are two critical questions to be answered on that emerging story.

“I’d like to see testimony from this witness who’s been identified as they informant in that Uranium One deal, where Russia ended up getting 20 percent of our uranium reserves and the Clinton Foundation was grotesquely enriched,” said McCarthy.

He’s especially dumbfounded that the uranium deal was allowed to proceed.

“Not only how did it help the national security to allow Russia to acquire these reserves, but why was that allowed to be done when we had a pending provable, prosecutable racketeering investigation on the outfit that was acquiring the reserves?” said McCarthy.

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Dossier Twist Points to Dems, Jeff Flakes Out, Fact Check Flop

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America discuss the Washington Post revelation that the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee provided some of the funding for the infamous and largely discredited Trump dossier that involved significant collaboration with officials in Russia, and they shake their heads as Democrats insist this was just simple opposition research.  They’re also unmoved by Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake’s denunciation of President Trump or Flake’s decision to fight back by retiring from the Senate, when it’s obvious the real reason he ended his campaign was because he can’t win.  And they get a kick out of the Washington Post fact checkers making a big deal out of determining that Virginia GOP gubernatorial nominee Ed Gillespie was wrong by claiming there were 2,000 MS-13 gang members living in one Virginia county when the best guess of law enforcement is there are just 1,400 violent criminals from that gang roaming area streets and neighborhoods.

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‘Holy Cow, We’ve Lost Our Culture’

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Western civilization is thoroughly battered in Europe and America is on course for the same fate unless unless it once again embraces the ideas that made us strong and resists the tide of progressive momentum that seeks to destroy them, according to Sovereign Nations founder and editor-in-chief Michael O’Fallon.

Sovereign Nations is hosting a three-day conference in the nation’s capital next week designed to highlight the threats to the founding principles and how to thwart them.  The conference will be held at the Trump International Hotel from Oct. 30-Nov. 1.

O’Fallon says he started Sovereign Nations as he watched America turn against the very things that made it strong.

“I imagine most [people] have noticed that there are things around them, especially in the last 8-10 years, that just don’t make sense.  What was once heresy is now law and what was once law is now heresy.

“When we take a look at things that were accepted in the United States, the things that held us together, the glue that really kept our civilization together, those things are now being turned and looked at as if they are things and signs of oppression,” said O’Fallon.

And what are some of those things?

“The way we raise our children, the basis of America in self-government in the family, those things are now looked upon as being controlling, oppressive, not the way that people can truly have freedom, things that need to be thought through and possibly done away with.  So everything that really keeps our society together as we know it is quickly being extinguished,” said O’Fallon.

O’Fallon says this is all a result of a carefully planned onslaught from the intellectual left.

“That cause of things we believe to be rooted in what is known as progressivism that is backed by open society foundations.  More commonly known is the name of George Soros, which keeps coming up again and again.  Certainly, he would be at the source of that,” said O’Fallon.

But how?  How can someone like Soros and his allies really implement so much change?

O’Fallon says the first powerful took is what Soros calls the theory of reflexivity.

“It’s creating an atmosphere of transmission and acceptance of either true or false statements in order to fulfill a manipulative function,” said O’Fallon, who says that tactic morphs into what are known as “fertile fallacies.”

“We know a fallacy is something that’s not true, but it’s fertile in that maybe it’s not true but it’s got legs.  It’s a great story.  It’s going to go someplace,” said O’Fallon.

He says the cumulative impact of this strategy on multiple economic, cultural, and international fronts, is aimed towards a the ultimate goal of undermining the philosophical foundations of the United States.

“The target, in and of itself, is to destroy anything that makes us a sovereign nation with the ability to have self-governance,” said O’Fallon.  “The citizens of this country are the ones that determine what this country does by making sure that we are within the frames of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.”

O’Fallon says the current attempts to blur the lines on citizenship by allowing non-citizens to vote and being lax on the enforcement of immigration laws is a direct attack on the right of citizens to rule, and he says killing that nation is the greatest tool the progressives have.

“All of these things are tools to break down and mold this world in a way that they would desire it – and when I say ‘the’y there’s a big ‘they’ there – in a way to not have us to be able to say,’That’s unconstitutional.  That needs to go to the Supreme Court.’  We need to make sure that we look at things as the U.S. as apart from the rest of the world,” said O’Fallon.

He says America needs to wake up fast because it may already be too late for Europe.

“The same thing is happening in Europe.  People are just waking up to the fact that, holy cow, we’ve lost our culture.  And that, sadly, is happening here as well,” said O’Fallon.

O’Fallon blames “progressive” Republicans and Democrats for trying to stop President Trump from strengthening American sovereignty .  He says the GOP is split between defenders of the Constitution and lawmakers behind the Gang of Eight immigration plan and other “globalist” initiatives.

He has even harsher words for the Democrats, whom O’Fallon believes need a new party name.

“They just need to come straight out and say, ‘We are globalist progressives at this point.  What people joined 30, 40, 50 years ago with the Democrat Party, it doesn’t even resemble it at this point,” said O’Fallon.

“They have become a party that is wanting to quickly take us out of our sovereignty and put us into a situation where we could have something that’s very much like a global EU very soon.

“They are the party of eugenics.  They are the party of attacking our sovereignty.  They are the party that is always looking to obstruct,” said O’Fallon.

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Reporter Actually Meets Red State Voters, Trump vs. Corker, Math is Racist

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David French of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America applaud former NPR CEO Ken Stern for taking the time to meet voters in red states and realizing they are nothing like the caricature offered by the mainstream media.  They’re also exasperated as President Trump and Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker resume their public feud and accomplish nothing other than choke momentum for tax reform and tax cuts.  And they react with disgust to a University of Illinois professor who argues that proficiency in algebra and geometry perpetuates unearned white privilege and that “mathematics itself operates as Whiteness.”

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