Trump seeks to make impeachment a campaign asset

 Article by Brett Samuels in "The Hill":

President Trump is hoping to turn the dubious distinction of impeachment into a rallying cry in his reelection bid.

Trump has long cast himself as a Washington outsider unwelcome by establishment politicians, and allies say he is likely to use the partisan impeachment votes to entrench that image and energize supporters on the campaign trail.

"I think it plays into an overriding message that I know the president and his team have been pushing for a while now,” one former White House official said.

While the House vote on Wednesday made Trump just the third U.S. president to be impeached, he will be the first to seek reelection with the notorious label attached to his name.

The president's campaign has already set out to portray impeachment as a boon to its strategy. It has released limited but favorable polling data showing impeachment is unpopular in certain swing districts, and the campaign boasted eye-popping fundraising totals on the heels of Wednesday's vote.

Gary Coby, the campaign's digital director, tweeted Friday that more than $10 million in donations had rolled in during the previous 48 hours.

Trump rode a populist wave to the White House in 2016 after a campaign in which he pledged to "drain the swamp" and railed against "elites" in the nation's capital.

That rhetoric has endured even after nearly three years in office, and Trump's allies and advisers believe the fact that no Republicans voted for impeachment will allow Trump to frame that debate in similar "us against them" terms.

"It allows him to, I think, rightly argue that from the moment he was elected, Democrats weren’t interested in holding hands with him and working with him," the former White House official said. "They were only interested in removing him from office."

The House voted to impeach Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Three Democrats opposed one or both of the articles.

The Trump campaign this past week highlighted the split screen of Democrats voting to impeach Trump without Republican support as the president rallied with thousands of supporters in what will be a pivotal swing state in 2020.

The president spoke for just over two hours on Wednesday night in Michigan, his longest campaign rally to date. He attacked Democrats in increasingly personal terms and sought to paint impeachment as a direct assault on his base.

"The do-nothing Democrats," Trump told the crowd in Battle Creek. "All they want to do is focus on this ... declaring their deep hatred and disdain for the American voter."

"This lawless, partisan impeachment is a political suicide march for the Democrat Party," he added.
But those close to the White House and political experts have acknowledged it's unlikely impeachment will be a driving force in the news cycle a few months from now, much less when voters head to the polls in November.

"I just don’t think it’ll have any impact," said Mark Rom, a professor at Georgetown's McCourt School of Public Policy.

"I think it’ll be a purely partisan election," he added. "I don’t think things will play out any differently than if he hadn’t been impeached. I think this is just seen as politics as usual."

Polls show the country is evenly divided between those who want Trump impeached and removed from office and those who don't, with those views hardening along party lines in the final days before Wednesday's vote.

Trump will be able to milk at least another month out of impeachment to rev up his supporters as the process moves over to the Senate.

The president has appeared eager for a Senate trial to acquit him, but that will have to wait since Congress is out until early January and the parameters of the trial are still up in the air.

Trump has publicly attempted to downplay his concern about the historical implications of being impeached, referring to the two articles as "impeachment lite" and telling reporters on Thursday that "it doesn't feel like impeachment."

Ivanka Trump, the president's daughter and senior White House adviser, told CBS's "Face the Nation" in an interview set to air Dec. 29 that her father is feeling a mix of anger and enthusiasm that she expects will trickle down to his base.

"He's energized, as are 63 million-plus voters who elected him to office," she said.

"There can be anger — anger at the opportunity cost to the Americans we're all here serving and what could have gotten done," she continued. "Angry at the waste of time, angry at the collateral damage. Angry, but it's still energizing."

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/475561-trump-seeks-to-make-impeachment-a-campaign-asset

 

Chris Cuomo Interviews an Evangelical Trump Supporter and It’s Just a Dumpster Fire

Bonchie reporting for RedState

Yesterday, I wrote a piece on why the moral preening of beltway dwellers largely falls on deaf ears. Be sure to check it out, as it’s a bit of a prologue to this latest example of idiocy found on CNN.

In that article, I wrote this.

This is why almost no one takes the “morality” arguments from the beltway seriously. They hand wave away their vast history of immorality, including things that have cost hundreds of thousands of lives, and then proclaim it immoral if you don’t work against your own interests. Worse, they demand you support candidates who have done far more immoral things as long as those candidates put on a good show of decorum in the process. It’s logically idiotic and ignores the realities at play.

Apparently, Chris Cuomo wanted to prove my point for me by acting like a complete clown while interviewing an evangelical Trump supporter. The amount of strawmen and obtuse argumenation gets hard to keep up with.

"Why get behind a man who makes a mockery of your faith?"

"Most people that I know do not think he makes a mockery of our faith."@ChrisCuomo gets into a heated exchange with @ericmetaxas, evangelical author and supporter of @realDonaldTrump.https://t.co/MhOQR8TRPD pic.twitter.com/yhEq8vMtRp

— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) December 21, 2019

It’s one thing to disagree with someone politically. It’s another to make ridiculously obtuse arguments that lack all self-awareness as Cuomo is doing here.

Christians who support Trump largely do so because the Republican platform, along with Trump’s policy actions, are far more supportive of their wants as observant people Cuomo’s party (and no one should be fooled by his “I’m just a journalist” routine) is pro-abortion to the first breath and sometimes after it. Democrats support all manner of other things as well that make a direct mockery of not just Christianity as a whole, but specifically Cuomo’s own Catholic faith.

Yet, he’s going to accuse Trump supporters of inconsistency while he’s literally supporting a party that believes in murdering babies. Come on, it’s just ludicrous and shows the complete disconnect the beltway media has to reality.

I’m not going to claim that Trump has managed his comments on Christianity perfectly. He’s made mistakes and had some cringy moments, but at the end of the day, it’s Cuomo’s party that makes a complete mockery of Christianity daily. It takes an incredible lack of shame to accuse others of inconsistency in their faith while he simply ignores the massive log in his own eye.

CNN and Cuomo are simply a disgrace for treating a guy so grossly that came on in good faith to discuss an important issue. Why anyone goes on that dumpster fire of a network is beyond me.

How Low Can You Go? Adam Schiff Shows Us, As He Smears Carter Page, 'It's Hard to Be Sympathetic' to Him

Nick Arama reporting for RedState

The recently released IG report confirmed that Trump campaign adviser Carter Page had been wrongly and unfairly surveilled by the FBI.

The report concluded that the warrant applications for Page relied largely on the unverified Steele Dossier, that some information give to the court had been manipulated and was knowingly false, and that exculpatory information and the fact that it was funded by the DNC and the Clinton team was left out. Even after all that, the IG found that the surveillance yielded nothing and the IG didn’t know why they continued with it. In other words, it should have long since stopped, but it continued. 

One of the most shocking parts of the abuse was that an FBI lawyer changed an email from the CIA saying that Carter Page had been an asset for them to say that in fact he had not been an asset and communicated that as part of the application. It’s hard not be completely appalled at that and not find that to have evil motivation. 

Now anyone who cares about American freedoms and rights should be troubled by the affront that is to those rights and to all Americans. 

But it’s also a violation of the rights of Carter Page, and we should care about his rights, because tomorrow, it might be any of us. At least that’s the way most Americans feel. 

Not Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA). When you think of a how low can a person go, it would be hard to go lower than Schiff. 

During an interview on Firing Line on PBS, host Margaret Hoover said that Page felt that his good name had been permanently damaged by this whole fiasco and she asked Schiff if he felt any sympathy for him.

His answer beggared belief, he still tried to smear him, suggesting he worked for the Kremlin. 

Rep Adam Schiff, summoning his inner sociopath, has no sympathy for Carter Page, despite FBI abuse. pic.twitter.com/y7owdxfZO1

— (((Jason Rantz))) on KTTH Radio (@jasonrantz) December 21, 2019

Schiff claimed that Page “dissembled” during his testimony before Congress, “denied things we knew were true” and “later had to admit them during his testimony.” Schiff told Hoover. “It’s hard to be sympathetic to someone who isn’t honest with you when he comes and testifies under oath. It’s also hard to be sympathetic when you have someone who has admitted to being an adviser to the Kremlin.”

Wait, what?

Hoover quickly jumps in with what Schiff left out of that description, that he was doing so while being an informant for the CIA. “But then was also informing the CIA,” Hoover said.

“Yes, yes,” Schiff says quickly, having been brought up short. He just did exactly what the FBI did to page, falsely leave out the CIA relationship to make Page look bad again. 

“Who was both targeted by the KGB but also talking to the United States and its agencies and that should have been included, made clear, and it wasn’t, according to the inspector general,” Schiff then conceded. 

As the Daily Caller’s Chuck Ross points out, it’s unlikely that’s true or Page would have been nailed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. He also observes that the only reason that Congress was interviewing Page to begin with was because of the unfair FISA process employed by the FBI using the Steele Dossier.

a.) Carter Page wasn't untruthful to House Intel. Mueller might have had something to say about it if he had been.

b.) The reason Page was interviewed by House Intel in the first place was because of Chris Steele's dossier smears.
https://t.co/rGhOlIEgQr

— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) December 21, 2019

Maybe Schiff should feel some remorse for how the DNC/Clinton team funded smear was so harmful to the country and to Page. 

Furthermore, maybe Schiff should feel a little personal remorse for allowing this to go on when he had reason to know the truth more than a year ago when they found out about the FISA abuse. Yet Schiff kept pretending and pushing things he knew were likely false. 

Page responded to Schiff’s comments on Firing Line

The former Trump adviser blasted Schiff, as “even more untrustworthy and dangerous with his misuse of [Democratic National Committee] lies” than the FBI lawyer who lied about Page not being a CIA asset.

The “Impeachment” of Donald Trump

Roger Kimball for American Greatness

It’s amazing what semantic potency can reside in a pair of quotation marks.

Did we just witness an historic event, the impeachment of only the third president in the entire history of the Republic?

Or was this a case of accusatio interrupta: impeachment interrupted by an untimely withdrawal from Nancy Pelosi?

The speaker of the House, unhappy at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s obvious contempt for the House proceedings, has suggested that she might not file the charges with the Senate.

In which case, the Senate could not hold a trial.

In which case, Donald Trump could neither be exonerated nor convicted.

In which case, he would not have been impeached by the House, but only “impeached.”

It’s amazing what semantic potency can reside in a pair of quotation marks.

Consider the difference between “fresh fish” and “‘fresh’ fish.”

It is the same with the quasi-legal, wholly political process known as impeachment. It is one thing to have been impeached. It is quite another to have been “impeached.”

From one follows a Senate trial, cross examination of witnesses, the presentation of evidence, an opportunity for the accused to defend himself.

Ultimately, there follows a vote. If 67 senators vote to convict, the president will then be removed from office.

From the other follows—grandstanding by Democratic apparatchiks and blather by their media enablers.

What a let-down. The “greatest deliberative body in the world,” etc. etc., and what do we get? Theater, and bad theater at that. Something Pinteresque: all angst, no denouement. Partruient montes, as Horace put it, nascetur ridiculus mus: “the mountains go into labor and give birth to a ridiculous mouse.”

Accusatio interrupta: embarrassing and unsatisfactory all around.

I understand that there is some legal dispute about the significance of Nancy Pelosi’s non-consummation of the process she abetted. Some scholars say that, regardless, Donald Trump is still impeached.

The weight of the opinion, however, is on the other side. A good summary was provided by Harvard law professor, Noah Feldman, one of the Democrats’ chief witnesses for the pro-impeachment case.

“Impeachment as contemplated by the Constitution,” Feldman wrote after Nancy made her, ah, withering suggestion, “does not consist merely of the vote by the House, but of the process of sending the articles to the Senate for trial. Both parts are necessary to make an impeachment under the Constitution: The House must actually send the articles and send managers to the Senate to prosecute the impeachment” (my emphasis).

“If the House never sends the articles,” Feldman concludes, “then Trump could say with strong justification that he was never actually impeached.”

I think this is true, though whether it will come to that remains up in the air. The outcome will depend on what shenanigans the House, as always enabled by their flacks in the media, can force upon the Senate. So far it looks as though Mitch McConnell will brook no nonsense. If that is right, then the dudgeon will be high. Expect the editorial board of the New York Times, fresh off their 1619 cruise, to go full Jeremiah, “threats to the rule of the law,” “sanctity of our Constitution,” “Republicans trampling on precedent,” “undermining our democracy,” etc., etc.

Air-sickness bags will not be provided, so bring your own.

But maybe Nancy will just close her eyes and go through with it after all. As I say, it will all depend on what she thinks she can get out of it. It may be taken as read, I submit, that the baseless articles of impeachment will be hastily crushed by the Republican-controlled Senate, where the charges will not even get a majority, to say nothing of the two-thirds majority necessary to remove a president.

Which leaves us—where?

Many commentators, myself included, have warned that the House was playing a dangerous game by taking the box marked “impeachment” down from the shelf and beginning to bat those balls around when there were no plausible grounds—none—for playing the game to begin with. Impeachment—again, as many commentators, myself included, have pointed out—was intended by the Founders to be a remedy of last resort, an in-case-of-fire-break-glass option when every other recourse had failed.

As recently as this March, Nancy Pelosi had insisted that impeachment had to be a bipartisan decision, only employed to address the most serious crimes. In endorsing the House charade, she shelved that scruple along with all her other ones. The result, as Andy McCarthy and others have pointed out, will be to make impeachment much more common. The price of “trivializing” impeachment, as the House has just done, will likely be to make it the “new normal.”

Indeed, the legal scholar Jonathan Turley, a prominent critic of the president, but one who has not therefore tainted his reason, pointed out that by the standards employed against Donald Trump, every living president could have been impeached. Turley was particularly troubled by the charge that the president was guilty of obstructing Congress. Why? Because all the president did was go to court to challenge House demands for certain evidence. The House, Turley noted, “set an abbreviated period for investigation, arguably the shortest investigation of any presidential impeachment.”

And then they said if you don’t turn over the evidence during that period, you’re obstructing Congress. Well, President Trump went to court to challenge the necessity of handing over that material. Both Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon were allowed to go all the way to the Supreme Court—they ultimately lost, and Nixon resigned soon after. My concern is that this really does seem like you are making an appeal to the court into a high crime or a misdemeanor (my emphasis).

I think there are two takeaways from this sad affair. One concerns the future place of impeachment in our system of government. I think that Andy McCarthy is right in suggesting that the ultimate sanction of impeachment has more and more been been routinely threatened because the usual checks and balances have been more or less neutered by the growing power of the so-called administrative state. “The problem,” McCarthy writes, is that

after a century of progressive governance . . . these checks do not work anymore. The federal government and its administrative state have grown monstrously big. Federal money is now as much tied to social welfare as to traditional government functions. Budgeting is slap-dash and dysfunctional. To threaten to deny funds or leave agencies leaderless is to be seen, not as reining in executive excess, but as heartlessly harming this or that interest group. Lawmakers would rather run up tens of trillions in debt than be portrayed that way.

A lot more could be said about the growth of administrative power, which is essentially executive power, in the face of the paralysis or abdication of responsibility of Congress to fulfill its core responsibilities.

But in the context of our present Trump-centric drama, I suspect that the chief issue is a deeper, structural deformation. I mean the gradual transformation of our government from a vigorous two-party system into a one-and-a-half party system. I’ve written about this before. The idea is not mine but something I crib from conversations with James Piereson of the William E. Simon Foundation.

The bottom line is that, for many decades now, no matter which party has been in office, the real center of power has resided in the regime party, the party that government itself evolved into. Although plenty of Republicans have sat around this table, happy to engorge themselves on the attendant spoils, the regime party has always been the Democratic party. They encouraged an agenda of dependency that they could simultaneously cater to, exploit, and manage—an agenda that resulted not only in that bloated administrative apparatus that is staffed primarily by Democrats but also a sort of professional underclass of clients of this apparatus. Until the election of Donald Trump, the fealty of this underclass was reliably Democratic. Now there are cracks in the edifice, a terrifying prospect for their managers.

This is the thing to keep in mind. Donald Trump represents an existential threat to this status quo. Which is why he had to be stopped. On January 20, 2017, 19 minutes after Trump was inaugurated, the Washington Post announced in a headline “The campaign to impeach President Trump has begun.” Indeed, there were calls for Trump’s impeachment even before he was sworn in. Al Green (D-Texas) put it with admirable clarity when he said, back in 2017 (reiterating the sentiment in 2018) that “I am concerned that if we do not impeach this president, then he will get reelected.”

Trump’s real crime, in other words, was having been elected in the first place.

The point is that Donald Trump had to be impeached not because of anything he had done or had failed to do but because of who he was, what he represented: an existential threat to string-pullers of our one-and-a-half-party system. That is why the Democrats can ride roughshod over the rule of law, to say nothing of precedent and tradition, ruining who knows how many lives, tying up the business of government with preposterous special counsel investigations, House hearings, and the like, while the Republicans mostly vibrate in impotent fury and they emerge from the turmoil scot-free.

Again, there are some signs of fissures in this decades-on Democratic dispensation. The pugilistic response of the president himself is one such sign (“Cet animal est très méchant: quand on l’attaque il se défend”—“This animal is very mean: it defends itself when attacked”). Another sign of change is the stalwartness of Mitch McConnell and the doggedness of U.S. Attorney John Durham and his boss, Attorney General William Barr. My own guess is that we’ll know real progress has been made when—or rather if—a raft of indictments are handed down in the business of the deep-state effort to take down the Trump campaign and then his presidency.

It might never happen. It would, as far as I know, be the first time that the regime party was truly held to account. I am assured by many smart people that this will not happen. They may well be right. If they are, then Trump’s presidency—even if he manages a second term (which at this point I think likely)—will count mostly as an anomaly, a strange challenge to the nomenklatura that they tried to prevent, and then to destroy, but ended up simply waiting out.

Trump Is Seriously Thinking About Claiming He Isn't Really Impeached & He's Got a Point.

 Article by Victoria Taft in "PJMedia":

We always knew the impeachment case against Trump had the weightiness of belly button lint, but now Americans are cottoning on to how the thing looks to be wholly unserious. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's vote-and-run strategy has made the foundation for impeachment look like it was cobbled out of crazy glue and straw.

And the White House noticed.

As we've previously reported, the Democrat constitutional law expert, Noah Feldman, says that by not sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate, President Trump's not really impeached:

"If the House does not communicate its impeachment to the Senate, it hasn’t actually impeached the president. If the articles are not transmitted, Trump could legitimately say that he wasn’t truly impeached at all."

That's not a typo.

While Nancy and company are off to the vineyard, wine cave, or perhaps some far-flung locale for a very-Pelosi Christmas, Trump and company have been huddling at the White House and Mar-a-Lago and taking seriously Feldman's legal opinion.

Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump

Plus, never did anything wrong. Read the Transcripts. A Democrat Hoax!

  John Roberts‏Verified account @johnrobertsFox

According to @Harvard law professor Noah Feldman (a Dem witness in the Judiciary hearing), President Trump is not “impeached” until the articles are sent to the Senate. If Pelosi holds onto them indefinitely, @realDonaldTrump would not be “impeached”.

Now that's something the Speaker may want to suck her teeth on!

 

The Palm Beach Post is among the first to tattoo Trump with the "impeached" title

CBS News reports that its White House sources indicate it indeed may be premature:

"The White House is considering making the case that Mr. Trump has not been impeached based on an opinion piece by Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman on Bloomberg's opinion page Thursday. ...

The sources told CBS News that the White House views Pelosi's delay as "a Christmas gift." They plan to use the delay to argue that the Democrats have so little faith in their own case for impeachment, they are too scared to trigger a trial they know they will lose. ...

A senior White House official said the White House might pursue that line of messaging, but the White House is also in a "wait and see" attitude over the Christmas holiday."

Trump's not the only one questioning the process. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is holding a match to the Democrats' foundation of straw and claiming the impeachment is "weak" and bad for the country:

Leader McConnell ✔ @senatemajldr

 · Dec 19, 2019

Replying to @senatemajldr

These articles of impeachment are so weak that before they even passed, the Senate Democratic Leader began demanding that the Senate re-do the House’s homework. Now the Speaker is hemming and hawing about whether they'll even proceed to trial.

         

Leader McConnell ✔ @senatemajldr

I am glad that leading Democrats seem to have buyer’s remorse about the least fair, least thorough, and most rushed impeachment in American history. They should. But for the sake of the country, I wish this understanding had dawned on them yesterday.

House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy said Pelosi is running and hiding from impeachment because she "knows the outcome is not good."

Of course, Pelosi trotted off for Christmas without finishing her job and now no one knows what will come of impeachment. Pelosi isn't tipping her hand on when or if she'll send the articles to the Senate and name her House impeachment managers. It's worth listening to the Democrats' handpicked impeachment expert, who says the president can "legitimately say he wasn't truly impeached at all."

https://pjmedia.com/trending/trump-is-seriously-thinking-about-claiming-he-isnt-really-impeached-hes-got-a-point/ 

 

NYT Discovers Voters Are...

Tristan Justice reporting for The Federalist

New York Times Discovers 

Voters Are Paying Little Mind To Impeachment

The New York Times discovered this week that few people around the country seemed to pay much attention to the the House passing articles of impeachment Wednesday making President Donald Trump only the third president in history to be impeached.

“It was a momentous day in American history. But, by all indications, it was not a momentous day in the lives of most Americans,” the Times declared. “As history played out Wednesday amid the bombast and rancor of impeachment proceedings, many of them seemed intent on looking elsewhere.”

The Times reported on people across the country who remained focused on their day-to-day lives over the circus act unfolding in Washington. Counter to what many beltway insiders tend to believe, most Americans are not obsessing about politics, especially when they are as nefarious as the Democrats’ efforts to reverse the results of the 2016 election.

I saw this play out firsthand in the nation’s capital. When I clocked in for my part-time bar job at a local pub just two blocks from the White House, I first anticipated seeing each of the restaurant’s televisions tuned into the House impeachment debate as we did during last year’s infamous Brett Kavanaugh hearings.

Instead, the TVs were turned on to their typical channels: ESPN, Chive TV playing short random clips from the internet, and other various sports channels. Only one TV had the news turned on and at around 4 p.m. a guest had it changed to sports.

The fact is, Americans are smarter than Washington thinks and can recognize performative action versus something that can result in a tangible outcome such as the Kavanaugh hearings.

Justice Kavanaugh endured a bruising confirmation process. His ultimate success in reaching the nation’s highest court was by no means an easy task for Republicans. Kavanaugh’s nomination last year was hampered by uncorroborated and discredited allegations of sexual assault from more than 30 years ago that put the judge’s confirmation in serious jeopardy.

The hearings garnered wall-to-wall media coverage and captured the nation’s attention. According to Nielsen ratings data reported by Reuters, an estimated 20 million people across six networks tuned into Kavanaugh’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The rushed impeachment proceedings launched by Democrats, on the other hand, have been nothing but a show-trial for Democrats culminating in a three-year campaign that began prior to Trump’s inauguration to effectively ban the president from the Oval Office. Even after the House passed the articles of impeachment by a partisan vote, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced her intention to delay sending them to the Senate.

If the House passed articles of impeachment to “save the republic” from Trump but refuses to hand them over to the Senate for trial, then what was even the point? Her actions prove the Democratic efforts to be nothing more than a sham in a desperate attempt to resurrect their hopes of overturning the American voters in 2016 after the epic failure of the grand Russian collusion hoax.

So it should come as no surprise that only an estimated 13.8 million viewers tuned in the first public impeachment hearing held by the House Intelligence Committee across 10 networks, a stark decline from Kavanaugh’s 20.

The end result of the impeachment proceedings has always been clear. The Democratic-controlled House hungry for impeachment would pass the articles only for the president to be cleared of all charges in the Republican-controlled Senate.

The Constitution mandates a two-thirds majority to remove the president from office. That requires 20 out of the 53 Republicans in the Senate to join Democrats in their partisan efforts. In other words, Trump’s removal prior to inauguration day on 2021 is a pipe-dream for Democrats, and Americans can see right through it.

Multiple polls show voters roundly rejecting the Democratic impeachment campaign. According to Real Clear Politics’ latest aggregate of polls documenting public opinion on the proceedings, public support for impeachment has gone underwater since the opening of the House’s investigation in September.

Projection in Campus and Party Politics

Article by Philip Carl Salzman in "PJMedia":

It is common to observe projection in campus and party politics, and in human affairs generally. “Projection” is a well-understood psychological mechanism in which a person or collective accuses another of doing what the accuser himself or itself is doing. “Psychological projection is a defense mechanism people subconsciously employ in order to cope with difficult feelings or emotions. Psychological projection involves projecting undesirable feelings or emotions onto someone else, rather than admitting to or dealing with the unwanted feelings.”

The classic example of Freudian projection is that of a woman who has been unfaithful to her husband but who accuses her husband of cheating on her. Another example of psychological projection is someone who feels a compulsion to steal things and then projects those feelings onto others. She might begin to fear that her purse is going to be stolen or that she is going to be shortchanged when she buys something.

Many highly entertaining examples of projection can be seen in recent party politics. Members of the Democrat Party and the mainstream media have accused President Trump being a potential dictator who would not honor an election which he had lost, and who would thus undermine the American electoral democracy. This from a party and media that refused to accept the 2016 election, and set about from the day of the inauguration to overturn the election and cancel the duly-elected president, most recently seen in the House impeachment of the president. Thus, the Democrat Party accuses the Republican president of not respecting the Constitution and election results, at exactly the same time as they reject the 2016 election winner.

Leading members of the Democrat Party have accused and continue to accuse President Trump of conspiring with a foreign power to interfere with the 2016 election, and to be similarly interfering with the upcoming 2020 election. No evidence has ever been adduced to support this assertion. But what has been proven beyond doubt is that the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee conspired with and paid for a foreign agent, the British spy Christopher Steele, who drew on Russian informants to invent “dirt” on candidate Trump. The uncorroborated Steele dossier was used by the FBI as justification to spy on the Trump campaign. The Democrats accuse the Republican president of colluding with foreign powers, while they not only collude but pay for those with whom they collude.

House Democrats have accused President Trump in an article of impeachment of “abuse of power,” an entirely partisan impeachment supported solely by Democrats, in a procedure that allowed President Trump no due process. None of the Democrat “fact witnesses” could identify any crime that the president has committed. The House Democrats could proceed because they were the majority, had the votes to impeach, and thus had the power notwithstanding the lack of due process and lack of evidence. So, in fact, after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s criterion that a legitimate impeachment must be bipartisan, the House Democrats have accused the president of “abuse of power” when that is exactly what their partisan and contentless impeachment, in procedure and substance, has been.

During the House impeachment debates, multiple Democrat representatives, parroted by their media puppets, solemnly declared that “No one is above the law,” although the two articles of impeachment put forward by the Democrats did not specify any law that was broken or any crime committed by the president. But it was disorienting to hear members of the Democrat Party -- the party of sanctuary cities, open borders, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), providing taxpayer funding to illegal aliens for medical care and welfare, and legitimizing illegal aliens through issuing official certification, such as driver's licenses -- proclaim with great gravitas that “No one is above the law.” So, Democrat House members accuse, without evidence, the president of acting outside the law, while their proudly asserted policies on illegal aliens violate laws enacted by Congress! An impressive example of projecting your lawlessness on others.

Finally, in what would be a hilarious example if the issue were not so serious, the Democrat Party, which engaged in an unprecedented partisan impeachment of President Trump, is accusing the Republicans in the Senate of not approaching the impeachment trial of President Trump in an impartial manner. The superlatively partisan Democrat Party accuses the Republicans of being partisan. One does not know whether to laugh or cry.

In identity politics, projection can be seen in accusations across race lines. Black Lives Matter claims that white vigilantes and police are attacking innocent African Americans. “The Black Lives Matter Global Network is a chapter-based, member-led organization whose mission is to build local power and to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes” (emphasis added). But the sad facts of violence in Black communities are quite different from what is stated by Black Lives Matter. According to official FBI statistics, in 2013, of the 2,491 “Black or African American” people murdered, 189 were murdered by “whites,” 20 by “other,” 37 by “unknown,” and 2,245 by "Black or African American." In other words, 90.12% of African Americans murdered were murdered by other African Americans. And while it is true that 189 African Americans were murdered by whites, 409 whites were murdered by African Americans. In cross-race murders, more than twice as many whites have been murdered as African Americans. Overall, 48% of all murders are committed by African Americans, more than three times what would be expected from African Americans’ 13% of the population. So Black Lives Matter is accusing white “vigilantes” and the government, presumably police, of crimes that are almost entirely committed by African Americans. Black Lives Matter is projecting onto others what in fact is happening within their own group.

In our universities, ideas deemed outmoded, such as academic achievement, merit, intellectual integrity, and excellence, have now been superseded by official policies of diversity, equality, and inclusion. The top priorities of universities, in student admissions, student financing, hiring of academic, non-academic, and administrative staff and leaders, is to include members of “underrepresented” categories, such as females, people of color (except East Asians), Hispanics, Native Americans or First Nations, the disabled, LGBT++, Muslims, poor, under-educated, and mentally unstable, while at the same time excluding members of undesirable, “overrepresented” categories, such as males, whites, East Asians, Christians and Jews, heterosexuals, able-bodied, middle and upper class, over-educated, and mentally stable. The rationale is that it is sexist not to include females, racist not to include people of color and indigenous people, Islamophobic not to include Muslims, homophobic and transphobic not to include LGBT++, oppressive not to include the poor, and discriminatory not to include the mentally unstable.

The position favored by advocates of diversity, equality, and inclusion, commonly under the general label of “social justice,” is that not including members of every category at levels at least equivalent to their presence in the general population is discriminatory. Anyone not in agreement is accused of being exclusionary, as well as sexist, racist, -phobic, etc. etc.

In this new dispensation, “virtue” is not in treating people as complex individuals, each with his or her own qualities, capacities, achievements, and potential, but rather in reducing people to certain superficial qualities according to their assignment in the gross census categories of race, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity. The key point here is that members of categories deemed to represent “victims” of our “oppressive” society are, in the views of university administrators, preferred, while members of other -- deemed by administrators “oppressor” -- categories are unworthy.

The result is that our “inclusive” universities include members of preferred -- while excluding members of unworthy -- categories, which they do by disregarding so-called “white supremacist” concepts such as achievement, merit, and potential. The administrators who accuse earlier administrators and society at large of being exclusionary are themselves exclusionary, refusing whites, men, Christians, Jews, and Asians. But in their eyes, that is a good thing because, they appear to believe, Asians and Jews have never suffered, never been excluded, and always been “privileged” oppressors.

African American, Hispanic, Asian (if any), Muslim, and LGBT++ student groups claim that they are excluded from university society, and their identity -- nay, their very existence -- is denied if their demands are not met in their entirety. What exactly are they demanding to facilitate their inclusion? They demand segregated African American, Hispanic, Muslim, LGBT++, and Asian eating, sleeping, and congregating facilities, plus separate celebration and graduation ceremonies, from which others, especially whites, would be excluded. Their version of “inclusion” is segregating themselves and excluding others, an impressive example of projecting on others exclusionary sentiments and actions.

Minority student groups claim that, if all of their demands are not met, they are being “silenced.” Yet if any professor or visiting speaker expresses opinions with which they might disagree, these student groups mobilize to block other students from attending, and/or enter themselves with the goal of disrupting the lectures or presentations and silencing the speaker. Once again, those who accuse others of silencing themselves take it as their right to silence others. They project on others their own motivations and actions.

What can we conclude from these cases of political projection? The answer, I think, is this: people in the fevered grip of an ideology -- whether partisan, racial, or moralistic -- are not very self-aware, and see in their appointed “enemies” the evil intentions that they themselves hold.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/projection-in-campus-and-party-politics/ 

 

‘This IS the Scandal’: Dan Bongino Explains How John Brennan’s Office Became Ground Zero in the Russian Collusion Scandal

Elizabeth Vaughn reporting for RedState

Caricature by DonkeyHotey flic.kr/p/Ct4G4K 

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

On Thursday night, just as Fox News was airing Martha MacCallum’s interview with Attorney General William Barr, the New York Times reported that U.S. Attorney John Durham had requested former CIA Director John Brennan’s communications records. This included all emails, texts and call logs from his time at the CIA. The Times’ sources also told them that Durham’s team was said to be “scrutininizing” Brennan’s Congressional testimony. Many believe he’s perjured himself. This is a major development and it hasn’t received the attention it deserves.

Durham’s probe, as we all know, shifted into a criminal investigation in October. In a special counsel or an independent counsel investigation, when the work is done, the team prepares a report of their findings. In a criminal investigation, when the team accumulates sufficient and convincing evidence of a crime, an indictment is made. Former assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew McCarthy told Fox on Friday that we should be waiting for indictments from the Durham team, rather than a report. He said that “in a criminal investigation, you don’t get a report unless there are no indictments.”

Washington attorney Sidney Powell, who is currently representing General Michael Flynn, said the same thing recently in an appearance on Lou Dobb’s show.

Fox News contributor and investigator Dan Bongino addressed the John Brennan story on his Friday podcast. (The Dan Bongino Show: Episode 1140, can be viewed below.) The first thing he told his viewers is that the Russian collusion story did not originate with the FBI. It began long before they opened their counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign on July 31, 2016.

Bongino explains it began because John Brennan and others wanted to gather intelligence on Barack Obama’s political opponents, “but couldn’t get it because there are U.S. laws that prevent the government from spying on its own citizens. But they found another place they could get it from – The Five Eyes.”

The Five Eyes, which includes the intelligence services of England, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the U.S., share intelligence among the group. It was set up to help track down terrorists and international criminals, but in this case, it was used against Obama’s political opponents.

Bongino says, “Do you understand that is the scandal?”

It’s important to note that John Brennan has maintained he did not see the Steele Dossier until December 2016.

The New York Times’ sources informed them the Durham team was “examining whether Mr. Brennan privately contradicted his public comments, including May 2017 testimony to Congress, about both the dossier and about any debate among the intelligence agencies over their conclusions on Russia’s interference.”

Although there is some real information in the Times’ article, Bongino emphasizes that its writers are trying to make the reader believe this is a Trump team witch hunt. They’re trying to dig up dirt on John Brennan. The reality of the situation is that it’s very likely John Brennan and his colleagues convinced the FBI to open their counterintelligence investigation. So, it’s necessary to filter out the propaganda from the facts.

Bongino says the lede tells us “they have absolutely no doubt our intelligence infrastructure was spying on political campaigns, notably [Ted] Cruze, [Ben] Carson and Trump using foreign partners in circumvention of U.S. law. There’s no doubt about this anymore.”

Durham’s team is also looking at the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) released in January 2017, which was backed by Comey, Brennan and others, which concluded that Russia meddled in the 2016 U.S. election to help Trump defeat Clinton. Everyone knows Russia interfered in our election. But we do not agree that Putin intended to tip the victory to Trump which is the narrative the left would like everyone to believe.

Bongino believes the “ICA gave them [the deep state] cover…that everything they’d been doing to spy on the Trump team was legitimate. ‘Look, the intelligence community agrees. Everything they (the Russians) were doing was to help Trump. Fair and square to look into it, right?'”

Durham’s team is trying to find out if this claim that Putin tried to help Trump was “based on intelligence or the political opinion that the [Obama] White House really needed out there?”

Dan puts up a Washington Times article written by Rowan Scarborough on May 29, 2917 entitled “Obama Loyalist Brennan drove the FBI to begin investigating Trump associates last summer.”

Bongino tells his viewers, “Brennan is nailed to the wall. This is an intelligence laundering operation by the CIA…I believe Brennan was running a rogue spying operation and lied to the FBI to get them to open a criminal operation as cover for what Brennan was already doing. In other words, ‘We can’t tell the people we’re spying in the CIA, but we can tell them the FBI has evidence of criminality and are doing a counterintelligence investigation.’ That was all cover. It was all a cover story.”

In Brennan’s testimony before Congress, he told lawmakers:

I wanted to make sure that every [piece of] information and bit of intelligence that we had was shared with the bureau [FBI] so that they could take it. It was well beyond my mandate as director of CIA to follow on any of those leads that involved U.S. persons. But I made sure that anything that was involving U.S. persons, including anything involving the individuals involved in the Trump campaign, was shared with the bureau.

I was aware of intelligence and information about contacts between Russian officials and U.S. persons that raised concerns in my mind about whether or not those individuals were cooperating with the Russians, either in a witting or unwitting fashion, and it served as the basis for the FBI investigation to determine whether such collusion [or] cooperation occurred.

Bongino notes that Brennan “was aware of contacts between people on the Trump campaign and the Russian government? Where was that information coming from? If Brennan’s assertion that he knew nothing about the dossier – which is the only place where you can find information about people on the Trump campaign, Carter Page, Papadopoulos and the Russians – that’s the only place…If Brennan said he didn’t see that, then where was he getting his information about the Trump campaign allegedly colluding with the Russian government?”

Bongino’s Analysis: The scandal is no more complicated than this. And the devastating portion of it was explained to me recently. We have multiple sources feeding things into this. And I would not report anything to you unless I can confirm it from multiple sources.

The scandal here is that U.S. citizens were being targeted and spied on by an intelligence structure whose sole purpose is to assist [prevent] U.S. citizens from being spied on, being the targets of terror investigations. Their entire role was reversed. And they were doing it in conjunction with their U.K. partners.

Brennan clearly knows about the information in the dossier, yet he claims he didn’t see it until December. Since the information could be found no where else, both stories can’t be true.

It sure looks like Brennan is lying. And clearly John Durham is on to him.

(Note: He refers to a CNN article published in April 2017 entitled “British Intelligence Passed Trump Associates’ Communications with Russians on to U.S. Counterparts,” which includes more detail. In addition, there is more information from 21:00 in the podcast below.)

If We Had A Real FBI, This Would Be The Greatest Money Laundering Scandal Of Our Time

For FY 2019, America has spent 30.4 billion dollars to countries around the world for Foreign Assistance. This Foreign Assistance is defined in 9 categories:

Peace and Security - 2.7 billion dollars
Health - 7.4 billion dollars
Humaniterian Efforts 7.1 billion dollars
Multi-sector (undefined or multiple categories) 3.5 billion dollars
Economic Development 3.0 billion dollars
Human Rights 1.7 billion dollars
Program Management 3.1 billion dollars (99% of that is administrative costs)
Education and Social Services 1.4 billion dollars
Environmental .5 billion dollars

https://www.foreignassistance.gov/explore

Here is how our brillant Bureaucratic Illuminati will explain Foreign Assistance to the regular tax payer:

Foreign assistance is aid given by the United States to other countries to support global peace, security, and development efforts, as well as to provide humanitarian relief during times of crisis.

The U.S. government provides foreign assistance because it is strategically, economically, and morally imperative for the United States and vital to U.S. national security.

It is interesting to note since President Trump has taken over, this spent dollar volume has decreased by an over all amount more than 10%. 

In other words he is trying to get Congress to cut their voracious appetite to feed the world the American Taxpayers hard earned money.

Now folks, let's look at one example:

Ukraine FY2015, our government shows the following budgetary records:

Requested by Ukraine: $140 million

Appropriated by Congress: $350 million

Obligated by Congress: $206 million

Spent by Ukraine: $169 million

Hmm........ Creepy UncleJoe Biden says he refused to give them the "Billion dollars unless they fire the prosecutor"

How did Ukraine spend the $160 million in 2015?

Peace and Security - 48 million dollars
Health - 22 million dollars
Humaniterian Efforts - 13 million dollars
Multi-sector (undefined or multiple categories) - 19 million dollars
Economic Development - 19 million dollars
Human Rights - 22 million dollars
Program Management - 15 million dollars
Education and Social Services - .2 million dollars
Environmental - 2 million dollars

The first question that should come to mind is what happened to the 1 Billion dollars supposedly appropriated for Ukraine?

How much has Ukrainian Oligarchs donated to the Clinton Foundation?

The Wall Street Journal reported in 2015 that between 2009 and 2013, including when Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state, the Clinton Foundation received at least $8.6 million from the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, according to that foundation, which is based in Kiev, Ukraine. 

It appears Mr. Pinchuk donated less that amount of $8.6 million previously from 2008 to 2013 in 2015 but totals can not be ascertained from the foundations records.

It was created by Mr. Pinchuk, whose fortune stems from a pipe-making company. 

He served two terms as an elected member of the Ukrainian Parliament and is a proponent of closer ties between Ukraine and the European Union.

It should be noted Mr. Pinchuk is an influencal member of the Atlantic Council https://atlanticcouncil.org/  a think tank in DC that donates to any Democrat entities and helps fund Crowdstrike who proved Russia hacked our 2016 election for the DNC.

Smell that yet?............

Now we all know how this works, American politicians appropriate funds to Foreign Assistance,the funds are deposited along with credit guarantees in that countries banking system. That money flowsto the appropriate "connected" individuals, like Mr. Pinchuk.

Mr. Pinchuk gets a $50 million dollar five year contract from his government and he donates $5 million to the Clinton Foundation. Other lessor powerful Ukrainian Oligarchs write contracts to democrat advocacy and legal groups in DC.

So, Ukraine gets $160 million, doles out $50 million and those oligarchs pay off Democrat Politiicans $10 million,

Now multiply that program by the 130 counties were are doling out Foreign Assistance to and you have a great little money laundering scheme legalized by Political entities.

This my friends is why DC is aswamp filled with Advocacy, Non-Profits, Lawyers and or course the slimey politicians.

President Trump istrying to do two things:

1. Slow down the rape of the American Taxpayer.

2. Help America keep more of her money.

That my friends is why the Entrenched Bureaucracy hate the man and must destroy him.