OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 1:45 PM PT – Saturday, August 29, 2020
President Trump
traveled to hurricane stricken Louisiana on Saturday to aid in emergency
efforts. The president reaffirmed he’s standing by local officials, who
have been working to restore water to more than 180,000 residents.
He added his heart goes out to families who lost loved ones to the
destructive storm. So far, more than a dozen people have been found
dead.
The president also took to the streets of Louisiana to survey the damage caused by the natural distaster.
“I’m here to support the great people of Louisiana. It’s been a
tremendous state for me. I love the people, we’ve had a good
relationship right from the beginning. I’ve already met some people that
have been absolutely devastated. This was a tremendously powerful
storm.” – Donald Trump, 45th President of the United States
The president then traveled to Orange, Texas to receive additional briefings on emergency operations in the state.
Marxists Always Said if They Can Infiltrate 1% of Society, They Can Control the Other 99%
In a recent exclusive for The Western Journal, Gen. Michael Flynn expressed a keen observation and frustration.
“I was once told if we’re not careful, 2 percent of the passionate
will control 98 percent of the indifferent 100 percent of the time,” wrote Flynn. “The more I’ve thought about this phrase, the more I believe it.”
I believe it, too, because I’ve seen it.
It’s not a new phenomenon. It’s a trenchant reflection on politics
and human nature, and on the revolutionary left’s longtime ability to
organize and manipulate what it likes to call “the masses” or a “united
front” or a “popular front.”
That assessment by Flynn has caught fire. It has been brought up to
me several times in conversations I’ve had on talk shows promoting a new
book that I just wrote titled “The Devil and Karl Marx,”
particularly in relation to the book’s focus on how communists sought
to infiltrate churches, especially the mainline denominations (most
notably, the United Methodist Church, the Episcopal Church and
Presbyterian Church USA) and also the Roman Catholic Church.
One conservative journalist reading the book emailed me last week
because he was struck by how similar Flynn’s assessment was to that of
Manning Johnson.
Johnson is a man forgotten but worth remembering today.
He was a brilliant and courageous man, well-known as a leading
African-American Marxist who left the Communist Party. He had served on
the National Negro Commission, an important subcommittee of the National
Committee of the Communist Party.
The commission was important because of the vigorous push by
Communist Party USA and the Soviet Comintern to attempt to organize
black Americans into a segregated “Negro Republic” in the South (yes,
seriously).
The commission, noted Johnson, was created “on direct orders from
Moscow to facilitate the subversion of the Negroes.” Johnson there
discovered not only the extent to which black Americans were targeted
“by the Kremlin hierarchy,” but how the “white overseers” in Communist
Party USA mistreated their African-American brothers, especially with a
demeaning attitude of subservience.
White American communist officials spied on black communists, treated
them as “their Negro lickspittles” and used “white women communists …
as political prostitutes,” said Johnson.
Johnson left the party in disgust not only over this but because of
his comrades’ war on religion and diabolical attempt to deceive and
infiltrate and manipulate churches. Johnson had refused to part with the
faith of his youth, even as the party demanded that he “liquidate” his
Christian faith and help communists to penetrate churches.
And above all — and this relates to Gen. Michael Flynn’s observation —
he marveled at how a tiny minority was able to control a large
majority.
“It is an axiom in Communist organization strategy that if an
infiltrated body has 1 percent Communist Party members and 9 percent
Communist Party sympathizers, with well-rehearsed plans of action, they
can effectively control the remaining 90 percent,” Johnson told the U.S.
Congress in sworn testimony in July 1953.
“In the large sections of the religious field, due to the ideological
poison which has been filtered in by Communists and pro-Communists
through seminaries, the backlog of sympathizers and mental prisoners of
socialistic ideology is greater than the 10 percent necessary for
effective control.”
All it took was a mere 1 percent Communist Party members and 9
percent sympathizers. How sad. Manning Johnson learned this regrettably
too well.
A trusting flock could, in the deceitful hands of a few bad
shepherds, be led to spiritual slaughter: “The Communists learned that
the clergyman under their control served as a useful ‘respectable face’
for most of their front activities. … Thus one professor of divinity,
lecturing to future clergymen, who in turn will preach to thousands of
churchgoers, is, in the long run, more dangerous than 20 Red preachers
singing the praises of communism from the pulpit.”
One really skilled pro-Marxist professor of divinity, smart and
cautious with the language he used, could be far more influential than a
couple dozen big-mouthed and less polished preachers.
Johnson spoke of a particularly shameless communist front that
operated under the name of the American League Against War and Fascism.
Why did it work so well? For starters, the name/slogan was brilliant.
As the name says, “Against War and Fascism.” Who could be against war
and fascism? Just as no one would say that black lives do not matter.
According to Johnson, this was “the key Communist Party front. There
was no other Communist Party front in all of the solar system of
organizations of the Communist Party that involved so many ministers,
churches, and religious organizations.”
In fact, warned Johnson, this organization was “the key to the
infiltration of the church, and as a result of the successful
infiltration and penetration they were able to involve these ministers
in every other Communist front through the years, even down to the
present time.”
Here again, Johnson paused to underscore the significance of the
numbers: “I know from my own experience in working in labor
organizations, for example, that we had an organization with 10,000
members, and there were only about 60 or 70 Communists, and we
controlled the organization. So with small minority of ministers who
work in an organized manner, they can always win over and subvert and
dupe the majority who are disorganized and are individualistic.”
With merely a small group of, say, 60 to 70, communists could redirect an organization of 10,000. Impressive but sad.
Johnson’s testimony is far from the only case.
In “The Devil and Karl Marx,” I give many such illustrations,
likewise quoting congressional testimony from prominent ex-communists
like Ben Gitlow and Bella Dodd, who repeatedly awed at how they as
communist ringleaders could take over an organization or hijack a cause
or movement with just a handful of trained Marxist organizers.
Ben Gitlow, the highest-level official ever to leave the American
Communist Party, spoke of the alarming success of the Rev. Harry Ward,
infamously known as the “red dean” among American clergymen, and a
founder of the ACLU.
His group was the Methodist Federation for Social Action. Again, note
the importance of a slick title: Who could be against Methodists
pursuing “social action” or (in today’s parlance) “social justice?”
According to Gitlow, “The Methodist Federation for Social Action
operated, though it was an unofficial organization, as if it had the
official sanction of the Methodist Church. Its limited, small
membership, fluctuating between 2,000 and 10,000, is dominated by a
handful of Communists who never officially avowed their Communist
affiliations. The Communists in the organization maintained an alliance
with militant, revolutionary Socialists, who were not under Communist
discipline, but who nevertheless went along with the Communists. The
Communists operated within the Methodist Federation for Social Action on
the premise that it was important to keep within the Methodist
Federation for Social Action all the Socialist, leftist, pacifist, and
the so-called liberal and progressive elements just so long as they went
together with the Communists on specific issues.”
Through a “limited, small membership” they could control a much
larger array of sympathizers on the left. This was a left-wing big tent,
an organization assembled and dominated by a handful of concealed
communists who misled everyone else.
Another prominent ex-communist who spoke to such organizing abilities was Bella Dodd.
She testified many times to Congress and to audiences on how she organized everyone from teachers in the state of New York
to striking seamen against shipowners to (one of her most sensational
claims) placing “over a thousand communist men” in Catholic seminaries.
Bella’s primary work for the party was to organize teachers. She
wrote about it candidly in her memoirs, “School of Darkness,” noting her
success as a communist organizer for teachers’ unions in New York from
1936 to 1938: “At its peak the Union boasted ten thousand members, and
in it the Communist Party had a fraction of close to a thousand.”
That’s a huge degree of penetration: 10 percent. Emboldened, Bella
and comrades looked to apply that tactic to Catholic seminaries, where
they would happily accept even a mere one percent placement. That was
all they needed to sow discord and chaos. They believed they could do
it.
And why not? The Communist Party already had staggering success with Protestant seminaries:
“You may be interested in knowing that we have preachers, preachers
active in churches, who are members of the Communist Party,” candidly
admitted Earl Browder, general secretary of Communist Party USA, to
students at the progressive Union Theological Seminary on Feb. 15, 1935.
He and his party initiated an aggressive push to create a “united
front” led by communists and socialists attracting a broader coalition
of liberals and fellow travelers. The goal was to expand the party’s
support, its membership base and above all its agenda. The wolves would
dress in sheep’s clothing and mingle among the masses.
This included recruitment among the religious and flat-out
infiltration of churches. As for Catholics, Browder (a fierce atheist)
warmly — albeit deceptively — offered: “We extend the hand of fellowship
to our Catholic brothers.”
Browder and his CPUSA thus orchestrated what the party called an
“outstretched hand” effort to appeal to the nation’s Roman Catholics in
the 1930s. Communists who organized in New York in particular were fired
up.
They salivated like Pavlov’s dogs over the numbers they laid out in a
secret 1937 memo (now on file at the Hoover Institution archives): 18
million Catholics in America, and 80,000 simply between New York’s 110
St. and 59th St.
Consider the numbers again: Communist Party USA, even here in the
1930s, its heyday, never exceeded 100,000 members nationwide. Well, 18
million Catholics obviously overwhelmed 100,000 commies. For communists,
they figured that if they could pick up even one percent of American
Catholics, they would explode their membership rolls and could
dramatically undermine parishes from within.
All they wanted was 1 percent. Such a modest goal, such a tiny
number, but that’s all they felt they needed. Very cynical, and very
shrewd.
One of Browder’s erstwhile buddies, J. B. Matthews, another prominent
ex-communist, who became Congress’s chief expert on the subject, had
spearheaded the party’s “united front” strategy.
Matthews explained: “It is not surprising to find the Communist Party
in the United States engaged in a systematic effort to lure the
churches into the net of the party’s united fronts.”
The goal was to find a single issue that would unite a wider
movement: for instance, opposing war and violence. Communist organizers
had to be extremely cautious, however, to keep their Marxist sympathies
and ambitions concealed.
And as for those who suspected those sympathies, and publicly called
out the communist organizers, they were denounced for their unseemly
anti-communism or told they were being paranoid. They were most
vociferously denounced by the communists’ liberal-progressive friends.
This kind of manipulation has gone on in America for literally over a hundred years.
I could give example after example, with victims that would startle
conservatives, such as a young actor named Ronald Reagan (and the
recently deceased Hollywood legend Olivia de Havilland)
being duped by a handful of concealed Marxist organizers running
Hollywood front groups like HICCASP and the Progressive Citizens of
America.
Such manipulative organizing continues to this day. It may not be as
extensive as it once was, but we can see how a handful of self-avowed
trained Marxists in an organization can rally huge numbers of people by
picking the right cause.
“We actually do have an ideological frame,” says Patrisse Cullors
of herself and Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza. “Myself and
Alicia in particular are trained organizers. We are trained Marxists. We
are super-versed on, sort of, ideological theories.”
And yet, when we note that someone like Patrisse Cullors frankly
concedes that she and her co-founder are trained Marxist organizers
“super-versed” in ideological theories, we’re reprimanded by liberals
for even bringing it up.
The only thing that matters, after all, is that black lives matter.
Everything else is irrelevant and even impolite to mention. It’s deemed
off-limits, insensitive, even “racist” to express concerns over what
Patrisse openly admits is their “ideological framework.”
But of course, that framework and training is utterly essential to
the bigger picture and deeper motivations. (Just as being a Christian,
for example, influences one’s actions.)
It reflects the long, sordid history of this kind of clever Marxist
organizing. This is exactly what trained Marxist organizers do. They
take a genuinely just cause like stopping police violence against people
of color (which, of course, has nothing to do with Marxism, and appeals
to any non-Marxist), and they use it to draw support to an organization
that at its website
seeks to rally “comrades” (yes, the BLM website uses that word more
than once) to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure.”
That’s a BLM call that has nothing to do with police and long predates George Floyd.
I’ve written elsewhere about the striking parallel between Black Lives Matter and George Floyd
and another great racial injustice from the 1930s, the Scottsboro boys.
That was a racial tragedy that Communist Party USA sought to hijack. In
so doing, communists badly hurt the boys’ case, to the outrage of
groups like the NAACP.
Again, example after example could be given. I wish not to belabor
the point but to convince readers that this has gone on for a long time.
Alas, returning to Gen. Flynn’s observation, it’s striking how merely
2 percent can influence so many. And few are skilled at this like
trained Marxist organizers.
As Flynn says, we need to be careful. We need to be smart.
Teen Receives Bill for Police Overtime After Organizing Black Lives Matter Protest
A teenager in New Jersey who organized a Black Lives Matter rally
received a $2500 bill from the town's mayor to cover police overtime for
her gathering. Black Lives Matter events held throughout the country
have culminated in widescale looting, destruction, violence, and death.
Mayor
Mario Kranjac of Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, doesn't believe it's
right for hardworking taxpayers to be on the hook for the criminality of
left-wing protesters.
"Please promptly forward your payment to
the borough in the amount of $2,499.26 for the police overtime caused by
your protest," the mayor wrote in a letter to the 18-year-old organizer
of the event. According to the mayor, the teenager had refused to meet
with officials before her protest, requiring leaders to hastily come up
with security plans for the event.
"As with any
privately-sponsored event that takes place in the borough requiring
police safety, an invoice was sent to the organizer for police overtime
since it would be unfair to require our residents to financially support
a private event," the mayor told NJ Advance Media.
The
legal director for the ACLU in New Jersey, Jeanne LoCicero, told the
Associated Press, "the idea of sending a bill to protesters is
shocking."
What's so "shocking" about it? Sure Americans have a right to peaceably assemble, but the taxpayer doesn't have to pay for it. You also have a right to own a gun, but taxpayers don't actually buy the gun for you.
The
taxpayers have been subsidizing the Left's Marxist tactics for years
and it's time for that to end. Let's make the Left fund the police.
Obama administration holdovers and partisan career employees succeeded in causing the ouster of the new administration’s pick for national security advisor.
For the last year, the discussion of the Russia collusion hoax as it relates to Michael Flynn has focused on the criminal case against President Trump’s former national security advisor. Now, all eyes remain fixed on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Two weeks ago it heard, en banc, oral argument to decide whether to direct presiding Judge Emmet Sullivan to dismiss the criminal charge against Flynn.
To Flynn and his family, the criminal jeopardy he faced because of the perjury trap set by Obama administration holdovers is the most concerning. Reasonable Americans of goodwill should be horrified by the personal harm inflicted on the retired lieutenant general and his loved ones.
However, the criminal case is but half the scandal, and the mostly unexamined portion of the plot to force Flynn’s ouster from the Trump administration threatens a more lasting harm to our constitutional republic and the peaceful transition of power.
Political Opposition Sought to Decide a President’s Staff
That the Trump Resistance sought Flynn’s firing seems clear from the evidence. The day before then-FBI Agent Peter Strzok and his colleague Joe Pientka questioned Flynn about Flynn’s telephone conversations with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, the Crossfire Hurricane team met to discuss the strategy.
On the morning of the interview, on January 24, 2017, Assistant Director of FBI Counterintelligence Bill Priestap apparently had second thoughts. “I believe we should rethink this,” notes from a follow-up meeting read. “What is our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie so we can prosecute him or get him fired?”
It now appears the primary goal was the ouster of the newly appointed national security advisor. What is less clear, however, is who plotted this plan or knowingly participated in its execution.
A brief exchange between Attorney General William Barr and Fox News’ Mark Levin three Sundays ago suggested these lines of inquiry. About halfway through the hour-long interview, Levin asked the attorney general about the Flynn case. Barr explained how he had appointed U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen to review the Flynn case after Flynn’s attorney, Sidney Powell, began accusing the Department of Justice of misconduct.
“Everyone who knew anything about that case thought it was hinky,” Barr explained. “It didn’t all add up,” he continued, “because the call, on its face”—referring to the late December 2016 call between Flynn and the Russian ambassador—“was a perfectly legitimate call for the incoming national security advisor to make.”
Jensen, whom Barr stressed had 10 years as an FBI agent then another ten years as a career prosecutor prior to his appointment as a U.S. attorney, “found a lot of things that had not come to light before.” “For example,” Barr continued, the evidence “showed clearly that the FBI agents who interviewed Flynn did not think he was lying.”
Significantly, Barr then added: “Now, this was later minimized in testimony as suggesting ‘Well, they meant he didn’t break out into sweat and his eye pupils didn’t contract, that’s all they were saying.’” “No,” Barr declared emphatically. “They were saying he didn’t believe he thought he was lying at the time.”
So, who stated in congressional testimony that the interviewing FBI agents, Pientka and Strzok, merely meant Flynn had not shown any indicia of lying? James Comey.
Comey Switches Testimony on Whether Flynn Lied
First, just a little more than a month after Pientka and Strzok interviewed Flynn, Comey testified before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. During his March 2, 2017 testimony, Comey stated, “I talked to them about this,” referring to their interview of Flynn, and “they discerned no physical indications of deception. They didn’t see any change in posture, in tone, in inflection, in eye contact. They saw nothing that indicated to them that he knew he was lying to them.” Comey added that after the interview, the agents “drafted a 302 and reported to me and the deputy director.”
Then on December 7, 2018, Comey testified before the House Committees on the Judiciary and Oversight. During that hearing, Comey was asked whether “either of those agents, or both,” had told him “they did not adduce an intent to deceive from their interview with General Flynn.” Comey said “no.”
Rep. Trey Gowdy then asked Comey what Pientka and Strzok had relayed back concerning Flynn’s intent to deceive. “My recollection was,” Comey stated, “the conclusion of the investigators was he was obviously lying, but they saw none of the normal common indicia of deception: that is hesitancy to answer, shifting in seat, sweating, all the things that you might associate with someone who is conscious and manifesting that they are being—they’re telling falsehoods. There’s no doubt he was lying, but that those indicators weren’t there” (emphasis added).
Comey added that he recalled telling the House Intelligence Committee earlier “that the agents observed none of the common indicia of lying — physical manifestations, changes in tone, changes in pace — that would indicate the person I’m interviewing knows they’re telling me stuff that ain’t true.” “They didn’t see that here,” Comey explained. Rather, “it was a natural conversation, answered fully their questions, didn’t avoid. That notwithstanding, they concluded he was lying,” Comey unequivocally affirmed.
When Comey told Congress that the FBI agents “concluded he was lying,” Flynn was on the cusp of being sentenced for supposedly lying to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador. Just three days prior, the special counsel’s office had filed its sentencing memorandum with the court, maintaining that because of Flynn’s “substantial assistance and other considerations set forth below, a sentence at the low end of the guideline range—including a sentence that does not impose a term of incarceration—is appropriate and warranted.” For all intents and purposes, the Flynn case was over.
But when Flynn appeared before Judge Sullivan for sentencing on December 18, 2018, the judge exploded, suggesting the retired lieutenant general had sold out his country and possibly committed treason. Sullivan then suggested Flynn might face jail time if sentencing proceeded. Flynn wisely agreed to delay the sentencing hearing. Then, six months later, Flynn fired the attorneys who had represented him during the Mueller investigation and hired Powell.
Evidence Comey Never Thought Would Surface
Powell immediately demanded the DOJ provide all material relevant to the case against Flynn. Little of significance was forthcoming, though, until Barr tasked Jensen with reviewing the case. Jensen later released several pieces of exculpatory material that Comey likely never expected would see the light of day when he testified before Congress that the agents concluded Flynn was lying.
That evidence included handwritten notes dated January 25, 2017, that stated the FBI assessed that yes, Flynn made false and inaccurate statements, “but believed that Flynn believes that what he said was true,” and that the FBI concluded that Flynn was “largely telling truth as he believed it.”
A typed “Draft Work Product” dated January 30, 2017 was even more explicit, stating that on January 25, 2017, the FBI had briefed the National Security Division and Office of Deputy Attorney General staff on their interview.” The “FBI advised that they believed Flynn believed what he was saying was true.”
Was Comey present for the debrief at which these notes were taken? Did he receive the Draft Work Product that stated the FBI “believed Flynn believed what he was saying was true?” And what, if anything, did Strzok, Pientka, or others tell Comey?
While in his first time testifying on the Hill, Comey noted he had spoken with the agents, during his follow-up testimony, Comey said while that was possible, his recollection was that he had “spoke[n] to people who had spoken to the investigators themselves.”
Here, the recently declassified 302 interview summary of the special counsel’s July 19, 2017, interview of Strzok provides some help. According to the 302, Strzok stated that following the interview of Flynn, he and Pientka “both had the impression at the time that Flynn was not lying or did not think he was lying.” Significantly, Strzok then told the special counsel’s office that after the interview, they “returned to FBI Headquarters and briefed [Andrew] McCabe and Baker on the interview. McCabe briefed Comey.”
So did McCabe mislead Comey, leading Comey to falsely testify that the FBI agents concluded Flynn “was lying?” Or did Comey know the truth based on his conversations with Strzok or Pientka, or reading the reports?
Comey and Yates Misinformed or Lying
These questions matter, and not merely because an affirmative to any of them would call into question the veracity of Comey’s congressional testimony. Rather, they also matter because someone (or many individuals) similarly misinformed Obama Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates: Yates apparently did not know that the agents who interviewed Flynn believed Flynn thought he was accurately recounting his conversations with the Russian ambassador.
Specifically, the 302 interview summary for Yates read: “Yates received a brief readout of the interview the night it happened, and a longer readout the following day. . . . Yates did not speak to the interviewing agents herself but understood from others that their assessment was that Flynn showed no ‘tells’ of lying and it was possible he really did not remember the substance of his calls with Kislyak. On the other hand, the DOJ prosecutors were very skeptical that Flynn would forget the discussion.”
The 302 summary of Yates’s interview further noted that Yates reiterated that, in hearing about the interview, “the DOJ prosecutors thought Flynn was lying, but the FBI didn’t say he wasn’t lying, just that he didn’t exhibit any ‘tells’ that he was lying.”
Yates’s 302 further noted that McCabe had discussed the FBI’s interview of Flynn with Yates. So, it would seem that McCabe also failed to tell Yates that the FBI agents did not think Flynn was lying. Given that Strzok and Pientka briefed McCabe after interviewing Flynn, it is inconceivable that they did not inform McCabe of their assessment that Flynn was not lying.
Did McCabe Lie, Or Did McCord, or Both?
But from declassified materials, it appears that it was not merely McCabe who failed to inform Yates of that important fact. Rather, Mary McCord, who served as the head of the DOJ’s National Security Division, appears to have likewise omitted this significant detail in briefing Yates.
McCord’s 302 stated that “following the Flynn interview, Priestap, Strzok, [Pientka], and FBI General Counsel went to the DOJ to brief them on the interview.” During this meeting, according to McCord’s 302 summary, “Strzok provided a readout of the Flynn interview, since he and another agent had conducted it.”
While McCord’s 302 statement was unclear on what exactly Strzok and Pientka told the DOJ representatives, declassified notes taken by Deputy Assistant Attorney General Tashina Gauhar reveal that during a read-out on January 25, 2017, Strzok and Pientka told McCord (and others) that the FBI assessed that “Flynn believes that what he said was true,” and was being forthright with the agents. The typed Draft Work Product also confirmed that during the January 25, 2017 briefing, the “FBI advised that they believed Flynn believed what he was saying was true.”
Yet it appears that McCord did not inform Yates of this significant fact because, as noted above, Yates’s 302 stated that Yates “did not speak to the interviewing agents herself but understood from others that their assessment was that Flynn showed no ‘tells’ of lying and it was possible he really did not remember the substance of his calls with Kislyak.” Significantly, Yates then said, “the DOJ prosecutors thought Flynn was lying, but the FBI didn’t say he wasn’t lying, just that he didn’t exhibit any ‘tells’ that he was lying.”
Not only did McCord apparently mislead Yates concerning the FBI agents’ assessment of Flynn’s veracity, according to Yates, McCord was “effectively ‘cross examining’ the statements Flynn made to the interviewing agents as compared to the transcripts.” But McCord did more than leave Yates uninformed or misled about the FBI agents’ view that Flynn had not lied: McCord inaccurately summarized the transcript of the calls between Flynn and the Russian ambassador for Yates.
According to McCord’s 302 summary, following Strzok and Pientka’s questioning of Flynn, “McCord reviewed the Flynn transcripts and pulled out excerpts for Yates to reference in the discussion with the White House Counsel’s Office, should they be necessary.” Then, on “January 26, 2017, McCord accompanied Yates to the White House, where they met with White House Counsel Don McGahn and another attorney from his office, James Burham.”
Another Lie: That Flynn Discussed Sanctions
McCord further stated, as summarized in the 302 summary, that Yates “told them that the conversations made it clear that there were discussions on Russian sanctions in those calls, contrary to what Vice President Pence had said on TV.”
But as all Americans (who don’t limit themselves to corporate media reporting) now know with the declassification of the transcripts of Flynn’s calls to Kisylak, Flynn did not discuss Russian sanctions with the Russian ambassador. So Flynn could not possibly have lied to the FBI or to Vice President Mike Pence about discussing sanctions with Kisylak.
So why did Yates think otherwise? Did McCord, who “reviewed the Flynn transcripts” and “pulled out excerpts for Yates” in preparation for the meeting, also mislead Yates about Flynn’s conversation with the ambassador? If so, was it intentional, or was McCord merely a victim of her own confirmation bias?
There is no doubt McCord held a bias: “When McCord left DOJ she was hired by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, serving ‘front and center’ in the whistleblower fraud run by Schiff that later led to the failedattempt to impeach president Trump.”
Intentional or not, Yates regurgitated the false claim to McGahn that Flynn had discussed sanctions with Kisylak and then implied that Flynn had lied to Pence about his conversations with the Russian ambassador. President Trump, believing Flynn had lied to the vice president, then fired Flynn, which was clearly the goal.
Another Tell in Comey’s Testimony
Comey unwittingly gave away the game when he testified before Congress that nothing had happened after President Obama raised Flynn’s conversation with the Russian ambassador during a January 5, 2017 Oval Office meeting also attended by Yates. Comey testified that the following day he had briefed Yates on the calls, and then “nothing, to my mind, happens until the 13th of January, when David Ignatius publishes a column that contains a reference to communications Michael Flynn had with the Russians.”
The reason “nothing happened” was because there was nothing wrong with Flynn’s calls. They were “legitimate,” as Comey put it at the time. It was the illegal leak of the classified intel to Ignatius of Flynn’s conversation with Kislyak that threatened Flynn’s position in the White House, and then only because the FBI questioned Flynn instead of asking him about the transcripts, or sharing the transcripts with the White House to allow the Trump administration to broach the issue with Flynn.
Flynn’s fate, however, was sealed when Yates conveyed to the White House that Flynn had lied to Pence and had been questioned by the FBI. Even then, had Yates conveyed the truth—that the agents believed Flynn had not lied—the Trump administration might have resolved the situation differently.
Instead, though, Obama administration holdovers and partisan career employees succeeded in causing the ouster of the new administration’s pick for national security advisor. And that plot only succeeded because of illegally leaked classified intel. These facts shake the foundation of our constitutional republic and threaten the peaceful transitions of power, and will be a blot on our country’s history long after Flynn obtains some semblance of justice.
Further, the targeting of Flynn was but one thread of the Obama-Biden administration’s attempt to interfere with the Trump administration. The spying on the transition team, the failure to provide Trump defensive briefings, the attempt to sidestep Trump’s attorneys general—successful with Jeff Sessions, but not Barr—and the weaponization of whistleblowing laws to impeach the duly elected president represent the most destructive attack on our government ever.
Come November 2020, Americans should make clear that such interference in their freely chosen commander-in-chief will not profit.
Some comments called for the harm of
the riders, alluding to "a sniper on the Tour," referring to it "'bird
shooting' as they do in Palestine."
French-Israeli member of the French National Assembly Meyer Habib
condemned a recent campaign launched by the BDS organization Palestine
Will Win, which ridiculed and named the French riders of Israel Start-Up
Nation (ISN) - the Israeli professional cycling team - claiming that by
participating in the 2020 Tour de France they are in turn supporting
"Israeli apartheid through sport."
The
campaign, shared reluctantly to Habib's official Facebook account,
called on the public to personally comment and shame the French riders -
notably Rudy Barbier, Hugo Hofstetter and Alexis Renard - for participating in the 2020 Tour, under Israeli colors.
"These three French riders will compete in the Tour de France
under the colors of the 'Israel Startup Nation' group 'To promote the
Israeli apartheid through sports. Do not hesitate to write a comment on
each of their private pages in order to ask them not to participate in
this scandalous activity," the campaign stated.
Some
comments called for the harm of the riders, alluding to "a sniper on
the Tour," referring to the act of gunning down Israel Start-Up Nation
riders as "'bird shooting' as they do in Palestine."Another
BDS organization, AFPS-BDSF, wrote on their official Facebook page that
"twenty organizations of Palestine Collective 63, work for justice and
peace between Israelis and Palestinians. They will distribute flyers on
and around the track, and will promote a number of actions in order to
condemn the Israeli crime laundering enterprise, and the cooperation of
the Tour de France in this matter."
"While the United Arab Emirates have reached a historic peace agreement
with Israel, and many Arab countries are aiming for normalization, the
BDS launches a campaign of hatred and threats, just days before the
start of the 2020 Tour de France, against the Israel Startup Nation
team," Habib said.
"The
Tour de France is a national institution. Since 1903 it has been a
celebration of cycling, a French celebration due to its diversity, the
pleasure of being together and watching exceptional performances. There
is no room for stigma and hatred. Hate ranging from calling for sabotage
to physical aggression and even murder on the backdrop of
Islamic-leftist antisemitism," he added. "Some examples out of hundreds
of responses: 'Sniper on the track,' 'wildlife to be slaughtered,' 'They
want to be everywhere like sewer rats,''throwing nails on the road,'
and more."
Habib noted that he is currently writing to the Interior Minister, and
copying the prime minister, on a request to provide "concrete measures"
against BDS to address the issue and ensure the safety of the Israel
Start-Up Nation riders - who he sends wishes of good fortune to.
"Should
the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics be
mentioned? For years I keep warning: BDS feeds an atmosphere of
antisemitic hatred. It actually influences and encourages the
transition. That same hatred is directed against Israel, against the
Jews of France, the police, the republic, the state and its symbols,"
Habib concluded.
August 28, 2020
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – A riot broke out on
Friday in the southern Swedish town of Malmo, where at least 300 people
had gathered to protest against anti-Islam activities, police said.
Protesters
were throwing objects at police officers and car tyres had been set on
fire, a police spokesman said. Earlier in the day, a copy of the Quran
had been burned in Malmo by right-wing extremists.
“We don’t have this under control but we are working actively to take control,” the spokesman said.
“We see a connection between what is happening now and what happened earlier today,” he said.
The demonstrations had escalated in the same place where the Quran had been burned, the spokesman said.
Daily
Aftonbladet said several anti-Islam activities had taken place in Malmo
on Friday, including three men kicking a copy of the Quran between them
in a public square.
The anti-Islam protests occurred after Rasmus
Paludan, leader of Danish far-right political party Hard Line, had been
denied permission to have a meeting in Malmo and was stopped at the
Swedish border, according to the newspaper.
The
overarching lesson of the triumphant Republican National Convention
this week is that America is great, and that it is good and proper for
an American president to put America first. In that, of course, the RNC
is echoing President Trump’s consistent statements since he began
running for president four years ago. But the President’s America-First
message remains one of the most maligned, misinterpreted, and
misrepresented aspects of his entire program.
In
fact, the president’s primary job is clear from the oath of office that
every president recites in order to assume office, and it isn’t to
provide health care for illegal aliens, or to make sure that Somalia
isn’t riven by civil war, or to make sure America is “diverse.” It is
simply this: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully
execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the
best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the
United States.”
Nonetheless,
this point is hotly controverted. In Donald Trump’s inaugural address
on January 20, 2017, he declared: “From this day forward, a new vision
will govern our land. From this moment on, it’s going to be America
First... We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the
world -- but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all
nations to put their own interests first.”
In
response, neoconservative pundit William Kristol tweeted: “I’ll be
unembarrassedly old-fashioned here: It is profoundly depressing and
vulgar to hear an American president proclaim ‘America First.’”
Eight
months later, at the UN General Assembly, Trump explained that his
guiding principle was simple common sense: “As President of the United
States, I will always put America first, just like you, as the leaders
of your countries will always, and should always, put your countries
first.”
Indeed.
As Trump continued, “All responsible leaders have an obligation to
serve their own citizens, and the nation-state remains the best vehicle
for elevating the human condition.”
That
is axiomatic. Yet Kristol was not alone in his disgust that the
president would use this phrase and make it the principal focus of his
presidency. The idea that “all responsible leaders have an obligation to
serve their own citizens” primarily, rather than those of the world at
large, has been out of fashion since World War II, and in many ways
since World War I. It has been mislabeled, derided, and dismissed as
“isolationism,” a fear or unwillingness to engage with the wider world,
even as it is becoming increasingly interconnected and inter- dependent.
But it does not necessarily mean that America will withdraw from the
world; it only means that in dealing with the world, American presidents
will be looking out primarily for the good of Americans.
The
term “America first” has also been associated, quite unfairly, with
anti-Semitism. This is largely due to the malign legacy of the famous
aviator Charles Lindbergh, who as the spokesman of the antiwar America
First Committee before World War II, railed against the forces that, he
said, were “pressing this country toward war: the British, the Jewish,
and the Roosevelt Administration.” He granted that “No person with a
sense of the dignity of mankind can condone the persecution of the
Jewish race in Germany,” but insisted that “instead of agitating for
war, the Jewish groups in this country should be opposing it in every
possible way, for they will be among the first to feel its
consequences.” Particularly after Pearl Harbor, Lindbergh was widely
accused of anti-Semitism; the America-First principle was tainted by
association with suspicions that to be pro-American meant being
anti-Semitic.
That
connection has been revived and reinforced today by young man named
Nicholas Fuentes, who hosts a podcast entitled America First and has
made classless statements likening Jews to cookies and claiming that it
would have been impossible in the span of World War II to bake as many
cookies as the number of Jews murdered during the Holocaust. His
supporters insist that he isn’t anti-Semitic and doesn’t deny the
Holocaust, and that these claims are exaggerated by his enemies.
However, in this video
from November 2019, Fuentes mockingly affirms that he does not deny the
Holocaust, and repeats several times the baseless claim that if he did
deny it, he would be murdered, as he claims other Holocaust-deniers have
been.
This
video is repulsive and stupid: Holocaust deniers are not being murdered
and are not cowering in fear for their lives. Fuentes is either
dishonest or misinformed, and he certainly doesn’t have anything to do
with any genuine America-First principle.
The
founding principles of the republic, notably the proposition that, as
the Declaration of Independence puts it, “all men are created equal, and
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,” shows that
putting America first has nothing to do with such petty and irrational
hatreds.
And far from the America-First being some eccentric minority view that Trump has borrowed from “extremists,” Rating America’s Presidents
shows that the Founding Fathers and every president up until Woodrow
Wilson took for granted that the president of the United States should
put his nation first and would have thought it strange in the extreme
that this idea should even be controversial.
The
controversial nature of Donald Trump’s policies and personality as well
as decades of conditioning have made many people suspicious of the
phrase America First, but what should an American president put first if
not the interests of his people? Even internationalism was originally
sold to the American people as being the best course to follow for the
protection of America and its people.
Today
there is more reason to revisit and embrace the America-First principle
than there has been in a century. Socialism and nationalism have found
favor among some Americans since before the First World War. Nowadays,
however, although the entire Democratic Party is embracing socialism, it
is still massively discredited as a political philosophy. Its sister
ideology, internationalism, is facing more opposition today than it has
since before World War II.
Accordingly,
it’s time the assumptions of the likes of William Kristol and the Left
were challenged openly, and the America-First principle reclaimed. This
is all the more important to do in light of the fact that several
generations of American children have now been raised to despise the
Founding Fathers as racist slaveowners and to consider American history
to be one long record of racism, imperialism, and oppression. It’s time
we put America First again in no small part by recalling what made
America great.
For about six months, the country has been beset by Karens of all shapes and sizes hectoring us about wearing face masks. This has become nothing more than a political Rohrschach test. There as much evidence, literally, showing that masks to harm as there is showing that they do good. Basic logic tells you that if you can breathe out, you can expel virus-laden moisture. Math tells you the diameter of the virus is orders of magnitude smaller than the smallest opening between mask fibers. This is very much like wearing the red ribbon when AIDS was a huge deal, and we were supposed to believe that you can have an epidemic without having casual transmission of a virus (sorry, in most areas of the world’s landmass outside a San Francisco bathhouse, butt sex is not considered “casual”). Right thinking people wore the lapel ribbon to show their solidarity with the suffering. Now we have additional proof that wearing masks has little to no medical value and is all about making people buy into the virus scaremongering.
Today on the little-watched and never-noticed Anderson Cooper program, Cooper was talking to a Dr. Rob Davidson, who styles himself “Dr. Rob.”
COOPER Let’s talk about that with Dr. Rob Davidson. He’s an emergency room physician, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Medicare. Doctor, I’m wondering what you thought of the scene at the White House where there weren’t many masks, also to point out the protest today, a lot of people wearing masks not social distancing though, obviously not uh not what it should be.
DAVIDSON Yeah, I was very concerned about the White House event last night; people packed shoulder-to-shoulder; the head of the White House Coronavirus Task Force in attendance without a mask, with his family his elderly mother without a Mask. And it’s concerning. We know people weren’t tested. Only people in direct contact with President Trump had testing done. So I think we’re going to see cases come out of that and it’s just modeling bad behavior. Now when we juxtapose that to what’s happening in Washington dc, right now, people are mostly wearing masks. Now, true, there are social distancing issues. However, this is a public health crisis. They are marching against systemic racism has taken so many lives in this country throughout our history. If you’re born black in this country in, you have a three and a half year lower life expectancy than if you’re born white. If you’re a young black man, you have a one in one thousand chance of being shot by police three times more than if you’re born White. So I think that when you’re marching against a public health emergency, I just think you do every risk mitigation procedure you can but we understand that we have to do the risk-benefit analysis and those folks are there doing something very important today.
Just some minor points here that illustrate the extent to which people who call themselves doctors are willing to gaslight you in order to push an agenda.
First, his numbers on police shootings are absolute bullsh**. They are so wrong that calling them wrong is a disservice to mere wrongness. Dr. Rob is either a malicious liar willing do deceive a credulous Anderson Cooper audience to advance a political agenda or he’s a slobbering moron who can’t be allowed to handle anything sharper than a basketball. There is no middle ground.
Oh, okay, that explains it:
CNN did not identify Rob Davidson as a former Democrat candidate for Congress. Only as “emergency room physician” who is giving selective and dangerous medical advice apparently. https://t.co/ohtgRT7DLPpic.twitter.com/pYcWdyTnrV
Second, though he’s right about risk assessment, he forgets who gets to make that judgment. We do. It is our risk. A virus doesn’t care if it is transmitted during a righteous event or a reprehensible event. The people attending the event get to make that choice. Going to President Trump’s nomination speech was a historic event. Hanging out with a bunch of shiftless Trotskyite wannabes listening to a collection of PPV grifters talk about how tough life is, is not historic.
I feel very much about face masks like the late fighter pilot and MilBlogger Carroll LeFon, aka Neptunus Lex, felt about the backseater in an F-14. “Every fighter pilot,” he wrote, “who needs a backseater should be allowed to have one.” If you need a mask to make it through the day without wetting yourself, well, by all means wear it, Scooter. Just don’t expect me to go along with your fantasy. And if me not having a mask disturbs you, stay six f***ing feet away and we’ll both be happy. If me not wearing a mask is killing you, then why aren’t you dead yet?
Glenn Beck Makes Stunning Recovery from Trump Derangement Syndrome
Glenn Beck has been one of the most vocal Never Trumpers in America.
Beck declared in 2016 that Donald Trump is an “immoral man who is absent
decency or dignity.” He voted for Evan McMullin for president rather
than vote for Trump. At one point, Beck compared himself to the prophet Jeremiah. Really.
Later in the show, a questioner suggested that Americans
were turning away from God. Beck said he’d been thinking a lot about the
prophet Jeremiah, who vainly warned the Israelite kings that
catastrophe was near. Finally, when the Babylonians were about to sack
Jerusalem, Jeremiah urged the Israelites to accept national enslavement,
because it was God’s will. Beck saw a contemporary lesson: “Sometimes
you have to pay the price for what you’ve done.” Then he started talking
about Donald Trump’s assault on the Bill of Rights.
He was seriously infected with Trump Derangement syndrome every bit
as cancerous as whatever is eating Rachel Maddow. No one ever expected
him to recover. His case seemed terminal. But the Republican National
Convention seems to have infused him with some kind of disinfectant that
opened his eyes to his uncharitable behavior and he issued a multi-part
apology that is quite stunning.
It’s a rare thing that a person recognizes the darkness in themselves
rather than projecting it onto others, but Beck has done just that. In
terms of an apology, his is how it should be done. Today, too many
people think an apology sounds like this: “I’m sorry you were offended.”
That’s not an apology.
Beck’s apology focused on what he did wrong. He confessed his bad
behavior and then he offered a sincere apology for it. The best part,
that all the president’s rabid critics who dehumanize him need to hear,
was when Beck wrote, “What haunts me this week is how my words must have
hit his children. How did I miss the sharpness of my judgment without
consideration of family?” The entire statement is below. If you ever
need an example of a great apology for teaching purposes, this one is
pretty perfect.
1). I am feeling so humbled this week. I feel truly horrible for the things I said and believed in 2016 about @realDonaldTrump . I believed the worst politically, which he proved me wrong at almost every turn. In the most dramatic cases (life/Israel/China/authoritarian) cont
2. I expected @realDonaldTrump to take control federally at the first opportunity. Here we are in a massive crisis. Bush ‘violated the free market to save the free market.’ Trump could have violated federalism to ‘save federalism’ yet he has stood firm through COVID. Con’t
3. But let me cut to the chase. I believed he actually didn’t care about people. When @realDonaldTrump called me after my fathers death, I assigned the motive to politics - AND SAID SO. What haunts me this week is how my words must have hit his children. How ... con’t
4. Did I miss, the sharpness of my ‘judgement’ without consideration of family. Me? A guy who has lived it from his side. I wanted to end my interview with @realDonaldTrump son this week w/ a personal apology, who had spent 20 minutes with me as if we were old friends. Con’t
5. I didn’t want to embarrass myself in the end and failed to do the right thing again. I don’t regret my doubts or expressing my concern in 16, but the fact that I missed his humanity and was blind to his family. I said at the time, ‘I hope I am wrong and will...’ con’t
6. Will be the first to admit it.’I did. On air and personally to the president himself.But it was all about politics. I knew he loved his children and they him. What I failed to see, is the reason I think they love him. @realDonaldTrump is a loud New Yorker with a private heart
