11:00 am || Meets with the president of Paraguay
8:15 pm || Hosts a Christmas reception
All times Eastern
As of now, I am in control here, in the White House
WSJ’s Henninger: The IG Report Shows Obvious FBI Bias. Just Read It.
Dan Henninger, opinion writer for the Wall Street Journal, suggests the report by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz shows no bias in the FBI investigation of Donald Trump — but only in the minds of the obtuse, Democrats, and their allies in the media.
And various combinations of the three, I presume.
According to his article:
Within minutes of the 434-page report’s release Monday, the generic media headline was that it “debunks” the idea that the FBI was guilty of political bias against Mr. Trump, as well as conservative “conspiracy theories” that there was a deep-state effort to get Mr. Trump.
Whatever the Horowitz review of four FBI Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act applications and its Crossfire Hurricane investigation did or did not “debunk,” the report is mind-boggling, shocking and damning. It is page after page—indeed, paragraph after paragraph—detailing gross errors of judgment and violations of FBI investigation protocols. Everyone who purports to have an opinion about what has been going on in the U.S. the past 3½ years should at least read the report’s detailed executive summary and draw their own conclusions.
Christopher Steele’s primary FBI handler even told the Horowitz investigators “it was obvious to him”—as early as July 2016—that the producer of the famous anti-Trump dossiers “was politically motivated.”
True, Mr. Horowitz asserted no “documentary or testimonial evidence” of anti-Trump bias inside the borders of this investigation. But one has to be obtuse to read this report and not see its authors are incredulous at the idea that the only explanation possible is incompetence and misjudgment on an unimaginable scale by trained FBI professionals. As Mr. Horowitz puts it with almost bemused understatement, “We did not receive satisfactory explanations for the errors or problems we identified.”
As it did with the Mueller report, the media is abandoning the actual content to push the public’s attention toward Attorney General William Barr’s “disagreements” with Mr. Horowitz. This is a sham issue, a red herring.
In a better world than we’ve got now, the press—or some of it—would step back from the Trump-Barr obsessions and revisit its historic role of protecting individual freedoms from such raw, unaccountable government power.
Greta Thunberg Mocks Trump Twitter Attack
Well, of course, Greta Thunberg should not be Time’s Person of the Year. She is a child with a disability being used by others for their purposes.
President Trump went after her in personal terms, which I thought was kind of crappy.
I have to admit, her response was pretty clever. She almost immediately updated her Twitter profile.
Matt Gaetz Holds Nothing Back Describing Hunter Biden’s Drug Abuse
The Florida Republican went through some of the history of Hunter Biden, the degenerate son of former Vice President Joe Biden, during today’s House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearing.
He said:
An essential element of the Democrats’ case on abuse of power is that the Bidens did nothing wrong. It can only be an abuse of power and not a correct use of power if the president was pursuing something under which there was no reasonable basis to ask a question about Hunter Biden and Burisma. Hunter Biden and Burisma, well, that’s an interesting story. And I think just about every American knows there’s something up with that.
I don’t want to make light of anybody’s substance abuse issues. I know the president’s working real hard to solve those throughout the country. But it’s a little hard to believe that Burisma hired Hunter Biden to resolve their international disputes when he could not resolve his own dispute with Hertz rental car over leaving cocaine and a crack pipe in the car.
Again, I’m not casting any judgment on any challenges someone goes through in their personal life, but it’s just hard to believe that this is the guy wandering through homeless encampments buying crack who was worth $86,000 a month to Burisma Holdings.
Of course, after he brought all this up, the Democrats and their notetakers in the press said Gaetz’s description of Hunter Biden was a case of “the pot calling the kettle black” since Gaetz was arrested as a young man and given a DUI. The charges were later dropped.
There is absolutely no comparison between Gaetz’s history and that of Hunter Biden, a rampant drug and alcohol abuser who has found all kinds of scammy ways to make money and is currently the subject of a paternity suit.
And yet the press is reporting “pot calling the kettle black” as if it’s serious.
Trump Schedule || Thursday, December 12, 2019
Video || IG Admits Government Did “Illegal Surveillance,” aka Spying, on Carter Page
Lindsey Graham is doing an excellent job as Senate Judiciary Chair conducting a hearing on Inspector General Horowitz’s report on the Russia investigation.
From an op-ed Carter Page wrote in the Wall Street Journal today, FBI Spying Ruined My Good Name”:
My name is Carter Page, and I wish you were hearing it for the first time. If you were, I could introduce myself—a former naval officer who has worked for political figures from both parties. But my identity has been reduced to a series of false accusations. If something isn’t done to prevent future abuses of power by intelligence agencies, I won’t be the last to lose his good name this way.
In 2016-17 the government I once served investigated me on suspicion of being an intermediary between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. This week Inspector General Michael Horowitz detailed how officials committed troubling errors over the course of the probe. From the day news of the investigation broke, I have faced threats to my life and have been forced to live like a fugitive. I still don’t feel safe enough to establish a fixed residence.
I still have many questions about the FBI investigation that ruined my life. If you value your privacy, reputation and right to political expression, you should too.
I’m by no means the first person to raise these concerns. In the 1970s, the Church Committee uncovered troubling abuses. In response, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. FISA was supposed to protect U.S. citizens from the formidable investigatory powers the government can turn on foreign agents and terrorists. But it didn’t protect me. And those surveillance powers have grown exponentially since the 1970s.
Mr. Horowitz’s report identified “at least 17 significant errors or omissions” in the application for a surveillance warrant against me. Among them: the FBI’s altering a document to secure my FISA warrant’s renewal, as well as its repeated reliance on uncorroborated information in the Steele dossier to justify intrusive surveillance. “That so many basic and fundamental failures were made,” the report said, “raised significant questions regarding the FBI chain of command’s management and supervision of the FISA process.”
Video || Don Lemon Falls Apart Over Trump Meme
Biden Almost Certain Not To Seek a Second Term If Elected
Looks like the Biden people are floating this to make everyone more comfortable with his campaign.
That might not be a bad idea. It’s pretty clear he’s not up to the task of being president for one term, so assuring people he won’t run for a second might make some feel better about voting for him. Eight years of Biden not knowing where he is, what year it is, or who the hell he is talking to would be too much even for the most diehard Trump hater.
He won’t make an official announcement, though, because it would turn him into a lame duck the moment he is elected.
According to Politico:
Former Vice President Joe Biden’s top advisers and prominent Democrats outside the Biden campaign have recently revived a long-running debate whether Biden should publicly pledge to serve only one term, with Biden himself signaling to aides that he would serve only a single term.
While the option of making a public pledge remains available, Biden has for now settled on an alternative strategy: quietly indicating that he will almost certainly not run for a second term while declining to make a promise that he and his advisers fear could turn him into a lame duck and sap him of his political capital.
According to four people who regularly talk to Biden, all of whom asked for anonymity to discuss internal campaign matters, it is virtually inconceivable that he will run for reelection in 2024, when he would be the first octogenarian president.
“If Biden is elected,” a prominent adviser to the campaign said, “he’s going to be 82 years old in four years and he won’t be running for reelection.”
The adviser argued that public acknowledgment of that reality could help Biden mollify younger voters, especially on the left, who are unexcited by his candidacy and fear that his nomination would serve as an eight-year roadblock to the next generation of Democrats.
By signaling that he will serve just one term and choosing a running mate and Cabinet that is young and diverse, Biden could offer himself to the Democratic primary electorate as the candidate best suited to defeat Trump as well as the candidate who can usher into power the party’s fresh faces.
Senate Republicans May Expedite Trial By Calling No Witnesses
We could be looking at just a couple of weeks here. Senate Republicans are so confident of acquittal that they want to limit the whole show and may not call witnesses. At the very least, they won’t bring in Hunter Biden or the whistleblower, because some Republicans are opposed and they need 51 senators to… Continue Reading
Trump Schedule|| Tuesday, December 10, 2019
Tuesday, December 10, 2019 2:30 pm || Meets with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov6:35 pm || Arrives Hershey, Pennsylvania7:00pm || Delivers remarks at a Keep America Great Rally; Hershey, Pennsylvania 8:30 pm || Departs Hershey, Pennsylvania10:05 pm || Arrives White House All times Eastern Facebook Twitter Reddit Linkedin email Continue Reading