“Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., criticized Christopher Wray’s response to the inspector general report on the FBI’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, released Thursday.
Gowdy said on Fox News Thursday evening that Wray’s assertion that the report will not have lasting consequences for the bureau is flat-out “wrong.”
“Chris Wray, I’m sorry, you’re wrong,” the House Oversight chairman stated. “There are consequences.”
“The consequences are that your fellow citizens question whether or not they can have confidence in the world’s premier law enforcement agency, and that’s coming from someone who has defended them a lot throughout his career. This was a bitterly disappointing report,” he continued.”
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“True, the report is damning about the man who lectures Americans on “higher loyalty.” It describes how an “insubordinate” Mr. Comey was, as early as April 2016, considering how to cut his Justice Department bosses from a public statement exonerating Hillary Clinton. He hid this scheme for fear “they would instruct him not to do it”—and therefore was able to “avoid supervision.” He then “violated long-standing Department practice and protocol” by using his July 5 press conference for “criticizing Clinton’s uncharged conduct.” In October, he made public that the FBI had reopened the investigation, even though the Justice Department recommended he not do so. Mr. Comey went rogue, and President Trump had plenty of justification in firing him in May 2017.
Yet it is the report’s findings on the wider culture of the FBI and Justice Department that are most alarming. The report depicts agencies that operate outside the rules to which they hold everybody else, and that showed extraordinary bias while investigating two presidential candidates.
There’s Loretta Lynch, who felt it perfectly fine to have a long catch-up with her friend Bill Clinton on a Phoenix tarmac and whom the inspector general slams for an “error in judgment.” Mr. Comey’s entire staff was complicit in concealing the contents of the July press conference from Justice officials. We discover that significant FBI “resources” were dedicated in October to spinning FBI “talking points” about the Clinton investigation—rather than actually investigating the new Anthony Weiner laptop emails the bureau discovered in September. We even find that Mr. Comey used personal email and laptops to conduct government work.
There’s former Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik, who was tipping off the Clinton campaign even as he took part in the investigation, and who “failed to strictly adhere to [his] recusal” when he finally stepped away. Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe also did not “fully comply with his recusal,” and he’d already been found to have lied to the bureau about a leak to the media. Speaking of leaks, Mr. Horowitz needed full attachments and charts to list the entire “volume of communication” between FBI employees and the press. Not only did these folks have “no official reason to be in contact with the media,” but they also “improperly received benefits from reporters, including tickets to sporting events, golfing outings, drinks and meals, and admittance to nonpublic social events.”
Be ready to hear the report absolves the FBI and DOJ of “bias.” Not true. It very carefully states that “our review did not find documentary or testimonial evidence directly connecting the political views these employees expressed in their text messages and instant messages to the specific investigative decisions we reviewed.” Put another way, he never caught anyone writing down: Let’s start this Trump investigation so we can help Hillary win.
But the bias is everywhere. It’s in the texts between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, and those of three other employees who are routinely “hostile” to Candidate Trump. It’s in Ms. Page’s freak-out that Mr. Trump might win the presidency and Mr. Strzok’s reply: “No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it.” It’s in a message from an unnamed agent in November 2016 who writes that although the FBI found Clinton aide Huma Abedin had “lied,” it doesn’t matter since “no one at DOJ is going to prosecute.” To which a second agent replies. “Rog—noone is going to pros[ecute] even if we find unique classified.””
“The Department of Justice inspector general report released today includes two elaborate charts mapping the volume of communications identified between FBI employees and members of the media in April, May, and October 2016.
“We have profound concerns about the volume and extent of unauthorized media contacts by FBI personnel that we have uncovered during our review,” the report states.”
———————–
Despite being able to track the number of times agents communicated with reporters, the IG cites two reasons for being unable to identify individual leakers.
First, we frequently find that the universe of Department and FBI employees who had access to sensitive information that has been leaked is substantial, often involving dozens, and in some instances, more than 100 people. We recognize that this is a challenging issue, because keeping information too closely held can harm an investigation and the supervision of it. Nevertheless, we think the Department and the FBI need to consider whether there is a better way to appropriately control the dissemination of sensitive information.
Then there’s this:
Second, although FBI policy strictly limits the employees who are authorized to speak to the media, we found that this policy appeared to be widely ignored during the period we reviewed. We identified numerous FBI employees, at all levels of the organization and with no official reason to be in contact with the media, who were nevertheless in frequent contact with reporters. The large number of FBI employees who were in contact with journalists during this time period impacted our ability to identify the sources of leaks.”
“FBI Director Christopher Wray’s explanation of Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the handling of Hillary Clinton’s emails revealed him to be just another deep-state shill willing to ignore the attempted and ongoing deep-state coup against a duly elected president, Donald J. Trump. Regarding the organized attempt to by FBI leadership to keep Hillary Clinton out of prison and Donald Trump out of the White House, Wray sees no evil, hears no evil, and will speak no evil. In his Orwellian press conference, Wray spoke from a parallel universe:
“It’s also important, though, to note what the inspector general did not find. This report did not find any evidence of political bias or improper considerations actually impacting the investigation under review,” Wray told a press briefing at FBI headquarters. “The report does identify errors of judgment, violations of or even disregard for policy, and decisions that, at the very least, with the benefit of hindsight, were not the best choices.”
Of course, Wray took advantage of the IG report’s reluctance to connect all the dots between the actions and the motives of those engaged in obstruction of justice like former FBI Director James Comey and Agent Peter Strzok, who headed the Hillary investigation and joining the Mueller team.
It takes either mind-numbing stupidity or corruption or both to find no evidence of anti-Trump bias that affected either the investigations of Hillary Clinton or Trump/Russia collusion in the text messages of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. Wray merely says the matter will be referred to the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), not bothering to explain how Strzok, despite his texts vowing to stop Trump, remains in the employ of the FBI.
Wray agrees with Inspector General Clouseau that texts such as these are not reflected in actions that clearly amount to obstruction of justice:”
Obama built this. He weaponized these agencies against his political opponents. While they are wrong and need to be held to account for having followed said illegal orders, he initiated most of this from the WH.
“Naturally, the political/media left that crowds out saner voices on television were quick as jack rabbits to announce that the FBI was vindicated by the IG report that was released on Thursday. “Nothing to see here, move along,” was their mantra. But one only has to scroll through the list of columns posted at RealClearPolitics on Friday to grasp the abyss between the left and right re: the report.
The report contained an executive summary that said “We found no documentary evidence of political bias.” That means they did not find written confessions by all those Trump-hating higher-ups at the once-great law enforcement agency. But the five-hundred page body of the report is chock full of extreme political anti-Trump mendacity. Why the hundreds of texts between several like-minded agents that reek of profound bias against Trump are not documentary evidence is a mystery.
Nevertheless, it is an indisputable fact that a cabal of conspirators on the seventh floor of the FBI building, led by Comey and McCabe, along with John Brennan (CIA) , James Clapper (DNI) , Sally Yates and Rod Rosenstein at Justice coordinated their attempts to prevent Trump from winning the election by all manner of illegal means. Most likely, much of this was at the bidding and with permission of Barack Obama. ”
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While the devious machinations of the deep state are not new, it was the Obama administration, most likely Obama himself, who brought us to this low point, the wholesale corruption of the FBI and the DOJ leadership. Obama surrounded himself with like-minded globalist elites who thought no laws applied to them: Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Valerie Jarrett, the Podestas, Ben Rhodes, Jonathan Gruber, and more. Eric Holder was the most unprincipled Attorney General, including even John MItchell who served time in federal prison.
We learned from the IG report that Obama lied when he said he learned of HRC’s private server from the media. He knew because he, too, corresponded with her from a private email, just as Comey used a non-FBI email account as well. None of these people, not one, respected our Constitution or the laws that were meant to govern their agencies.
This is what Obama did to America. He virtually destroyed the FBI, the CIA, and the DOJ by turning them into weapons with which to destroy his opponents. They learned their Stasi lessons well. President Trump’s outsider ways are like blessed sunlight on these institutions that had been allowed to deteriorate and decay over the eight years of Obama rule.”
I have only read the IG Summary and have not criticized it. But apparently many find the lack of bias conclusion in the report rather lame. There was a good article in National Review about the IG report. It made a lot of sense.
David French at National Review appears to have found the answer the pesky question of how the FBI could be biased against Trump when their actions injured Clinton: they unintentionally helped elect Trump while deliberately exonerating Hillary through self-interest and sheer incompetence. It’s rather damning considering the source.
…If you wade through the entire inspector general’s report, consider the content and tone of the FBI correspondence quoted within it, and ponder the timeline, you will finally get an answer to the key question I, and millions of Americans, have asked: If key members of the FBI were actually biased against Donald Trump, why did the FBI so dramatically damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign in the last days before the election? Why did it draft a letter to Congress announcing that it was reopening its email investigation a month after it found Anthony Weiner’s laptop, a letter that detonated like a bomb in the campaign and had a measurable effect on Hillary’s polling?
Now we know. The decisions leading up to that moment were influenced by a toxic stew of anti-Trump bias and institutional self-interest. The combination of those two factors sent an FBI torpedo straight at the SS Hillary, blasting another hole in a ship that was already taking on water….
And in other news, here’s more on the legal constraints surrounding the detention of children not legally residing in the US, particularly those who are being brought by adults illegally.
The Trump administration isn’t changing the rules that pertain to separating an adult from the child. Those remain the same. Separation happens only if officials find that the adult is falsely claiming to be the child’s parent, or is a threat to the child, or is put into criminal proceedings.
It’s the last that is operative here. The past practice had been to give a free pass to an adult who is part of a family unit. The new Trump policy is to prosecute all adults. The idea is to send a signal that we are serious about our laws and to create a deterrent against re-entry. (Illegal entry is a misdemeanor, illegal re-entry a felony.)
When a migrant is prosecuted for illegal entry, he or she is taken into custody by the U.S. Marshals. In no circumstance anywhere in the U.S. do the marshals care for the children of people they take into custody. The child is taken into the custody of HHS, who cares for them at temporary shelters.
The criminal proceedings are exceptionally short, assuming there is no aggravating factor such as a prior illegal entity or another crime. The migrants generally plead guilty, and they are then sentenced to time served, typically all in the same day, although practices vary along the border. After this, they are returned to the custody of ICE.
If the adult then wants to go home, in keeping with the expedited order of removal that is issued as a matter of course, it’s relatively simple. The adult should be reunited quickly with his or her child, and the family returned home as a unit. In this scenario, there’s only a very brief separation.
Where it becomes much more of an issue is if the adult files an asylum claim. In that scenario, the adults are almost certainly going to be detained longer than the government is allowed to hold their children….
Again, more on family detentions. This one specifies that these individuals are crossing ‘between ports of entry’, which makes a difference in their ability to even apply for asylum when here.
…Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the policy is a result of the administration not sending children to jail with their parents.
“Noncitizens who cross our borders unlawfully, between our ports of entry, with children are not an exception,” Sessions said. “They are the ones who broke the law, they are the ones who endangered their own children on their trek. The United States, on the other hand, goes to extraordinary lengths to protect them while the parents go through a short detention period.”…
Criminals are separated from their children all the time when incarcerated. Why would anyone think an illegal entrant (a crime) should be treated differently?
And Scarborough and his Never-Trump side kick should be under quarantine. TDS is contagious ya’ know.
“The White House came out swinging Friday against MSNBC star Joe Scarborough after the former Republican congressman compared the methods used in current immigration policy to the Nazis.
Speaking about White House press secretary Sarah Sanders’ Thursday press briefing – in which she sparred with reporters over the separation of families attempting to try to enter the southern border – Scarborough accused Sanders of excessive lying on his “Morning Joe” program.
“So why is she lying this much?” Scarborough asked. “I know children are being ripped from their mother’s arms, even while they’re being breast-fed. I know children are being marched away to showers, marched away to showers. Being told they are — just like the Nazis — said that they were taking people to the showers and then they never came back,” he said.
“You think they would use another trick like ‘Hey, got a slurpee room over there.’ ‘We’re going to take them to get a slurpee,’” he continued. “That would be better than ‘We’re marching them to the showers and we’ll be right back’ and they never come back.”
“It is appalling that Joe Scarborough would compare sworn federal law enforcement officers— who put their lives on the line every day to keep American people safe— to Nazis,” White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley said in a statement provided to Fox News. “This is the type of inflammatory and unacceptable rhetoric that puts a target on the backs of our great law enforcement.
“It is also horribly insulting to the memory of the 6 million Jews who perished in the Nazi Holocaust. Not only is Scarborough’s rhetoric shameful, but his facts are categorically false. When American citizens break the law, they are separated from their children and prosecuted. It’s unclear why Scarborough believes that illegal aliens are entitled to more rights than those afforded to American citizens. While Scarborough is quick to launch into his straight-to-camera outrage over the temporary separation of illegal alien families, he has never shown similar outrage for the permanent separation of American families forever torn apart from their children, who were killed by criminal aliens as a result of Democrats’ open borders policies,” Gidley continued.
“If Joe Scarborough actually cared about keeping illegal alien families together, he would use his platform to support the Trump Administration’s efforts to close loopholes in federal immigration law,” the statement said.”
———————-
As would Democrats. But they don’t want solutions, only ammo they think hurts the President.
.@BernardKerik: “There’s no greater threat to our democracy than a government that weaponizes its criminal justice system to target its citizens and in this case the target today is the President of the United States.” pic.twitter.com/XbyFx2R1hE
“You’ve got to hand it to Michael Horowitz: The Justice Department inspector general’s much-anticipated report on the Clinton-emails investigation may be half-baked, but if it is, it is the most comprehensive, meticulously detailed, carefully documented, thoughtfully reasoned epic in the history of half-bakery.
Why say do I say the report “may be half-baked”? Why don’t I just come out and declare, “The report is half-baked”? Well, I figure if I write this column in the IG’s elusive style, we’ll have the Rosetta Stone we need to decipher the report.
See, you probably sense that I believe the report is half-baked. But if I say it “may be” half-baked . . . well, technically that means it may not be, too. I mean, who really knows, right?
If that annoys you, try wading through 568 pages of this stuff, particularly on the central issue of the investigators’ anti-Trump bias. The report acknowledges that contempt for Trump was pervasive among several of the top FBI and DOJ officials making decisions about the investigation. So this deep-seated bias must have affected the decision-making, right? Well, the report concludes, who really knows?
Not in so many words, of course. The trick here is the premise the IG establishes from the start: It’s not my job to draw firm conclusions about why things happened the way they did. In fact, it’s not even my job to determine whether investigative decisions were right or wrong. The cop-out is that we are dealing here with “discretionary” calls; therefore, the IG rationalizes, the investigators must be given very broad latitude. Consequently, the IG says his job is not to determine whether any particular decision was correct; just whether, on some otherworldly scale of reasonableness, the decision was defensible. And he makes that determination by looking at every decision in isolation.
But is that the way we evaluate decisions in the real world?
In every criminal trial, the defense lawyer tries to sow reasonable doubt by depicting every allegation, every factual transaction, as if it stood alone. In a drug case, if the defendant was photographed delivering a brown paper bag on Wednesday, the lawyer argues, “Well, we don’t have X-ray vision, how do we really know there was heroin in the bag?” The jurors are urged that when they consider what happened Wednesday, there is only Wednesday; they must put out of their minds that text from Tuesday, when the defendant told his girlfriend, “I always deliver the ‘product’ in paper bags.”
Fortunately, the judge ends up explaining to the jury that, down here on Planet Earth, common sense applies. In our everyday lives, we don’t look at related events in isolation; we view them in conjunction because they read on each other. Let’s say on Monday I confide to my friend that I can’t stand Bob, and on Tuesday I tell Bob I can’t join him for dinner because I have other plans. It may or may not be true that I have other plans, but common sense tells you my disdain for Bob has factored into the decision — even if I don’t announce that fact to Bob.
For all his assiduous attention to detail, IG Horowitz has weaved a no-common-sense report.”
“‘We might have a new situation’ German MP predicts Merkel could be OUSTED end of NEXT WEEK
GERMAN Chancellor Angela Merkel could lose her powerful seat in the heart of Europe as soon as next week amid clashes within her coalition Government over EU migration policies, claimed German MP Kai Whittaker.”
“smartest” then “countries history” The imbecile is in fine form.
My supporters are the smartest, strongest, most hard working and most loyal that we have seen in our countries history. It is a beautiful thing to watch as we win elections and gather support from all over the country. As we get stronger, so does our country. Best numbers ever!
Trump does lead to some great Father/Son conversations.
Me: The guy can’t spell “missile” or “stopped”.
My son: Dad! He can’t spell “too” or “tap”. Baby step! Baby steps!
The children are being used as hostages. If a parent pleads guility they are released as are their kids and then deported. However if parents wish to claim asulym their children are kept from them and held in detention. The choice for a parent is then coerced. Plead guility. Not only is this a deterrant its coercion and may force a parent back to a situation dangerous for them and their children.
This is not how children of criminals are treated. Once parents are arrested, minors become wards of the state abd children’s services usually places them in foster care or a group home not in an abandoned Walmart in what looks like a dog kennel.
And parents claiming asylum are not criminals. They are fleeing some type of imminent harm. By international law that is not a criminal offense.
Using children as hostages, as a deterrent, as coercion is an act one would expect in North Korea. Trump is carrying his admiration for dictators too far.
Well I’m all for funding detention centers that will adequately house illegals and their children for as long as needed to properly process their asylum applications and vet them as part of comprehensive immigration reform package—that would include increased security measures and funding for ‘the wall’. Concerned Conservatives call your Senators and Representatives in Congress. The President is awaiting a bill he can sign in good conscience. So am I. :–)
Speaking of persecuted people who need help, it looks like VP Pence has been instrumental in getting increased aid for persecuted minorities in Iraq—particularly in Christian and Yazidis communities.
“The children are being used as hostages. If a parent pleads guility they are released as are their kids and then deported. However if parents wish to claim asulym their children are kept from them and held in detention. The choice for a parent is then coerced. Plead guility. Not only is this a deterrant its coercion and may force a parent back to a situation dangerous for them and their children.”
That sounds like a reasonable approach. I also notice you assume the impossible, that every single asylum claim is legit. They’re not.
If they plead guilty, everyone goes home, and they really had no claim to asylum in the first place, as a judge decides before ordering deportation. Then they were just border jumping criminals.
If their claim is legitimate, they’ll be re-united once verified.
But I do agree it’s intended as a deterrent. And I’d add it’s only in place because illegals were exploiting the asylum loophole. Word was out that this was an end around. Word is now out that it isn’t.
As Debra said, the fix is easy. It just requires Congress to do the job they keep ignoring, and securing the border. But they’d rather use them as tools against Trump. Fixing the problem doesn’t benefit them.
It seems cruel of fate to deny us Charles Krauthammer just when we most need models of dignity, balance, and integrity. Charles is coruscatingly brilliant — but that is not his greatest virtue.
Thanks for the love. Really. But I was not showing off, as you seem to imply. It was the right word. That's all. Now you know it too. You're welcome. https://t.co/91VXWSEod6
I was very sorry to hear of Charles Krauthammer’s cancer. He will be missed—his voice already is. There was a nice tribute piece in the WSJ earlier this week; it’s good, and you will not need a dictionary to read it.. ;–)
Maybe Comey and Kim will primary Trump in 2020. The media would love it, because the Democrats seem so dead that otherwise they will never drag ratings into the double digits and Trump will be a complete shoo in. What a waste of an election year that would be for CNN and the talking bobbleheads.
“This is not how children of criminals are treated. Once parents are arrested, minors become wards of the state abd children’s services usually places them in foster care or a group home not in an abandoned Walmart in what looks like a dog kennel.”
Yeaaaaahhh….. about that….
First off the dog kennel pics were from Obama’s reign. You can’t put that on Trump. As these pics show, things have greatly improved since the Obama years, although I’m sure there’s still some temporary holding areas that may still look that way. This looks pretty un-WalMart like to me, except for the large scale cooking operation. But you can see for yourselves.
“The children are separated from their parents — or, to be precise, from the adults accompanying them, who may or may not be their parents — when their parents cross the southern U.S. border illegally and are caught and detained.
Previously, under the “catch-and-release” policy, the adults would be released. Under the “zero tolerance” policy of the Trump administration, the adults are being detained and prosecuted. Children cannot be incarcerated with them.
However, families that arrive together at legal ports of entry and apply for asylum status are generally not split up and are permitted to stay in the U.S. pending the adjudication of their applications (which can take several years).
Democrats and the mainstream media have accused the administration of separating the children of “immigrants” from their parents and imprisoning them in “cages.” On Thursday, CNN analyst and Playboy reporter Brian Karem shouted at White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders: “These people have nothing. They come to the border with nothing and you throw children in cages.” None of the reporters in the briefing room corrected him.
The facility at El Cajon, however, is not a “cage.” It is a comfortable facility providing lodging, meals, clothing, medical care, education, recreation, counseling, and other services.”
“Department of Homeland Security officials on Friday flatly denied a widely reported allegation that border authorities forcibly separated a breastfeeding baby from her mother while she was awaiting prosecution for entering the country illegally.
“We do not separate babies from adults,” a DHS official told reporters during a background briefing. “It’s a bright line.”
CNN first reported that an illegal immigrant from Honduras claimed federal authorities took her daughter while she breastfed the child at an immigration detention center in McAllen, Texas, on Tuesday. The CNN report was picked up by several national media outlets, including the Huffington Post, The Daily Beast and Vox, sparking further condemnation of the Trump administration’s policy of separating migrant families caught crossing the border illegally.
The CNN report did not quote the mother herself, but rather an attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project who had reportedly interviewed the woman. A Customs and Border Protection spokesman denied the allegations in a statement to CNN on Wednesday.
“Nothing could be further from the truth and these allegations are unsubstantiated,” the spokesman, Carlos Diaz, told CNN in an email.
DHS officials reiterated that denial on Friday, telling reporters the claim was false and that department officials have been working to investigate the circumstances surrounding the allegation.”
Debra, Trump’s recent meeting with American Kim went almost as well as his meeting with Korean Kim. Expect him to ask her to replace Pence in 2020 as his VP and merge the two cults.
Not going to happen Ricky. Kardashian might upstage Trump and when he realized he can’t fire her, he’d waste his second term trying to have her impeached. Let’s stick with Pence.He’s more useful all the way around.
I’m really starting to find the whole immigration scandal disturbing, but not for the usual reasons.
When I see influential people like Franklin Graham or Rod Dreher or even Russell Moore giving what appear to be knee-jerk reactions to negative media hype—describing children as being ‘ripped’ out of their mothers’ arms at the border, it makes me think they are just swaying in the wind of media-driven public opinion like spineless scarecrows instead of the strong-minded leaders and thinkers I believe they really are. It’s disappointing.
So I see Ross Douthat also doesn’t fact check what he hears and just parrots the same lies and distorted talking points. But then, how else does one get in the NYT, right?
As hoped by all and predicted by many, Trump is “growing” in office. He has learned to spell “too”.
WITCH HUNT! There was no Russian Collusion. Oh, I see, there was no Russian Collusion, so now they look for obstruction on the no Russian Collusion. The phony Russian Collusion was a made up Hoax. Too bad they didn’t look at Crooked Hillary like this. Double Standard!
The first paragraph of the Ross Douthat piece was so patently mindless that I didn’t waste my time on any more of it. Good grief people, children are separated from their parents all the time when they are incarcerated, and that’s what happens when you break the law—or has the party of law and order forgotten that. Children are being removed from the desert and given caring oversight, lodging,food, and education all at American taxpayer expense (and YES, I AM a taxpayer). These are the basic care their parents were not able to provide for them in the sort term. And they will be returned to their parents when the proceedings are over. Very evil indeed. You people have lost your minds. :eyeroll:
The essential problem is children are being held in prision in order to elicit a guility plea from parents. That’s coercion and illegitimate. its rule by law not rule of law. Its also the use of children to deter asulym claims. Its indefensible.
AJ, I find it interesting you quote with approval claims made by DHS. Yet when the FBI makes a claim you’re incredibly skeptical despite the FBI being part of the DHS.
I wonder if Mueller used the same technique in his investigation ie put children in jail until he gets a guilty plea or confession, how quick Trump supporters would condemn it.
Debra, You need to read the rest of the Douthat piece. He ends up recommending a very Trumpkin-friendly solution.
HRW, Thanks for the note on the Maher/Will discussion. I will look for it. I have had several interesting discussions with the handful of liberals who live in Texas. I have to admit they are handling those conversations better than I would if the circumstances were reversed. As most of you can imagine, if the Dems had nominated and elected Trump, my first words to them would have been:
“Ha Ha Ha! Your leader is an illiterate, lying moron!”
My liberal friends wait for me to describe Trump in such language, then breathe a huge sigh of relief and say, “Thank goodness! We thought no one on your side noticed.”
Keep an eye on this story. It is likely to change and grow.
New & interesting: Mueller is looking into May 2016 contact between Russians offering to sell info about Clinton & officials in the Trump campaign, who “forgot” about the meeting in Congressional testimony. Sounds like Mueller helped them remember. https://t.co/erXKluRpI9
“The first paragraph of the Ross Douthat piece was so patently mindless that I didn’t waste my time on any more of it.”
Exactly, just more parroting of the same old false tripe.
——————————–
HRW,
When the leadership at the border patrol and DHS starts breaking the law, policy, and actively working to undermine our president and democracy, I’ll be skeptical of them too.
If you can show me proof they’re lying, maybe I’ll change my mind. But you can’t. Other than parroted talking points, old Obama era photos, and lies, you got nothing.
“Former State Department official Victoria Nuland, who reportedly connected FBI officials to the former British spy who wrote the infamous anti-Trump dossier, will testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee next week.
Ms. Nuland, a longtime State Department official who served in the George W. Bush administration as the U.S. Ambassador to NATO, served during the Obama administration as assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs.
In that capacity, according to the book “Russian Roulette,” she played an instrumental role in the evolution of Christopher Steele’s negative campaign research on then-presidential candidate Donald Trump in 2016 by giving permission for an FBI agent in London to meet with the former U.K. intelligence officer.”
————————
“House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes said Sunday that “there will be hell to pay” — including impeachment for top Justice Department officials — if the agency fails this week to give Congress documents about an FBI informant used to spy on the Trump campaign.
“We can’t force the resignation, but we can hold in contempt, we can pass resolutions, we can impeach. I think we’re getting close to there,” Nunes said of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in an interview with Maria Bartiromo on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”
Nunes has battled Rosenstein for months over other documents related to the Russia investigation. The Justice Department and FBI stalled for months to provide information about the Steele dossier as well as about a secret surveillance warrant taken out against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
The most recent standoff concerns Nunes’ request for documents related to a longtime FBI and CIA source who the bureau tasked to meet with three Trump campaign advisers, including Page.”
“Then-Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe tasked the mistress of lead agent Peter Strzok to stay appraised of the probe into Hillary Clinton’s private server — a decision that other bureau officials took issue with at the time, according to the Department of Justice Inspector General’s bombshell report.
McCabe was supposed to be insulated from the probe by two levels of management: Strzok worked for counterintelligence head Bill Priestap, who worked for national security head Michael Steinbach, who reported up to McCabe. However, Strzok communicated about the probe with his mistress, Lisa Page, who worked directly for McCabe and acted as a liaison for the Clinton investigation for the deputy director.
The report says:
Lisa Page, who was Special Counsel to McCabe, became involved in the Midyear investigation after McCabe became the Deputy Director in February 2016. Page told the OIG that part of her function was to serve as a liaison between the Midyear team and McCabe.
Page acknowledged that her role upset senior FBI officials, but told the OIG that McCabe relied on her to ensure that he had the information he needed to make decisions, without it being filtered through multiple layers of management.
Several witnesses told the OIG that Page circumvented the official chain of command, and that Strzok communicated important Midyear case information to her, and thus to McCabe, without Priestap’s or Steinbach’s knowledge. McCabe said that he was aware of complaints about Page, and that he valued her ability to “spot issues” and bring them to his attention when others did not.”
Swing state jobs tied to Canadian trade (thousands, source: U.S. Labor Dept.) FL: 620K PA: 346 OH: 309 VA: 280 MICH: 259 NC: 248 WI: 158 (Nine million total across U.S.)
When we run a ground drill or fly a sortie, the North runs a reciprocal operation. These war games are painfully expensive for a gov't w/no money, de facto sanctions on North Korea & part of the maximum-pressure policy. Lifting them eases the pressure. https://t.co/RRiRXTg9WOhttps://t.co/rUy4LNahvT
I did go back and read all of that pathetic Douthat piece. Waste of time. Law and order establishment Republicans object to everify because it stops them from talking out of both sides of their mouths. That’s why we have no immigration policy that can transcend administrations. It’s not profitable for the establishment in either party. So I guess those putting their children in horrific danger by illegal border crossings are going to lose custody at least temporarily.
Debra
The leadership at ICE, border patrol, etc has broken down. They are ignoring the rule of law. Coerced pleas of guilty are invalid and detering asulym claims by imprisioning children is wrong on so many levels. They have lost any moral authority and can not be counted on to tell the truth.
I’ve always thought the Catholic church was consistent. And here’s more proof;
Debra, Among the literate, no one is more sympathetic to Trumpkins than is Douthat. Of course, he views Trump himself as a fraud. However, unlike many of us, he tries to advocate policies that he believes would improve the lot of the poor Trumpkins.
The Catholic chuch does excellent work with refugees who have been vetted and come jere legally. I have great respect for their sustained efforts with the poor and disabled as well. If they wanted to be a part of the temporary care for the children of those seeking asylum while the parents are being vetted and processed that would be great.
Ricky, it’s ironic that you and other never-Trumpers view the President as a fraud. From my perspective he’s been more faithful to his word to his supporters than just about any President in memory. Most say what they think voters want to hear,and afterward treat those people like morons who can’t see how they have been betrayed. Trump hasn’t done that. I think that’s why many of you are so furious. In that way he demonstrates more integrity than most.
Debra
.@TGowdySC tells Chris there will be action on the floor of the House if DOJ and FBI do not comply with subpoena request. Watch the full interview 2PM & 7PM ET @FoxNewspic.twitter.com/N74dEVWxg0
Debra @ 6:40
1. Abandoned 2 wives
2. Cheated on three wives
3. Lied to and conned a multitude of mistresses
4. Defrauded his lenders
5. Defrauded his former business partners
6. Fought with his family over his father’s estate.
7. Promised his gullible cult that Mexico would pay for “the wall”.
8. Promised the Cult he would deport all 11 million illegal immigrants
9. Promised to deliver a cheap, fantastic healthcare plan
10. Has told over 3000 lies in 550 days in office
11. Paid $25 million to settle claims of those defrauded by a fake university
12. Was involved in over 3000 lawsuits, many with contractors he refused to pay
13. Said it “is easy” to win a trade war.
14. Spent years peddling the “birther” myth
15. Accused the father of Ted Cruz of being involved in the assassination of JFK
16. Told the Cult he wouldn’t play golf in office.
17. The man had imaginary friends he used to call New York reporters to lie about his sex life.
Any rational adult who pays any attention to the news knows that Trump is a fraud. It is his occupation. That is why we view his followers as cultists. It isn’t rational or normal to follow Jim Jones or join the Branch Davidians. It isn’t rational or normal to fail to see that Trump is constantly lying and conning.
Any rational person who pays attention knows that Trump is a business man. He is a practitioner of the kind of capitalism we have created in this country. Look on it and weep. We are simply using the tools you have given us (and to some extent he is one) to attempt to restore national sanity.
Debra
Defrauding lenders is not a normal business practice.
Stiffing your contractors and their workers is not a normal business practice.
Casinos are not normal businesses. They are cons.
Fake universities are not normal businesses. They are cons.
Selling real estate to people trying to launder money isn’t a normal business.
Strip joints in your casino are not normal businesses.
Appearing in pornographic movies is not a normal business.
Having your mistress (later your third wife) pose nude on your private plane isn’t a normal business practice.
There are millions of Americans engaged in starting legal, legitimate businesses that do not abuse or exploit their fellow citizens. Do not associate them with con men like Bernie Madoff and Donald Trump.
Wandering Views 
Stop.
Hammer time.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/trey-gowdy-fbi-director-christopher-wray-ig-report-youre-wrong
“Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., criticized Christopher Wray’s response to the inspector general report on the FBI’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, released Thursday.
Gowdy said on Fox News Thursday evening that Wray’s assertion that the report will not have lasting consequences for the bureau is flat-out “wrong.”
“Chris Wray, I’m sorry, you’re wrong,” the House Oversight chairman stated. “There are consequences.”
“The consequences are that your fellow citizens question whether or not they can have confidence in the world’s premier law enforcement agency, and that’s coming from someone who has defended them a lot throughout his career. This was a bitterly disappointing report,” he continued.”
————————–
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Here a bias, there a bias, everywhere a bias….
The list of biased players at the FBI and DoJ is expanding.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/insubordination-and-bias-at-fbi-1529018176?shareToken=st10e37559dddc4679bb0426fe3d06fe04&ref=article_email_share
“True, the report is damning about the man who lectures Americans on “higher loyalty.” It describes how an “insubordinate” Mr. Comey was, as early as April 2016, considering how to cut his Justice Department bosses from a public statement exonerating Hillary Clinton. He hid this scheme for fear “they would instruct him not to do it”—and therefore was able to “avoid supervision.” He then “violated long-standing Department practice and protocol” by using his July 5 press conference for “criticizing Clinton’s uncharged conduct.” In October, he made public that the FBI had reopened the investigation, even though the Justice Department recommended he not do so. Mr. Comey went rogue, and President Trump had plenty of justification in firing him in May 2017.
Yet it is the report’s findings on the wider culture of the FBI and Justice Department that are most alarming. The report depicts agencies that operate outside the rules to which they hold everybody else, and that showed extraordinary bias while investigating two presidential candidates.
There’s Loretta Lynch, who felt it perfectly fine to have a long catch-up with her friend Bill Clinton on a Phoenix tarmac and whom the inspector general slams for an “error in judgment.” Mr. Comey’s entire staff was complicit in concealing the contents of the July press conference from Justice officials. We discover that significant FBI “resources” were dedicated in October to spinning FBI “talking points” about the Clinton investigation—rather than actually investigating the new Anthony Weiner laptop emails the bureau discovered in September. We even find that Mr. Comey used personal email and laptops to conduct government work.
There’s former Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik, who was tipping off the Clinton campaign even as he took part in the investigation, and who “failed to strictly adhere to [his] recusal” when he finally stepped away. Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe also did not “fully comply with his recusal,” and he’d already been found to have lied to the bureau about a leak to the media. Speaking of leaks, Mr. Horowitz needed full attachments and charts to list the entire “volume of communication” between FBI employees and the press. Not only did these folks have “no official reason to be in contact with the media,” but they also “improperly received benefits from reporters, including tickets to sporting events, golfing outings, drinks and meals, and admittance to nonpublic social events.”
Be ready to hear the report absolves the FBI and DOJ of “bias.” Not true. It very carefully states that “our review did not find documentary or testimonial evidence directly connecting the political views these employees expressed in their text messages and instant messages to the specific investigative decisions we reviewed.” Put another way, he never caught anyone writing down: Let’s start this Trump investigation so we can help Hillary win.
But the bias is everywhere. It’s in the texts between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, and those of three other employees who are routinely “hostile” to Candidate Trump. It’s in Ms. Page’s freak-out that Mr. Trump might win the presidency and Mr. Strzok’s reply: “No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it.” It’s in a message from an unnamed agent in November 2016 who writes that although the FBI found Clinton aide Huma Abedin had “lied,” it doesn’t matter since “no one at DOJ is going to prosecute.” To which a second agent replies. “Rog—noone is going to pros[ecute] even if we find unique classified.””
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These people make Nixon look good.
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11 things, but I’ll just give you my favorites….
http://thefederalist.com/2018/06/15/11-quick-things-know-inspector-generals-report/
“4. Comey Is Slippery And Weird”
“5. FBI Has A Massive Leak Problem And Is Doing Nothing About It”
“7. Breathtaking Bias”
“9. Obama Lied When He Said He Knew Nothing About Hillary’s Secret E-mail Scheme”
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Here’s something most including myself have missed. The charts show who at the FBI was leaking to reporters, and they are legion.
http://thefederalist.com/2018/06/14/inspector-general-put-together-insane-fbi-leak-chart-upon-finding-rules-widely-ignored/
“The Department of Justice inspector general report released today includes two elaborate charts mapping the volume of communications identified between FBI employees and members of the media in April, May, and October 2016.
“We have profound concerns about the volume and extent of unauthorized media contacts by FBI personnel that we have uncovered during our review,” the report states.”
———————–
Despite being able to track the number of times agents communicated with reporters, the IG cites two reasons for being unable to identify individual leakers.
First, we frequently find that the universe of Department and FBI employees who had access to sensitive information that has been leaked is substantial, often involving dozens, and in some instances, more than 100 people. We recognize that this is a challenging issue, because keeping information too closely held can harm an investigation and the supervision of it. Nevertheless, we think the Department and the FBI need to consider whether there is a better way to appropriately control the dissemination of sensitive information.
Then there’s this:
Second, although FBI policy strictly limits the employees who are authorized to speak to the media, we found that this policy appeared to be widely ignored during the period we reviewed. We identified numerous FBI employees, at all levels of the organization and with no official reason to be in contact with the media, who were nevertheless in frequent contact with reporters. The large number of FBI employees who were in contact with journalists during this time period impacted our ability to identify the sources of leaks.”
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No Wray of sunshine this one…..
Fire him. Now.
A clueless “leader” who doesn’t see the problem here is hardly gonna do anything to fix it. For that reason alone he should be fired.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/06/no_wray_of_sunshine.html
“FBI Director Christopher Wray’s explanation of Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the handling of Hillary Clinton’s emails revealed him to be just another deep-state shill willing to ignore the attempted and ongoing deep-state coup against a duly elected president, Donald J. Trump. Regarding the organized attempt to by FBI leadership to keep Hillary Clinton out of prison and Donald Trump out of the White House, Wray sees no evil, hears no evil, and will speak no evil. In his Orwellian press conference, Wray spoke from a parallel universe:
“It’s also important, though, to note what the inspector general did not find. This report did not find any evidence of political bias or improper considerations actually impacting the investigation under review,” Wray told a press briefing at FBI headquarters. “The report does identify errors of judgment, violations of or even disregard for policy, and decisions that, at the very least, with the benefit of hindsight, were not the best choices.”
Of course, Wray took advantage of the IG report’s reluctance to connect all the dots between the actions and the motives of those engaged in obstruction of justice like former FBI Director James Comey and Agent Peter Strzok, who headed the Hillary investigation and joining the Mueller team.
It takes either mind-numbing stupidity or corruption or both to find no evidence of anti-Trump bias that affected either the investigations of Hillary Clinton or Trump/Russia collusion in the text messages of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. Wray merely says the matter will be referred to the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), not bothering to explain how Strzok, despite his texts vowing to stop Trump, remains in the employ of the FBI.
Wray agrees with Inspector General Clouseau that texts such as these are not reflected in actions that clearly amount to obstruction of justice:”
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Bottom line?
Obama built this. He weaponized these agencies against his political opponents. While they are wrong and need to be held to account for having followed said illegal orders, he initiated most of this from the WH.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/06/bottom_line_obama_singlehandedly_ruined_the_fbi_and_the_doj_.html
“Naturally, the political/media left that crowds out saner voices on television were quick as jack rabbits to announce that the FBI was vindicated by the IG report that was released on Thursday. “Nothing to see here, move along,” was their mantra. But one only has to scroll through the list of columns posted at RealClearPolitics on Friday to grasp the abyss between the left and right re: the report.
The report contained an executive summary that said “We found no documentary evidence of political bias.” That means they did not find written confessions by all those Trump-hating higher-ups at the once-great law enforcement agency. But the five-hundred page body of the report is chock full of extreme political anti-Trump mendacity. Why the hundreds of texts between several like-minded agents that reek of profound bias against Trump are not documentary evidence is a mystery.
Nevertheless, it is an indisputable fact that a cabal of conspirators on the seventh floor of the FBI building, led by Comey and McCabe, along with John Brennan (CIA) , James Clapper (DNI) , Sally Yates and Rod Rosenstein at Justice coordinated their attempts to prevent Trump from winning the election by all manner of illegal means. Most likely, much of this was at the bidding and with permission of Barack Obama. ”
————————–
While the devious machinations of the deep state are not new, it was the Obama administration, most likely Obama himself, who brought us to this low point, the wholesale corruption of the FBI and the DOJ leadership. Obama surrounded himself with like-minded globalist elites who thought no laws applied to them: Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Valerie Jarrett, the Podestas, Ben Rhodes, Jonathan Gruber, and more. Eric Holder was the most unprincipled Attorney General, including even John MItchell who served time in federal prison.
We learned from the IG report that Obama lied when he said he learned of HRC’s private server from the media. He knew because he, too, corresponded with her from a private email, just as Comey used a non-FBI email account as well. None of these people, not one, respected our Constitution or the laws that were meant to govern their agencies.
This is what Obama did to America. He virtually destroyed the FBI, the CIA, and the DOJ by turning them into weapons with which to destroy his opponents. They learned their Stasi lessons well. President Trump’s outsider ways are like blessed sunlight on these institutions that had been allowed to deteriorate and decay over the eight years of Obama rule.”
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Meanwhile, in other news: Kim Jong Un Criticized For Meeting With Nation That Has Killed 60 Million Babies
(Note- This article is supposed to be satire. But often there is truth in satire.)
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I have only read the IG Summary and have not criticized it. But apparently many find the lack of bias conclusion in the report rather lame. There was a good article in National Review about the IG report. It made a lot of sense.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/ig-report-fbi-no-bias-conclusion-may-not-supported/
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David French at National Review appears to have found the answer the pesky question of how the FBI could be biased against Trump when their actions injured Clinton: they unintentionally helped elect Trump while deliberately exonerating Hillary through self-interest and sheer incompetence. It’s rather damning considering the source.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/inspector-general-report-fbi-bias-helped-trump/
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And in other news, here’s more on the legal constraints surrounding the detention of children not legally residing in the US, particularly those who are being brought by adults illegally.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/illegal-immigration-enforcement-separating-kids-at-border/
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Again, more on family detentions. This one specifies that these individuals are crossing ‘between ports of entry’, which makes a difference in their ability to even apply for asylum when here.
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/white-house-blames-democrats-for-separation-of-families-at-border/
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https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/06/16/business/tariffs-trade-war.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
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Jefferson was a weird guy.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/opinion/sally-hemings-monticello-thomas-jefferson.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
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A very nice tribute to Krauthammer.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/opinion/charles-krauthammer-democratic-vocation.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fopinion-columnists&action=click&contentCollection=columnists®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront
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Yes! An article about Trumpism as a cult.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/this-is-the-way-of-the-cult/2018/06/15/9a9c9346-70ad-11e8-afd5-778aca903bbe_story.html?utm_term=.8a4033d24aae
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Debra,
That’s just the left’s latest outrage du jour.
Criminals are separated from their children all the time when incarcerated. Why would anyone think an illegal entrant (a crime) should be treated differently?
And Scarborough and his Never-Trump side kick should be under quarantine. TDS is contagious ya’ know.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/06/15/white-house-rips-msnbcs-joe-scarborough-for-nazi-comment.html
“The White House came out swinging Friday against MSNBC star Joe Scarborough after the former Republican congressman compared the methods used in current immigration policy to the Nazis.
Speaking about White House press secretary Sarah Sanders’ Thursday press briefing – in which she sparred with reporters over the separation of families attempting to try to enter the southern border – Scarborough accused Sanders of excessive lying on his “Morning Joe” program.
“So why is she lying this much?” Scarborough asked. “I know children are being ripped from their mother’s arms, even while they’re being breast-fed. I know children are being marched away to showers, marched away to showers. Being told they are — just like the Nazis — said that they were taking people to the showers and then they never came back,” he said.
“You think they would use another trick like ‘Hey, got a slurpee room over there.’ ‘We’re going to take them to get a slurpee,’” he continued. “That would be better than ‘We’re marching them to the showers and we’ll be right back’ and they never come back.”
“It is appalling that Joe Scarborough would compare sworn federal law enforcement officers— who put their lives on the line every day to keep American people safe— to Nazis,” White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley said in a statement provided to Fox News. “This is the type of inflammatory and unacceptable rhetoric that puts a target on the backs of our great law enforcement.
“It is also horribly insulting to the memory of the 6 million Jews who perished in the Nazi Holocaust. Not only is Scarborough’s rhetoric shameful, but his facts are categorically false. When American citizens break the law, they are separated from their children and prosecuted. It’s unclear why Scarborough believes that illegal aliens are entitled to more rights than those afforded to American citizens. While Scarborough is quick to launch into his straight-to-camera outrage over the temporary separation of illegal alien families, he has never shown similar outrage for the permanent separation of American families forever torn apart from their children, who were killed by criminal aliens as a result of Democrats’ open borders policies,” Gidley continued.
“If Joe Scarborough actually cared about keeping illegal alien families together, he would use his platform to support the Trump Administration’s efforts to close loopholes in federal immigration law,” the statement said.”
———————-
As would Democrats. But they don’t want solutions, only ammo they think hurts the President.
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—————————-
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Half-baked.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/ig-report-fbi-no-bias-conclusion-may-not-supported/
“You’ve got to hand it to Michael Horowitz: The Justice Department inspector general’s much-anticipated report on the Clinton-emails investigation may be half-baked, but if it is, it is the most comprehensive, meticulously detailed, carefully documented, thoughtfully reasoned epic in the history of half-bakery.
Why say do I say the report “may be half-baked”? Why don’t I just come out and declare, “The report is half-baked”? Well, I figure if I write this column in the IG’s elusive style, we’ll have the Rosetta Stone we need to decipher the report.
See, you probably sense that I believe the report is half-baked. But if I say it “may be” half-baked . . . well, technically that means it may not be, too. I mean, who really knows, right?
If that annoys you, try wading through 568 pages of this stuff, particularly on the central issue of the investigators’ anti-Trump bias. The report acknowledges that contempt for Trump was pervasive among several of the top FBI and DOJ officials making decisions about the investigation. So this deep-seated bias must have affected the decision-making, right? Well, the report concludes, who really knows?
Not in so many words, of course. The trick here is the premise the IG establishes from the start: It’s not my job to draw firm conclusions about why things happened the way they did. In fact, it’s not even my job to determine whether investigative decisions were right or wrong. The cop-out is that we are dealing here with “discretionary” calls; therefore, the IG rationalizes, the investigators must be given very broad latitude. Consequently, the IG says his job is not to determine whether any particular decision was correct; just whether, on some otherworldly scale of reasonableness, the decision was defensible. And he makes that determination by looking at every decision in isolation.
But is that the way we evaluate decisions in the real world?
In every criminal trial, the defense lawyer tries to sow reasonable doubt by depicting every allegation, every factual transaction, as if it stood alone. In a drug case, if the defendant was photographed delivering a brown paper bag on Wednesday, the lawyer argues, “Well, we don’t have X-ray vision, how do we really know there was heroin in the bag?” The jurors are urged that when they consider what happened Wednesday, there is only Wednesday; they must put out of their minds that text from Tuesday, when the defendant told his girlfriend, “I always deliver the ‘product’ in paper bags.”
Fortunately, the judge ends up explaining to the jury that, down here on Planet Earth, common sense applies. In our everyday lives, we don’t look at related events in isolation; we view them in conjunction because they read on each other. Let’s say on Monday I confide to my friend that I can’t stand Bob, and on Tuesday I tell Bob I can’t join him for dinner because I have other plans. It may or may not be true that I have other plans, but common sense tells you my disdain for Bob has factored into the decision — even if I don’t announce that fact to Bob.
For all his assiduous attention to detail, IG Horowitz has weaved a no-common-sense report.”
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But… but…..
I was assured her reign as the new leader of the free world was just beginning, thanks to Trump…….
Hmmm…… Now where did I hear that?…..
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/975166/Angela-Merkel-Germany-Bundestag-EU-migration-crisis-Kai-Whittaker
“‘We might have a new situation’ German MP predicts Merkel could be OUSTED end of NEXT WEEK
GERMAN Chancellor Angela Merkel could lose her powerful seat in the heart of Europe as soon as next week amid clashes within her coalition Government over EU migration policies, claimed German MP Kai Whittaker.”
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This stuff figures to be the 5th or 6th Article of Impeachment.
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Dreher on the division of families at the border.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/christians-cruelty-children-the-law/
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“smartest” then “countries history” The imbecile is in fine form.
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Having had his hopes dashed yet again, Ricky is off to the next made up scandal….
Sooner or later, something has to stick, right Ricky?
🙂
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Trump does lead to some great Father/Son conversations.
Me: The guy can’t spell “missile” or “stopped”.
My son: Dad! He can’t spell “too” or “tap”. Baby step! Baby steps!
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@1:47 Father and son baby blocks. But soon you will have the real thing to play with. Hope all is going well on that front. :–)
Debra
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The children are being used as hostages. If a parent pleads guility they are released as are their kids and then deported. However if parents wish to claim asulym their children are kept from them and held in detention. The choice for a parent is then coerced. Plead guility. Not only is this a deterrant its coercion and may force a parent back to a situation dangerous for them and their children.
This is not how children of criminals are treated. Once parents are arrested, minors become wards of the state abd children’s services usually places them in foster care or a group home not in an abandoned Walmart in what looks like a dog kennel.
And parents claiming asylum are not criminals. They are fleeing some type of imminent harm. By international law that is not a criminal offense.
Using children as hostages, as a deterrent, as coercion is an act one would expect in North Korea. Trump is carrying his admiration for dictators too far.
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Colbert takes his Catholicism seriously;
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Well I’m all for funding detention centers that will adequately house illegals and their children for as long as needed to properly process their asylum applications and vet them as part of comprehensive immigration reform package—that would include increased security measures and funding for ‘the wall’. Concerned Conservatives call your Senators and Representatives in Congress. The President is awaiting a bill he can sign in good conscience. So am I. :–)
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Speaking of persecuted people who need help, it looks like VP Pence has been instrumental in getting increased aid for persecuted minorities in Iraq—particularly in Christian and Yazidis communities.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/mike-pence-gets-usaid-to-dole-out-more-than-100-million-to-help-christians-and-yazidis-in-iraq
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“The children are being used as hostages. If a parent pleads guility they are released as are their kids and then deported. However if parents wish to claim asulym their children are kept from them and held in detention. The choice for a parent is then coerced. Plead guility. Not only is this a deterrant its coercion and may force a parent back to a situation dangerous for them and their children.”
That sounds like a reasonable approach. I also notice you assume the impossible, that every single asylum claim is legit. They’re not.
If they plead guilty, everyone goes home, and they really had no claim to asylum in the first place, as a judge decides before ordering deportation. Then they were just border jumping criminals.
If their claim is legitimate, they’ll be re-united once verified.
But I do agree it’s intended as a deterrent. And I’d add it’s only in place because illegals were exploiting the asylum loophole. Word was out that this was an end around. Word is now out that it isn’t.
As Debra said, the fix is easy. It just requires Congress to do the job they keep ignoring, and securing the border. But they’d rather use them as tools against Trump. Fixing the problem doesn’t benefit them.
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Mona with a Krauthammer tribute:
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Which led to this:
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The logical next step. I think she already has her own weird cult.
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I was very sorry to hear of Charles Krauthammer’s cancer. He will be missed—his voice already is. There was a nice tribute piece in the WSJ earlier this week; it’s good, and you will not need a dictionary to read it.. ;–)
https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/charles-krauthammer-goes-out-like-gehrig-1528652464
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Maybe Comey and Kim will primary Trump in 2020. The media would love it, because the Democrats seem so dead that otherwise they will never drag ratings into the double digits and Trump will be a complete shoo in. What a waste of an election year that would be for CNN and the talking bobbleheads.
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“This is not how children of criminals are treated. Once parents are arrested, minors become wards of the state abd children’s services usually places them in foster care or a group home not in an abandoned Walmart in what looks like a dog kennel.”
Yeaaaaahhh….. about that….
First off the dog kennel pics were from Obama’s reign. You can’t put that on Trump. As these pics show, things have greatly improved since the Obama years, although I’m sure there’s still some temporary holding areas that may still look that way. This looks pretty un-WalMart like to me, except for the large scale cooking operation. But you can see for yourselves.
http://www.breitbart.com/california/2018/06/15/photos-inside-shelter-for-illegal-alien-children-separated-from-parents/
“The children are separated from their parents — or, to be precise, from the adults accompanying them, who may or may not be their parents — when their parents cross the southern U.S. border illegally and are caught and detained.
Previously, under the “catch-and-release” policy, the adults would be released. Under the “zero tolerance” policy of the Trump administration, the adults are being detained and prosecuted. Children cannot be incarcerated with them.
However, families that arrive together at legal ports of entry and apply for asylum status are generally not split up and are permitted to stay in the U.S. pending the adjudication of their applications (which can take several years).
Democrats and the mainstream media have accused the administration of separating the children of “immigrants” from their parents and imprisoning them in “cages.” On Thursday, CNN analyst and Playboy reporter Brian Karem shouted at White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders: “These people have nothing. They come to the border with nothing and you throw children in cages.” None of the reporters in the briefing room corrected him.
The facility at El Cajon, however, is not a “cage.” It is a comfortable facility providing lodging, meals, clothing, medical care, education, recreation, counseling, and other services.”
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More lies exposed.
Just because someone with an agenda says it’s happening, doesn’t mean it actually is.
http://dailycaller.com/2018/06/15/dhs-we-do-not-separate-babies-from-adults/
“Department of Homeland Security officials on Friday flatly denied a widely reported allegation that border authorities forcibly separated a breastfeeding baby from her mother while she was awaiting prosecution for entering the country illegally.
“We do not separate babies from adults,” a DHS official told reporters during a background briefing. “It’s a bright line.”
CNN first reported that an illegal immigrant from Honduras claimed federal authorities took her daughter while she breastfed the child at an immigration detention center in McAllen, Texas, on Tuesday. The CNN report was picked up by several national media outlets, including the Huffington Post, The Daily Beast and Vox, sparking further condemnation of the Trump administration’s policy of separating migrant families caught crossing the border illegally.
The CNN report did not quote the mother herself, but rather an attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project who had reportedly interviewed the woman. A Customs and Border Protection spokesman denied the allegations in a statement to CNN on Wednesday.
“Nothing could be further from the truth and these allegations are unsubstantiated,” the spokesman, Carlos Diaz, told CNN in an email.
DHS officials reiterated that denial on Friday, telling reporters the claim was false and that department officials have been working to investigate the circumstances surrounding the allegation.”
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https://twitter.com/sahilcdesaic/status/1007858131060318208?s=21
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Debra, Trump’s recent meeting with American Kim went almost as well as his meeting with Korean Kim. Expect him to ask her to replace Pence in 2020 as his VP and merge the two cults.
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Not going to happen Ricky. Kardashian might upstage Trump and when he realized he can’t fire her, he’d waste his second term trying to have her impeached. Let’s stick with Pence.He’s more useful all the way around.
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I’m really starting to find the whole immigration scandal disturbing, but not for the usual reasons.
When I see influential people like Franklin Graham or Rod Dreher or even Russell Moore giving what appear to be knee-jerk reactions to negative media hype—describing children as being ‘ripped’ out of their mothers’ arms at the border, it makes me think they are just swaying in the wind of media-driven public opinion like spineless scarecrows instead of the strong-minded leaders and thinkers I believe they really are. It’s disappointing.
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Exactly. Doesn’t anyone demand proof before they buy what’s being sold? Sheesh.
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Twitter was good last night. Kat Timpf is visiting Texas.
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And Charles Murray is reacting to the story that Ivy League schools discriminate against Asians.
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Douthat addresses immigration issues:
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Maureen Dowd is as vicious as Kevin D. Williamson. Some days she is funny. Today is one of those days.
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Timpf was still going strong at 1:00 a.m. in my hometown.
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So I see Ross Douthat also doesn’t fact check what he hears and just parrots the same lies and distorted talking points. But then, how else does one get in the NYT, right?
Polly want a cracker?
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A Trump cultist talks about fact-checking. Will they soon begin to put a premium on spelling?
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My son told me at church that Kat Timpf is here in Texas for some kind of conference of conservative women. I hope she went to bed at some point.
https://twitter.com/kattimpf/status/1008219597722542085
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More NYT on immigration. No word if these facts have been confirmed by Alex Jones.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/06/16/us/politics/family-separation-trump.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fpolitics&action=click&contentCollection=politics®ion=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront
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More NYT on immigration. Warning: The Black Swallow may have a different perspective.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/06/16/us/politics/trump-democrats-separation-policy.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
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As hoped by all and predicted by many, Trump is “growing” in office. He has learned to spell “too”.
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The first paragraph of the Ross Douthat piece was so patently mindless that I didn’t waste my time on any more of it. Good grief people, children are separated from their parents all the time when they are incarcerated, and that’s what happens when you break the law—or has the party of law and order forgotten that. Children are being removed from the desert and given caring oversight, lodging,food, and education all at American taxpayer expense (and YES, I AM a taxpayer). These are the basic care their parents were not able to provide for them in the sort term. And they will be returned to their parents when the proceedings are over. Very evil indeed. You people have lost your minds. :eyeroll:
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The essential problem is children are being held in prision in order to elicit a guility plea from parents. That’s coercion and illegitimate. its rule by law not rule of law. Its also the use of children to deter asulym claims. Its indefensible.
AJ, I find it interesting you quote with approval claims made by DHS. Yet when the FBI makes a claim you’re incredibly skeptical despite the FBI being part of the DHS.
I wonder if Mueller used the same technique in his investigation ie put children in jail until he gets a guilty plea or confession, how quick Trump supporters would condemn it.
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Ricky,
George Will was a guest of Bill Maher this week. They had a interesting conversation. Not too much substance but still woth a listen.
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Debra, You need to read the rest of the Douthat piece. He ends up recommending a very Trumpkin-friendly solution.
HRW, Thanks for the note on the Maher/Will discussion. I will look for it. I have had several interesting discussions with the handful of liberals who live in Texas. I have to admit they are handling those conversations better than I would if the circumstances were reversed. As most of you can imagine, if the Dems had nominated and elected Trump, my first words to them would have been:
“Ha Ha Ha! Your leader is an illiterate, lying moron!”
My liberal friends wait for me to describe Trump in such language, then breathe a huge sigh of relief and say, “Thank goodness! We thought no one on your side noticed.”
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Keep an eye on this story. It is likely to change and grow.
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Debra,
“The first paragraph of the Ross Douthat piece was so patently mindless that I didn’t waste my time on any more of it.”
Exactly, just more parroting of the same old false tripe.
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HRW,
When the leadership at the border patrol and DHS starts breaking the law, policy, and actively working to undermine our president and democracy, I’ll be skeptical of them too.
If you can show me proof they’re lying, maybe I’ll change my mind. But you can’t. Other than parroted talking points, old Obama era photos, and lies, you got nothing.
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Put her under oath and lets get to it. 🙂
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jun/15/victoria-nuland-linked-anti-trump-dossier-testify/
“Former State Department official Victoria Nuland, who reportedly connected FBI officials to the former British spy who wrote the infamous anti-Trump dossier, will testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee next week.
Ms. Nuland, a longtime State Department official who served in the George W. Bush administration as the U.S. Ambassador to NATO, served during the Obama administration as assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs.
In that capacity, according to the book “Russian Roulette,” she played an instrumental role in the evolution of Christopher Steele’s negative campaign research on then-presidential candidate Donald Trump in 2016 by giving permission for an FBI agent in London to meet with the former U.K. intelligence officer.”
————————
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Getting closer…..
http://dailycaller.com/2018/06/17/nunes-impeach-rod-rosenstein/
“House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes said Sunday that “there will be hell to pay” — including impeachment for top Justice Department officials — if the agency fails this week to give Congress documents about an FBI informant used to spy on the Trump campaign.
“We can’t force the resignation, but we can hold in contempt, we can pass resolutions, we can impeach. I think we’re getting close to there,” Nunes said of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in an interview with Maria Bartiromo on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”
Nunes has battled Rosenstein for months over other documents related to the Russia investigation. The Justice Department and FBI stalled for months to provide information about the Steele dossier as well as about a secret surveillance warrant taken out against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
The most recent standoff concerns Nunes’ request for documents related to a longtime FBI and CIA source who the bureau tasked to meet with three Trump campaign advisers, including Page.”
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The more we know, the more justified his firing appears to have been.
http://dailycaller.com/2018/06/17/mccabe-used-page-bypass-chain-of-command/
“Then-Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe tasked the mistress of lead agent Peter Strzok to stay appraised of the probe into Hillary Clinton’s private server — a decision that other bureau officials took issue with at the time, according to the Department of Justice Inspector General’s bombshell report.
McCabe was supposed to be insulated from the probe by two levels of management: Strzok worked for counterintelligence head Bill Priestap, who worked for national security head Michael Steinbach, who reported up to McCabe. However, Strzok communicated about the probe with his mistress, Lisa Page, who worked directly for McCabe and acted as a liaison for the Clinton investigation for the deputy director.
The report says:
Lisa Page, who was Special Counsel to McCabe, became involved in the Midyear investigation after McCabe became the Deputy Director in February 2016. Page told the OIG that part of her function was to serve as a liaison between the Midyear team and McCabe.
Page acknowledged that her role upset senior FBI officials, but told the OIG that McCabe relied on her to ensure that he had the information he needed to make decisions, without it being filtered through multiple layers of management.
Several witnesses told the OIG that Page circumvented the official chain of command, and that Strzok communicated important Midyear case information to her, and thus to McCabe, without Priestap’s or Steinbach’s knowledge. McCabe said that he was aware of complaints about Page, and that he valued her ability to “spot issues” and bring them to his attention when others did not.”
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This one makes me laugh.
Nice job Senator. 🙂
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A new idea for the media.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/instead-of-trumps-propaganda-how-about-a-nice-truth-sandwich/2018/06/15/80df8c36-70af-11e8-bf86-a2351b5ece99_story.html?utm_term=.df840ff51c06
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I did go back and read all of that pathetic Douthat piece. Waste of time. Law and order establishment Republicans object to everify because it stops them from talking out of both sides of their mouths. That’s why we have no immigration policy that can transcend administrations. It’s not profitable for the establishment in either party. So I guess those putting their children in horrific danger by illegal border crossings are going to lose custody at least temporarily.
Debra
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The leadership at ICE, border patrol, etc has broken down. They are ignoring the rule of law. Coerced pleas of guilty are invalid and detering asulym claims by imprisioning children is wrong on so many levels. They have lost any moral authority and can not be counted on to tell the truth.
I’ve always thought the Catholic church was consistent. And here’s more proof;
http://www.newsweek.com/catholic-bishop-suggests-canonical-penalties-catholics-help-carry-out-trump-975834?amp=1
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Debra, Among the literate, no one is more sympathetic to Trumpkins than is Douthat. Of course, he views Trump himself as a fraud. However, unlike many of us, he tries to advocate policies that he believes would improve the lot of the poor Trumpkins.
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The Catholic chuch does excellent work with refugees who have been vetted and come jere legally. I have great respect for their sustained efforts with the poor and disabled as well. If they wanted to be a part of the temporary care for the children of those seeking asylum while the parents are being vetted and processed that would be great.
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Anon=Debra
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Ricky, it’s ironic that you and other never-Trumpers view the President as a fraud. From my perspective he’s been more faithful to his word to his supporters than just about any President in memory. Most say what they think voters want to hear,and afterward treat those people like morons who can’t see how they have been betrayed. Trump hasn’t done that. I think that’s why many of you are so furious. In that way he demonstrates more integrity than most.
Debra
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Bring the pain.
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Debra @ 6:40
1. Abandoned 2 wives
2. Cheated on three wives
3. Lied to and conned a multitude of mistresses
4. Defrauded his lenders
5. Defrauded his former business partners
6. Fought with his family over his father’s estate.
7. Promised his gullible cult that Mexico would pay for “the wall”.
8. Promised the Cult he would deport all 11 million illegal immigrants
9. Promised to deliver a cheap, fantastic healthcare plan
10. Has told over 3000 lies in 550 days in office
11. Paid $25 million to settle claims of those defrauded by a fake university
12. Was involved in over 3000 lawsuits, many with contractors he refused to pay
13. Said it “is easy” to win a trade war.
14. Spent years peddling the “birther” myth
15. Accused the father of Ted Cruz of being involved in the assassination of JFK
16. Told the Cult he wouldn’t play golf in office.
17. The man had imaginary friends he used to call New York reporters to lie about his sex life.
Any rational adult who pays any attention to the news knows that Trump is a fraud. It is his occupation. That is why we view his followers as cultists. It isn’t rational or normal to follow Jim Jones or join the Branch Davidians. It isn’t rational or normal to fail to see that Trump is constantly lying and conning.
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Any rational person who pays attention knows that Trump is a business man. He is a practitioner of the kind of capitalism we have created in this country. Look on it and weep. We are simply using the tools you have given us (and to some extent he is one) to attempt to restore national sanity.
Debra
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Defrauding lenders is not a normal business practice.
Stiffing your contractors and their workers is not a normal business practice.
Casinos are not normal businesses. They are cons.
Fake universities are not normal businesses. They are cons.
Selling real estate to people trying to launder money isn’t a normal business.
Strip joints in your casino are not normal businesses.
Appearing in pornographic movies is not a normal business.
Having your mistress (later your third wife) pose nude on your private plane isn’t a normal business practice.
There are millions of Americans engaged in starting legal, legitimate businesses that do not abuse or exploit their fellow citizens. Do not associate them with con men like Bernie Madoff and Donald Trump.
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