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Brexit Chronicles: Boris gears up for EU meetings

August 19, 2019 in history | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 comments

Prime Minister Boris Johnson will be visiting our European neighbours this week before the G7 conference in Biarritz:

Reuters reports (emphases mine):

Prime Minister Boris Johnson will tell French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel that the Westminster parliament cannot stop Brexit and a new deal must be agreed if Britain is to avoid leaving the EU without one.

In his first trip abroad as leader, Johnson is due to meet his European counterparts ahead of a G7 summit on Aug. 24-26 in Biarritz, France.

He will say that Britain is leaving the European Union on Oct. 31, with or without a deal, and that the British parliament cannot block that, according to a Downing Street source.

Despite Parliament’s summer recess, Remain MPs have been in various discussions as to how to stop our leaving, deal or no deal, on October 31:

It is, however, unclear if lawmakers have the unity or power to use the British parliament to prevent a no-deal Brexit on Oct. 31 – likely to be the United Kingdom’s most significant move since World War Two.

Sky News reports that No. 10 says Brexit will be but a small part of Boris’s discussions with France and Germany:

… Number 10 said it expects there to be “very little discussion” of Brexit during the visit to Berlin on Wednesday and Paris on Thursday, with other topics to be the focus.

Discussions are expected to centre around the next G7 summit in Biarritz, France, next weekend, with trade, foreign policy, security and the environment set to be on the table.

Number 10 said Mr Johnson would discuss issues such as climate change with his fellow leaders, adding: “The EU are our closest neighbours and whatever happens we want a strong relationship after we leave.”

Thanks to Boris’s leadership thus far, the Conservative Party once again leads in the polls:

British voters believe that Boris would make the best PM:

Nevertheless, Labour MPs think they can overturn triggering of Article 50. Whether this can be done is of some debate:

The Speaker of the House, John Bercow, is supposed to be impartial, yet, he, too, is said to be plotting against No Deal:

Boris’s government tied up one loose end at the weekend:

This was something Theresa May was supposed to instruct Stephen Barclay (pictured) to do — but didn’t:

There were two significant leaks in the past few days.

One was Boris’s Brexit ‘script’, left behind in a London pub, allegedly by a civil servant. Tell me this was not deliberate:

The other was a copy of Operation Yellowhammer, which contains all the worst case scenarios in case of No Deal:

The Sunday Times made this look like news, but Yellowhammer first surfaced on Wednesday, March 20 in preparation for our original March 29 exit date.

That day, the Express reported:

Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay told Cabinet ministers in a letter the plan will be implemented on March 25 unless a new exit date is agreed. Operation Yellowhammer is the UK Treasury’s contingency plan for no deal exit from the bloc. The plan drafts what would happen for factors such as money, citizens, trade and customs.

According to the Daily Telegraph, if no date is set by Monday Operation Yellowhammer will be implemented.

In a letter to Cabinet ministers, Mr Barclay wrote: “Operation Yellowhammer command and control structures will be enacted fully on 25 March unless a new exit date has been agreed between the UK and the EU.”

The Guardian‘s story, also published that day, had more information:

With the country placed on a knife-edge by Theresa May’s latest Brexit crisis, the government is preparing for “any outcome” with a decision on Monday on whether to roll out the national Operation Yellowhammer contingencies for food, medicine and banking.

Some measures have already swung into place, including Operation Fennel’s traffic management in Kent.

The Europe minister, Alan Duncan, has also said the Foreign Office staff deployed to its Brexit “nerve centre” are working to help UK citizens in the EU in the event they get caught up in a Brexit mess.

The Department of Health was due to activate emergency supply chain operations, with instructions to medicines suppliers to book space on ferries to ensure they are not caught up in queues from next weekend in the event of no-deal.

They are just two of the 12 Operation Yellowhammer areas of risk the government has planned for in the event of a crash-out, according to a National Audit Office report [pdf]. It will decide next Monday if they should all become operational, enacting no-deal plans in 30 central government departments and 42 local councils, two devolved governments and in Northern Ireland.

Yellowhammer also had measures in place for Gibraltar. Fortunately, the government there was quick to point out that Yellowhammer as published is now out of date:

Interestingly, the week before, the island’s government reminded residents to prepare for a No Deal Brexit:

But I digress.

Meanwhile, back in the UK, Michael Gove, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, tweeted:

Sky News had more about Gove’s explanation:

Sebastian Payne of the Financial Times tweeted:

Boris is also displeased with Theresa May’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond, who has been predicting all manner of Project Fear disasters if No Deal comes about on October 31:

However, Germany had an important leak of its own at the same time as Yellowhammer resurfaced in the UK:

Good. I was also heartened to see the view of Boris from Berlin:

Absolutely correct.

I wish Boris Johnson all the best in his meetings this week with our European partners.

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Latest news on Epstein, as well as some history

August 13, 2019 in history | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 comments

Tomorrow, I will post a powerful video on child sex trafficking in the United States, which I highly recommend.

First, let’s see what is happening with the Jeffrey Epstein case after his death on Saturday, August 10, 2019.

The day before, 2,024 pages of court documents were released to the public.

Suspicions

As I write on Monday morning (BST), it is no wonder that people suspect there is a two-tiered justice system.

The story is being covered here in Britain as well as France.

If you missed my post yesterday, London’s Paul Joseph Watson summarises the Epstein death on Saturday, August 10, 2019 and the questions that have arisen as a result. This video is around four minutes long:

People are questioning the orange prison uniform shown in a photo circulating in various media outlets, because in many US prisons, inmates wear brown:

Others also question whether he could have committed suicide at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Manhattan:

A former MCC inmate spoke to two reporters from the New York Post and said that suicide would be impossible:

An excerpt follows from the article. He, too, refers to brown uniforms (emphases mine below):

Between the floor and the ceiling is like eight or nine feet. There’s no way for you to connect to anything.

You have sheets, but they’re paper level, not strong enough. He was 200 pounds — it would never happen.

When you’re on suicide watch, they put you in this white smock, a straight jacket. They know a person cannot be injurious to themselves.

The clothing they give you is a jump-in uniform. Everything is a dark brown color.

Could he have done it from the bed? No sir. There’s a steel frame, but you can’t move it. There’s no light fixture. There’s no bars.

They don’t give you enough in there that could successfully create an instrument of death. You want to write a letter, they give you rubber pens and maybe once a week a piece of paper.

Nothing hard or made of metal.

There’s up to 80 people there. They could put two in cell. It’s one or two, but I’ll never believe this guy had a cellmate. He was too blown up.

An autopsy has been performed, but results are being withheld ‘pending further information’:

Here is the preliminary statement in full (click on blue text to read it in full):

The ZeroHedge article linked to in Dr Janda’s tweet says:

On a side note, the private pathologist, demanded by Epstein’s attorneys, Dr. Michael Baden, was the city’s chief medical examiner in the late 1970s and has been called as an expert witness in high-profile cases including by the defense at O.J. Simpson’s 1994 murder trial.

Of course, this unusual delay will merely spur further uncertainty and the all around ‘conspiracy theory’ feel to this whole debacle.

What are the odds that Epstein’s body gets misplaced? Or accidentally cremated?

On Sunday, August 11, the New York Post (NYP) reported:

Sources tell The Post that a determination will likely come by early next week.

“Today, a medical examiner performed the autopsy of Jeffrey Epstein,” said Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Barbara Sampson in a statement Sunday night …

Attempts to reach Dr. Baden, the city’s former chief medical examiner and a deputy chief medical examiner for Suffolk County, were not successful Sunday night. It was not immediately clear who he was working for at the time of the autopsy.

Another NYP article, ‘Epstein’s guards were working “extreme” OT at short-staffed lockup’, states:

The two Manhattan jail guards who allegedly failed to monitor Jeffrey Epstein before he died had been working “extreme” overtime shifts amid a severe staffing shortage at the facility, reports said Sunday.

The unidentified jailers at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center violated procedure by failing to check on Epstein every 30 minutes before he apparently committed suicide in his cell, sources told Reuters.

One guard was working his fifth straight day of overtime and the other was toiling under mandatory overtime, a person familiar with operations at the lower-Manhattan lockup told The Associated Press.

The guards also violated procedure by leaving the convicted pedophile without a cellmate, the New York Times reported.

There’s no surveillance video of Epstein’s death, which apparently occurred when the 66-year-old pervert appeared to hang himself Saturday morning, law-enforcement officials told The Post.

Although there are cameras in the 9 South wing at the MCC, they are trained on areas outside the cells and not inside, according to officials familiar with the setup.

According to Reuters, Epstein’s victims are allegedly preparing to sue his estate this week:

Two of Epstein’s lawyers are allegedly lawyering up themselves:

Trump tweets

On Saturday, President Trump retweeted this …

… and this:

He followed those retweets with one of his own:

Media

President Trump was correct in tweeting about the media.

Google ‘trends’ showed this:

And while a sensible editorial from Bernard Kerik, the first deputy and commissioner of the New York City Department of Correction, 1995-2000, appeared on The Hill: ‘Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide makes no sense’ …

The fact that one of the country’s highest-profile federal prisoners could even commit suicide defies all logic and belief. 

His death raises doubts about officials’ actions. The FBI says it will investigate; Attorney General William Barr says he is “appalled” by what happened; members of Congress such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) are demanding answers. Indeed we all need answers, before we lose all faith in our justice system.

But the most basic question, in my mind, is why Epstein was in solitary confinement in the first place — something so totally inappropriate for a prisoner already at risk of suicide …

… the rest of the media denounced ‘conspiracy theories’ surrounding the high profile prisoner’s death, as Sohrab Amari reported for the NYP:

Within hours of the story breaking, writers at mainstream outlets went patrolling the Internet for “conspiracy theories” to debunk, usually with that tone of superiority and self-satisfaction that so endears the blue-check Twitterati to the American public.

“Suicide is the leading cause of death in US jails,” scolded The Daily Beast’s Justin Miller. “ ‘Suicide watch’ is just that, ‘watch,’ or observation, usually periodic. Stop speculating Epstein was murdered.” The headline on a story by Miller’s colleague Kelly Weill read: “Conspiracy Theories Erupt After Jeffrey Epstein’s Death.” (Talk about begging the question.)

“It would be easy to treat this frenzied reaction to Epstein’s death as a sad case study in how conspiratorial thinking has bled into mainstream discourse,” lectured The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins. “But finger-wagging feels inadequate at this moment.”

Among other examples of this lamentable rise in paranoia, Coppins cited one of my tweets. In it, I had recounted how a Manhattan restaurateur I know predicted that “they’ll never let Epstein live” — “they” being our shady ruling class. “Regular people,” I added, “are wiser than us pundits.”

If Coppins had bothered to contact me for comment before writing critically of my remarks — as is standard journalistic practice — I would have told him that, of course, I don’t necessarily believe the restaurateur was right. But at the time I heard him say it, I was inclined to dismiss the restaurateur’s cynicism about our system. “What does he know?” I thought. “Of course, Epstein will live to testify.” …

Speaking of which, shouldn’t the reporters who are busy lamenting our nation’s conspiratorial cast of mind wait for the facts to come out? After all, at least three local and federal probes have just gotten underway. The Justice Department and the Bureau of Prisons have been careful to append the adjective “apparent” to the noun “suicide” in their statements on the matter. As Will Chamberlain of Human Events noted, the no-conspiracy journalists are “ahead of the facts.”

It’s all especially rich, given the fact that many of these same journalists have spent the past two years feverishly promoting the “collusion” theory. Here’s Coppins writing in 2017: “As evidence piles up pointing to the possibility that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, Republican lawmakers have largely ignored Democrats’ calls for urgent action.”

Trump and Epstein

The Left are hard at it promoting the idea that Donald Trump, well before running for president, was a close friend of Epstein’s. There is no convincing them of the contrary.

That, too, is conspiracy theory, isn’t it?

On Monday, July 9, two days after Epstein’s arrest, ZeroHedge posted an article stating the contrary: ‘Trump Was “Only One” To Help Prosecutor In 2009 Epstein Case’.

That year, Epstein began serving 13 months in prison for sex with a 14-year old girl. He was released in 2010. Florida attorney Bradley Edwards was the man who was serving subpoenas which resulted in Epstein’s conviction. Edwards says that Donald Trump never had to be subpoenaed. He spoke freely to Edwards. From the ZeroHedge article (emphases in the original):

Following a 2018 financial settlement between Florida attorney Bradley Edwards – who represented one of Epstein’s accusers, only to be later sued by Epstein, Edwards claimed that Donald Trump was the ‘only person’ who provided assistance when Edwards served subpoenas and notices to high-profile individuals connected to Epstein.

Edwards: The only thing that I can say about President Trump is that he is the only person who, in 2009 when I served a lot of subpoenas on a lot of people, or at least gave notice to some pretty connected people, that I want to talk to them, is the only person who picked up the phone and said, let’s just talk.  I’ll give you as much time as you want.  I’ll tell you what you need to know, and was very helpful, in the information that he gave, and gave no indication whatsoever that he was involved in anything untoward whatsoever, but had good information. That checked out and that helped us and we didn’t have to take a deposition of him in 2009.

However, the Left was — and is still — sure that Trump had a nefarious connection to Epstein. Contrast that with Bill Clinton’s known 26 flights on Epstein’s plane.

As much as they wanted to find incriminating evidence, Fusion GPS, Vice.com and Radar came up with nothing Trump-related:

While trying to tie Trump to Epstein in an attempt to push the narrative to at least two reporters, Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS – the firm behind the unsubstantiated “Trump-Russia” dossier, found that the Trump-Epstein link appears purely social, according to the Washington Times, which writes “Journalist sources told The Washington Times that Simpson pushed the idea of a close relationship between Mr. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein,” adding “Ken Silverstein, the reporter who ultimately wrote an Epstein-Trump report, confirmed to The Times that Fusion had sourced the story.”

Mr. Silverstein, who wrote the Vice.Com story, was asked by The Washington Times if Fusion pushed the Epstein-Trump story.

Since you asked, yes, they helped me with that, Mr. Silverstein said. But as you can see, I could not make a strong case for Trump being super close to Epstein, so they could hardly have been thrilled with that story. [In my humble opinion], that was the best story written about Trumps ties to Epstein, but I failed to nail him. Trump’s ties were mild compared to Bill Clinton’s. –Washington Times

In January 2016, Vice.com ran Silverstein’s story on Trump’s ties to Epstein, which framed them as more social – including dinner parties, two plane trips, and Epstein hanging out at Trump’s Mar-a-lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. As Radar reported last April, “According to an investigation by Radar, Trump was among dozens of renowned New Yorkers who knew Epstein socially but ostracized him after Palm Beach police uncovered the financiers sleazy double life,” adding that Trump “once barred child molester Jeffrey Epstein from his famed Mar-a-lago club after the presidential candidate caught him hitting on a young girl.”

Epstein’s is not a ‘So what?’ story

Some do not care whether Epstein died.

However, Epstein had no co-defendant named in his latest case. Effectively, his case is dead, although victims can still sue his estate.

Epstein received a short sentence ten years ago as Trump’s former Secretary for Labor, Alex Acosta, explained during his confirmation hearing before he got the job. On July 9, Vicky Ward, a journalist who followed Epstein’s activities for years, wrote an article for the Daily Beast, ‘Jeffrey Epstein’s Sick Story Played Out For Years In Plain Sight’. In it, she discusses Acosta (emphases mine):

Epstein’s name, I was told, had been raised by the Trump transition team when Alexander Acosta, the former U.S. attorney in Miami who’d infamously cut Epstein a non-prosecution plea deal back in 2007, was being interviewed for the job of labor secretary. The plea deal put a hard stop to a separate federal investigation of alleged sex crimes with minors and trafficking.

“Is the Epstein case going to cause a problem [for confirmation hearings]?” Acosta had been asked. Acosta had explained, breezily, apparently, that back in the day he’d had just one meeting on the Epstein case. He’d cut the non-prosecution deal with one of Epstein’s attorneys because he had “been told” to back off, that Epstein was above his pay grade. “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone,” he told his interviewers in the Trump transition, who evidently thought that was a sufficient answer and went ahead and hired Acosta. (The Labor Department had no comment when asked about this.) …

After the one meeting with then-U.S. Attorney Acosta, where presumably “intelligence” was mentioned, the indictment was shelved and, instead, Epstein signed a non-prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors, pleading guilty to one count of solicitation of prostitution and one count of procurement of minors for prostitution, which earned him a cushy 13 months in county jail, from where he was allowed to leave to work at his office and go for walks. 

The deal granted immunity to “any potential co-conspirators.” Most significantly, federal prosecutors agreed to keep the deal secret from Epstein’s victims, which meant they would not know to challenge it in court. As it turned out, this actually broke the law, because victims have a right to know of such developments, under the Crime Victims’ Rights Act.

The Miami Herald — and independent journalist Mike Cernovich — were successful in getting the case reopened this year. Vicky Ward explains the Miami Herald‘s role:

So kudos, then, to the Miami Herald journalist Julie K. Brown, who many years after the fact went back and interviewed some of Epstein’s alleged victims in her brilliant three-part series “Perversion of Justice.” It was Brown who told the stories of teenagers in trailer parks outside Palm Beach who needed money for shoes or just to live, who went to give Epstein massages and so much more. Brown and her editors actually took the women seriously.

It was that heart-wrenching series that caught the attention of Congress. Ben Sasse, the Republican senator from Nebraska, joined with his Democratic colleagues and demanded to know how justice had been so miscarried.

Given the political sentiment, it’s unsurprising that the FBI should feel newly emboldened to investigate Epstein—basing some of their work on Brown’s excellent reporting.

The story in the indictment that was unsealed earlier Monday was eerily familiar to all of us who have been paying attention to Epstein’s sick story. What is different, finally, after 16 years, is the reaction, which is, at last, appropriate. 

One of the young women who spoke to me 16 years ago emailed Monday evening. “Shocked and elated,” she said. “Fingers crossed they all finally go down.” Amen to that.

Yet, going back to Epstein’s release in 2010, celebrities and journalists attended a dinner at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse, as Alexandra Wolfe wrote for Real Clear Politics on April 2, 2011, in ‘Celebs Close Ranks Around a Pedophile’:

Alexandra Wolfe is a former contributing editor to Conde Nast Portfolio. She has written for publications including the New York Times, New York magazine, the New York Observer, and the Wall Street Journal, where she wrote design and lifestyle features for the Weekend Journal section. Before that, she was a reporter at the New York Observer. She is currently working on a book called American Coddle, about America’s culture of entitlement.

Despite the pedophile mogul’s conviction for soliciting underage prostitution, his circle—a who’s who of the rich and powerful, from Bill Clinton to Katie Couric—is standing by their man. Renowned scientists whose research Epstein funded also back the billionaire, writes Alexandra Wolfe.

On the evening of December 2nd, 2010, a handful of America’s media and entertainment elite—including TV anchors Katie Couric and George Stephanopoulos, comedienne Chelsea Handler, and director Woody Allen—convened around the dinner table of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. It wasn’t just any dining room, but part of a sprawling nine-story townhouse that once housed an entire preparatory school. And it wasn’t just any sex offender, but an enigmatic billionaire who had flown the likes of former President Bill Clinton and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak around the world on his own Boeing 727. Last spring, Epstein completed a 13-month sentence for soliciting prostitution from a minor in Palm Beach. Now he was hosting a party for his close friend, Britain’s Prince Andrew, fourth in line to the throne …

Sure enough, that December night no one mentioned that their handsome host, a gray-haired 58-year-old financier with tanned skin and a joker smile, had just doled out millions of dollars in civil settlements to 17 [Published reports say 7…LS] girls who allege that he paid them to perform erotic massages and demeaning sexual acts when they were underage. They are among the 40 victims turned up by an FBI investigation. But at the time, this particular swath of Epstein’s elite Rolodex had no idea that the feted royal would soon renounce Epstein as a friend, nor that the royal’s ex-wife, Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson, would hysterically apologize for letting Epstein pay off some of her debts.

Oh, my.

Let’s look at Epstein’s destinations, which extended to cities in Europe:

Does anyone now not think that this is part of the reason these same people oppose Donald Trump, who made the issue of human trafficking, especially for sex, one of his campaign issues on which he has been acting during his presidency?

Three years ago, I wondered, ‘Is human trafficking really a thing?’ Trump, ever sober, knew then that it is a very serious thing, indeed.

More on child sex trafficking tomorrow.

Brexit Chronicles: the Boris Bumper Edition

July 26, 2019 in history | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 comments

Despite record-breaking heatwave this week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson lost no time on his first full day in No. 10:

On Thursday, July 25, 2019, he held his first cabinet meeting. The Press Association (PA) reported:

Boris Johnson will preside over his first meeting of his new Cabinet after a brutal cull of Theresa May’s top team.

Within hours of taking office on Wednesday, the new Prime Minister moved to stamp his authority, putting Brexiteers into key Cabinet posts as he vowed to take Britain out of the EU by the October 31 deadline.

He took his pledge to Britain seriously in his first address outside of No. 10 the day before:

Sensible people welcome his approach:

I do hope that journalist Lloyd Evans is correct:

Political pundit Guido Fawkes has been getting record-breaking social media stats:

Even the dress that Boris’s girlfriend wore on July 24 was selling out that same day:

Let’s look at the Cabinet reshuffle, which, for the most part, had me cheering.

In short:

This is also worth keeping in mind:

The new Cabinet will actually carry out the 2017 General Election Conservative Party mandate:

Conservative MP — and former Party leader — Iain Duncan Smith (IDS) says that leaving on October 31 is possible. I already knew this, but for those who do not, there is little danger of ‘crashing out’ with ‘no deal’:

Ultimately, the true nature of our MPs emerged with the stalling this year:

He is not wrong. There was a protest in Whitehall as Boris was preparing to make his first speech as PM. Please pardon the language below, but this has to be shown:

Now for more detail on the new Cabinet — which is diverse. By way of explanation, Michael Howard is also a former Conservative Party leader and Jewish:

Pundits think that Boris’s senior adviser Dominic ‘Vote Leave’ Cummings (in the tee shirt below) …

… had a lot to do with it:

Guido Fawkes posted a comprehensive list on July 24 of firings and hirings. Highlights follow (emphases and red in the original):

Earlier: Hammond, Stewart, Lidington, and Gauke pre-emptively announce resignations.

16:44: Penny Mordaunt sacked as Defence Secretary. Penny drops…

17:00: Liam Fox sacked as International Trade Secretary. Out-Foxed…

17:11: Chris Grayling quits as Transport Secretary. Grayling bailing…

I was really happy about this one:

17:24: James Brokenshire out as Communities Secretary. James Broken-fired…

James Brokenshire fired conservative philosopher Roger Scruton, who was deliberately misquoted in a New Statesman interview earlier this year. Scruton did not find out he had been sacked until he returned home from Paris the evening the article was published. He had been lecturing on architecture in Paris that day. Brokenshire did not even ask Scruton about the interview. Later, he admitted he was wrong in having jumped the gun, but he never rehired Scruton until July 23.

So, Brokenshire is out …

… and Scruton is back!

Incredibly, Brokenshire rehired Scruton the day before his own sacking! Perhaps Brokenshire thought that would put him in Boris’s good books. Wrong!

Scruton’s new boss is Robert Jenrick.

But, wait, there’s more.

Boris’s rival for Conservative Party leadership quit:

17:58: Jeremy Hunt quits as Foreign Secretary after turning down Defence. Shunt for Hunt…

Now for a few names of the new Cabinet members. I’m happy about all except for Dominic Raab, Grant Shapps and Amber Rudd, as I do not trust them nor believe they respect the British people:

18:35: Sajid Javid appointed Chancellor.

18:43: Priti Patel appointed Home Secretary. 

18:52: Dominic Raab appointed Foreign Secretary and First Secretary of State. 

18:59: Stephen Barclay remains Brexit Secretary. 

19:10: Michael Gove appointed to Cabinet Office, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, no deal coordinator.

19:26: Liz Truss appointed International Trade Secretary.

19:55: Matt Hancock remains Health Secretary.

20:11: Theresa Villiers becomes Environment Secretary.

20:24: Gavin Williamson becomes Education Secretary.

20:29: Andrea Leadsom becomes Business Secretary.

20:46: Amber Rudd remains at DWP, adding Equalities brief.

20:59: Robert Buckland becomes Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary.

21:07: Alok Sharma becomes International Development Secretary.

21:12: Grant Shapps becomes Transport Secretary.

21:39: Baroness Evans remains Leader of the Lords.

21:51 Geoffrey Cox remains Attorney General.

22:11 Rishi Sunak becomes Chief Secretary to the Treasury.

22:43: Jacob Rees-Mogg becomes Leader of the House of Commons.

23:02: Oliver Dowden becomes Paymaster General and Cabinet Office Minister.

23:58: Kwasi Kwarteng appointed Business Minister.

This is Boris’s brother:

22:55: Jo Johnson returns as Universities Minister in BEIS and DfE.

I’m really happy about this appointment:

22:32: James Cleverly becomes Tory Party Chairman.

James Cleverly replaces Brandon Lewis, who is now Home Office Minister.

Here is the entire set of appointments. You can tell The Sun‘s political editor, Tom Newton Dunn, is not a Boris fan:

Everyone appointed attended Thursday’s Cabinet meeting:

Afterwards, Boris addressed the House of Commons:

He did a splendid job, on the last day that the House of Commons meets before summer holiday. (They return in September.)

This is what happened, as tweeted by Dan Hodges, ex-Labour member — and former actress/Labour MP Glenda Jackson‘s son. He noticed the effect that Boris’s pusillanimous attacks were having on Labour, including party leader Jeremy Corbyn:

As for Jacob Rees-Mogg (JRM), who sat next to Boris during the Prime Minister’s Statement:

Re Brexit and the EU, he said (emphasis mine):

The days of supplication are over.

Well said!

In fact, even the Germans noticed, calling Boris ‘the blond bulldozer’. Wow:

Meanwhile, Theresa May — and some of the cabinet ministers Boris sacked — enjoyed a day of cricket:

Pundits wonder where Boris will travel first: Europe or the United States. Although President Trump hasn’t yet issued an invitation, it will surely come soon:

In closing, for anyone wondering about living arrangements:

According to the comments following that tweet, Tom Newton Dunn has exaggerated about the size of the No. 10 flat, which is larger than he makes it out to be. He has also conveniently forgotten that Boris has children, too: four, to be precise.

We can expect more Boris-bashing and sniping in the weeks ahead. The media and the rest of the Left will make sure of it.

I am cautiously optimistic for Boris’s tenure as Prime Minister.

Trump commemorates the 75th anniversary of D-Day

June 21, 2019 in history | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments closed

President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump were in England and Normandy for commemorations of the 75th anniversary of D-Day.

The night before, he hosted Prince Charles and Camilla the Duchess of Cornwall for dinner at the US ambassador’s residence in Regent’s Park, London. The guests at his table were also in Portsmouth the following morning. Theresa May is on the right in the photo:

On Wednesday, June 5, the Royal Family’s Twitter account summarised D-Day’s importance:

Also:

The Allied landings on the Normandy beaches marked the start of a long and costly campaign to liberate north-west Europe from German occupation.

This was the scene in Portsmouth, on England’s south coast that day:

A short time later, veterans who had been involved 75 years ago began taking their seats:

The Queen, who served as a mechanic during the war, arrived:

This is a photograph for the history books:

Warm exchanges took place beforehand:

The Queen stood between Prince Charles and President Trump to watch the proceedings:

She addressed the crowd, referencing her father, George VI:

President Trump read then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s prayer for the troops:

D-Day veterans appeared on the dais to grateful applause.

Actress Celia Imrie (speaking in the next video) compered (emceed) the various performances:

The following ABC News video has the Portsmouth commemorations in their entirety:

The BBC has a set of photographs covering the day’s events.

Afterwards, the Queen, Prince Charles and the Trumps met with veterans who so bravely served in D-Day operations:

Trump also met with British veterans as well as US Navy personnel based in England:

The Queen then bade farewell to the Trumps, who were leaving for Ireland, where the president met with the prime minister there that afternoon:

The Trumps went to Normandy the following day for D-Day ceremonies before returning to Ireland, then onwards to the United States.

The Q Tree has the Trumps’ schedule after Portsmouth for the rest of June 5 (emphasis in the original):

2:50pm BST / 9:50am EST THE PRESIDENT and THE FIRST LADY depart Southsea Commons en route to Southsea Castle Landing Zone, Portsmouth, United Kingdom

2:55pm BST / 9:55am EST THE PRESIDENT and THE FIRST LADY arrive at Southsea Castle Landing Zone, Portsmouth, United Kingdom

3:05pm BST / 10:05am EST THE PRESIDENT and THE FIRST LADY depart Portsmouth, United Kingdom, en route to Southampton Airport, Southampton, United Kingdom, Portsmouth, United Kingdom

3:25pm BST / 10:25am EST THE PRESIDENT and THE FIRST LADY arrive at Southampton Airport, Southampton, United Kingdom

3:35pm BST / 10:35am EST THE PRESIDENT and THE FIRST LADY depart Southampton Airport en route Shannon Airport, Shannon, Ireland, Southampton, United Kingdom

~ U.K State Visit Concludes ~

4:50pm IST / 11:50am EST THE PRESIDENT and THE FIRST LADY arrive at Shannon Airport, Shannon, Ireland

5:00pm IST / 12:00pm EST THE PRESIDENT and THE FIRST LADY depart Shannon Airport en route to Shannon Airport Terminal, Shannon, Ireland

5:05pm IST / 12:05pm EST THE PRESIDENT and THE FIRST LADY arrive at Shannon Airport Terminal, Shannon, Ireland

5:15pm IST / 12:15pm EST THE PRESIDENT participates in a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Taoiseach Leo Varadkar of Ireland, Shannon, Ireland

5:20pm IST / 12:20pm EST THE PRESIDENT participates in an expanded bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Taoiseach Leo Varadkar of Ireland, Shannon, Ireland

6:00PM IST / 1:00pm EST THE PRESIDENT and THE FIRST LADY depart Shannon Airport Terminal en route to Shannon Airport, Shannon, Ireland

6:05pm IST / 1:05PM EST THE PRESIDENT and THE FIRST LADY arrive at Shannon Airport, Shannon, Ireland

6:15pm IST / 1:15pm EST THE PRESIDENT and THE FIRST LADY depart Shannon, Airport, en route to Trump International Doonbeg Landing Zone, Doonbeg, Ireland, Shannon, Ireland

6:35pm IST / 1:35pm EST THE PRESIDENT and THE FIRST LADY arrive at Trump International Doonbeg Landing Zone, Doonbeg, Ireland

The Clare Champion featured their arrival:

At the end of Tuesday, Trump tweeted:

He and his entourage would fly from Ireland to Colleville-sur-Mer in the département of Calvados of Normandy the following morning.

Speaking of Normandy, two British veterans were preparing to re-enact their jumps from 1944. Here is one of them undergoing a refresher course:

This is what happened on Wednesday, June 6:

This is what the Trumps saw as they landed in France that morning:

The following is an excerpt of President Trump’s speech on Omaha Beach:

The Q Tree has his speech in full on Omaha Beach, excerpted below (emphases mine). More than 60 surviving American D-Day veterans flew to France for this important anniversary. Many more Second World War military survivors also attended:

President Macron, Mrs. Macron, and the people of France; to the First Lady of the United States and members of the United States Congress; to distinguished guests, veterans, and my fellow Americans:

We are gathered here on Freedom’s Altar. On these shores, on these bluffs, on this day 75 years ago, 10,000 men shed their blood, and thousands sacrificed their lives, for their brothers, for their countries, and for the survival of liberty.

Today, we remember those who fell, and we honor all who fought right here in Normandy. They won back this ground for civilization.

To more than 170 veterans of the Second World War who join us today: You are among the very greatest Americans who will ever live. You’re the pride of our nation. You are the glory of our republic. And we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

Here with you are over 60 veterans who landed on D-Day. Our debt to you is everlasting. Today, we express our undying gratitude.

When you were young, these men enlisted their lives in a Great Crusade — one of the greatest of all times. Their mission is the story of an epic battle and the ferocious, eternal struggle between good and evil.

On the 6th of June, 1944, they joined a liberation force of awesome power and breathtaking scale. After months of planning, the Allies had chosen this ancient coastline to mount their campaign to vanquish the wicked tyranny of the Nazi empire from the face of the Earth.

The battle began in the skies above us. In those first tense midnight hours, 1,000 aircraft roared overhead with 17,000 Allied airborne troops preparing to leap into the darkness beyond these trees.

Then came dawn. The enemy who had occupied these heights saw the largest naval armada in the history of the world. Just a few miles offshore were 7,000 vessels bearing 130,000 warriors. They were the citizens of free and independent nations, united by their duty to their compatriots and to millions yet unborn.

There were the British, whose nobility and fortitude saw them through the worst of Dunkirk and the London Blitz. The full violence of Nazi fury was no match for the full grandeur of British pride.

There were the Canadians, whose robust sense of honor and loyalty compelled them to take up arms alongside Britain from the very, very beginning.

There were the fighting Poles, the tough Norwegians, and the intrepid Aussies. There were the gallant French commandos, soon to be met by thousands of their brave countrymen ready to write a new chapter in the long history of French valor.

And, finally, there were the Americans. They came from the farms of a vast heartland, the streets of glowing cities, and the forges of mighty industrial towns. Before the war, many had never ventured beyond their own community. Now they had come to offer their lives half a world from home.

This beach, codenamed Omaha, was defended by the Nazis with monstrous firepower, thousands and thousands of mines and spikes driven into the sand, so deeply. It was here that tens of thousands of the Americans came …

One of those men in [Colonel George] Taylor’s 16th Regiment was Army medic Ray Lambert. Ray was only 23, but he had already earned three Purple Hearts and two Silver Stars fighting in North Africa and Sicily, where he and his brother Bill, no longer with us, served side by side.

In the early morning hours, the two brothers stood together on the deck of the USS Henrico, before boarding two separate Higgins landing craft. “If I don’t make it,” Bill said, “please, please take care of my family.” Ray asked his brother to do the same.

Of the 31 men on Ray’s landing craft, only Ray and 6 others made it to the beach. There were only a few of them left. They came to the sector right here below us. “Easy Red” it was called. Again and again, Ray ran back into the water. He dragged out one man after another. He was shot through the arm. His leg was ripped open by shrapnel. His back was broken. He nearly drowned.

He had been on the beach for hours, bleeding and saving lives, when he finally lost consciousness. He woke up the next day on a cot beside another badly wounded soldier. He looked over and saw his brother Bill. They made it. They made it. They made it.

At 98 years old, Ray is here with us today, with his fourth Purple Heart and his third Silver Star from Omaha. Ray, the free world salutes you. Thank you, Ray.

Trump related a few more real life stories about what is known as the Longest Day, unimaginably harrowing. God was with the Allied troops.

Trump concluded:

The men behind me will tell you that they are just the lucky ones. As one of them recently put it, “All the heroes are buried here.” But we know what these men did. We knew how brave they were. They came here and saved freedom, and then, they went home and showed us all what freedom is all about.

The American sons and daughters who saw us to victory were no less extraordinary in peace. They built families. They built industries. They built a national culture that inspired the entire world. In the decades that followed, America defeated communism, secured civil rights, revolutionized science, launched a man to the moon, and then kept on pushing to new frontiers. And, today, America is stronger than ever before.

Seven decades ago, the warriors of D-Day fought a sinister enemy who spoke of a thousand-year empire. In defeating that evil, they left a legacy that will last not only for a thousand years, but for all time — for as long as the soul knows of duty and honor; for as long as freedom keeps its hold on the human heart.

To the men who sit behind me, and to the boys who rest in the field before me, your example will never, ever grow old. Your legend will never tire. Your spirit — brave, unyielding, and true — will never die.

The blood that they spilled, the tears that they shed, the lives that they gave, the sacrifice that they made, did not just win a battle. It did not just win a war. Those who fought here won a future for our nation. They won the survival of our civilization. And they showed us the way to love, cherish, and defend our way of life for many centuries to come.

Today, as we stand together upon this sacred Earth, we pledge that our nations will forever be strong and united. We will forever be together. Our people will forever be bold. Our hearts will forever be loyal. And our children, and their children, will forever and always be free.

May God bless our great veterans. May God bless our Allies. May God bless the heroes of D-Day. And may God bless America.

The Q Tree has full coverage, including this 90-minute video of the day’s commemorations:

This is NBC’s video, which begins with an analysis of D-Day:

French president Emmanuel Macron also addressed the American veterans. I was in France at the time and watched part of his speech on BFMTV. It was highly evocative and really captured the idea of Americana. Whoever wrote it should get a pay rise. I was very moved by it. He spoke, as did Trump, of young soldiers from farms in the Midwest mixing with their comrades from Manhattan and New Jersey, writing their girlfriends farewell letters.

Afterwards, Macron shook hands with all the veterans and spoke with each individually. I’m not a Macron fan at all, but I have to give him credit for that.

Trump tweeted a short video recapping his day in Normandy:

This is the view of the Trumps’ departure, returning to Ireland before flying back to Washington:

Reflecting on D-Day, someone online posted this excellent graphic from Gab:

We should be so grateful for everything that God has given us — especially peace and freedom in the Western world.

However, it would also be prudent to look at how we have squandered the opportunities for our young people in peacetime. The safe space generation is not equipped to deal with the horrors of life such as it is.

May the good Lord grant us the wisdom to get us out of a navel-gazing attitude towards one of genuine progress and ingenuity, such as that of the post-war years.

In closing, let us give thanks to the Greatest Generation for their immense courage and bravery.

Brexit Chronicles: former Chancellor Osborne’s petty revenge against Theresa May

May 27, 2019 in history | Tags: , , , , , | 4 comments

Regardless of what one thinks about Theresa May’s premiership, giving her a media kicking on the day she stood down as party leader and imminently as Prime Minister is not a good look.

George Osborne was David Cameron’s Chancellor to the Exchequer.

When Theresa May became PM in July 2016, one of the first things she did was to sack him. He then sat on the backbenches as a Conservative MP until he stood down early in 2017.

As Osborne has somewhat of a journalistic background, the owner of the London Evening Standard hired him as the daily paper’s editor in May 2017.

Since then, the freebie paper’s editorial line has been anti-Brexit — and anti-May.

He tweeted this himself. I bet he could hardly wait to be the first paper to publish this photo last Friday afternoon:

The editorial pages stuck the boot in further.

Here are the first two paragraphs of the editorial, accompanied by another photo of her as above:

Her resignation speech this morning pointed to a premiership that might have been: human, understanding of modern Britain, respectful of the achievements of her predecessors, and straight about the compromise needed if we are to move forward as a country.

Sadly, little of this was on display during her premiership. As a result, the central objective she set herself — leaving the European Union in an orderly fashion — looks less certain than it did the day she entered Number 10 less than three years ago.

Then, there was the political cartoon on the opposite page:

It was good to see that Osborne received a lot of negative Twitter comments on both tweets.

I’ve been reading the Evening Standard for decades. That was when they still charged money for it. The news coverage and journalism were top-notch.

These days, I go straight to the puzzle page and skim the rest.

The Standard used to offer objectivity in its editorial line. Unfortunately, the paper’s standards have fallen significantly in the past few years, and it has become not only politically biased, but also too focused on celebrities. I hold George Osborne partly responsible. If he is able to get his staff access to celebrity news, surely he can get them access to substantial news.

Brexit Chronicles: leaving the EU defeats Theresa May

May 24, 2019 in history | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 comments

On Friday, May 24, 2019, Prime Minister Theresa May announced that she would stand down as Conservative leader immediately and as Prime Minister once the Conservatives have elected a new leader.

The tension at No. 10 must have been palpable that morning, as the email with the text of her speech had no attachment. ITV’s Robert Peston tweeted:

Nonetheless:

The Guardian, among other media outlets, has the full text of her speech (emphases mine below):

Ever since I first stepped through the door behind me as Prime Minister, I have striven to make the United Kingdom a country that works not just for a privileged few, but for everyone. And to honour the result of the EU referendum. Back in 2016, we gave the British people a choice. Against all predictions, the British people voted to leave the European Union.

I feel as certain today as I did three years ago that in a democracy, if you give people a choice you have a duty to implement what they decide. I have done my best to do that. I negotiated the terms of our exit and a new relationship with our closest neighbours that protects jobs, our security and our Union. I have done everything I can to convince MPs to back that deal. Sadly, I have not been able to do so.

I tried three times. I believe it was right to persevere, even when the odds against success seemed high. But it is now clear to me that it is in the best interests of the country for a new Prime Minister to lead that effort.

So I am today announcing that I will resign as leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party on Friday 7 June so that a successor can be chosen. I have agreed with the Party Chairman and with the Chairman of the 1922 Committee that the process for electing a new leader should begin in the following week. I have kept Her Majesty the Queen fully informed of my intentions, and I will continue to serve as her Prime Minister until the process has concluded.

It is, and will always remain, a matter of deep regret to me that I have not been able to deliver Brexit. It will be for my successor to seek a way forward that honours the result of the referendum. To succeed, he or she will have to find consensus in Parliament where I have not. Such a consensus can only be reached if those on all sides of the debate are willing to compromise.

For many years the great humanitarian Sir Nicholas Winton – who saved the lives of hundreds of children by arranging their evacuation from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia through the Kindertransport – was my constituent in Maidenhead. At another time of political controversy, a few years before his death, he took me to one side at a local event and gave me a piece of advice. He said, ‘Never forget that compromise is not a dirty word. Life depends on compromise.’ He was right.

As we strive to find the compromises we need in our politics – whether to deliver Brexit, or to restore devolved government in Northern Ireland – we must remember what brought us here. Because the referendum was not just a call to leave the EU but for profound change in our country. A call to make the United Kingdom a country that truly works for everyone. I am proud of the progress we have made over the last three years.

We have completed the work that David Cameron and George Osborne started: the deficit is almost eliminated, our national debt is falling and we are bringing an end to austerity. My focus has been on ensuring that the good jobs of the future will be created in communities across the whole country, not just in London and the South East, through our Modern Industrial Strategy.

We have helped more people than ever enjoy the security of a job. We are building more homes and helping first-time buyers onto the housing ladder – so young people can enjoy the opportunities their parents did. And we are protecting the environment, eliminating plastic waste, tackling climate change and improving air quality. This is what a decent, moderate and patriotic Conservative Government, on the common ground of British politics, can achieve – even as we tackle the biggest peacetime challenge any government has faced.

I know that the Conservative Party can renew itself in the years ahead. That we can deliver Brexit and serve the British people with policies inspired by our values. Security; freedom; opportunity. Those values have guided me throughout my career.

But the unique privilege of this office is to use this platform to give a voice to the voiceless, to fight the burning injustices that still scar our society. That is why I put proper funding for mental health at the heart of our NHS long-term plan. It is why I am ending the postcode lottery for survivors of domestic abuse. It is why the Race Disparity Audit and gender pay reporting are shining a light on inequality, so it has nowhere to hide. And that is why I set up the independent public inquiry into the tragedy at Grenfell Tower – to search for the truth, so nothing like it can ever happen again, and so the people who lost their lives that night are never forgotten.

Because this country is a Union. Not just a family of four nations. But a union of people – all of us. Whatever our background, the colour of our skin, or who we love. We stand together. And together we have a great future.

Our politics may be under strain, but there is so much that is good about this country. So much to be proud of. So much to be optimistic about. I will shortly leave the job that it has been the honour of my life to hold – the second female Prime Minister but certainly not the last. I do so with no ill-will, but with enormous and enduring gratitude to have had the opportunity to serve the country I love.

When she got to the last five words of her announcement, she choked up and abruptly turned around before re-entering No. 10:

Here is her statement in full (start at 1:28, sorry for the closeup of Peston):

Brexit defeated Theresa May:

The Sun‘s political editor observed:

Peston called it correctly:

This is important to remember over the next several weeks:

The new Prime Minister should be in place by the time Parliament begins its summer recess. The 1922 Committee is comprised of Conservative MPs and will oversee this process:

Then again … please note:

The Guardian has more (emphases in the original, those in purple mine):

Conservative party chairman Brandon Lewis and the vice-chairs of the 1922 Committee, Cheryl Gillan and Charles Walker, have issued a joint statement setting out the process for selecting a successor to Theresa May.

First they thank her for her service to the party as an activist, councillor, MP, a member of the shadow cabinet, party chairman, home secretary and, finally, prime minister.

“She embodies the finest qualities of public service and, with this decision, has once again demonstrated her strong sense of duty and devotion to the national interest,” they say.

They set out the following –

    • The timetable to select a new leader has been decided by the executive of the 1922 committee after consultation with the party board, which includes representatives of the voluntary, parliamentary and professional party.
    • Nominations will close in the week commencing 10 June, before “successive rounds of voting will take place until a final choice of candidates to put to a vote of all party members is determined”.
    • “We expect that process to be concluded by the end of June, allowing for a series of hustings around the UK for members to meet and question the candidates, then cast their votes in time for the result to be announced before Parliament rises for the summer,” they say.

So we should have a new prime minister by mid-July.

They conclude:

We are deeply conscious that the Conservatives are not just selecting the person best placed to become the new leader of our party, but also the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. That is a solemn responsibility, particularly at such an important time for our nation. We will therefore propose that the leadership election and hustings involve opportunities for non-members and people who may not yet vote Conservative to meet the candidates and put their questions to them too.

Peston points out that Graham Brady did not sign the 1922 Committee’s letter, even though he is its chairman. It is possible that Brady wants to throw his hat into the ring as a contender:

I assume the reason the chairman of 1922 committee of Tory MPs Graham Brady hasn’t signed letter setting out timetable for new leader and PM to be in place by 20 July is that he may well be a candidate to replace .

Soon afterwards:

By mid-afternoon:

Jeremy Hunt was the first to formally declare his own candidacy:

I doubt either of these men has a chance. The Conservatives must choose someone who can defeat Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn, therefore, I predict Boris Johnson will be the next leader and PM.

May’s predecessor tweeted his appreciation of her service. It did not go down well. One person remembered that he stood down as party leader the morning the referendum results were in — around 9:30 a.m. on Friday, June 24, 2016:

He gave an empathetic interview to the BBC later in the afternoon:

Let us spare a moment to recall Cameron’s jaunty ‘doo-doo-doo-doo-Right!’ tune after he resigned:

Brexit is powerful, although, despite this tweet, not insurmountable:

I hope the new Spanish government’s concerns turn out to be accurate (emphases mine):

The Spanish government has described May’s decision to resign as “bad news”, warning that it significantly raised the prospect of a hard Brexit, reports the Guardian’s Madrid correspondent Sam Jones.

“A hard Brexit in these circumstance seems an almost unstoppable reality,” the government’s spokewoman, Isabel Celaá, said at a press conference on Friday afternoon.

Celaá said the announcement would disappoint all those “who want an orderly UK exit from the European Union”. But she said that Spain had contingency measures in place and would do everything possible to “guarantee the best situation” for Spanish citizens and businesses in the UK.

A No Deal Brexit does not mean a disorderly exit from the EU. Plans have been in place for months to implement No Deal processes, as drawn up by civil servants in Whitehall. No Deal was ready for implementation well in advance of Friday, March 29, 2019.

Outside of Brexit, I believe Theresa May was a good prime minister.

As far as Brexit went, however, her downfall started when she presented her deal at Chequers in July 2018. The principal members of her Brexit team at the time resigned. It is rumoured that her ‘deal’ — a treaty — was developed in Berlin by one of her advisers. I have read at least one article about it, but would like to see another source before writing more.

Whoever the next Conservative leader is, I hope he or she is a committed Leaver and will toss the whole of May’s deal into the long grass of history, where it belongs.

‘Witch hunt’ over as Mueller report lays to rest Left’s ‘collusion’ narrative

March 29, 2019 in history | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 comments

At 5 p.m. on Friday, March 22, 2019, news emerged that special counsel Robert Mueller’s report was complete, with no more indictments:

Attorney General William Barr wrote a letter to both houses of Congress:

This investigation has been a millstone around President Trump’s neck since 2017.

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-North Carolina) said:

It was an expensive investigation:

The third paragraph in the following announcement details what it involved — all to no avail:

Imagine the disappointment:

Media and the coming downfall

The media were positive that President Trump was guilty of a criminal offence, as they watched the Mueller probe unfold involving:

More on this in a moment:

For now, let’s look at three people on MSNBC.

Rachel Maddow

Rachel Maddow wasn’t crying, but she came pretty close:

Mika Brzezinski

Morning Joe‘s Mika Brzezinski also had a close call with the tear ducts:

Chris Matthews

Chris Matthews, who once said he felt a tingle go up his leg during Obama’s 2008 campaign, looked as if he was fighting back tears but spoke in anger. He was particularly upset the report was released at 5 p.m. on a Friday:

There is always the danger that a lie told long enough appears to be true:

There was also this gem in Chris’s segment:

HE ADMITS they were “TARGETING” Trump! Listen about 2/3 the way through Apx 1 min into it he slips up & calls Pres. Trump “THE PERSON BEING TARGETED” and quickly corrected himself saying “the subject being investigated”

Ratings tank

On Wednesday, March 27, Breitbart‘s John Nolte reported on the tanking ratings for CNN and MSNBC (excerpts follow, emphases mine):

During the week of March 18, the far-left CNN lost almost 30 percent of an audience that is already minuscule …

On the credibility front, CNN chief Jeff Zucker tried to excuse his network’s two-year deliberate deception about Trump colluding with the Russians by admitting on Tuesday that no one at CNN does investigative work.

Like we didn’t already know that.

“We are not investigators,” he told the far-left New York Times. “We are journalists, and our role is to report the facts as we know them, which is exactly what we did.”

All Zucker did there was to confirm what we already knew: CNN acts as stenographers for the establishment, most especially the intelligence community, all of whom share CNN’s left-wing agenda for the country.  The facts are that so-and-so told us this and so-and-so told us that, is not journalism. Journalism requires investigation and the risk of uncovering a truth that might be inconvenient to your own personal beliefs and still reporting that truth …

For the week of March 18, meaning prior to the release of the Mueller Report exonerating Trump from the Russia Collusion Hoax, CNN lost a jaw-dropping 24 percent of its total day viewers and 27 percent of its primetime viewers, when compared to this same week last year.

In the 25-54 age demo, which sets advertiser rates, CNN lost an astonishing 37 percent of total day viewers and 38 percent primetime viewers.

For comparison purposes, during this same week, Fox News increased its total day and primetime viewership by +8 and +2 percent, respectively.

MSNBC, CNN’s competition for left-wing viewers, only lost 9 percent of its total day viewers and 15 percent of primetime viewers. In the 25-54 demo, MSNBC also took a huge loss in total day and primetime; 33 percent and 32 percent, respectively …

On Monday, during primetime, four of CNN’s hours failed to break 700,000 total viewers: Jake Tapper (683,000), Wolf Blitzer (637,000 & 622,000), Erin Burnett (685,000).

MSNBC might see a ratings dip as it maneuvers in the post-Mueller world, but CNN was already in trouble, already in far-last place, and those wondering how CNN’s ratings could possibly get any worse are about to find out.

With the Mueller probe wrung dry, Rachel Maddow’s show definitely took a hit:

Not surprisingly, Trump tweeted about both networks’ ratings:

Reactions from Democrats and their allies

Before the Mueller report was completed, the American public saw these now-familiar Democrats on television with nauseating regularity:

The Dems and their supporters will continue to press on with other anti-Trump talking points:

Assassination attempt

This attempted coup has roused radicals to take matters into their own hands. The latest was, thankfully, thwarted on Wednesday, March 27, on the border between West Virginia and Maryland:

Nancy Pelosi

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-California) has put impeachment on the back burner for now:

Adam Schiff

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-California), who chairs the House Intelligence Committee and is one of the president’s most constant critics, refuses to let go:

He commiserated with Rachel Maddow, but that was only momentarily:

A fellow House member, Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas), has strong words for him …

… as does journalist Paul Sperry:

On March 27, Fox News reported of Republicans’ calls for Schiff’s resignation:

Republicans are stepping up calls for House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff to resign or give up his committee post for repeatedly pushing claims of collusion between President Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian operatives.

Now that Robert Mueller’s probe has shown no evidence of collusion, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway has been the most vocal in calling for Schiff’s resignation – telling “Fox & Friends” on Monday that the California Democrat “ought to resign today.”

… While not going so far as Conway in calling for Schiff to leave office, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said that Schiff does owe “an apology to the American public” and should step down from his post as head of the intelligence committee.

“He owes an apology to the American public,” McCarthy said. “There is no place in Adam Schiff’s world or in Congress that he should be chair of the intel committee.”

McCarthy added: “There is no way he could lead the intel committee and he should step back.”

James Comey

On Sunday, March 24, former FBI director James Comey tweeted, and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) — chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee — duly replied:

Sean Hannity also replied:

Yes Mr . Let’s start with why did you sign off on the FISA warrant based on hrc lies in oct 2016. And in January 2017 say it’s “unverified and salacious” ? Did you commit a fraud of the FISA court or lie to the President Elect you hated?

And, let’s not forget a memo that Comey leaked in 2017:

Comey instructed his friend, Daniel Richman, to give the [New York] Times a memo he wrote about a conversation he had with Trump on Feb. 14, 2017. Comey claimed Trump asked him to shut down an investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Comey’s ploy worked, as Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel May 17, 2017.

What happens next?

It seems probable that President Trump will not let sleeping dogs lie. Nor should he.

On Wednesday, March 27, he gave an interview to Sean Hannity, his first since the Mueller report’s completion (watch on YouTube):

President Trump, in an exclusive wide-ranging interview Wednesday night with Fox News’ “Hannity,” vowed to release the full and unredacted Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants and related documents used by the FBI to probe his campaign, saying he wants to “get to the bottom” of how the long-running Russia collusion narrative began.

Trump told anchor Sean Hannity that his lawyers previously had advised him not to take that dramatic step out of fear that it could be considered obstruction of justice.

“I do, I have plans to declassify and release. I have plans to absolutely release,” Trump said. “I have some very talented people working for me, lawyers, and they really didn’t want me to do it early on. … A lot of people wanted me to do it a long time ago. I’m glad I didn’t do it. We got a great result without having to do it, but we will. One of the reasons that my lawyers didn’t want me to do it, is they said, if I do it, they’ll call it a form of obstruction.”

Trump added: “Frankly, thought it would be better if we held it to the end. But at the right time, we will be absolutely releasing.”

Trump also accused FBI officials of committing “treason” — slamming former FBI Director James Comey as a “terrible guy,” former CIA Director John Brennan as potentially mentally ill, and Democrat House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff as a criminal.

He mentioned ‘treason’ more than once:

“It was treason, it was really treason,” Trump said, referring to texts between former FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page that discussed an “insurance policy” in the event of Trump’s election.

“You had dirty cops, you had people who are bad FBI folks … At the top, they were not clean, to put it mildly.” He said later, “We can never allow these treasonous acts to happen to another president.”

Also:

“I think Brennan’s a sick person, I really do,” Trump said. “I believe there’s something wrong with him, for him to come out of the CIA and act that way was so disrespectful to the country and to the CIA. He was not considered good at what he did. He was never a respected guy.”

Looking back to 2016:

“When I said there could be somebody spying on my campaign, it went wild out there,” Trump told Hannity. “They couldn’t believe I could say such a thing. As it turned out, that was small potatoes compared to what went on. … Millions and millions [spent] on the phony dossier, and then they used the dossier to start things. It was a fraud, paid for by Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.”

As for the mysterious tarmac meeting between Bill Clinton and Obama’s attorney general Loretta Lynch during the summer that year, he said:

I had a lot of planes for a long time. I’ve never stopped the plane on the tarmac to let somebody on the plane. Bill Clinton said he was there to play golf, but I know the area very well. Arizona. It’s a little warm at that time of year for golf, OK?

He also had a dig at his own former AG Jeff Sessions — and rightly so:

Trump also told Hannity “this all would not have happened” if Attorney General William Barr had been with his administration from the beginning.

I could not agree more!

However, without Mueller and Stumbling Block Sessions, the administration can move forward, and one congressman, dairy farmer Devin Nunes (R-California), is raring to go:

Onwards and upwards!

MAGA!

Hoax hate crimes abound, especially in Trump era

February 28, 2019 in history | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 comments

On February 21, 2019, the heretofore unknown actor Jussie (Empire) Smollett was charged with felony disorderly conduct for allegedly filing a false police report in Chicago claiming he was the victim of a hate crime.

The charge came from the Cook County State’s Attorney office.

NBC News reported (emphases mine):

The state alleges Smollett filed a false report with Chicago police on Jan. 29, when he claimed he was assaulted by two masked men who hurled racist and homophobic slurs.

Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson, speaking at a press conference, skewered Smollett and false police reports generally. He said that while no violent crimes went uninvestigated as a result of Smollett’s claims, Johnson suggested that the hundreds of killings in Chicago represented a more serious problem deserving of national attention than a celebrity’s allegedly false police report.

Disorderly conduct is normally thought of as a low-level crime. In Illinois, however, making false reports to peace officers is actually a felony contained within the disorderly statute. A false report is a class four felony, punishable by up to three years in prison. The elements that make it such a felony are: any kind of transmission to a peace officer reporting a crime without reasonable grounds.

There is also the question of a hoax hate letter with his name on it that was sent to the set of Empire before the attack. That is potentially more serious, as the former sheriff of Milwaukee says:

For those who missed the running three-week saga, this is what happened. Click on the image to enlarge. Read the top three columns, then the bottom horizontal bar:

Sheriff Clarke tweeted more observations about this case:

On February 22, an editorial appeared in USA Today, ‘Hate crime hoaxes, like Jussie Smollett’s alleged attack, are more common than you think’.

The author is Wilfred Reilly:

an associate professor of political science at Kentucky State University, a historically Black institution located in Frankfort. He is the author of the upcoming book Hate Crime Hoax, as well as The $50,000,000 Question, a book dealing with how people value identity. 

Reilly says:

The questions here are obvious. How many Trump supporters even exist in the downtown of a city that went 83% for Hillary Clinton — and how many of them watch “Empire?” How many guys looking for a fight carry rope and bottles of bleach around with them? Almost every normal citizen had questions like these about this incident, and we were justified in having them.

That this case turned out to be a hoax shouldn’t come as too big of a shock. A great many hate crime stories turn out to be hoaxes. Simply looking at what happened to the most widely reported hate crime stories over the past 4-5 years illustrates this: not only the Smollett case but also the Yasmin Seweid, Air Force Academy, Eastern Michigan, Wisconsin-Parkside, Kean College, Covington Catholic, and “Hopewell Baptist burning” racial scandals all turned out to be fakes. And, these cases are not isolated outliers.

He went on to describe research in this area:

Doing research for a book, Hate Crime Hoax, I was able to easily put together a data set of 409 confirmed hate hoaxes. An overlapping but substantially different list of 348 hoaxes exists at fakehatecrimes.org, and researcher Laird Wilcox put together another list of at least 300 in his still-contemporary book Crying Wolf. To put these numbers in context, a little over 7,000 hate crimes were reported by the FBI in 2017 and perhaps 8-10% of these are widely reported enough to catch the eye of a national researcher.

Therefore, of the 7,000 real hate crimes, a small number actually make a researcher’s list. In order to make the researcher’s list, they have to appear in the media.

Ironically, it would seem that we hear more about the hoaxes than the real hate crimes.

It is also important to note that most real hate crimes are not inter-racial:

84% of white murder victims and 93% of Black murder victims are killed by criminals of their own race, and the person most likely to kill you is your ex-wife or husband. When violent inter-racial crimes do occur, whites are at least as likely to be the targets as are minorities. Simply put, Klansmen armed with nooses are not lurking on Chicago street corners.

This seems to be a good point to let everyone know that the last time a lynching took place — and by a Klansman, no less — was in 1981 in Mobile, Alabama. Wikipedia records that the defendants received maximum sentences for the murder of Michael Donald, and the Klan went bankrupt:

Henry Hay executed in the electric chair. James Knowles and an accomplice sentenced to life in prison. Civil suit against United Klans of America caused their bankruptcy.

Reilly points out that hoaxes do a lot of harm to community relations as well as waste precious police time:

what hate hoaxers actually do is worsen generally good race relations, and distract attention from real problems. As Chicago’s disgusted top cop, Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson, pointed out yesterday, skilled police officers spent four weeks tracking down Smollett’s imaginary attackers — in a city that has seen 28 murders as of Feb. 9th, according to The Chicago Tribune. We all, media and citizens alike, would be better served to focus on real issues like gun violence and the opiate epidemic than on fairy tales like Jussie’s.

How true.

Hoax hate crimes have proliferated in recent years, especially since Donald Trump was elected president. You can read more about them in the articles below. There is some overlap, but not much:

‘Here are 50 campus hate-crime hoaxes The College Fix has covered since 2012’

‘Nolte: From Trayvon to Jussie — Poll Shows Media Hoaxes Killed Race Relations’ (Breitbart)

‘Here’s A List Of Hoax “Hate Crimes” In The Trump Era’ (The Daily Caller)

Were it not for a diligent citizen social media, Jussie Smollett’s hoax could have run for much longer and done irreparable damage to the fabric of America.

As it was, good people everywhere put their heads together across the country and pieced the puzzle together online.

This is yet another example of citizen media doing the job of supposedly legitimate media.

Covington Catholic: when the media narrative turned

February 15, 2019 in Catholic, clergy, school | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 comments

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the much-maligned students at Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky:

A school chaperone’s role is an onerous one (January 18, March for Life, Covington Catholic High School)

Covington Catholic: responsible media backtracked (January 20, March for Life, Covington Catholic High School)

Covington Catholic: doxxing followed by support on a fateful weekend (January 20-21, Covington Catholic High School)

I meant to write about them last week, but that worked out just fine, because the story gradually progressed to a happy ending. On Wednesday, February 13, the Diocese of Covington has cleared the boys of any wrongdoing.

Nonetheless, the story needs telling in full.

To pick up where I left off, Monday, January 21, 2019, was Martin Luther King Day, so there was no school. No doubt, the boys who were harassed at the Lincoln Memorial after the March for Life the previous Friday were delighted during that long, horrible weekend to hear from someone their own age, CJ Pearson, who rallied to their cause:

Pearson posted a video of two of the boys that Monday:

The Gateway Pundit was able to interview two students and two mothers under conditions of anonymity (names were changed). One of the mothers said the boys, who were performing their school chants — with permission — thought the Native American who approached them (emphasis in the original):

was on their side and drumming along to their cheer.

Clearly, this was traumatising for the families involved, especially when politicians and even their own diocese criticised the students:

The families also wanted to make it clear that there were no chants of “build the wall,” or anything else that could be seen as offensive. Mrs. Smith recited one of the Covington chants, saying that it could have been what Phillips heard.

Another mother whose son was present during the incident, who we refer to as Mrs. Adams, said that “it’s just terrible that they are being criticized the way they are.”

Mrs. Adams said that she is worried about the safety of the students on Tuesday when they return to school. The American Indian Movement Chapter of Indiana and Kentucky has called for a protest at the high school.

“I’m worried about their safety on Tuesday — people were threatening to shoot up the school,” Mrs. Adams said. “I’m worried about sending my child back.”

Mrs. Smith added that she “demands an apology and a retraction from the Diocese.”

The mothers had much more to say (purple highlights mine):

Mrs. Adams added that the worst for her has been the Bishop of Covington throwing them under the bus. “That is the worst thing to me,” she said, her voice shaking.

“I personally think they were targeted because they had the MAGA hats on,” Mrs. Smith said. “I think it’s a shame that people are saying that we shouldn’t have let them wear them. It’s a shame that you can’t support your president in Washington, DC.”

Trump “is the first and only president to come out to support the March for Life,” Mrs. Smith added. “To get blamed for this because they were wearing a hat instead of blaming the aggressors — it’s blaming the victims.”

“Like I said, the Bishop here is literally victimizing the victims twice. They’ve already been victimized by the media, now they are being victimized again,” she added. “There is blood in the water and they are making it worse. They’re feeding the piranha frenzy from the liberal media. I just want people to understand that they need to wake up and stop believing the fake news and defend the kids.”

The Gateway Pundit asked the families if there is anything they would like to say to the Democrat mob of adult journalists and celebrities that are coming after their children.

“I don’t think you could publish it,” Mrs. Smith said, taking a break from the righteous outrage for some laughter.

“These students aren’t adults, these are kids — innocent children — and the adults should pause before they react when it’s children’s lives that could be ruined,” Mrs. Smith said. “And kids are so susceptible to bullying. I honestly thought, this kid could kill himself over this. What are they thinking? They could destroy this boy’s life, depress him, and he could end up committing suicide — and he did nothing wrong! These people, who are supposed to be adults, are jumping in and accusing him of terrible things — shame on them! Shame isn’t even enough of a word,” Mrs. Smith demanded.

Adam Smith noted that many of the children on the collage of photos that is being passed around the internet, looking for their names, are as young as 14-years-old. Many of them are freshmen.

“They’re really young,” he said. “They’re really going after kids. Half of us were just standing in the background and they’re looking for our information.”

Online scrutiny then turned to the Native American, allegedly a left-wing activist who appeared in a 2012 anti-police video, and thought to have been involved in a 2015 incident targeting a group of university fraternity members. In that incident, he also claimed he was abused, when it appears he instigated it.

Questions were raised about the timing of and his rank during his military service. Even the Washington Post had to correct one of their stories, retracting a mention of his service in the Vietnam War. Someone else unearthed his family history and past interviews with the media, which raised more questions about him.

Another Native American protester with him acknowledged that the two of them decided to join in solidarity with the group harassing the students.

That day, President Trump had a message of encouragement for the students:

One Trump supporter, whose Twitter account was later deleted, tweeted about the main target of the Left’s ire, student Nick Sandmann (emphases mine):

Imagine being Nick. One day you are on a field trip – next day the President of the United States got your back. That’s life in the Maga lane. The President understands loyalty better than many Bishops & ‘Catholic’ Teachers. Think about that. He fights for us. This is proof.

Things began looking up. Digital company INE Entertainment fired one of their employees who had tweeted a death wish towards the boys — and their parents. The Wrap reported:

Digital company INE Entertainment has fired a journalist who publicly wished for the death of several Covington Catholic High School students and their parents in a pair of tweets over the weekend. Aside from his job as a post-production supervisor at INE, Erik Abriss is a contributor to New York Media’s pop culture site Vulture.

“We were surprised and upset to see the inflammatory and offensive rhetoric used on Erik Abriss’ Twitter account this weekend. He worked with the company in our post-production department and never as a writer,” the company said in a statement to TheWrap on Monday.

“While we appreciated his work, it is clear that he is no longer aligned with our company’s core values of respect and tolerance. Therefore, as of January 21, 2019, we have severed ties with Abriss.”

The Wrap included the text of the offending tweet.

Tucker Carlson had a great segment on the journalists who ‘rushed to judgement’ about the Lincoln Memorial incident (also see YouTube). Note, there are neo-conservatives on his list, too:

A man helping the Covington families tweeted:

More messages of support rolled in from Patricia Heaton of Everyone Loves Raymond fame (also see her tweet), TurningPoint USA’s Charlie Kirk about his phone call with Nick Sandmann and Kyle Kashuv of Parkland, Florida, where the mass high school shooting took place a year ago on Valentine’s Day. He said:

The Media has bent over backwards to defend my Parkland Highschool liberal peers, no matter what outrageous things they have said. But now they have tried to ruin a highschool kid’s life, over fake news. What changed? The student was a Trump Supporter.

That day, the school’s principal sent an email to all parents. Gateway Pundit has the details. The message announced the beginning of an investigation into what had happened on Friday. One of the mothers was indignant (emphasis in the original):

“No apology. No explanation. No news on protests planned for tomorrow. No cancelling of school. Nothing,” she said.

The far-left radical activist group the “American Indian Movement” and Antifa have called a protest for Tuesday when the students are supposed to return to school.

The local Antifa group is urging “co-conspirators” to join them …

Two mothers that have spoke to The Gateway Pundit have both said they will not be sending their children to school tomorrow out of fear for their safety.

On Tuesday, January 22, Covington Catholic High School was closed. Gateway Pundit reported that parents received early morning phone calls with a recorded message from the principal (emphases mine):

A mother who received the call tells the Gateway Pundit that it was a recorded message from the principal saying that they decided to close the school after discussions with local authorities. They said that there were security concerns and no parents or children are permitted on campus throughout the day or for any evening activities.

The recording also asked that parents continue to pray for the school.

“It sounded serious, like they had some serious threats to call it off like that after they planned for it to be open,” the parent told TGP.

The parent also expressed frustration at the fact that they hadn’t cancelled sooner — as the threats were everywhere.

A local Antifa group and a far-left Native American group have called for protests at 10 a.m. on Tuesday at the school — though the Natives have reportedly moved their protest to a church.

That afternoon, the Cincinnati Enquirer published Nick Sandmann’s full statement on the incident and the aftermath. I cited most of it in an earlier post, but there is more. He received many threats — and so did his family:

My parents are receiving death and professional threats because of the social media mob that has formed over this issue …

Also:

I provided this account of events to the Diocese of Covington so they may know exactly what happened, and I stand ready and willing to cooperate with any investigation they are conducting.

The newspaper added:

This is the only statement that has been made by the Sandmann family. Any comments attributed to any member of the family that is not contained in this document are fabricated. The family will not be answering individual media inquiries.

That day, President Trump tweeted again about the incident:

As there are a number of other aspects to this story, I will continue next week.

Senate Intelligence Committee: ‘no direct evidence of conspiracy between Trump campaign and Russia’

February 14, 2019 in history | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 comments

Well, well, well, on Tuesday, February 12, 2019, the Senate Intelligence Committee has concluded there is ‘no direct evidence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia’.

NBC News intelligence and national security correspondent Reporter Ken Dilanian broke the story in his article, ‘Senate has uncovered no direct evidence of conspiracy between Trump campaign and Russia’.

This is a bipartisan finding, by the way.

Later, MSNBC interviewed Dilanian:

NBC has a summary on Twitter:

This finding comes after the Senate Intelligence Committee spent two years on an investigation involving 200 interviews and 300,000 documents.

Their investigation has not yet concluded, but its end is nigh, according to Senator Richard Burr (R-North Carolina), the chairman. Dilanian’s article tells us:

“We know we’re getting to the bottom of the barrel because there’re not new questions that we’re searching for answers to,” Burr said.

On Tuesday, Burr doubled down, telling NBC News, “There is no factual evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.”

It could take the committee several more months to produce a written report of their findings, which, even with this news, could be inconclusive:

The final Senate report may not reach a conclusion on whether the contacts added up to collusion or coordination with Russia, Burr said.

Democrats told NBC News that’s a distinct possibility.

“What I’m telling you is that I’m going to present, as best we can, the facts to you and to the American people,” Burr told CBS. “And you’ll have to draw your own conclusion as to whether you think that, by whatever definition, that’s collusion.”

The Senate investigation is separate from the Mueller probe, which trundles along.

Also, the House of Representatives, now Democrat-controlled, is planning to conduct a separate investigation:

that will go beyond the 2016 election to examine whether any foreign government has undue financial influence on Trump or his family. And New York federal prosecutors are pursuing their own criminal inquiry related to hush-money payments to women. The investigations into Donald Trump, therefore, are far from over.

Nonetheless, the Senate news puts a dent in Big Media’s anti-Trump narrative.

ZeroHedge reports that when Dilanian appeared on MSNBC (see video above, bold emphases in the original, those in purple mine):

MSNBC anchor Hallie Jackson and her guest panelists’ faces looked visibly confused and uncomfortable as they learned the Senate report is going in the opposite direction of everything MSNBC and other mainstream outlets have been breathlessly reporting on a near 24/7 basis. 

More importantly, if this is a precursor of what the Mueller report concludes in a few weeks/months, the TV station that built its current reputation on the premise of Russian collusion, may have no option but to go on indefinite hiatus.

Watch the segment … with host Hallie Jackson appearing to grow exasperated by the 2:20 mark:“If and when the president, as he may inevitably do, points to these conclusions and says look, the Senate intelligence committee found I am not guilty of conspiracy… he would be correct in saying that?”

Dilanian noted that while the Republican chair of the committee made what he characterized as “partisan” comments the week prior, it turned out be unanimous fact. “What I found,” he said, “is that Democrats don’t dispute that characterization.”

But perhaps sensing how “contrary” to the network’s own hysterical ‘Russiagate’ coverage his reporting was, he tried to soften the blow, saying, “But, again, no direct proof of a conspiracy. As one democratic aide said to me, ‘we never thought we were going to find a Democrat between Trump and Vladimir Putin saying let’s collude, but the question is how do we interpret all these various contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia.’”

Hallie Jackson followed with further probing: “Not to put too fine a point on it, but I want to make sure I’m understanding this…” and asked “If and when the president, as he may inevitably do, points to these conclusions and says look, the Senate intelligence committee found I’m not guilty of conspiracy… he would be correct in saying that?”

Her face looking rather incredulous at this point, Dilanian responded by invoking the Meuller investigation, reassuring her his inquiry is not complete and likely could uncover more information. But then the bottom line: “That said, Trump will claim vindication through this, and he’ll be partially right,” he said.

President Trump tweeted his thanks:

Some readers might be sceptical.

However, an investigative journalist who has no ties to Trump and is not a supporter — Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept — agrees with him:

Greenwald’s readers were not happy.

On another tweet, Greenwald still had to repeat himself:

More angry readers tweeted here.

Let’s remind ourselves of what Big Media have been foisting on us since 2017: ‘bombshell’, ‘tipping point’, ‘beginning of the end’, ‘Trump will resign’:

Big Media’s narrative is ‘too big to fail’:

Trump supporters, understandably, are sick and tired of it all, because the Democrats started this narrative shortly before the 2016 election:

This chap meant ‘wielded’, but his point still stands. I hope he is correct:

Here are a few suggestions for President Trump on how to wield that hammer:

As for Robert Mueller and his team, the same day NBC’s Ken Dilanian filed his report, President Trump’s former attorney John Dowd gave an interview to ABC News (full transcript).

John Dowd does not believe the report of Mueller’s findings will be released to the public. He thinks there will simply be an announcement that the two-year investigation has ended.

Dowd says that Mueller had all the information he needed nearly a year ago (emphases mine):

In my opinion, on March 5th, we were done. He had everything. He said he had everything. He told me that no one had lied. He told me they had every document we asked for. He told me that it was nothing more. He told me that the president was not a target. That is, he did not have any exposure, that he was a witness subject, which is perfectly normal for someone’s conduct you’re looking at, but they don’t have exposure.

Dowd later said the same thing and says Mueller should have admitted that he was being pressured to find something by a ‘cabal in the FBI’:

There’s no exposure. It’s been a terrible waste of time. What’s worse is let’s get on the other side of this, how it all happened. This is one of the greatest frauds this country’s ever seen. And I’m just shocked that Bob Mueller didn’t call it that way and say, “I’m being used.” I would’ve done that. If I were in his shoes in this thing, I’d have gone to the– I’d have gone to Sessions and Rosenstein and said, “Look. This is nonsense. We are being used by a cabal in the F.B.I. to get even.”

President Trump has co-operated with Mueller, responding to requests that no other president has never had to endure (source):

Note the third paragraph in that last tweet. Had Trump agreed to an interview with Mueller:

it would set a precedent that would open the current president and future presidents to this kind of interview.

Given the Senate Intelligence Committee’s findings, it will be interesting to see how much longer the Mueller probe lasts.

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