David French of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America discuss President Trump defending some of the people attending the rally in Charlottesville, including those who were at the torch protest, and David explains why he sees Trump’s words as the dream scenario for the alt-right.. They cheer a new law in Texas that prevent insurance companies from requiring Texans to subsidize elective abortions through their own coverage. They are deeply disturbed, however, by a CBS report declaring Iceland has virtually eliminated Down Syndrome through abortion.
‘The Left Wants to Have a One-Way Hate Campaign’
Best-selling author Dinesh D’Souza says there were fascists on both sides of the violence in Virginia on Saturday and he posits that Democrats and their allies in the media are now focused on painting all Republicans and conservatives as responsible for the racism that still exists in the United States.
Last week, prior to the violence in Charlottesville, D’Souza likened the Antifa movement and their pattern of stopping speech through violence to Adolf Hilter’s brown shirts and Benito Mussolini’s black shirts. But with white supremacists and neo-Nazis on one side and Antifa on the other, which side is the fascists?
“Clearly, there’s a fascist streak running between both sets of violent activists. The mayor of Charlottesville said, ‘These people all came to fight.’ They didn’t come to peacefully protest. They wanted to tangle with each other,” said D’Souza, author most recently of “The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left.”
While many in the media and in Democratic circles suggest that the white supremacists are Trump voters, D’Souza says that’s not true of the organizer of the rally.
“What’s really strange is that the white supremacist who organized the rally is a former Obama guy and a former Occupy Wall Street guy. So right away you know that something fishy is going on here,” said D’Souza.
When it comes to the rest of the neo-Nazi and KKK figures in Charlottesville, D’Souza says the story is more complicated.
“This white nationalism was actually invented in the Democratic Party, but the Democratic Party has moved from embracing white nationalism to embracing every other type of minority nationalism. So the Democrats like black nationalism, black pride, black solidarity. They’re telling every ethnic group – blacks, Hispanics, Asians – be proud of what makes you distinctive,” said D’Souza.
He says Democrats now mobilize all of these groups against white nationalists, and that has created some changing voting patterns among white supremacists.
“Today if you’re a white nationalist, you don’t find a hospitable home in the Democratic Party. You don’t find much of a home in the Republican Party either, because Trump is not a white nationalist. Trump is an American nationalist. So I think that’s why some of these white nationalists are for Trump,” said D’Souza.
“They normally would be Democrats, if the Democrats hadn’t created a type of multiculturalism in which these guys are not welcome at the multicultural picnic,” said D’Souza.
But rather than acknowledge these bigoted elements as a fringe of the American political landscape, D’Souza says liberals and the media are trying to paint the political right with a very broad brush.
“The media is up to something very vile and very cunning. They’re trying to excuse the much more dangerous fascism on their own side. Think about it: the driving of speakers off campus, not just the Antifa violent guys, but the deans and the studio bosses in Hollywood. If you have a different point of view, they’ll run you out of town. They’ll make sure you never work again,” said D’Souza.
“This is the fascism, not just of the street but of the institutions. The Democratic Party today has much more of a fascist ideology and fascist tactics than anything you see in the Republican Party,” said D’Souza, who says he’s never seen a white supremacist at a GOP event in more than 25 years of speaking around the country.
D’Souza says this effort is a massive exercise in blame-shifting.
“There’s an effort to transfer responsibility from the actual guilty party, the Democrats, onto the non-guilty party, the Republicans,” he said.
“What’s underway here is an effort to create a national shaming of the right. For example, look at the stuff about, ‘Trump is a fascist.’ Trump has never said one kind thing about fascism,” said D’Souza. “The left wants to have a one-way hate campaign.”
He says there’s plenty of evidence of Democrats praising the most vile fascist regimes in history.
“When you had real fascism, very dangerous fascism, I’m talking about Mussolini’s Italy and Nazi Germany. We have [Franklin Roosevelt] praising Mussolini, sending members of his braintrust to fascist Italy to study Italian fascism, which he thought was more progressive than the New Deal. He wanted to bring fascist ideas over here,” said D’Souza.
In the wake of Charlottesvile, the debate is turning once again to the fate of Confederate memorials and monuments. Some want to destroy them, others believe they should be limited to museums and cemeteries, while others fear tearing them down is tantamount to erasing history.
D’Souza says this North vs. South debate raging around the Civil War is badly misplaced.
“The real slavery debate was not between the North and the South. It was between the pro-slavery Democratic Party and the anti-slavery Republican Party . Most southerners did not own slaves. Most Confederate soldiers did not own slaves. The northern Democrats led by Stephen Douglas were actively and cunningly protecting slavery and did so for 40 years,” said D’Souza.
He says that should mean plenty of statues and memorials getting razed in the North, since so many figures openly or tacitly approved of slavery.
D’Souza also notes that the Democrats are never under any pressure to denounce any figures from their party’s past, even those as recent as longtime Sen. Robert Byrd, D-West Virginia, who spent years in the KKK.
“No one is pulling his statues down. He was lionized in the Democratic Party. Hillary called him her mentor. So you know there is a big lie underway. It’s just a matter of getting our fingers on it so we can expose what’s really going on,” he said.
Kim Backs Down on Guam Threats
North Korean Dictator Kim Jong-Un appears to be backing off his threats towards the U.S. territory of Guam. A state media report from the isolated nation claimed that Kim would “watch a little more” before coming to a decision, apparently deterred by the strong words from the Trump administration. — Jenna Suchyta
Kim Backs Down, Solving A Monumental Problem, ESPN’s Pathetic Politics
David French of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America are glad to see Kim Jong-Un has publicly back down from his threats to fire missiles towards Guam and discuss whether some new blunt talk from Defense Secretary James Mattis made the decision an easy one. David rejects the push by the left and some on the right to move or remove Confederate memorials and statues and instead proposes more memorials to honor Union, slave, and free black figures from the war to provide more context. And they roll their eyes as an ESPN commentator says he hopes a positive outcome from Charlottesville will be Colin Kaepernick getting a job in the NFL again.
Media Made Charlottesville About Trump
Ugly violence rooted in bigotry broke out in Charlottesville, Virginia, Saturday, but media analyst and American Women’s Alliance President Gayle Trotter says the media instantly made the story about President Trump instead of the people responsible for the violence that left one person dead, two state troopers indirectly killed, and and many others hurt.
Trotter says it didn’t take long for political figures and the the media to demand a statement from Trump on Saturday as the violence unfolded. And they didn’t like what they got.
“We condemn, in the strongest possible terms, this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides, one many sides, said Trump, Saturday afternoon.
The media and politicians of all stripes condemned Trump for not specifically condemning white supremacists, the KKK, and neo-Nazis. Trotter believes it was a cautious but clear statement in the midst of a developing crisis.
“He was condemning violence from all sources. He made a very strong statement about how he wanted to make America great again and we were going to make America great for all people. It was a very judicious statement, given right as events were unfolding,” said Trotter.
She says that statement led to wall-to-wall media condemnation.
“All you heard was criticism of him, that he had not specifically named names. If you were listening to CNN on Monday morning, every single panelist and the hosts were apoplectic that he had not ‘named names,'” said Trotter.
Monday afternoon, Trump got specific.
“Racism is evil. And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans,” said Trump.
“We are a nation founded on the truth that all of us are created equal. We are equal in the eyes of our Creator. We are equal under the law. And we are equal under our Constitution. Those who spread violence in the name of bigotry strike at the very core of America,” he added.
Trotter says the criticism then continued but shifted in focus.
“You would think that would answer the accusations that President Trump did not name names. Yet, as soon as he issued that statement, the media continued to criticize him for being two days late,” said Trotter, who suspects the criticism would be just as intense if Trump “named names” on Saturday.
“Even if what he said on Saturday included specifically naming white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and fascists, it would not have been enough. he would have continued to have been criticized,” said Trotter.
What galls Trotter most about the media treatment of Trump is their assessment of why there’s so much coverage of the president’s response as opposed to the carnage on the streets of Charlottesville.
“I heard a Bloomberg reporter today saying that President Trump made this episode about himself. If anything, that charge should be laid at the feet of the media, because they turned it from being a news story where they were reporting on what was happening and they turned all of the focus over to President Trump and his reaction,” said Trotter.
By Monday morning, CBS was pushing the claim that since September 12, 2001, nearly three times more terrorist attacks have been perpetrated by “right-wing extremists” than Islamic radicals, although the attacks from radical Muslims still resulted in more deaths.
Trotter is appalled at the reporting for two reasons, first over the obvious manipulation of the data by starting the count the day after the worst terrorist attack in American history, which claimed nearly 3,000 lives.
“If this wasn’t such a serious topic, this would be so laughable. How can you possibly start any type of calculation about terrorism that doesn’t include that doesn’t include 9/11,” said Trotter.
Second, she says there is a clear political agenda afoot.
“When CBS and these other news stations make reports like this, they’re not making these reports to ensure that Americans are safer. They’re making these reports in order to support a political proposition that Republicans and conservatives are dangerous to the American experiment,” said Trotter.
While condemning the bigots in Charlottesville as possessing a “demonic ideology of white supremacy,” Trotter says there needs to be full rejection of all who would use violence to suppress constitutional rights, and she says this is a good time to call all of them out and repudiate them.
“It must be repeated over and over again that these groups: radical Islamic terrorists, Antifa, any white supremecists, the KKK, they are all part of the same type of ideology. They believe in violence to achieve political means. They do not believe in the rule of law,” said Trotter.
Trotter says discussing and exposing those tactics from all who use them is part of a “continuing conversation” that ought to proceed from the ugly events in Virginia on Saturday.
Trump’s Troubling Response, The ‘But Obama’ Defense, Media Misdirection
David French of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America address the horrific violence in Charlottesville over the weekend. David and Greg criticize President Trump’s failure to condemn the specific white supremacist and Neo-Nazi groups that led the marches and the connection of the man who committed the vehicular homicide– particularly when the president has a history of getting specific with other targets. They also groan as far too many on the right deflect from President Trump’s stumbles by pointing out egregious mistakes President Obama made along similar lines – mistakes the same people roundly condemned. And they ridicule the news media for grossly manipulating terrorism statistics to suggests right-wingers kill more Americans than Islamic radicals and for relying on the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center to decide who is a right-wing extremist.
Trump Tactics Already Yielding Results
While the media and former Obama administration officials wring their hands over President Trump’s tough talk on North Korea, retired Navy Captain Chuck Nash says the president is not only charting the right policy but is already reaping results from it.
Nash is also blasting the Obama administration for it’s handling of the North Korean threat in recent years and it’s “insane” recommendations now.
Trump roiled the political establishment by promising “fire and fury” in response to any acts of North Korean aggression against the U.S. or our interests. His comments came in the wake of revelations that North Korea has miniature nuclear weapons that can be placed inside missiles.
On Thursday, Trump waved off suggestions that his remarks were too incendiary and even suggested they hadn’t gone far enough. But while critics on both sides of the aisle worried that his words were “reckless” and could trigger horrific actions from North Korea, Nash says Trump is playing this exactly right.
“The administration is taking the exact right messaging tone, which is not just to Kim Jong-Un. That message is to Russia and specifically to China. And this president is saying, ‘Look, if that guy does anything to make me itch, you’re not going to like it because we’re going to do something,'” said Nash.
And Nash says it’s clear China already got the message. On Thursday, the Chinese announced they would stay neutral in any conflict between the U.S. and North Korea unless the U.S. struck first.
“It’s clear that it’s working because the Chinese just backed off by telling the North Koreans, ‘If you do something stupid, you’re going to get the results and we’re not going to stand up for you,” said Nash.
Nash is pleased to see Trump, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and Defense Secretary James Mattis staying on message. He says everyone underneath them needs to stay on script as well.
“The last thing that the United States needs now is for anybody to break ranks and, as [former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher] said to George Bush, ‘This is no time to go wobbly.’ We don’t need that right now. Too much political capital is on the line here,” said Nash.
Nash points to a Washington Post story this week revealing the U.S. knew North Korea had deployable miniature nukes four years ago. But instead of confronting the crisis, Obama tried to pretend it didn’t exist.
“The Obama administration did everything it could to downplay it and in fact made it disappear because they were trying to pursue a policy of what was termed strategic patience,” said Nash.
And he says leaving the nuclear threat unaddressed was a major error.
“We’re starting to come to the realization that they do have a capability, that the intelligence community did know about it but that the Obama administration buried that information. As we say in the Navy, bad news does not get better with age. This is aging out and it’s starting to stink,” said Nash.
Former National Security Adviser Susan Rice is actively condemning the Trump approach. While acknowledging that Obama failed to stop the North Korean nuclear program, she says any conflict with North Korea would be catastrophic and believes the world must simply come to grips with the communist regime being a nuclear state.
“That absolutely insane,” said Nash, likening Rice’s posture to deciding to accept living near a crazy neighbor who threatened to kill you and then accumulated the weapons to do it.
“The time for pussyfooting around and being really diplomatic is over, just as Tillerson said. Strategic patience, that’s over. We’re now at the point of having kicked the can down the road. The road has come to a fork. As [Yogi Berra] said, ‘When you come to a fork in the road, take it,'” said Nash.
“Something’s going to happen. Either we are going to acquiesce to having a madman with nuclear weapons, who is only going to continue to pursue and refine that capability, or we’re going to do something different than what we have been doing, which is kicking a can down the road, hoping – which is not a strategy – that things would get better,” said Nash.
Nash says North Korea’s current threat of aiming four missiles near Guam would meet the threshold of a first strike by the enemy. He also expects the U.S. would try to bring down those missiles rather than hoping they don’t hit Guam.
“You can’t just sit there and hope that he wouldn’t really target Guam when you’ve got missiles that could be nuclear-armed headed in that direction, an intolerable situation,” said Nash.
Nash says one other major problem in the this standoff lies squarely at Obama’s feet, namely that rogue nuclear states have no incentive to give up their arms or ambitions.
“I think Iran and North Korea took the lessons of recent history. What happened to Moammar Ghaddafi when he gave up his weapons of mass destruction, mostly chemical but he also gave up some nuclear material. When he gave up those programs, that didn’t help him. In fact, the United States partnered with NATO and went and deposed him,” said Nash.
And it’s not just Libya.
“Look at the Russians with Ukraine. The Brits, the United States, and the Russians all signed an agreement that they would protect the political and territorial integrity of Ukraine if they gave up the nuclear weapons after the USSR fell. How’d that work out for them?” asked Nash.
He says rogue nations learned the exact opposite lessons we hoped they would learn from those examples.
“The lesson is if you’ve got nuclear weapons capability, don’t give them up. Because if you do, you’re in trouble,” said Nash.
Trump: U.S. Military is ‘locked and loaded’
North Korea’s threats to strike Guam continue, but President Donald Trump refuses to blink. He maintains that the U.S. military is prepared to respond with “an event the likes of which nobody has seen before” if North Korea does attack the U.S. territory. — Jenna Suchyta
Trump’s Tough Talk, Post Loves Anarchists, Jeffrey Lord’s Odd Exit
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America discuss the media hand-wringing over President Trump’s words towards North Korea and point out why Trump’s rhetoric is serving an important purpose. They also throw their hands up as The Washington Post offers a glowing profile of D.C.-based anarchists and how all their rioting and property destruction is all for some greater good. And Jim and Greg speculate about how a conservative group would be treated by the media if it behaved similarly. Finally, Jim goes after CNN for their dishonesty in firing Jeffery Lord over a Twitter battle: “Just come out and say it — we’re tired of Jeffery Lord!”
Feds, Insurers Creating Fearful Doctors
Tightfisted insurance companies and dizzying government bureaucracy are squeezing the art out of medicine, forcing doctors to use one-size-fits-all approaches with patients, and needlessly putting the lives of patients at risk, according to a patient advocate and “My Life is Worth It” Co-Founder Bob Tufts.
Tufts pitched in the major leagues, went on to become a Wall Street executive, and now teaches at Yeshiva University. He says he never missed a day of work in 30 years before getting a series of small colds a number of years ago. His doctor ordered tests that confirmed Tufts was suffering from multiple myeloma, a cancer of the bone marrow.
Thanks to excellent instincts by his doctor and the embrace of a novelty drug therapy including thalidomide, Tufts says he felt largely back to normal within nine months.
But he says his experience is far from normal, starting with doctors willing to do extra tests to hunt down possible ailments.
“They’re getting scared to do it because many doctors have been forced, due to the cost of electronic health records and all the government mandates into hospital systems. And the more you’re into a system, they’ll over-regulate what the doctor can and cannot do,” said Tufts.
He says the art of medicine is lost as a result and doctors are instead practicing the science of medicine and simply treating patients based on the odds. Tufts says if he lived in the United Kingdom or some other country with government-run care, he’s probably be dead.
“When I was diagnosed, my drug was just approved for off-label use in the United States. It was not approved in the UK. And frankly, for front line use it was not approved until much later,” he said.
“Considering the way my cancer was high-risk, by the time I’d have begged, borrowed or whatever to try to get this drug and maybe used other ones which were harsher, I’d probably have been dead under the [National Health Service] and [National Institute for Health and Care Excellence] system,” said Tufts.
He says anytime the government gets involved in making the rules and paying the bills, the health care priorities move farther and farther away from what’s best for the patient.
“Unfortunately, as we have more and more government use and control of health care, it becomes a budgetary issue, as we’re seeing in many of the debates going on. The more the government controls, the more it’s on a budget line and people start thinking about what that number is on the line and look at people as little pixels on a chart, not as humans trying to fight to survive,” said Tufts.
“We create a bureaucracy and what does a bureaucracy do? It feeds upon itself. It creates more layers and makes it more confusing for patients and anyone who enters this Byzantine system,” said Tufts.
And Tufts sees that frustration up close.
“Let the doctors practice the art of medicine and the science of medicine as opposed to spending 50,000 a practice to fill out these forms. It drives me crazy. Even though I love my oncologist, of our 15 minutes together, over half is spent looking at the computer entering codes so he can be paid appropriately. That’s nonsense and a waste of time and money,” said Tufts.
But Tufts is clear to point a major finger of blame at insurance companies who increasingly challenge their responsibility to pay for novel courses of treatment. He says the insurers force patients to jump through cruel hoops in an effort to save money. Again, it’s not something he’s been faced with but many of the people he helps deal with it every day.
“You found out how other people were being basically denied care by step therapy or fail first. You are to take the older, cheaper medicine for at least 30-60 days before they would allow you to try another medication,” said Tufts.
“I had a dear friend who they did that to who had terrible neuropathy, who the insurance company made go through the hell of pain for 30 days before they gave him the meds. What was the cost difference? Four dollars. Over four dollars, they made a man suffer,” said Tufts.
At other times he says insurers force patients down an unnecessary, far more expensive track.
“[They are] making people go to the hospital and having the liquid transfusions as opposed to, in my case, being able to take a pill at home. The cost out-of-pocket of going to hospitals twice a week for a transfusion versus taking a pill every day. Those two things really got me going and I found out I was really fortunate compared to many other cancer or rare disease patients,” said Tufts.
And Tufts says the bean counters at the insurance companies are making doctors’ lives miserable too.
“I have personally seen my oncologist get on the phone and, in my early stage of treatment, and spend 15-20 minutes arguing with an insurance company that, ‘This person needs this treatment. This is what I recommend. This is a standard of care,’ and having the hemming and hawing and seeing the time wasted by my doctor basically having to beg for me to keep the care that would keep me alive,” said Tufts.
Tufts says he would like to get lawmakers in a room and “knock heads” until they agreed on solutions for the current health care system. He also thinks doctors and patients should be helping to draft legislation and that lawmakers should not just rely on number crunchers to arrive at a final bill.