Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America not enjoy watching the quixotic Jill Stein recount come to a whimpering end but applaud Michigan for using the episode to push for stronger voter ID laws. They also groan as Donald Trump says he doesn’t need daily intelligence briefings. And they wade into the growing furor over what role Russia played in hacking the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta – and what to do about it if it’s true.
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America offer a champagne toast to the military and space heroism of John Glenn. They are surprised to see a massive jump in economic optimism since Trump’s election. They shudder as free speech is trampled in the Netherlands. And they unload on Hillary Clinton after she claims fake news is having a major impact on the nation.
Legal challenges and hand counting of ballots are daily occurrences in Michigan, and the head of an anti-Hillary Clinton political action committee says the former Democratic nominee is deeply involved in an effort to give the perception Donald Trump’s victory is illegitimate while Green Party candidate Jill Stein is just in this for herself.
The courts have been back and forth on the issue. After Stein pressed the issue in court, federal judge Mark Goldsmith ordered the recount to begin on Monday, despite Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette trying to stop the process. The state is arguing that since Stein has no chance of winning she has no standing to make the request.
On Tuesday, the Michigan Court of Appeals agreed with Schuette and ordered to recount to be stopped. However, a three-judge panel of the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that the recount ought to continue. The various parties were arguing the case again before Goldsmith on Wednesday morning.
After all 83 Michigan counties certified their vote totals last month, the Michigan Board of Canvassers declared the winner of the state’s 16 electoral votes by a 10,704 vote margin. Stein successfully triggered a recount in neighboring Wisconsin, where Trump leads by roughly 22,000 votes, and Pennsylvania, where the margin is more than twice the spread in Wisconsin.
The Committee to Defend the President is also wading into the legal waters. Formerly known as the Stop Hillary PAC, the group says this recount drama is nothing more than an expensive circus.
“I think it is a waste of taxpayers’ money first and foremost. The taxpayers in these three states are going to have to pick up the tab for these recounts,” said Committee to Defend the President Chairman Ted Harvey.
“The recounts will achieve nothing. Jill Stein received one percent of the vote in these states. There is no way that she can get the votes necessary to overcome Trump’s victory and I don’t believe she has any standing in these states to file lawsuits to do a recount because of that,” said Harvey.
He says Stein’s true motives are fairly obvious.
“She is simply doing this to raise money for her organization, to raise her profile as an individual and to raise the profile of the Green Party,” said Harvey.
The Clinton campaign is officially joining Stein in it’s stated cause of ensuring the vote was not subject to hacking, error, or fraud. However, the Clinton team has publicly stated it doesn’t expect any changes in the results.
Harvey doesn’t believe Clinton is just a silent bystander in all of this. He sees the former secretary of state as a raging hypocrite.
“After the (final) debate, she stood up in speech after speech after speech and said Donald Trump is attacking democracy by questioning the election. That was easy for her to say when she thought she was going to win. Now that she is losing, her fingerprints are all over this recount,” said Harvey, who also has scathing reviews for how the media is covering this.
“I think it’s typical of the agenda of the left-wing media, which is all of the CNN, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, ABC in this country. They are run by leftists and they have an agenda,” said Harvey.
He says the media roundly mocked Trump for suggesting voting irregularities could be a factor in the election but they are only too eager to treat Stein and Clinton’s challenge as serious news.
On the contrary, he says there are plenty of examples of truly concerning issues across the country, including in his home state of Colorado.
“Here in Colorado, they passed legislation to allow for same-day voter registration without proof of voter ID. When it was brought up that this was only going to lead to massive voter fraud, they laughed at it and they pushed it through. Now here we are with an election that they lose and they’re coming before the American people and the press and they’re claiming voter fraud. It’s just hypocrisy left and right,” said Harvey.
Harvey says the media has been toeing the liberal narrative since the moment Trump won the election.
“You saw what happened the day after the election when you had ‘spontaneous’ rallies around the country protesting Donald Trump’s election. That didn’t just happen overnight. That was organized by (George) Soros and the Clinton campaign to rally young people around the country to protest. The media gobbled that up and ran with that hour after hour after hour,” said Harvey.
He says the media then jumped to new stories when the protesting became stale, namely an obsession with Hillary Clinton winning the popular vote and then treating the recounts as legitimate.
Harvey believes all these different tactics have the same long-term goal.
“Their whole agenda is to discredit Donald Trump and discredit his duly legal election. I think they will continue to do this for the next four years to say that everything that he is going to do as president is not legitimate,” said Harvey.
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America groan as Rush Limbaugh says Donald Trump’s trillion dollar infrastructure bill could be a big success – just like FDR. They also get a kick out of Democrats getting really excited over the prospect of a 78-year-old Joe Biden running for president in 2020. And Jim unloads on a “faithless elector” from Texas, who says he cannot cast a vote for Trump.
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America shake their heads as the media and the left go nuts because Donald Trump took a phone call from the president of Taiwan. They also sigh as the media ramp up an hysterical assault on “fake news.” And they note that the Wisconsin recount has done nothing so far – except narrowly increase Trump’s lead.
Retired U.S. Army Lt. General William “Jerry” Boykin is applauding President-Elect Donald Trump’s selection of retired U.S. Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis to be the next Secretary of Defense and believes Mattis will do an excellent job of restoring the military to its original purpose and moving it away from the giant social experiment its become during the Obama years.
Boykin, who served 36 years, many of them in special operations, sees Trump and Mattis as kindred spirits in that they both despise political correctness. Mattis, known as “Mad Dog” and “Chaos” during his years in uniform comes to the confirmation process with a sterling reputation as a military scholar and leader and for speaking his mind bluntly.
“I think what Donald Trump was looking for was somebody who would send a very strong message to our military, to the people in the ranks of our military that we are going to get back to a focus on what the military’s mission is. And this is plain and simple to win the nation’s wars. I think Mattis sends that signal. It’s a very good choice. I’m excited about it,” said Boykin.
When asked how Mattis would tackle priorities like ISIS or strengthening the military, Boykin says the most urgent priority is something else.
“I think his top priority will be restoring the warrior ethos here. We’ve been plagued by various social experiments for the entire eight years Obama has been out commander-in-chief. It has created a huge morale problem. It has reduced our readiness. It has made our ability to win the nation’s wars questionable,” said Boykin.
Boykin says there are limits to what Mattis can do to reverse the social engineering implemented in the military during the Obama years.
“There are some things that he cannot roll back. What he can do is put an end to all the wasted training time that is associated with every social experiment,” said Boykin.
“For example, when you allow transgenders to serve in the military, there is a training program that goes with that. Every soldier, sailor, airman, Marine and Coastguardsman has to go through hours and hours of that training. What does that do? It causes them to have to give up something in their training program,” said Boykin.
He points to January’s incident in the Persian Gulf, in which Iran took American sailors prisoner, took video of them on their knees and forced the commanding officer to apologize. The U.S. later apologized and even thanked Iran for it’s hospitality of our personnel.
“That’s not acceptable under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The problem was they didn’t get that kind of training. What they did get was diversity and inclusion and tolerance and white privilege and all those things that go with social experiments and they contribute nothing to the ability to fight and win the nation’s wars,” said Boykin.
Boykin is confident Mattis can handle the job of running a massive organization like the Department of Defense. And while Boykin, strongly prefers civilian leadership at the Pentagon, he says we need Mattis right now.
“I fully endorse civilian control of the military. It’s a fundamental principle to our constitutional republic. We all believe in that. But these are extreme circumstances. These are extreme situations we find ourselves in now,” said Boykin.
“So in this situation, I am comfortable with it. I would not want it to be the norm. But again, we’re not in a normal situation or circumstance,” said Boykin.
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America applaud Donald Trump for selecting retired U.S. Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis to be Secretary of Defense. They also roll their eyes as Clinton campaign officials contend white supremacists won the election for Trump. And they explain why Trump’s deal is good for Carrier employees but a bad model to follow as an economic policy.
Republicans in Congress are fired up by the chance to accomplish big things in the early days of the upcoming Trump administration and move away from the crisis budgeting that faces them once again in the lame duck session.
Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Fla, who gained notoriety nearly two years ago by posing an intraparty challenge to then-House Speaker John Boehner, says GOP members are itching to get things done.
“I can tell you the enthusiasm and the excitement up here of getting things done is higher than I’ve ever seen,” said Yoho, who is wrapping up his second two-year term. “The optimism is tremendous. Even the members that served under (George W.) Bush said they’ve never seen it like this.”
He says part of the excitement was the promise from Vice President-Elect Mike Pence that lawmakers would be very busy in the early days of the Trump administration.
“He said, ‘I hope you guys are holding on and you’re ready to work because this guy that is going to be president is unlike anybody you’ve ever worked with before. He’s got unlimited energy. We want to roll back the majority, if not all, of the executive orders. We want to repeal and replace Obamacare and we want to adapt the tax reforms that the Republicans have teed up and ready to go,'” said Yoho.
“He said we’re going to do all that in the first 100 days,” said Yoho.
Even thornier issues such as entitlements lie ahead, but Yoho says a united GOP can make progress on those elusive goals as well.
“The biggest thing is having a common vision and goal that you’re trying to accomplish. We’re at a point in this country where in 5-10 years our mandatory spending is going to consume over 80 percent of what we spend as a nation,” said Yoho.
“We’ll be at a situation like Greece, Spain, or Portugal, where the situation dictates what you have to do as far as austerity measures and the reforms you have to make in programs. We have time to be proactive and change that,” said Yoho, who says this GOP Congress will not end up spending more and growing government like it did from 2005-2007, the last time Republicans controlled Congress and the White House.
While admitting some tough decisions will have to made on some aspects of entitlement and spending reform, he says some parts of the solution should be easy, starting with mandatory spending that isn’t essential.
“One of the things that’s mandatory spending is $88 million to save the wild horses out West. I’m a veterinarian, worked on horses all my life. I’m very cognizant and want to take care of the horses, but it shouldn’t be mandatory spending,” said Yoho.
He also sees places to trim entitlement spending.
“We’ve got people receiving Social Security benefits that have never paid into it. We’ve got people from other countries getting Social Security Disability Insurance. These things have to be looked at. Then you take the fraud and abuse out of these things. There are billions of dollars that can be saved by doing some very simple things and fixing the low-hanging fruit,” said Yoho.
Even before Trump takes office, Congress must work with President Obama to pass a short-term government funding bill. Current funding runs out Dec. 9. Yoho expects a continuing resolution to pass that would extend government funding until March. The Trump administration would then be in office to negotiate future spending. However, Yoho points out that subsequent spending debate would coincide with a high stakes debate over raising the debt ceiling.
Yoho hopes that a Trump administration will bring an end to omnibus budgeting that often end up with Republicans holding their noses and voting for prominent Obama priorities such as funding Planned Parenthood and sanctuary cities.
The current lame duck session is already a success for Yoho. Earlier in the week, the House passed his WINGMAN legislation, also known as H.R. 5166. The bill gives Congress access to claims filed by veterans with the Department of Veterans Affairs and gives lawmakers and their staffs the ability to explain what else veterans need to fill out or put members in position to pressure the VA for resolution of the claims.
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America have only good martinis Wednesday. They are very bullish about many of the Trump cabinet selections. They enjoy watching the left prove out radical it is by how it responds to a simple Trump tweet. And we love watching Senate Democrats regret scrapping the filibuster for political appointments.
While the mainstream media camp out in the lobby of Trump Tower, the work being done upstairs by the Trump transition team is a seemingly endless stream of personnel decisions, policy briefings and figuring out the personal and political chemistry of the president-elect’s inner circle.
Trump won the 2016 election on Nov. 8. He now has just over 50 days to prepare to assume the most powerful office in the world. And that means his team needs to get him ready.
“The idea is that when a president takes office Jan. 20, that he can literally step into his desk that first morning and begin to function as commander-in-chief and handle all the duties of the presidency,” said Reagan White House Political Director Frank Donatelli.
He says the first order of business is growing the president’s staff.
“When someone runs for president, chances are they have a small coterie of advisers around them. Of course, once you become president, you need a lot more people than that. So they have to expand the circle pretty rapidly,” said Donatelli.
While much of the media attention centers on the high-profile cabinet selections, there are a total of about 4,000 political appointments for a president to make.
“Any position that is cabinet-level, deputy secretary or assistant secretary, generally those require Senate confirmation. The president will have some involvement at that level,” said Donatelli.
He adds that while 4,000 may seem like a lot, there are about one million career government employees.
Donatelli says some of the lower political appointments often go to people with some sort of connection to the president or the party.
“The president will give some direction to the kinds of people he wants. Generally, the Office of Presidential Personnel in the White House is responsible for filling out the bureaucracy. They’ll take into consideration campaign workers and key members of the Republican Party and fundraisers for the president, and oh by the way, people who actually have some expertise in the job,” said Donatelli.
In addition to personnel matters, there is the issue of bringing the president-elect up to speed on a wide range of policy issues.
“You want to be able to hit the ground running and so the president needs to be broadly familiar with the issues that are going to be hitting his desk immediately: budget issues, economic issues, obviously foreign policy issues and briefings,” said Donatelli.
It’s an intense process of poring over critical information that is a challenge for every incoming president.
It’s a big curve. It’s no comparison. Some people say it’s a lot more fun to run to be president than it actually is being president. You’ve got a lot of decisions to make. I think it’s true. Only a past president can understand the burdens that a new president is going to take on,” said Donatelli.
While Trump studies his briefing books and makes key nominations, Donatelli says it would be wise for his inner circle to be studying Trump, beginning with the issues he’s most passionate about.
“I think another important thing is if you have people around you that understand the president-elect, so that you know what the president-elect is most interested in and what he’s not interested in – the stuff he’s not interested in that he really doesn’t have to know that much about and can be delegated elsewhere,” said Donatelli.
He says President Reagan had a very smooth transition because some of his closest aides from his days as California governor were by his side and knew how he operated. Donatelli says the learning curve could be steeper for Reince Preiebus and Steve Bannon, who have been close to Trump for a much shorter time.
“Reince Priebus has not worked for Donald Trump before. Steve Bannon was on his campaign but it was only for a short period of time. So I think there is going to be a feeling out process here so that the White House staff knows how this president operates; what he wants to know, what he’s doesn’t need to know, how he functions, etc. etc.,” said Donatelli.
