Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America react to reports – and audio – of Montana GOP House candidate Greg Gianforte getting physical with a reporter, who claims Gianforte body slammed him and broke his glasses. They also shake their heads as Manchester police stop sharing intelligence on Monday’s bombing with U.S. officials after several sensitive items were made public. And they groan as Washington Post columnist David Ignatius has already decided that the 2018 midterm elections will be all about whether to impeach Trump because he is just so very sure that Robert Mueller will recommend impeachment, Trump won’t resign and Republicans won’t pursue impeachment on their own.
Trump
Manchester ‘Carnage,’ Trump Targets ‘Losers,’ Resisting the Fortress Mentality
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America react to the horrific terrorist attack that killed at least 22 people and was aimed at young concertgoers in Manchester, England. They also discuss President Trump’s characterization of terrorists as “evil losers” and some of the social media reaction to the deadly blast. And they point out how difficult it is to stop an attack like this and why the instinct to turn every public gathering place into a fortress is not the right answer.
Trump’s Terrorism Speech, Virginia Looking Blue, Trump & the Sword Dance
After offering an alternative explanation for why some graduates walked out of Vice President Mike Pence’s commencement speech at Notre Dame, Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America applaud President Trump’s speech imploring Middle East leaders to do their part to stamp out terrorists. They also grimace as polling shows either Democrat running for governor in Virginia winning the general election by double digits. And they wonder what the Secret Service was thinking when they gave the green light to the elaborate sword dance in Saudi Arabia involving President Trump and members of his cabinet.
‘Swamp’ Aligns Against Trump on Climate Treaty
President Trump is running out of time to make good on his promise to withdraw the United States from the Paris agreement on climate policy obligations, and the delay is largely due to many different interests imploring him to back away from his campaign pledges.
As Trump embarks on an ambitious eight-day trip to the Middle East and Europe, the pressure is only growing on him to keep the U.S. committed to the Paris deal. However, Competitive Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Christopher C. Horner, who served on Trump’s transition landing team at the Environmental Protection Agency, says all Trump needs to do is make good on his word.
“We have to go back to the campaign and remember that a decision was made and it was to get out,” said Horner. “He gave reasons why. He said this would give others control over our energy use, how much we could use the things that are reliable and affordable, as well as the massive wealth transfer. He made the decision.”
The Competitive Enterprise Institute released an advertisement last month urging Trump to stay true to those campaign promises.
What has changed? Horner says a lot of different interests are pushing him to accept the status quo.
“The brakes were put on it because different influences came into play. There were what I’ll call swamp considerations, which were not obviously considerations in the campaign. In fact, he ran against the swamp. Once he got here, those interests are considerable,” said Horner.
Horner says there is a long list of people and interests looking pressuring Trump to keep the U.S. in the agreement.
“(There are) tremendous business lobbies, tremendous resistance among (the government) holdovers. I could tell you blow by blow about a lot of these officials as well as some Trump appointees. But as you also know, some family members are feeling and exerting what we’ll call Manhattan social pressures to not have to defend keeping this promise,” said Horner.
Some businesses and industries are at the forefront of protesting climate-inspired restrictions, but Horner says much of big business is on board with the climate agenda for multiple reasons. He says a lot of big companies are eager for the federal subsidies that come with compliance with the Paris accords.
“The reason is simple. When you rob Peter to pay Paul, you’re guaranteed Paul’s enthusiastic support and sometimes it was Paul’s idea. So you’ve got this base of industry support, the ones who would benefit,” said Horner.
He says those same businesses also see more restrictive policies as an advantage against the competition.
“They love instituting policies that are barriers to entry to new participants or that smaller competitors can’t handle as well. Some businesses were publicly saying in news reports that, ‘We’ve planned for this so we need this to happen,'” said Horner.
Even among Trump’s top diplomats, there is deep division on the issue.
“The UN Ambassador Nikki Haley is reportedly very strong on this, even though, as I’ve said before, State will do what’s in the State Department’s interest and (withdrawing from the accords) makes Rex Tillerson’s life more difficult and not easier,” said Horner.
Horner also expects Trump’s time in Europe to be one long lobbying effort to keep the U.S. in the agreement.
“The Group of Seven, the leading economic nations who want – as a State Department cable that I found in litigation shows – they want us to share the pain, to relieve the burden of our competition of not having this agenda saddle our economy,” said Horner.
Published reports suggest multiple deadlines to make a decision on U.S. involvement in the accords have come and gone. He says that’s largely because Trump is trying to resist the tide aligned against his instincts.
“We’ve got it on pretty good authority what the president still thinks. He wants out and wonders aloud why he can’t just keep his promise. He’s surrounded by influencers saying, ‘You can’t do it for the following reasons.’ But some people are saying, ‘You have to (withdraw) for these reasons, the same reasons you said you would,” said Horner.
If Trump relents, Horner says President Obama’s promise that our electricity rates will “necessarily skyrocket” will come true and the cost of everything related to energy costs will also shoot up.
“The price will go up, leaving you with less disposable income and a less resilient lifestyle, less healthy because you’re less wealthy. There’ll be more hypothermia, more of seniors and the vulnerable dying from energy poverty. That’s what it’s going to mean for you,” said Horner.
Horner fears that if Trump was going to withdraw the U.S. from the agreement, he would have done so already. However, he is not giving up hope given Trump’s adamant campaign promises.
If Trump doesn’t make good on that vow, Horner says it will be a strong example of how difficult it is to reverse the tides in Washington.
“It means the swamp isn’t as easily defeated as a lot of people hoped,” said Horner. “This is really, so far, the ultimate test of his battle against the swamp.”
Dem Double Standard on Obstruction of Justice
Democrats, media figures, and even some Republicans suggest President Trump’s alleged request for former FBI Director James Comey to end an investigation into fired National Security Adviser Michael Flynn amounts to obstruction of justice, but a former federal prosecutor says what we know thus far does not rise to that level and is no different than Barack Obama’s efforts to exonerate Hillary Clinton.
Andrew C. McCarthy led the prosecution of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and others for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and plots to blow up other New York City landmarks. In his latest column for National Review, McCarthy says those purporting outrage now said virtually nothing when President Obama arguably took more egregious actions with respect to Clinton.
“In a few ways, the Obama situation with Hillary Clinton is worse than what we’ve heard about here. What Obama did was make a very public statement, which is obviously a statement to his subordinates as well as everyone else, that he didn’t want Mrs. Clinton prosecuted and didn’t think she should be prosecuted,” said McCarthy in an interview discussing his column.
“He articulated a legal theory for why she shouldn’t be prosecuted, this claim that she wasn’t trying to harm the United States and that her classified emails, while they exhibited carelessness on her part, were really a small part of a much larger overall picture and had been exaggerated out of proportion,” said McCarthy.
He says that same logic was used again a few months later.
“Lo and behold three months later, when Director Comey announced his view that Mrs. Clinton shouldn’t be prosecuted, he adopted precisely the legal reasoning Obama had announced three months before,” said McCarthy.
McCarthy’s analysis follows the breathless reporting of an alleged Comey memo following a February 14 meeting with Trump at the White House. According to the memo, Trump cleared the room before engaging Comey on the Flynn investigation.
Trump reportedly told Comey, “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.” M
McCarthy says that tidbit alone is a far cry from constituting obstruction of justice.
“I don’t think we’re close to being there yet because even though I am sure that then-Director Comey must have found the conversation with President Trump to be awkward and inappropriate, I don’t think there’s anything corrupt about it,” said McCarthy.
First of all, McCarthy says it’s hard to draw any sweeping conclusions from a few scraps of a conversation.
“The most important thing about obstruction of justice is context. We don’t really have context here. We have one statement that’s mined out of what must be a larger memo,” said McCarthy.
He says there needs to be concrete evidence of corruption to pursue obstruction of justice allegations.
“Corruption is the heart of obstruction of justice. The person has to act intentionally, knowing that what he’s doing is wrong, and intend to subvert the truth-seeking process,” said McCarthy.
Trump critics suggest the subsequent firing of Comey after the director refused to back off the Flynn case is evidence of obstruction. McCarthy says you need a lot more than that.
“I think the corruption that would be involved would be if you were to pressure the FBI to drop an investigation, rig that result and then use it to suggest the person had been exonerated when you knew that you had actually rigged the result and not allowed the FBI to do an investigation,” said McCarthy.
Furthermore, McCarthy says Comey’s actions over the subsequent three months shows he did not consider Trump’s comments as an attempt to obstruct justice.
“Obviously, Comey, who is a highly-decorated and highly-experienced former prosecutor and FBI director and who well knows what obstruction of justice is, he clearly didn’t feel like he’d been obstructed. If he had, I’m certain he would have resigned and then gone up and down the chain of command and perhaps to Congress to report why he was resigning,” said McCarthy.
“Instead, he ended the conversation. He did write the memo. The investigation of Flynn continues. In fact, we now here that there’s a grand jury in Virginia, so he must not have perceived that he’d been obstructed. Obviously they weren’t obstructed because they’re proceeding with the investigation,” said McCarthy.
For the same reason, McCarthy says the wringing of hands and panting for impeachment inside the beltway is greatly overblown.
“Democrats will say that Trump fired Flynn because of the Flynn investigation and because of the fact that it hadn’t been closed down and that he did it as a signal to the FBI and the Justice Department that he doesn’t want Flynn proceeded against. That’ll be their interpretation of it,” said McCarthy.
“The reason I think that’s a loser, even though I understand why they’re making the argument, is that the investigation is continuing,” said McCarthy.
“There’s a lot more to the relationship between the president and the FBI director than a single criminal case, even against a one-time aide of Trump’s in the administration. There could be a million reasons why the president might want to fire the FBI director,” said McCarthy.
McCarthy says Democrats have been trying to bring down Trump since the day after the election, and perpetual outrage is often an effective way of preventing much from getting accomplished.
“In the long term, what they’re looking at is trying to make it impossible for him to govern so the parts of his agenda, to the extent that they object to them, can’t be implemented and also make it look like his government – and he’s helping them with this by the way – is so chaotic and so in over its head that it helps their electoral prospects in 2018 and 2020,” said McCarthy.
While McCarthy notes that Republicans have a long history of not defending their party’s president during times of controversy, at least compared to Democrats, he sees no actual traction for impeachment despite the growing demands from the left.
“I see the fervor (among Democrats) to want to get a president impeached, but I don’t see any grounds for doing it. Given what Republican numbers are at the moment, I don’t see any prospect of it,” said McCarthy.
Trump Wants Arab NATO, Comey Memo, Spicer Watch
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America react to reports that President Trump wants to create a NATO-like group in the Middle East, involving Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and the UAE. They also dissect what we know of the memo former FBI Director James Comey reportedly wrote about Trump asking him to back off the investigation of Michael Flynn. And they discuss the speculation swirling around the future of White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and explain how Trump is making the work of the communications team much more difficult.
Trump & Intel, Dem Wage Hypocrisy, Mad Dog’s Cell Number
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America discuss reports that President Trump revealed very sensitive intelligence during his meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. They also get a kick out of a lawsuit against the Democratic National Committee, alleging staffers weren’t paid the current minimum wage for their work in 2016. And they have some fun with the news that a published photo of President Trump’s bodyguard revealed the personal cell phone number of Defense Sec. James Mattis.
Trump Shake-up Speculation, Lefty Road Rage, Self-Marriage Increasing
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America serve up three crazy martinis today. They shake their heads at the the rampant speculation that’s constantly swirling around the Trump administration staff – from the same people who had no idea Trump was going to fire James Comey. They also react to the Tennessee woman who forced her Republican congressman off the road, started beating on his windows and blocked his path – all to very little reaction from the media. And they discuss the left’s emerging acceptance of polygamy and open marriages while also updating the rise of sologamy, otherwise known as marrying yourself.
Crooked Dems Convicted, Trump & Loyalty, Did Trump Tape Comey?
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America discuss the conviction of former Florida Rep. Corrine Brown on 18 counts of fleecing her own charity to fund her own activities and how she is the second Democrat convicted of fraud in the past year. They also wince as Kellyanne Conway tells Fox News that Trump expects the FBI director to be loyal to the administration. And they sigh as Trump tweets out the suggestion that he may have secretly recorded his earlier conversations with James Comey.
Trump Targets Voter Fraud
The Trump administration announced the creation of a new commission Thursday that is tasked with studying the scope of voter fraud and voter suppression in the United States, a move that a former Justice Department attorney says is long overdue after eight years of voter fraud that resembled the “wild west” during the Obama years.
The commission will be led by Vice President Mike Pence and co-chaired by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a strong supporter of clamping down on voter fraud through measures like mandating all voters produce photo identification before casting a ballot.
Public Interest Legal Foundation President and General Counsel J. Christian Adams worked in the civil rights division of the Justice Department during the George W. Bush administration and the beginning of Obama’s first term. He says this focus is long overdue.
“We know of election crimes that have gone on in the last seven years, one after another after another, that the federal government never prosecuted and never investigated, never did anything about and creating this wild west atmosphere with voter fraudsters,” said Adams.
For examples, Adams cites Wendy Rosen, the 2012 congressional candidate in Maryland, who also voted in Florida. He says there have been over 1,000 non-citizens discovered voting in Virginia since 2011 and more than 800 others in Ohio. He says North Carolina found 41 ballots cast by non-citizens last year and Nevada found three.
Not only is the fraud not being investigated, in some cases it is celebrated.
“You have Melowese Richardson, a woman in Cincinnati, who said on camera that she voted six times for President Obama. She was actually celebrated at an event that Al Sharpton was at. They treated her like a hero,” said Adams.
The new commission is not without it’s critics however. A group called the Citizen’s Committee for Civil Rights Under Law immediately issued a statement referring to the commission’s work as “blocking the black vote.”
While the argument that voting reforms disenfranchise minorities and the poor is rather common, Adams says it is baseless.
“That narrative is a lie. More often than not, the people losing the right to vote because of election crimes are people in minority communities,” said Adams, who says his work at the Justice Department bears out his position.
“When I was at the Justice Department, I brought a case that was afflicting the minority community in a small town in Mississippi where political operatives exploited the weak and the vulnerable. They voted for them. They stole their votes. So often it is the minority communities who are being harmed by voter fraud,” said Adams.
But he didn’t stop there.
“The dirty little secret is these groups that send out these press releases like it that way, because they benefit from controlling the process. They benefit by telling people how to vote, by voting for them, by running an organization that covers up crimes, just to get certain people elected,” said Adams.
That’s why Adams suspects criticism of the commission’s work will not focus on the facts.
“The critics of the commission are essentially want to hide the facts. They don’t want us to know the truth about the extent of voter fraud. They’re accessories to the crime. If they want to cover up and obstruct the investigation into voter fraud, then those people deserve our criticism,” said Adams.
A more bipartisan criticism of the effort suggests that while voter fraud ought to be prosecuted, the problem is being blown out of proportion, After all, three votes usually don’t decide statewide elections in Nevada, 141 didn’t tilt any big races in North Carolina and even 1,000 votes would be unlikely to change results in Virginia.
Adams quickly offered two responses to that argument, starting with the crime itself.
“Changing the outcome of the election is not an element to the federal crime. That is not in the law. That is something people have invented to give people a pass and to shut down enforcement of the law,” said Adams.
But he also says voter fraud certainly can alter the outcome of elections.
“The fact that it effects elections is real. We have found at the Public Interest Legal Foundation that over 4,000 aliens have been caught on the voter rolls, many of them voting, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. These are the ones who have self-reported essentially. So there’s tens of thousands more most likely,” said Adams.
Adams has long favored requiring voters to display photo identification at the polls and for state and local officials to regularly update voter rolls to clean out names of people who are dead or no longer live there.
He says another effective step would take very little effort.
“The easiest thing to do is to compare the voter rolls of the country to the list of aliens in federal databases. Nobody has ever done that. It’s a simple operation. It would not take very much to simply see how many people in the alien database are also registered to vote, and those who have voted should be prosecuted,” said Adams.
“It doesn’t take many prosecutions to chill criminal activity,” he added.
However, for Adams, the most important aspect of the commission may be to punch a hole in the movement of those trying to stop voting reforms.
“Those loud voices on the left have done all they can over the years to silence any examination of the vulnerabilities in our system. They have intimidated and yelled and done everything they could to hide the facts of election crimes. What they’re most upset about it that that’s ending. So I’m optimistic this is going to be a good process,” said Adams.