Hiding Biden: How Democrats Crafted First Impeachment, Helping Defeat Trump With Media Help

By Mark Hemingway for RealClearInvestigations

By the numbers, Joe Biden is president of the United States because he won the swing states of Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin by a combined total of some 43,000 votes.

But he also owes his victory to the groundwork laid by Democrats and their media allies one year before, during the first impeachment of Donald Trump over his supposedly strings-attached demand that the Ukrainian government investigate alleged corruption involving Biden’s son, Hunter.

The first impeachment failed to oust Trump from office, but it helped secure the White House for Biden.

It shielded him from scrutiny, enabling him and his supporters to cast allegations during the campaign about dubious Biden family business ties as rehashed Trumpian conspiracy theories.

RELATED: Democrats Are The Party Of Make Believe

Biden’s razor-thin swing state victories might not have materialized if the Trump campaign had been able to gain traction from its October Surprise – a series of articles it helped orchestrate in the New York Post that reported information from a laptop owned by Hunter Biden suggesting corrupt foreign business deals that may have involved his father.

As many as 45% of Biden voters said they were unaware of Hunter’s financial scandals before the election.

That’s likely because Democrats and much of the media discredited or did not report the accusations in the final weeks of the campaign – accusations that were bolstered after the election when Hunter admitted that he has been the subject of an ongoing federal corruption probe since 2018.

Once the Post ran its first laptop article on Oct. 14, Democrats and their allies immediately turned to the narrative they had long used against Trump: foreign interference.

Without evidence save for the claims of Democrat partisans and anonymous official sources — like those commonly relied upon during the debunked Trump-Russia affair — the New York TimesWashington Post, and Politico ran stories suggesting the laptop could be Russian disinformation.

Joe Biden said the laptop was a “Russian plan” at the first presidential debate.

The FBI, which was a main driver of the Trump-Russia collusion investigation, added to the narrative when word was leaked that the bureau was investigating whether the laptop emails were Russian disinformation.

Twitter and Facebook reacted by actively censoring the Hunter Biden story. Twitter went so far as to lock the New York Post out of its own account.

As the Senate prepares next week to take up a second impeachment of Trump, Republican objections to the Democrats’ handling of the first go-round loom large.

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The record of those proceedings shows that they were conducted in a highly unusual manner. In retrospect, it seems clear that they were designed not just to target Trump – but to protect Biden.

Taking Early Aim

Some Democrats were bent on impeaching Trump from the moment he took office, on Jan. 20, 2017. Just 19 minutes after Trump was sworn in, the Washington Post published a piece headlined, “The Campaign to Impeach President Trump Has Begun.”  

Those early efforts were spearheaded by Texas Rep. Al Green, who drew up articles of impeachment for alleged misdeeds ranging from Trump’s insulting kneeling professional football players to his firing of former FBI Director James Comey.

Green’s effort led to three different unsuccessful impeachment votes — one in 2017 and two more in 2019 after Democrats gained a House majority in the 2018 election.

Publicly, Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders said they did not approve of Green’s efforts.

“Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country,” the House speaker told the Washington Post in March 2019.

Privately, Democratic leaders were betting Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump-Russia collusion would produce a clearly impeachable offense.  

They were wrong.

RELATED: New Evidence Implicates FBI Higher-Ups In Anti-Trump Lawyer’s Document Falsification

After three years of thorough investigation – as well as thousands of breathless articles and untold hours of TV coverage keyed toward Trump’s prospective guilt – Mueller’s final report, issued in March 2019, concluded that the probe “[did] not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

Mueller did not make a determination of whether Trump had tried to obstruct his investigation. Looking at the evidence, Attorney General William Barr determined he had not.

Nevertheless, some powerful Democrats sought to use the Mueller report as the basis to impeach Trump, only to be rebuffed by Pelosi. 

The speed of what happened next blindsided Republicans. 

The Ukraine Affair

In early August, a CIA employee filed a formal whistleblower complaint against President Trump aimed at forcing Congress to address the matter.

He alleged that Trump had pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a July 25 phone call to investigate the Bidens for political purposes, and subsequently made aid to Ukraine contingent on the probe.

Trump reportedly raised the issue because he believed there had never been any serious inquiry into why Hunter Biden, a lawyer with no experience in the energy sector, had been paid upwards of $80,000 a month to serve on the board of a Ukrainian gas company, Burisma.

RELATED: Intelligence Panel Republicans: Swalwell ‘Compromised’ by Fang Ties

Hunter received the appointment in 2014, shortly after his father was asked to oversee Ukrainian affairs as Barack Obama’s vice president. In 2016, Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in aid to Ukraine unless it fired a prosecutor widely considered to be ineffective.

The fired prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, testified that he was driven from office because he was investigating Burisma.

“There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son,” Trump told Zelensky, “that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it. … It sounds horrible to me.”

At the time of the whistleblower complaint, Biden was favored to win the Democratic nomination for president.

However, the allegations regarding the Trump phone call with Zelensky were problematic from the start. The man who brought the complaint was not really a whistleblower as the term is commonly understood.

He had no direct knowledge of the phone call but had been leaked details of it by one of the seven American officials who were on the call with the president.

The Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel, whose legal opinions are normally binding on these matters, soon concluded the whistleblower complaint did not meet the requirements of an “urgent concern”  for it to be forwarded to Congress.

Meanwhile, Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, worked to surface the details of the complaint publicly. He recast obstacles to legitimizing the whistleblower’s complaint as attempts to hide Trump’s malfeasance.

When the White House ultimately made a transcript of the call public, Trump’s rhetorical style, an odd combination of obliqueness and bluntness, made the idea of a quid pro quo – no Biden investigation, no aid — open to interpretation.

Officials from Ukraine, which did not open an investigation, said they never felt pressured by Trump

Despite the procedural problems with the whistleblower complaint, it provided a semblance of formal process to buttress an all-new impeachment attempt. 

RELATED: Hunter Biden News Should Shame Dismissive Media Outlets

Progressives and much of the media cast the call as an abuse of power by Trump who, they claimed, tried to extort a foreign leader to kneecap a political rival. A formal House impeachment inquiry was launched on Sept. 24, 2019, with the full support of Democratic House leadership.

From the beginning, the impeachment inquiry was rife with episodes suggesting Democrats had a larger strategy. To begin with, they took an unprecedented amount of control over the process.

With the 2020 election and the prospect of a second Trump term looming, there would be no years-long special counsel or nonpartisan investigation of this matter.

While the Judiciary Committee, led by Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, was the traditional venue for impeachment, Democrats decided that Schiff would guide the impeachment inquiry through the Intelligence Committee.

Schiff, who had raised his national profile during the Mueller probe by repeatedly claiming that he had seen more than circumstantial evidence that Trump had colluded with Russia, had already acquired a reputation for fierce partisanship.

In early October, shortly after the impeachment inquiry began, the  New York Times reported that Schiff’s office had helped shepherd the alleged whistleblower’s complaint.

The Washington Post fact-checker gave Schiff “four Pinocchios” for repeatedly denying his office’s contact with the man. Nevertheless, Schiff received glowing press coverage for his impeachment efforts.

The mainstream press further enabled impeachment by refusing to publish the whistleblower’s name, in line with Democrat admonitions, even though he wasn’t formally protected by any whistleblower laws.

RELATED: Why The 2020 Election Was Neither Free Nor Fair

News organizations disclosed no agreements of source confidentiality with the man, and his identity was common knowledge in Washington.  

When Paul Sperry of RealClearInvestigations reported the evidence that the whistleblower was a then-33-year-old CIA employee named Eric Ciaramella, this news blackout by major media allowed them to ignore his history of partisan ties and anti-Trump statements.

Sperry reported that Ciaramella had served as an adviser on Ukraine to Vice President Biden and had been overheard in 2017 discussing with another staffer how to “take out,” or remove, the new president from office.

That colleague was Sean Misko, who left the White House in the summer of 2019 to join House impeachment manager Schiff’s committee, where, sources say, he offered “guidance” to the whistleblower. 

Aside from Schiff’s backstage dealings with Ciaramella, the Intelligence Committee chairman publicly tried to spin Trump’s alleged wrongdoing.

On Sept. 26, the day after the Trump-Zelensky transcript was released, Schiff gave an opening statement before acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire testified before his committee.

During the statement, Schiff, who had once been an aspiring screenwriter, characterized the president’s behavior on the Zelensky call as being like “a classic organized crime shakedown.” Instead of reading the plain text of the call, Schiff paraphrased what happened in hyperbolic and lurid terms.

“I have a favor I want from you,” Schiff said while seeming to read from a transcript. “And I’m going to say this only seven times, so you better listen good. I want you to make up dirt on my political opponent, understand? Lots of it, on this and on that.”

Republicans were appalled.

“He makes up a conversation supposedly between the president and Ukraine which sounds like a script from a cheap comic book. Lies and innuendo. He was called out on it and said, well, I meant it as a parody. Geez, that’s great. The fun begins,” Utah Congressman Chris Stewart would record in his journal, as quoted in “Obsession,” Washington Examiner reporter Byron York’s book on Democrats’ years-long quest to remove Trump from office.

RELATED: The FBI Spying Denial That Never Grows Cold

Leaking Testimony

To make the case for impeachment, it was crucial for Democrats to demonstrate the existence of a quid pro quo between Trump and Zelensky, which was ambiguous because Trump never mentioned aid on the call.  

Schiff responded to the Volker testimony by taking even more unprecedented steps for Democrats to control the impeachment proceedings. Volker had sat for what was known as a “transcribed interview,” which allowed Republicans to speak about the testimony afterward.

After Volker, Schiff made sure all the witnesses in the impeachment inquiry were deposed, forbidding committee members from discussing what was said publicly.

But the secrecy rules had a convenient and glaring exception – the witnesses themselves could speak about what happened. “The sessions settled into a pattern of secret testimony accompanied by quick leaks of witnesses’ opening statements,” York observes in “Obsession.”

The leaked, one-sided testimonies allowed press speculation to run wild, while House Republicans who knew the particulars were subject to ethics charges if they told the public what had actually been said. 

The DNC-Ukraine Nexus

For Democrats, Biden was a fraught issue in the impeachment proceedings. One obvious defense of Trump was for Republicans to argue that the president’s questions about Biden family corruption in Ukraine were legitimate and necessary to protect national security.

Under questioning, multiple witnesses called by Democrats conceded that Hunter Biden’s role with Burisma was concerning, leading to calls for Hunter to testify in the proceedings. (During the subsequent Senate impeachment trial, one Democratic senator, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, said Hunter Biden was a relevant witness.)

RELATED: Biden’s Dilemma: Unify The Country Or Impeach President Trump?

Democrats rejected calls to question Hunter Biden, Ciaramella, and others.

“I think we really could have torpedoed impeachment by making the whistleblower detail all of his prior contacts with Schiff and also his prior contacts with Biden as well,” said a Republican House staffer with intimate knowledge of the proceedings who requested anonymity because he did not want to speak for elected officials.

Democrats also shut down Republican attempts to probe the Democratic Party’s own troubling connections to Ukraine during impeachment. 

A Politico investigation published in January 2017 “found evidence of Ukrainian government involvement in the [2016] race that appears to strain diplomatic protocol dictating that governments refrain from engaging in one another’s elections.”

The article, written by David Stern and Kenneth Vogel, the latter now at the New York Times, reported that Ukrainian officials had helped Hillary “Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers,” including his campaign manager, Paul Manafort.

Key to this effort was a Democratic National Committee operative, Alexandra Chalupa, who met with Ukrainian officials and American journalists in Washington and was invited to the White House by Biden’s Ukraine pointman – the future “whistleblower” Ciaramella.

(Chalupa wasn’t the only Democratic operative pushing Manafort dirt originating in Ukraine at about the same time. So was Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS, the Democratic contractor behind the discredited Steele dossier on Trump-Russia collusion. He has acknowledged feeding the media Ukraine tips in “Crime in Progress,” the book he co-wrote with his Fusion co-founder Peter Fritsch.) 

But even though Politico’s reporting on Ukraine and the DNC was largely unquestioned for three years, the media once again sprang to Democrats’ defense as Republicans sought to make an issue of it.

In the end, Schiff’s secrecy and tight control over who got to testify allowed House Democrats to sidestep any explosive questions about the chairman’s role in instigating impeachment, the DNC’s involvement with Ukraine, and Biden’s potential role in his son’s corruption.

RELATED: A Quiet Totalitarian Revolution

Ultimately, the Senate refused to convict Trump and many Republicans believed that it did little to harm him politically.

“Not a single Democrat speaker referenced impeachment during any of the convention, which is a really amazing thing,” the GOP staffer noted. “That just shows me they didn’t get a whole lot of political benefit out of it.”

Shielding Joe

But if impeachment failed to tarnish Trump as much as Democrats hoped, it appeared successful in delegitimizing valid questions about alleged Biden corruption.

After impeachment, the mainstream media showed almost no interest in investigating Biden family business ties, which were largely characterized as a series of unsubstantiated and debunked allegations.

Christiane Amanpour of PBS expressed the prevailing view in an interview with Republican National Committee spokesperson Liz Harrington when she said “there has never been any issues in terms of corruption” with the Bidens.

After Harrington disagreed and urged journalists to look into the story, Amanpour responded: “We’re not going to do your work for you.”

Some coverage transformed the potential scandals into a positive for Biden. At a campaign event in Iowa, a Democratic voter asked the candidate in December 2019 about allegations of his son’s corruption.

In response, Biden called the voter a “damn liar” and challenged him to an IQ test. CNN national political reporter Maeve Reston characterized the exchange this way: “In a human moment defending his son, Biden showed the authenticity, emotion and readiness for a fight that appeals to so many Democrats as they look for someone who can take on Trump.”

Last September, when a Senate intelligence panel report revealed that a firm co-founded by Hunter Biden received a $3.5-million wire transfer from the wife of a Russian politician, the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and MSNBC did not cover the story.

When Trump raised the issue at the first presidential debate, Biden claimed it had been “totally discredited” even though its existence was confirmed by Treasury Department documents.

This news blackout may have helped propel Biden to victory, but questions regarding the Bidens have not gone away.

There is the laptop, which, far from Russian disinformation, did indeed belong to Hunter Biden, who in December admitted he has been the subject of a federal corruption probe since 2018.

RELATED: To Win The Narrative Battle, Conservatives Should Learn From The Left

Other evidence and testimony implicate President Biden. Tony Bobulinski, a former naval officer and business partner with Hunter Biden, asserted in October that he met with the senior Biden as part of a plan to secretly give the future president a 10% stake in a deal with a Chinese conglomerate with ties to the country’s communist government.

Bobulinski has provided documents to back up his account and news outlets such as the Wall Street Journal have confirmed they are authentic.

President Biden seems aware of the danger of family embarrassments, including from a January 2020 FBI raid involving allegations of financial fraud at a company where Biden’s brother James was listed as “principal.” 

Politico reported last week that the president had pulled his brother Frank aside last summer to tell him, “For Christ’s sake, watch yourself. Don’t get sucked into something that would, first of all, hurt you.”

On Inauguration Day, a law firm’s ad promoting Frank Biden’s relationship with the president caused a new stir.

Such Biden family matters, and Republicans’ awareness that their concealment may have helped seal Trump’s defeat, color Democrats’ long-shot efforts next week to convince at least 17 senators of the opposite party to join their legally and politically fraught effort to convict a president in an impeachment trial after he has left office.

Republicans think the Democrats’ handling of the first impeachment poisoned the well.

“Republican fence sitters are probably already on the record denouncing the unfairness of the House process last time around, since both GOP House members and senators were doing that,” says a GOP staffer who insisted on anonymity. “So if that process was unfair, how can you trust Democrats enough to sign off on impeachment 2.0, when there wasn’t even any process to speak of at all?”

A number of House Democrats involved in the first impeachment declined to comment on their Republican colleagues’ concerns.

In a recent vote, 45 Republican senators went on record saying they did not believe impeaching a former president was constitutional.

Even prominent Senate Democrats, such as 2016 vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine, are advocating censuring Donald Trump for fear that a bitter and drawn out impeachment trial is not only futile but will hamper Biden’s ability to get his administration up and running during the crucial early months of the presidency.  

Congressional Republicans, for their part, have shown no signs of dropping efforts begun in the first impeachment to investigate what they see as clear Biden family corruption – even after Trump’s second impeachment.

Prominent Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Lindsey Graham and Charles Grassley, recently told Fox News they plan to ask Joe Biden’s nominee for attorney general, Merrick Garland, about the Hunter Biden corruption probe during his nomination hearing. 

Syndicated with permission from RealClearWire.

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Reports Of Donald Trump’s Political Demise Are Greatly Exaggerated

In 1897, a newspaper in New York printed the obituary for American novelist Mark Twain. The only problem? Twain was in London on a speaking tour and very much alive.

When asked about the printing of the obituary by a reporter, Twain famously quipped, “the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”

For the last few weeks, the mainstream media and the Republican establishment have told us repeatedly that Donald Trump’s political career and his influence over the GOP is at an end.

RELATED: President Trump’s Farewell Speech: ‘We Will Be Back’

GOP Establishment, Media Want Trump Gone

Writing in the National Review this week, noted ‘NeverTrumper’ Dan McLaughlin said, “for the first time in five years, it is possible to propose or promote conservative ideas without having to go through or around Donald Trump.”

McLaughlin went on to note:

Trump’s influence will linger to an extent that is yet to be tested, but unless and until he returns to win another presidential nomination, his monopoly over the Republican Party — over its access to power, its communications with voters, its reputation and ideals — is broken.

This is far from the first time that the press has told us that Trump’s political future is at an end. Indeed, this is probably closer to the 100th time they have made this proclamation.

From the very first day he came down the escalator to announce his candidacy, to his attack on John McCain, to the floor fights at the convention, to the Access Hollywood tapes, to the Russia hoax, to the Ukraine hoax, to the first impeachment, and the list goes on and on and on and on.

The cycle of these stories is always the same. Event happens, event gets completely blown out of proportion by the media, establishment Republicans pile on Trump hoping to finally get rid of him, and in the end – Trump ends up just as popular, if not even more popular, with his base.

RELATED: Poll: Republican Voters Are Siding With Trump Over Mitch McConnell

Trump Supporters Can’t Be Tricked Or Browbeaten

This cycle of “the end of Trump” is no different than the first 99, and the outcome – much to the disappointment of Dan McLaughlin and the rest of the Trump Deranged – will be no different either.

Donald Trump will emerge from this “scandal” with an even stronger and more committed base.

Why? The answer, is actually not that difficult to discern. For Trump supporters, this isn’t about Trump, it’s about them. They rightfully see the attacks on Trump as attacks on them – and with good reason.

Since Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” comment back in 2016 up until today, the left, the mainstream media and the establishment GOP has orchestrated an unprecedented attack on the voters who support Trump.

Instead of focusing on policy differences with Trump, they have instead lobbed attack after attack on the people who elected Trump in the first place.

They have accused Trump supporters of being hillbillies, racists, xenophobes, bigots, and now seditionists.

CNN host Don Lemon recently went as far as to accuse all Trump supporters of being on the side of Nazis and the KKK:

“If you voted for Trump, you voted for the person who the Klan supported. You voted for the person who Nazis support. You voted for the person who the alt-right supports. You voted for the person who incited a crowd to go into the Capitol and potentially take the lives of lawmakers … You voted on that side, and the people in Washington are continuing to vote on that side.”

RELATED: Report: Trust in Media Just Hit An All-Time Low

It’s Not Trump They Hate – It’s YOU

By failing to focus their attacks solely on Trump, but instead choosing to attack his voters as well, every single one of these hyperbolic “scandals” fail to actually do long-term damage to Trump and to his brand.

Indeed, these “scandals” have quite the opposite effect, serving only to deepen and harden Trump’s support among his base.

The reports of Donald Trump’s political demise are greatly exaggerated, and the mainstream media, the left and the establishment of the Republican Party can thank themselves for keeping Trump’s brand and power intact.

The post Reports Of Donald Trump’s Political Demise Are Greatly Exaggerated appeared first on The Political Insider.

CNN Asks Biden Spokeswoman If Admin Will Deny Access To News Outlets That ‘Lie’ About Biden

On Wednesday night, Biden’s Communications Director Kate Bedingfield was asked by CNN’s Alisyn Camerota if the Biden administration would deny access to news outlets should they decide to “lie” about Biden.

Camerota referred to Biden’s inaugural speech, in which he stated, “Recent weeks and months have taught us a painful lesson. There is truth and there are lies. Lies told for power and for profit.”

Camerota made it clear who she was referring to: “They are right-wing companies, some are more fringe than others, at this point, or more extreme than others.”

RELATED: Katie Couric Asks How We’ll ‘Deprogram People Who Signed Up For The Cult Of Trump?’

Will The Biden Administration Determine Who is ‘Lying?’

In response, Bedingfield said, “Now obviously, if media companies are willfully lying or are not carrying forth straightforward honest information from the president when we make him available, or from administration officials when we make them available, then, of course, that’s something we are going to think about and we’re going to factor in.”

Bedingfield also stated the commitment of her office to, “use all sorts of creative platforms, that we’re going to be able to reach out in all sorts of ways to meet people where they are. We love viewers who watch CNN, but we also love viewers who don’t watch CNN.”

Bedingfield didn’t elaborate what “factoring in” might mean for an outlet that “lies” about Biden.

CNN wasn’t the only outlet with commentary on the First Amendment.

MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace, a former Communications Director herself in the George W. Bush administration, offered up an idea that to avoid the dangers of “echo chambers.”

Under the Wallace plan, a “Republican must assert the truth before they’re allowed to share any other views.”

Wallace likened “fake news” to counterfeit currency, and added that, “If we can protect against counterfeit dollar bills, we should be able to protect against fake news that we now know has the potential to kill people as it did two weeks ago.”

Wallace referring to the violence that took place at the Capitol building on Jan. 6 as Congress prepared to count electoral votes and officially certify the election. 

RELATED: CNN Journalist Says Reflecting Pool Looks Like “Extension Of Joe Biden’s Arms Embracing America.”  

Field Day For The News Media

Also on Wednesday, Biden Press Secretary Jen Psaki held her first press conference.

The White House Press Corps proved their commitment for speaking truth to power and holding government officials accountable.,

One reporter asked what ‘measures’ the press ‘took to ensure that the President is safe’ from lingering Trump officials’ germs. 

Another tough question was, “Can you just give us some color about what it was like for him going into the Oval Office? He’s been waiting for this for so long. what was his reaction?”

Perhaps the best window into what’s to come came from this hard-hitting question: 

“Will Biden keep Donald Trump’s Air Force One color scheme change?”

Psaki was delighted to engage the question.

The toughest question went to Fox News’s Peter Doocy who posed the question,”So, President Biden wants a theme of his presidency to be unifying the country, does he think that Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer should drop a potentially divisive Senate impeachment trial?” 

Psaki made sure the American people knew exactly where Joe Biden stood by transparently responding, “His view is the way to bring the country together is to address the problems we’re facing.”

RELATED: ABC Quietly Edits Story That Claims Republican Movement Should Be “Cleansed” Of Trump Supporters

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ABC Quietly Edits Story That Claims Republican Movement Should Be ‘Cleansed’ Of Trump Supporters

An ABC News column written by Rick Klein and MaryAlice Parks was quietly edited after it originally argued for “cleansing” the movement of Trump supporters.

“Even aside from impeachment and 25th Amendment talk, Trump will be an ex-president in 13 days. The fact is that getting rid of Trump is the easy part,” they argued in a column for a section called ‘The Note.’

“Cleansing the movement he commands, or getting rid of what he represents to so many Americans, is going to be something else,” it continued.

Klein also tweeted a column with the original phrasing about Trump supporters quoted.

ABC quietly changed the verbiage in the column to “cleaning up,” while Klein simply deleted the tweet.

RELATED: Federal Prosecutor Could Bring Criminal Charges Against President Trump For Capitol Violence

ABC Reporter Wants Trump Supporters “Cleansed”

Nothing quite says ‘unity’ like the media suggesting that Republicans “cleanse” themselves of Trump supporters – 75 million strong.

The Media Research Center’s Nick Kangadis writes that Klein “can celebrate that Trump is leaving office all he wants.”

“But it is the height of hypocrisy for those in the media to condemn others for violent acts that are dwarfed in comparison to the consistent violence of the far-left — one act doesn’t justify the other — and then go out and call for something like a ‘cleansing’ of people and think there’s nothing wrong with a statement like that,” he added.

It wasn’t long before viewers were able to draw a link between past instances of ethnic cleansing and the call for a political cleansing.

ABC Suggested It, Big Tech Is Actually Doing It

Amid threats of the 25th Amendment being invoked and a second impeachment vote cleared the House, it seems there is a push to completely wipe out any memory of the Trump administration.

Big Tech has been dutifully following the demands of former First Lady Michelle Obama who insisted social media permanently ban President Trump from their platforms.

They did, but weren’t about to stop with the President. They’re going after Trump supporters too.

Thousands of conservatives have reportedly been ‘cleansed’ from Twitter’s platform since the Capitol riots took place.

“The radical left and their big tech allies cannot marginalize, censor, or silence the American people,” former White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said.

“This is not China, this is the United States of America, and we are a free country.”

They’re certainly trying their best to ‘cleanse’ America of the conservative moment. Communist China would be so proud.

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MSNBC’s Joy Reid Claims Capitol Police Went Easy On ‘White’ Protesters, Ignores Killed Woman

While the entire nation is still reeling from the events on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021, MSNBC’s Joy Reid has claimed that Capitol Police wouldn’t have gone as easy on black protesters.

What started out as a peaceful protest by patriots concerned for the future of their nation, suddenly turned violent by the afternoon.

The Capitol building itself was breached by those who came to do nothing but to stir up trouble and commit violent acts. With any luck, those culprits will be brought to justice.

But it got worse than that. People lost their lives.

We can wax poetic about how they gave their lives for their nation doing what is every American citizen’s right to do, protest.

But we are learning that, even at times like this, it all depends on who you are when it comes to whether or not people will be outraged, or even hear about it.

RELATED: Barack Obama Says Conservative Media ‘Ecosystem’ Is To Blame For Trump Supporters Storming Capitol

The Mainstream Media Doing What It Does Best

On Wednesday, as the chaos erupted in Washington D.C., the mainstream media, particularly MSNBC, and even more particularly, Joy Reid, did what they, and she, do best: make everything a race issue.

As Capitol Police clashed with protesters, Joy made the observation that perhaps the police were giving the protesters a free pass.

Why….wait for it….because they are white. Yep, you guessed it, the protesters were unafraid of the police because the police feel like the protesters are just like them….or something.

Reid said, “White Americans are never afraid of the cops, even when they’re committing insurrection.”

Joy continued on about how protesters broke in “because they think they own it”.

RELATED: Ilhan Omar, Squad Members Call For Trump’s Impeachment, Expulsion Of Republican Lawmakers

Racist Cops?

Here is where things get a little sticky for Joy. As everyone now knows, things went from bad to worse by Wednesday afternoon.

As protesters made their way into the Capital building, Ashli Babbit of San Diego, and a 14-year veteran of the Air Force, was shot and killed by Capitol Police.

This is a terrible tragedy that should not have happened. But let’s look at what we know. Ashli Babbit had come from across the country to gather with her fellow Americans, to support President Donald Trump.

The fact is that she was unarmed, and she was shot by police. Why?

Will there be looting and violence on the streets, and people demanding “justice for Ashli”? No, there will not. Can Joy explain why that is?

Why are we not going to hear Joy go on and on…and on about the injustice of it all? Do the differences really need to be pointed out?

Not only is Ashli Babbit a conservative, even worse, she was apparently Trump supporter. Does her skin color factor in? It is the elephant in the room no one will mention. Can Joy pinpoint which of these things causes her life not to matter? 

Joy Reid and the rest of the mainstream media goons gleefully reported on every city that burned over the summer and told us all it was because of racist cops. But that will not happen this time.

Ashli Babbit’s family will bury her, and unfortunately, because cops are human and have seconds to make a decision, more unarmed people will be shot. It’s just a fact.

But we now know there are criteria for that story being heard.

Hypocrisy at it’s finest.

RELATED: Report: House Members Nearly Come To Blows As Congress Preaches Unity To America

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Congress, Journalists Rank Among Worst Professions For Honesty And Ethics According To Survey

A new Gallup poll asking Americans to rank the honesty and ethics of different professions placed journalists and members of Congress low amongst groups such as car salesmen.

Congressional members actually tied car salespeople with a mere 8 percent rating them highly, with advertising practitioners coming it slightly better at 10 percent.

Rounding out low-ranking groups were business executives at 17 percent, lawyers at 21 percent, and journalists at 28 percent.

The top two professions should come as no surprise in a normal year, let alone in the midst of a historic pandemic – nurses at 89 percent and doctors at 77 percent.

Police officers came in at number five, with 52 percent.

With police officers being the subject of defunding pushes by the left and the media, one has to wonder why there isn’t a larger outcry to defund or abolish far more detestable institutions such as the media and Congress.

RELATED: Trump Calls Out Mitch McConnell: Republicans Must Finally Learn To Fight

Members Of Congress Viewed As Unethical By Both Parties

Congressional members – unlike journalists – were universally despised in the Gallup poll regarding professional ethics, with only 8 percent of Democrats rating them highly, 10 percent of Independents, and 4 percent of Republicans.

And why not really? They had a banner year.

A banner year that started with congress focusing almost exclusively on the impeachment of President Trump rather than the coronavirus, which had found its way to America in January.

That was followed up by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ignoring President Trump who had vowed in his State of the Union Address to “take all necessary steps” to protect Americans from the coronavirus.

In fact, Pelosi was too preoccupied with her plan to showboat by tearing up her copy of the address rather than worry about the pandemic.

Pelosi followed that despicable effort by encouraging her constituents to visit San Francisco’s Chinatown in late February – after President Trump banned travel from China to try and stop the spread of the disease.

She would go on to blame Trump solely for the deaths of Americans at the hands of COVID.

Now, you see Republican congressional leaders failing to take the concerns of the American people over election fraud seriously.

Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate Majority Leader, congratulated Joe Biden for winning the presidential election earlier this month and urged his colleagues to accept him as the President-elect.

President Trump responded by giving McConnell a lesson on the mood of the American people.

“Too soon to give up. Republican Party must finally learn to fight,” he tweeted to the GOP leader. “People are angry!”

People are still angry, hence the used car salesperson rating for Congress.

Journalists’ Ethics Aren’t Too Hot Either

While Congress is looked down upon by Americans in both parties, journalists’ ethics are viewed drastically different by Democrats and Republicans.

The only reason the media gets a 28 percent rating is through trust by the left. Which is, of course, no surprise since a vast majority of journalists are card-carrying, bed-wetting liberals.

The Gallup poll shows only 5 percent of Republicans rate the ethics and honesty of journalists highly, while nearly half – 48 percent of Democrats – give them high marks.

Come to think of it, that mark for Democrats is astonishingly low, considering the mainstream media almost singlehandedly gave the presidential election to Joe Biden.

A study conducted by the Media Research Center just weeks after the election suggests biased media coverage may have tilted the results in favor of Biden.

The study consists of an analysis of eight major news stories that the MRC suggests were not covered appropriately, along with a survey of how that coverage affected the election.

It shows that a very significant 17% of Biden voters would have abandoned the candidate if their knowledge of the issues had been different on matters such as his sexual assault allegation, or his son Hunter Biden’s scandal involving shady business deals.

The media and members of Congress rank far lower than President Trump and his administration in regards to honesty and ethics.

The post Congress, Journalists Rank Among Worst Professions For Honesty And Ethics According To Survey appeared first on The Political Insider.

Who Wants to Blow Up Our Constitution? (Spoiler: It’s Not Trump)

By Charles Lipson for RealClearPolitics

The most profound attacks on Donald Trump are that his presidency is illegitimate and that he wants to destroy our constitutional structure.

The Democrats have leveled those accusations for four years, accompanied by charges he is a wannabe dictator, elected thanks to his good buddy, Vladimir Putin.

These frenzied charges, we now know, were invented and paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and then funneled to the U.S. government through the FBI, Department of Justice, and State Department.

Meanwhile, the CIA and then the FBI were busy spying on the Trump campaign (and, later, in the FBI’s case, on the Trump presidency), trying to find “collusion” with Russia.

Their relentless effort led to the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, whose partisan team knew almost immediately there was no proof of these damning allegations.

They should have told the public immediately.

Instead, they spent the next two years trying — and failing — to catch President Trump on a “process” crime of obstructing justice, without any underlying crime to investigate.

RELATED: Secret Report: CIA’s Brennan Overruled Dissenters Who Concluded Russia Favored Hillary

They were pursuing a person, not a crime, violating our most basic idea of legitimate law enforcement.

Trump actually cooperated fully with the collusion investigation, providing millions of otherwise-privileged documents, but he didn’t bite on a personal interview designed to catch him in a purported false statement.

(His promise to cooperate fully with Mueller’s collusion investigation was based on the special counsel’s explicit promise to complete the investigation quickly. Mueller’s team reneged on that assurance after they received all the White House documents and testimony they sought.)

Why bother trying to lure the president into a false-statement trap if you can’t indict him?

Simple: because Mueller’s team, effectively led by his zealous deputy, Andrew Weissmann, wanted to help House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, so she could impeach the president.

That effort failed because the special prosecutor’s office  didn’t come up with convincing evidence. The investigation by Pelosi acolyte Adam Schiff also failed.

As chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Schiff had already elicited testimony, under oath, from Obama administration officials, all of whom said there was no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion.

He kept that testimony secret for two years so the public would never find out.

With these failures accumulating, Schiff’s team suddenly spied another pot of gold at the end of the rainbow: alleged malfeasance by Trump regarding Ukraine.

RELATED: Investigation: The Senate’s ‘Russian Collusion’ Report Had No Smoking Gun

It was fool’s gold, but it was enough for House Democrats, who voted to impeach the president on a party-line vote. The public wasn’t convinced.

House Democrats never won the broad support they needed to convince senators to remove a duly-elected president. How badly did this impeachment effort fail?

The Democratic National Convention, held just six months later, simply ignored the whole embarrassing episode.

Even the most rabid partisans didn’t care.

These repeated attacks may not have forced Trump out of office, but they succeeded in another way: They hobbled his presidency for four years. Today, the cumulative damage makes his reelection an uphill struggle.

So does the COVID pandemic and Trump’s response to it, which the public considers mediocre (or worse) and confusing.

Trump’s narcissism/constant self-promotion doesn’t help, either. It repels many educated voters, especially with women.

The vitriolic conflicts surrounding Donald Trump have obscured two crucial issues, which voters ought to weigh carefully as they choose the next president.

One is the difference between Trump’s impulsive, divisive personality and the policies he has actually pursued. The other is the Democrats’ threat to significantly change the structure of American government.

The two issues are intertwined since Trump’s policies are, at bottom, an effort to restore America’s traditional federal structure and limit the power of unelected officials in Washington.

His efforts to roll back the regulatory state also curtail the power of lobbyists and their powerful employers, since they hold the greatest influence over detailed rules and regulations, not general laws like tax rates.

Trump’s tweets and rambling public comments project strong, personalized, centralized power. That’s the essence of the “wannabe dictator” charge against him.

In fact, his basic policies are quite different from that self-inflated persona.

For all Trump’s braggadocio, he has tried to move the country away from Washington’s centralized control, away from control by executive branch bureaucracies (though not from the White House itself), and toward federalism and policymaking by the elected officials.

No president in modern times has waged a more sustained battle against powerful entrenched interests and their phalanx of lobbyists, who rotate in and out of government.

Trump’s most important domestic policies are aimed squarely at wresting control from these special interests and their apologists in the mainstream media.

To do so, Trump has tried to return policymaking to elected officials and senior Cabinet appointees and away from the lower-level bureaucrats, whose regulations dominate Americans’ everyday lives.

Likewise, he has tried to wrest control of the federal courts away from judges who act like unelected legislators and return them to judges who see a more modest role for themselves: interpreting laws and the Constitution as written.

Taken together, Trump’s major initiatives are an effort to restore the traditional balance between Washington and the states, between those elected to make laws and those responsible for executing them or adjudicating disputes.

Not surprisingly, these efforts have met ferocious opposition, led by liberals who established the bureaucratic behemoths in the mid-1960s, by progressives who want to expand them still further, and by interest groups that profit from these massive programs.

These disputes, not Trump’s personality, are the heart of America’s modern political divide.

Joe Biden is simply the familiar face of the old guard, repeating hoary nostrums by rote. Their last ideas died decades ago.

Their only answer now is to enlarge the programs and spend more money.

The new ideas come not from this nomenclatura but from the progressive and socialist left, who want to take giant strides toward centralized, regulatory government, paid for with higher taxes and more debt.

They are determined to redistribute wealth on an unprecedented scale and impose vast regulatory schemes, beginning with health care and energy.

RELATED: Joe Biden Vows No New Coal Or Oil Plants In America

They want to “reimagine” policing, jails, and immigration, without so much as deigning to explain why this wouldn’t result in letting violent criminals run loose in our cities and states, while opening the Southern border to an influx of illegal migrants (who would then receive the bounty of larger government welfare programs).

Since these ideas lack broad voter support, Biden is not running on them.

He is running an almost entirely on one idea: Trump is dreadful and needs to be replaced. Biden’s own prospective policies are as well hidden as the Wizard of Oz.

There are three reasons Biden and the Democrats won’t say what they will do. Despite what happened to them in 2016, they believe a purely negative campaign can win the White House.

They are betting that revulsion with Trump is that high. Second, the more Biden and Kamala Harris say, the more likely they are to alienate either progressive activists or center-left independents – and they need both groups to win.

Third, the media doesn’t press them for answers, so why give them? The mainstream media want Democrats to win, and they have behaved more like adjuncts of the Biden campaign than neutral reporters.

RELATED: CNN Reporter Complains About Trump Removing Mask – Video Shows Her Taking Mask Off Inside White House

A negative campaign does not mean the Democrats won’t enact a positive agenda if they are elected.

Senior Democrats on Capitol Hill have already floated ideas that would fundamentally alter both Congress and the courts — that is, Articles I and III of the Constitution.

To do that, they must not only win the presidency and both houses of Congress, they must change the Senate’s long-established rules, which allow a sufficiently large minority to stop radical legislation.

If that minority is 40 votes or more, its members can “filibuster” the bill and prevent its passage.

What Democrats are suggesting is they will abolish the filibuster in order to pass sweeping legislation with just 50 votes and Vice President Kamala Harris to break the tie.

RELATED: Senate Republicans Can Do What They Want, Democrats Already Shot the Hostage

Since the filibuster is a Senate rule, not a constitutional requirement, it can be changed by a simple majority as the first act of the new Senate.

With the minority neutered, a Democratic Senate could move quickly to enact their party’s agenda, just as the House would. The Senate without a filibuster would resemble the House, only with longer terms.

Those who propose these changes are weighing short-term goals: the policies they want to implement.

Whatever you think of those goals, the means they propose would eliminate a vital element of the Founders’ constitutional structure, which set up a Senate to slow (or stop) impetuous action and required large majorities to enact new laws.

Although the Founders wanted a more energetic government than the Articles of Confederation, their new structure included multiple “veto points,” plus the Bill of Rights, all designed to prevent an overly aggressive government from trampling citizens’ liberties.

Changing the Senate rules is not the only major change being floated. Democratic leaders apparently want to add two new states to the union, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia.

The goal, obviously, is to lock in their party’s control of the Senate for years to come. Again, Democrats would need to eliminate the filibuster since all Republicans (and perhaps a few Democrats) would object.

Some Democrats also propose yet another institutional change, this one to the third branch of government.

They want to expand the Supreme Court beyond its current nine members, which it has had since 1869. Thanks to Republican presidents and Republican Senates, the court now has a conservative majority.

RELATED: It’s Starting: Democrats Introduce Bill To Limit Supreme Court Terms

Democrats have suggested packing the court with several new, liberal justices to outvote the conservatives.

Given the scope of these proposed changes, you would think the party floating them would be forced to say whether they were really determined to blow up Articles I and III of the Constitution.

In fact, they won’t say. It would be “a distraction” even to discuss it, declare Biden and Harris. The Democrats’ Senate leader won’t say, either. His coy line is that “everything is on the table.” Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge.

What about Democrats running for Senate in hard-fought races in Colorado, Arizona, North Carolina, South Carolina, Michigan, Iowa, and Maine? Have they been pressed to say yea or nay on these issues?

No.

The result is that the biggest issues lay hidden in the shadows as we enter the final stages of the election, the most consequential one of the modern era.

RELATED: Top Dem Senator Is Asked By CNN To Explain How Nomination Of Amy Coney Barrett Is ‘Illegal Or Illegitimate’ – He Can’t Do It

The institutional changes being proposed mean we are not just voting for a president, a senator, and a representative. We could be voting on the basic structure of our central government, the role of the courts, and the relationship between Washington and the states.

Yet the presidential debate said little about it. It was simply a flurry of crude interruptions, mostly by Trump, and mud-slinging by both candidates.

They never engaged each other directly on the fundamental issues. That was a travesty for the country and a missed opportunity for Trump.

We are being kept in the dark as we vote on what could be monumental changes. Let’s debate those changes openly. Turn on the damned lights.

Syndicated with permission from RealClearWire.

Charles Lipson is the Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Political Science Emeritus at the University of Chicago, where he founded the Program on International Politics, Economics, and Security. He can be reached at charles.lipson@gmail.com.

The post Who Wants to Blow Up Our Constitution? (Spoiler: It’s Not Trump) appeared first on The Political Insider.

Fact Check: Media And Democrats Downplayed Coronavirus, Not President Trump

While the media rewrites history because of the Bob Woodward tapes, claiming President Trump ‘knew and did nothing’ to protect Americans from the COVID pandemic, their own words and those of their favorite political party have betrayed them.

In reality, it was the media and top Democrat politicians like Joe Biden who downplayed the pandemic – even attacking President Trump for taking the virus seriously.

The President’s role as a leader requires him to make public statements that quell panic and project calm and confidence. It’s a relatively understood tactic for America’s leader.

Anyone recall Barack Obama telling the American people that ISIS had been “contained” one day before they killed over 130 people in Paris? Was there a single media outlet that blamed him for knowing and doing nothing? Of course not.

That said, Trump stands accused of telling Woodward on February 7th that the COVID pandemic was “more deadly than your, you know, your — even your strenuous flus,” while telling him a month later that he “wanted to always play it down … because I don’t want to create a panic.”

Most people understood why the President would make such comments. But the media and the Democrat Party aren’t most people. They’ve seized on the opportunity to accuse Trump of downplaying the crisis and doing nothing to stop it.

One accusation is hypocritical, while the other is simply false.

RELATED: Biden – Just Like Trump – Told Americans Not To ‘Panic’ About COVID At Beginning Of Pandemic

The Media Downplayed the Virus – Here’s Proof

Hypocrisy comes in the form of the mainstream media and their keepers – the Democrat Party – criticizing President Trump of downplaying the threat of the virus to the American people.

Nobody did this more than they did. Yet they have the gall to pretend as if they knew all along how bad things were going to get, sanctimoniously pointing accusatory fingers at the President for having blood on his hands.

The examples are legion, and glaring in how hypocritical they are:

  • The Washington Post said the flu is “much bigger threat than coronavirus.”
  • In another Washington Post ‘perspective‘ piece, they suggest our brains are actually making coronavirus “seem scarier than it is.”
  • The Post also ran a column warning against an aggressive government response to the pandemic.
  • The New York Times claimed that fear “spreads faster than the coronavirus itself.”
  • CNN declared that “racist assaults and ignorant attacks against Asians” were spreading faster than the pandemic.
  • CNN’s Anderson Cooper: “Half the people in America do not get a flu shot, and the flu is far deadlier. So if you’re freaked out at all about coronavirus, you should be more concerned about the flu and actually do something about it, which is get a flu shot.”
  • CNN hosted a doctor who claimed no special precautions were in order because Americans should do “what you do every cold and flu season.”
  • CNN ran a segment citing physicians who said “there’s no need to wear surgical masks … when treating viruses.”
  • Vox tweeted a question asking, “Is this going to be a deadly pandemic?” before answering, “No.”

Democrat lawmakers weren’t much better as they also went out of their way to downplay the threat in the United States.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told people to leave their concerns behind and head on down to San Francisco’s Chinatown in late February – after President Trump banned travel from China.

“What we’re trying to do today is to say everything is fine here,” Pelosi said. “Come because precautions have been taken. The city is on top of the situation.”

New York City mayor Bill de Blasio was telling people to “go on with your lives” and hit the movie theaters despite the threat.

Following the President’s implementation of a travel ban from China, Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden vociferously objected, calling the move “xenophobic.”

RELATED: Here’s The Reason Trump Deserves The Nobel Peace Prize And Obama Didn’t

Trump Acted Quickly and Decisively

The second part of the media narrative is to suggest President Trump did nothing to stop the spread – a provable, bald-faced lie.

Unserious journalists make that accusation based simply on the President having told Woodward on March 19th that he “still like(s) playing it down.”

His administration’s actions up until that date show a man taking definitive action behind the scenes.

By the date in question, President Trump and his administration had done the following:

  • The CDC established a coronavirus incident management system to better share and respond to information about the virus.
  • Dr. Fauci announced the National Institutes of Health was working on the development of a vaccine for the coronavirus.
  • The White House Coronavirus Task Force started meeting to help monitor and contain the spread of the virus and provide updates to the President.
  • Declared the coronavirus a public health emergency.
  • Announced Chinese travel restrictions, followed by more from other hotspots such as Italy and the UK.
  • President Trump vowed in his State of the Union Address to “take all necessary steps” to protect Americans from the coronavirus.
  • The CDC began shipping CDC-Developed test kits for the 2019 Novel Coronavirus to U.S. and international labs.
  • Trump signed an $8.3 billion bill to fight the coronavirus outbreak.
  • Trump declared a national emergency in order to access $42 billion in existing funds to combat the coronavirus.

What had the Democrats and the media focused on during that time? Impeachment. And any other coverage that would reflect poorly on the President.

They have no interest in protecting the American people. President Trump did. He took action. And that is the only thing that matters.

Take a look at the entire timeline:

Woodward Thread by grusbf5 on Scribd

The post Fact Check: Media And Democrats Downplayed Coronavirus, Not President Trump appeared first on The Political Insider.

Fact Check: Media And Democrats Downplayed Coronavirus, Not President Trump

While the media rewrites history because of the Bob Woodward tapes, claiming President Trump ‘knew and did nothing’ to protect Americans from the COVID pandemic, their own words and those of their favorite political party have betrayed them.

In reality, it was the media and top Democrat politicians like Joe Biden who downplayed the pandemic – even attacking President Trump for taking the virus seriously.

The President’s role as a leader requires him to make public statements that quell panic and project calm and confidence. It’s a relatively understood tactic for America’s leader.

Anyone recall Barack Obama telling the American people that ISIS had been “contained” one day before they killed over 130 people in Paris? Was there a single media outlet that blamed him for knowing and doing nothing? Of course not.

That said, Trump stands accused of telling Woodward on February 7th that the COVID pandemic was “more deadly than your, you know, your — even your strenuous flus,” while telling him a month later that he “wanted to always play it down … because I don’t want to create a panic.”

Most people understood why the President would make such comments. But the media and the Democrat Party aren’t most people. They’ve seized on the opportunity to accuse Trump of downplaying the crisis and doing nothing to stop it.

One accusation is hypocritical, while the other is simply false.

RELATED: Biden – Just Like Trump – Told Americans Not To ‘Panic’ About COVID At Beginning Of Pandemic

The Media Downplayed the Virus – Here’s Proof

Hypocrisy comes in the form of the mainstream media and their keepers – the Democrat Party – criticizing President Trump of downplaying the threat of the virus to the American people.

Nobody did this more than they did. Yet they have the gall to pretend as if they knew all along how bad things were going to get, sanctimoniously pointing accusatory fingers at the President for having blood on his hands.

The examples are legion, and glaring in how hypocritical they are:

  • The Washington Post said the flu is “much bigger threat than coronavirus.”
  • In another Washington Post ‘perspective‘ piece, they suggest our brains are actually making coronavirus “seem scarier than it is.”
  • The Post also ran a column warning against an aggressive government response to the pandemic.
  • The New York Times claimed that fear “spreads faster than the coronavirus itself.”
  • CNN declared that “racist assaults and ignorant attacks against Asians” were spreading faster than the pandemic.
  • CNN’s Anderson Cooper: “Half the people in America do not get a flu shot, and the flu is far deadlier. So if you’re freaked out at all about coronavirus, you should be more concerned about the flu and actually do something about it, which is get a flu shot.”
  • CNN hosted a doctor who claimed no special precautions were in order because Americans should do “what you do every cold and flu season.”
  • CNN ran a segment citing physicians who said “there’s no need to wear surgical masks … when treating viruses.”
  • Vox tweeted a question asking, “Is this going to be a deadly pandemic?” before answering, “No.”

Democrat lawmakers weren’t much better as they also went out of their way to downplay the threat in the United States.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told people to leave their concerns behind and head on down to San Francisco’s Chinatown in late February – after President Trump banned travel from China.

“What we’re trying to do today is to say everything is fine here,” Pelosi said. “Come because precautions have been taken. The city is on top of the situation.”

New York City mayor Bill de Blasio was telling people to “go on with your lives” and hit the movie theaters despite the threat.

Following the President’s implementation of a travel ban from China, Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden vociferously objected, calling the move “xenophobic.”

RELATED: Here’s The Reason Trump Deserves The Nobel Peace Prize And Obama Didn’t

Trump Acted Quickly and Decisively

The second part of the media narrative is to suggest President Trump did nothing to stop the spread – a provable, bald-faced lie.

Unserious journalists make that accusation based simply on the President having told Woodward on March 19th that he “still like(s) playing it down.”

His administration’s actions up until that date show a man taking definitive action behind the scenes.

By the date in question, President Trump and his administration had done the following:

  • The CDC established a coronavirus incident management system to better share and respond to information about the virus.
  • Dr. Fauci announced the National Institutes of Health was working on the development of a vaccine for the coronavirus.
  • The White House Coronavirus Task Force started meeting to help monitor and contain the spread of the virus and provide updates to the President.
  • Declared the coronavirus a public health emergency.
  • Announced Chinese travel restrictions, followed by more from other hotspots such as Italy and the UK.
  • President Trump vowed in his State of the Union Address to “take all necessary steps” to protect Americans from the coronavirus.
  • The CDC began shipping CDC-Developed test kits for the 2019 Novel Coronavirus to U.S. and international labs.
  • Trump signed an $8.3 billion bill to fight the coronavirus outbreak.
  • Trump declared a national emergency in order to access $42 billion in existing funds to combat the coronavirus.

What had the Democrats and the media focused on during that time? Impeachment. And any other coverage that would reflect poorly on the President.

They have no interest in protecting the American people. President Trump did. He took action. And that is the only thing that matters.

Take a look at the entire timeline:

Woodward Thread by grusbf5 on Scribd

The post Fact Check: Media And Democrats Downplayed Coronavirus, Not President Trump appeared first on The Political Insider.

Liberal Media Smears Keep Coming – President Trump Keeps Honoring His Oath

No politician in America has faced more unjustified criticism from the liberal-dominated “mainstream” media than President Donald Trump. But despite enduring a constant barrage of smears, baseless attacks, and blatant lies from the moment he entered the political arena, our president has never wavered.

According to the newly-disclosed footnotes from the Justice Department’s report on the FBI surveillance of the Trump campaign in 2016, the infamous Steele dossier —a document that was at the heart of the manufactured Russia collusion narrative— contained…Russian disinformation. To make matters worse, some FBI officials were concerned about the author’s ties to Russian oligarchs, but those concerns were never shared with the unit that was assigned to investigate Donald Trump’s associates.

It turns out that President Trump was right all along—there was a “witch hunt” conducted against him, both before and after the 2016 election. But you will never hear an apology from the liberal media who treated the Steele Dossier as the sacred scripture of the anti-Trump #resistance. And worse, we now know, because of the #resistance and their push of the false narratives, there is danger of permanent erosion of civil liberties and due process for all Americans.

What is truly remarkable is that President Trump never allowed the mainstream media to distract him from accomplishing his policy objectives, no matter how preposterous their smears became over time.

During his first year in office, the president passed historic tax cuts, saving American workers an average of $1,400 on their annual federal income taxes. The following year, he signed the most extensive bipartisan prison reform legislation in U.S. history, the FIRST STEP Act. Even the hyper-partisan Democrat impeachment campaign didn’t stop the president from fighting for American workers—Donald Trump whipped up bipartisan support for his groundbreaking United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement so effectively that it passed with negligible opposition just one day after the House of Representatives approved articles of impeachment without a single Republican vote.

That’s not even close to being an exhaustive list of this president’s extensive record of promises kept—his administration has also secured the border, deregulated the economy, fixed the VA, appointed reliably conservative justices to the Supreme Court and the rest of the federal judiciary, and much more. Throughout it all, he has had to aggressively defend his integrity in the public square, relentlessly pushing back against the fake news media’s assault on the truth.

We’ve have never seen a man who is as patient, determined, and focused under fire as President Trump—and that is exactly the kind of leadership that our country needs more than ever right now.

The sad thing is, our president probably could have achieved even greater things for the country if he didn’t have to deal with the slings and arrows of partisan media outlets. Liberal journalists have launched brand new attacks, often using Orwellian doublespeak, against the White House in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, treating this once-in-a-lifetime public health crisis as just another opportunity to advance their biased narrative in preparation for the November elections.

Their fabricated storyline is predictable and unimaginative, baselessly claiming the White House botched its response to the coronavirus outbreak, and the Trump administration is still not doing enough to curb the spread of the deadly disease.

The facts are clear and immutable. The White House acted swiftly and responsibly.

No matter how hard the media try, they will never be able to change history. The United States was one of the first countries in the world to implement robust international travel restrictions on coronavirus hot spots—something liberals excoriated President Trump for doing at the time.

While House Speaker Nancy Pelosi contemplated legislation called the “NO BAN” Act to keep borders open as vectors of infection, the president acted to protect the American people by shutting down travel from China and eventually with the EU, Africa, the Middle East and the United Kingdom.

While the Democrats paraded the ever more troubling incompetence of their presidential candidates during their January 29, February 7 and February 19 debates — where there was not a single mention of the Wuhan Coronavirus — the White House was establishing and coordinating a whole-of-government response integrating critical private/industrial sector support, moving material and personnel to meet the challenge head on.

Most significant, contrary to initial projections, our country has avoided a shortage of life-saving ventilators thanks to the president’s effective collaboration with the private sector, and the number of COVID-19 deaths is now expected to be much lower than public health experts first anticipated. And through it all, the Trump administration has made it a priority to support the millions of working families who have been impacted by the current economic lockdown.

Further, the president’s fundamental belief that America must increase manufacturing and self-reliance (especially in critical national security and medical sectors) to preclude foreign reliance during a national crisis has been proven correct, and must be a priority going forward into 2021.

The liberal media have thrown everything in their arsenal at Donald Trump, but they’ve never been able to distract him from fulfilling his obligation to the American people before. The president certainly isn’t going to flinch now as they try to distract him from the most important work of his entire presidency.

Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer is a retired senior intelligence operations officer and President of the London Center for Policy Research.

This piece was written by Lt Col Tony Shaffer on April 29, 2020. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

Read more at LifeZette:
Former state attorney general calls out Michigan Democrat governor on blatant conflict of interest
Recharged Trump holds press conference
Howard Stern calls for Trump to resign, says his supporters should take disinfectant and ‘drop dead’

The post Liberal Media Smears Keep Coming – President Trump Keeps Honoring His Oath appeared first on The Political Insider.