Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America shake their heads as infighting among congressional Republicans and even White House staffers clouds the push for a vote. They also cast suspicion on President Trump’s vow to just let Obamacare continue if Congress failed to pass the bill. And they have some much needed fun by examining the push to rename the airport in Las Vegas for former Sen. Harry Reid.
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America shake their heads as Republicans fight over health care reform after telling Americans it would be easy to repeal and replace. They’re also disgusted as school officials in Maryland seem far more concerned about protecting the reputation of illegal immigrants than condemning the rape of a 14-year-old girl, allegedly by two teens in the U.S. illegally. And they get a kick out of Susan Rice lecturing the Trump administration about the importance of being honest and factual with the public and our allies.
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America begin by discussing the interesting circumstances surrounding the discovery of Tom Brady’s stolen Superbowl jersey, but then get to the real news. They are excited to see Neil Gorsuch begin his Supreme Court confirmation hearings. They also react to the heads of the FBI and NSA say they have no evidence suggesting Pres. Obama ordered surveillance on Trump Tower. And they shake their heads as only 43 percent of Americans can name one Supreme Court justice.
A leading critic of the Environmental Protection Agency who served on President Trump’s transition team is very encouraged by the administration approach to the agency in policy and budget, but he says Trump must make good on his promise to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate change agreement.
Trump’s proposed budget made headlines this week, as it called for big cuts in many departments of the federal government. The blueprint calls for a 31 percent reduction in spending at the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA. Trump plans to spend no more money on climate change projects.
“We’re not spending any more money on that,” said Budget Director Mick Mulvaney. “We consider that to be a waste of your money to go out and do that.”
Competitive Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Christopher C. Horner served on Trump’s “landing team” at EPA. He is very encouraged by Trump’s fiscal approach to the EPA.
“It’s a complete departure from anything you might expect from any administration, which is usually, ‘We will just slow the rate of growth,’ no matter what they think if something. That’s sort of the worst thing they would ever consider doing,” said Horner.
He says Trump has no patience for EPA climate change policies that even Obama-era administrator Gina McCarthy admitted were more symbolic than substantive.
“He’s throwing this out the window, saying, ‘We’re trillions in debt. Symbolism is the first thing to go. This is a waste of your money.’ So I think that’s fantastic,” said Horner.
Horner says the trimming will allow the EPA do the job it’s supposed to do rather than burdening Americans with bureaucratic rules.
“They have statutory mandates. They have statutory deadlines. They’ve never met one they liked, but they go off on these very expensive, very harmful hobbies and ideological ax-grinding,” said Horner.
“What they’re saying is, ‘You seem to have an awful lot of time and other people’s money to do that. Why don’t you stick to your knitting and focus on actual environmental problems and actual environmental mandates from Congress,'” said Horner.
Horner says it’s not hard to find places to cut at EPA.
“This is an agency that has grown essentially from an executive order to, over time, consuming major parts of the economy, and tax revenues, and our debt. The expansion from the statutory mission is breathtaking,” said Horner.
Horner also says his experiences at EPA while serving on the landing team left him underwhelmed.
“The insistence by people, including those you might imagine, can’t even tell you how many people work there. But they need more money to do their job because the agency is so big. Yet, if you ask them, for example, ‘What is your role in the federal-state partnership, they will tell you it is ‘partnering.’ OK, well that’s a big flag that maybe this is a good place to save some money,” said Horner.
But while Horner is very pleased with the actions Trump is taking thus far at the EPA, he is pleading with the president to formally withdraw from the Paris climate change agreement signed by the Obama administration in its final months.
He says the consequences of not backing out soon will be very real.
“You’re going to see the pain of the sort that was pointed out in the presidential campaign of these policies but worse and worse every year with more and more promises to make it worse every five years,” said Horner.
While the tenets are effectively voluntary, Horner says every five years there will be immense international pressure and public shaming for the U.S. to keep lowering emissions levels and meeting other targets to keep up with the terms of the treaty, which Obama refused to call a treaty so as to dodge rejection of the deal in the U.S. Senate.
But because Obama took that strategic approach, Horner says Trump can exit the deal just as easily.
“For months before the terms were agreed, [the Obama administration] said, ‘I can’t tell you what it is, but I can tell you it’s not a treaty.’ In other words, whatever happens, we’re going to say it’s not a treaty. That is a ‘what are you going to do about it approach.’ If you live by the ‘what are you going to do about it’ approach, then it can also die by it. President Trump promised to cancel the Paris climate treaty,” said Horner.
Horner says the only argument being made against withdrawing is the international blowback that would come for the U.S. But he says the whole point of the treaty is to shame the U.S. for any reluctance to restrict emissions, so staying in the agreement would only make the criticism more intense.
However, despite Trump’s campaign promises, Horner suspects Trump won’t pull out of the agreement.
“I’m encouraged that the issue seems to be open again because I think the wrong answer was reached. So we have time, but I have to tell you I’m not very confident because people very close to the president are pushing for him to break this campaign promise,” said Horner.
He says time is of the essence.
“If President Trump doesn’t get out of this within the next two months, probably six weeks and certainly by the July G-20 meeting in Hamburg, July 7-8, then we’re probably in this forever,” said Horner.
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America are pleased to see conservative priorities in Pres. Trump’s budget, even though they concede the final appropriations will look nothing like this. They also shake their heads as John McCain accuses anyone opposing NATO membership for Montenegro of doing Vladimir Putin’s bidding. And they react to a tweet from the McDonald’s account that slams Pres. Trump.
Jim Geraghty of Radio America and Greg Corombos of Radio America discuss MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow turning a supposedly big scoop on Pres. Trump’s tax history into a dud of a story. They also discuss why some in the media are determined to make Chelsea Clinton into some sort of political power player. And they shake their heads as former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley starts testing the waters for a presidential run in 2020.
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America discuss Pres. Trump’s removal of 46 Obama-era U.S. attorneys and how many critics fail to mention this happens with every modern administration. They also shake their heads as scores of high-level government appointments have yet to be filled and no nominations have been made. And they wince as Iowa GOP Rep. Steve King says, “We can’t restore our civilization with someone else’s babies.”
The leaking of CIA methods and the ongoing debate over whether the intelligence community is trying to undermine President Trump have thrust a part of our government into the spotlight that greatly prefers to operate in the shadows.
In the first few weeks of the Trump administration, much attention has been paid to the litany of unnamed sources offering information to the media that casts the president in a negative light, possibly even in cahoots with Russia. In addition, Trump has accused President Obama of keeping him under surveillance during the campaign.
The latest headline material for the intelligence community centers on Wikileaks releasing CIA documents which reveal methods of spying on subjects, including the use of smart phones, televisions and other devices.
When it comes to the exposure of CIA secrets, there is the immediate and the long-term fallout.
“Our intelligence service may no longer be able to access information they need to prevent an attack. So that’s as serious as it gets,” said Herbert E. Meyer, who served as special assistant to then-CIA Director William Casey during the Reagan administration.
Meyer also served as vice chairman of the CIA’s National Intelligence Council. Most recently he’s founder of Storm King Press and the author of the updated booklet, “Why Is the World So Dangerous?”
The long-term damage of CIA secrets and methods being exposed is also sobering.
“This discredits the CIA and the intelligence service. We’re living in an age when rumors go all over the place and news is unchecked. You can never tell the difference between a fact and an allegation. So once again, the idea is out there that the CIA is spying on everybody,” said Meyer.
“That does an enormous amount of damage to our credibility as a country and to citizens. So it’s really very, very damaging, whatever the facts (in the Wikileaks case) turn out to be,” said Meyer, who says rooting out leakers at the CIA isn’t very difficult.
Meyer admits there are endless new ways to track people than when he was serving at the CIA, but he says the agency always adhered to strict privacy policies unless it had good reason for surveillance.
“There was obviously a clear line. We looked overseas. If it was something here in the United States, the FBI dealt with it, said Meyer. “So the line was a little thicker, a little brighter then. But in all fairness to everyone, it’s a different world now.”
But even worse than the leaking, according to Meyer, is the intelligence community’s obsession with simply gathering information.
“Since 9/11, our intelligence service has been making a fundamental mistake. They came to the conclusion that 9/11 happened because they didn’t have enough information. To some extent that was true, but you know, it’s never enough. It’s a trap. If you’re not careful, you try to know everything about everything and you wind up knowing nothing about nothing,” said Meyer.
Meyer likens that approach to constantly shopping for groceries to make a dinner but never actually making the dinner.
As for the intelligence community regularly leaking sensitive material to a media eager to paint the president in a bad light, Meyer says that happened all the time during the Reagan years.
“About twice a week,” said Meyer. “There’d be a conversation on the seventh floor of the CIA and the next day it would be in the Washington Post. Absolutely amazing (and) that’s nothing new,” said Meyer.
But while Meyer says there are certainly intelligence personnel who do not like the president, there is not a grand conspiracy to bring down the president.
“It’s not ‘deep state.’ That’s sort of an overdramatic version of it. The same thing is happening at the EPA. It happens at the agriculture department. The people like us don’t pay as much attention to that,” he said.
When it comes to whether the Obama administration spied on Trump or his campaign, Meyer is mystified by the drawn-out intrigue.
“This is a classic case of what’s wrong with Washington, D.C. You can never get to the bottom of anything. You can never get anything straight. It’s like trying to read a book while someone throws sand in your eyes,” said Meyer.
He says Trump could resolve this quickly.
“The president has access to every document in the executive branch. There’s nothing that you can keep from a president. So why doesn’t President Trump simply call the directors of the FBI, the CIA, and the NSA and say, ‘Get in here with everything you’ve got on this and let’s take a look,'” said Meyer.
“The president also has the absolute authority to declassify anything. If he wanted to, he could declassify the nuclear launch code. So why can’t we get our hands on this stuff? Why can’t we just see it? If there was a FISA request that was denied last spring, somebody wrote the requests, somebody signs it. The document exists. Let’s see it.
“If there was a FISA request that was approved in October, let’s see that. If anything was approved and there are tapes, recordings [or] transcripts, let’s see them,” said Meyer.
Meyer says he expected obfuscation from the Obama administration but Trump should handle this differently.
“We have a president who is, in effect, on our side as opposed to the last president. So why doesn’t he just get his hands on it and says, ‘Here’s what there was’ or ‘There was nothing.’ I don’t understand why this takes more than 10 minutes to get straight,” said Meyer.
“Remember, we never got to the bottom of Benghazi, but that’s because the people in the White House were trying to keep us from getting straight answers. Why can’t we get straight answers now? That’s what I don’t understand,” said Meyer.
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America discuss the latest revelations surrounding former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and breathe a sigh of relief that he’s already gone. They also lament FBI Director James Comey’s admission that there is no longer any such thing as “absolute privacy” anymore. And they discuss Pres. Trump’s decision to nominate former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman to be U.S. Ambassador to Russia.
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America discuss the Trump administration’s new executive order temporarily banning travel from six nations with major terrorism problems. They also react to North Korea announcing its latest missile tests were designed to strike U.S. bases in Japan. And they slam teachers in Alexandria, Virginia, for forcing the cancellation of school because 300 of them plan to attend the anti-Trump women’s march.
