Tag Archives: Donald Trump

A Mexican Sea-Change on the Illegal Alien Tsunami?

President Trump seems to have persuaded Mexican officials that there is, indeed, a crisis at the southern border – theirs with Guatemala, as well as ours with Mexico.

Suddenly, the government of Andres Lopez Obrador has apparently abandoned his previous stance that everyone in the world has a right to migrate to the United States and is welcome to come to Mexico for that purpose.

Press accounts say Mexico is stopping some Central American “caravans” and arresting several of those responsible for encouraging and facilitating them. 6,000 newly designated Mexican National Guard personnel are reportedly being assigned to help control their country’s southern frontier. We’re told further concessions are on offer, too.

If all this actually materializes and endures, it will be a powerful vindication of President Trump’s threats to impose sweeping tariffs on Mexican imports and a welcome repudiation of his critics.

Mark Levin Defends John Bolton, Rebuffs Hysteria Over Trump Iran Policy

Mark Levin delivered a strident defense of the Iran policy of President Trump and his National Security Adviser John Bolton on the May 15, 2019 edition of the Mark Levin Podcast:

I want to talk briefly about Iran. You and I do not have the information that the president has that has caused him to act to move the USS Lincoln and other support ships into the Mediterranean and other parts of the Middle East. To move B-52 bombers into Qatar, our base there. To put our military personnel in Syria and other areas of the Middle East on high alert. And to remove out State Department employees from Iraq. We don’t have the facts.

Now, we can surmise as a general matter, we know what Iran is up to. Iran is looking to create war throughout the Middle East. Iran is looking to take over Iraq. Iran is looking to take over Yemen. Iran is looking to take over parts of Syria. Iran is backing Hezbollah, its terrorist, militant arm, among other terrorist organizations. And Iran is looking to build nuclear warheads and to put them on ICBMs. Iran is looking to go to war with, among others, Israel. So, Iran is a very, very dangerous country. It is run by Islamo-Nazis in Tehran.

The president, this president, unlike the past president, has really put an economic stranglehold on this country. We talk about our GDP going up 3.2 percent. Their GPD lost six percent. And the president put further sanctions in place as applies to oil and applied them worldwide. That is, our allies or people who do business with us and our companies. They are no longer free to purchase oil from Iran. So, he’s put really strong deterrents in place, economic deterrents and sanctions. But something has happened with this president, who’s no interventionist, he’s no interventionist, has great concern.

And as I’ve been reading the media and trying to figure out what’s going on, all I get is a lot of opinion and pablum that this is Iraq under George W. Bush. That this is another phony issue, like weapons of mass destruction, they argue, they write. That Trump is going to be dragged into a war thanks to neocons like John Bolton. That’s the genius Pat Buchanan there, among others. And that Trump’s going to send a hundred and twenty thousand troops. He didn’t say he’s sending a hundred and twenty thousand troops. Those plans are on the shelf just in case, for a president. As they are when it comes to China, Russia, and a whole lot of other scenarios. But I’m sitting here thinking to myself, we’ve got all these Code Pink Republicans, we have all these Code Pink Democrats, if Iran is indeed threatening our military personnel and our military assets, if Iran is indeed planning to cut off navigable international waters to prevent twenty percent of the world from receiving oil that comes out of the Middle East, if Iran is preparing a massive provocative reaction, both militarily and economically, why are these newspapers attacking Donald Trump? Why are these newspapers attacking John Bolton? Is it always politics at all times? Because it seems to be.

As I said, this president is not a radical interventionist. He’s not an interventionist at all. He’s taken a lot of troops out of Syria. He wants to take a lot of troops out of Afghanistan. That is his mindset. That’s what he ran on. Agree or disagree? But here he’s ramping up our defenses because, based on other accounts, our military has been threatened in a significant way and the economic stability of the world should oil be cut off is being threatened. How is this in any way a comparison to what took place with Iraq? He’s not looking for an excuse to go to war. He’s not looking for an excuse for military action. What’s happened to his supporters? So-called supporters. In the media. All of a sudden – all of a sudden they think he’s going to make an odd move or take a left turn or whatever it is.

If Iran is doing these things, Iran must be stopped. Iran must be confronted. We’re not the colonialists, we’re not the imperialists, we’re not trying to set up some kind of a – a caliphate in the Middle East. It amazes me how even some conservatives think of our country. We don’t conquer territory to hold territory. We’re not the imperialists. You have a terrorist regime that has killed God knows how many Americans over decades and wants to kill more and talks about it. You have a president that’s prepared to stand up to this. Unprovoked. You have a regime that’s not popularly elected. You have a regime that – that is repressive. Repressive against Christians and whatever a few Jews are left, repressive against dissidents, repressive against gays, repressive – look, it’s an Islamo-Nazi regime, like I just said. But when you start threatening in a serious way American military forces, personnel, and assets – you know, I remember when Hezbollah blew up the barracks, the Marine barracks and killed what? Over a hundred, over a hundred and fifty – I think it was a hundred and eighty-three, I could be off, Marines as they were sleeping? And I remember the Reagan Administration was criticized strongly.

Well, it sounds to me like this administration has learned the lesson of past administrations, including the great Reagan Administration of which I served, and has said, not again. That’s not going to happen. But we don’t have all the facts. So why all the knee-jerkers out there going on and on about how this is all weapons of mass destruction like Iraq? And we can debate that, but I don’t need to debate it now. That he’s being dragged into war by John Bolton. This president isn’t dragged into anything. He has a mind of his own. He looks at the facts, he makes a decision. So, the reporting on this is utterly unhelpful. It’s not factual. It’s mostly political and partisan in that respect. I have to hear these Code Pink Republicans and their knee-jerk reactions to everything and they don’t have all the facts either.

Fleitz South Korea Factfinding Trip: Kim Jong Un’s Reaction to Failure of Vietnam Summit

Seoul, South Korea, May 16, 2018

I am finishing up a week-long factfinding trip to South Korea sponsored by the Washington Times. I’m grateful to the Times for this opportunity to be on a delegation with distinguished experts like former CIA Director James Woolsey, Washington Post national security columnist Bill Gertz and Ambassador Joseph DeTrani. We met with officials with South Korean intelligence, the National Assembly, and the Blue House (South Korea’s White House). We also met with officials with U.S. Forces Korea. A conference was held after our government meetings.

I learned a lot during this trip about North Korea and the foreign policy views of South, Korea, Japan and Russia. Some major findings so far:

  1. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was stunned when President Trump walked away from the Vietnam Summit in February. We heard this in many briefings. Most of the delegation knew Kim had been surprised at this outcome; we hadn’t heard how much this angered Kim and threw his foreign policy off the rails.  Some briefers believed Kim’s recent missile tests and cutoff of diplomatic meetings with South Korea and the U.S. after the summit is a backlash to the outcome of the summit.  My hope is that this backlash will soon subside and allow these meetings to resume.

 

  1. South Korea is way too eager to make a deal with the North. I was aware of this, but it was interesting to hear South Korean officials voice this over and over again. Many expressed frustration with President Trump’s North Korea policy, asserting that it would be better if Mr. Trump weakened his tough stand on complete denuclearization of North Korea.

 

  1. Many South Korean officials failed to credit President Trump’s role in creating an opportunity for a peaceful resolution of the North Korean threat. We sat through several briefings by South Korean officials who failed to give President Trump and his “Maximum Pressure” strategy credit in lowering tensions with North Korea and creating an historic opportunity for peace. They were, however, quick to criticize President Trump, especially concerning the Vietnam summit. Several members of our delegation took issue with this.

 

  1. Concerns that Kim Jong Un might try to wait out the Trump administration in hope that he will lose reelection in 2020.

 

  1. Kim Jong Un recently has tried to build ties to Russian President Putin because of his frustration over the failure of the Vietnam summit and the Kim regime’s dislike of China.

 

  1. South Korean officials claimed they termed North Korea’s recent missile tests as “projectile tests” because it has not been established what kind of projectile the North tests. This explanation is absurd and is actually an attempt to avoid accusing North Korea of violating UN Security Council sanctions by calling these tests “missile tests.”

This was a good opportunity to hear the views of Asia-Pacific officials, many of which conflict with the Trump administration. There also were other bad and confusing ideas and proposals. But despite this and criticism of President Trump, there was widespread support and respect for President Trump’s leadership and recognition that strong American leadership is crucial to dealing with the threat from North Korea.

Communist China’s New Brand – “Foreign Adversary”

Few marketers have been more successful in indelible branding than Donald Trump. Look no further than the myriad buildings, planes, wines, etc. that bear his name. Then, there are his foes who will always be known by the colorful nicknames he has given them.

Mr. Trump just gave Communist China a new designation. After decades in which the PRC was portrayed as a Cold War ally against the Soviet Union, then as a business partner, and most recently, as a “peer competitor,” the President gave it a far more accurate brand yesterday: “foreign adversary.”

In a new executive order clearly aimed at the Chinese Communist Party’s conglomerates Huawei and ZTE, Mr. Trump barred our telecommunications networks from using such adversaries’ equipment. Those overseas who want access to our intelligence and security assistance had better follow his lead.

Learn more at PresentDangerChina.org

A New Sheriff in Town – John Durham

Attorney General William Barr has recruited U.S. Attorney John Durham to investigate the cabal of FBI leadership figures, Justice Department officials and senior CIA and other intelligence personnel who apparently manufactured for partisan purposes a counter-intelligence probe of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016. If they haven’t already done so, these folks better lawyer-up.

That’s because Gen. Barr’s choice is an experienced prosecutor with a record of bringing to justice crooked cops and other corrupt officials. If anybody can get to the bottom of what seems to be rampant malfeasance at the highest levels of the Obama administration, it should be John Durham.

Diana West’s splendid new book, The Red Thread: A Search for Ideological Drivers Inside the Anti-Trump Conspiracy, provides a roadmap for his damage assessment and efforts to bring wrongdoers to justice.

Read The Red Thread for free at SecureFreedom.org.

Trump Rose To EMP Challenge, Now Must Fight DC Swamp

Originally published by Newsmax:

President Trump proves once again that he keeps his promises.

When candidate Trump began his race for president in the Iowa Republican caucuses, I briefed him that the greatest and least understood threat to our nation and global electronic civilization is electromagnetic pulse (EMP).

Candidate Trump, astonished that the U.S. government had done nothing to protect the national electric grid and other life-sustaining critical infrastructures, said, “Don’t worry. When I’m elected president, we’ll knock some heads together and fix this.”

Now President Donald Trump deserves the gratitude of every American for his new “Executive Order on Coordinating National Resilience to Electromagnetic Threats” signed on March 26, 2019.

It may well be the most significant executive order of any presidency.

And it does, in effect, “knock together the heads” of the Department of Energy (DOE), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Department of Defense (DOD) and all other relevant U.S. government departments and agencies in a well-crafted masterplan to achieve national EMP preparedness.

The president’s executive order recognizes manmade and natural electromagnetic pulse (EMP) (from the high-altitude detonation of a nuclear weapon or from a solar superstorm) are existential threats to America and the world:

“An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) has the potential to disrupt, degrade, and damage technology and critical infrastructure systems. Human-made or naturally occurring EMPs can affect large geographic areas, disrupting elements critical to the Nation’s security and economic prosperity, and could adversely affect global commerce and stability.”

Crucially, after a quarter-century of warnings by scientists and experts, Mr. Trump is the first president to act decisively against the EMP threat: “The federal government must foster sustainable, efficient, and cost-effective approaches to improving the nation’s resilience to the effects of EMPs.”

The Congressional EMP Commission, officially the Commission to Assess the Threat from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack, has been warning for years that manmade or natural EMP could destroy our electronic civilization — killing millions — in reports published in 2004, 2008, and 2017. And before that, beginning in 1995, Congress held the first unclassified hearings sounding the alarm about the then little-known threat from EMP.

In 2008, Dr. William R. Graham, Chairman of the Congressional EMP Commission, testified that an EMP event causing a nationwide blackout lasting one year could kill up to 90 percent of Americans through starvation and societal chaos.

According to the July 2017 “EMP Commission Chairman’s Report” (available on Amazon.com):

“While during the Cold War major efforts were undertaken by the Department of Defense (DoD) to assure that the U.S. national command authority and U.S. strategic forces could survive and operate after an EMP attack, no major efforts were then thought necessary by the national leadership to protect critical national infrastructures, provided that nuclear deterrence was successful.

“With the development of small nuclear arsenals and long-range missiles by small, hostile, potentially irrational countries, including North Korea, the threat of a nuclear EMP attack against the U.S. becomes one of the few ways that such a country could inflict devastating damage to the U.S.”

The chairman’s report concludes, “Therefore, it is critical that the U.S. national leadership address the EMP threat as an immediate, existential issue, and give a high priority to assuring the necessary leadership is engaged and the necessary steps are taken to protect the country from EMP.”

President Trump’s EMP Executive Order seeks to realize the recommendations of the Congressional EMP Commission on a fast timeline, quickly.

It’s an excellent first step toward achieving national EMP preparedness.

Wisely, President Trump’s executive order puts the White House in charge of managing national EMP preparedness, as recommended by the EMP Commission and my book “EMP Manhattan Project” (Amazon.com).

DOE and DHS have been asleep at the wheel for years, doing little or nothing to protect the nation from EMP, so White House leadership on EMP preparedness is urgently necessary.

One of the smartest features of the EMP Executive Order requires that vulnerability of critical infrastructure vital equipment be established through empirical testing in EMP simulators.

DOE, the national labs, and their partners in the electric power industry, like the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI, really an industry lobby masquerading as an objective think tank), have done great injury to national security with junk science reports.

Accounts purportedly proving the national electric grid would be little damaged and quickly recovered from natural or nuclear EMP.

These studies rely on garbage-in-garbage-out computer models grossly underestimating EMP threats.

EPRI’s junk science is knowingly dishonest, since the EMP Commission met with their two EMP non-experts to try correcting their faulty analysis — to no avail.

EPRI’s happy face EMP reports are reminiscent of the cigarette industry’s untrustworthy “independent laboratory assessments,” allegedly proving there is no causal linkage between smoking and lung cancer.

Computer models are no substitute for EMP equipment testing, as last done comprehensively by the Congressional EMP Commission.

Now the battle to make America safe from EMP really begins.

President Trump must now penetrate the obfuscations of lobbyists, the lies of do nothing bureaucrats.

That is, he must keep knocking heads together to achieve the objectives of his excellent EMP Executive Order.

How Mueller Protects the Deep State

Originally published by The Epoch Times:

Former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy has published a shocking op-ed, explaining why he suspects that Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III has known for the past 18 months, since fall of 2017, that there was no Trump-Russia “collusion.”

Personally, I suspect Mueller knew earlier still, and certainly no later than the day he became Special Counsel, his very appointment resulting from leaking chicanery by his longtime “law enforcement twin,” James Comey. (Muller and Comey both were thought of as “rising stars mentored and guided by Eric Holder in the 1990s,” according to the Washingtonian)

McCarthy has laid out a logical argument based on dates and FISA warrants to make his case, which rather makes me wonder how long McCarthy has suspected Mueller has known there was no Trump-Russia “collusion.”

In concluding, he writes:

“Yet the investigation continued. The Justice Department and the special counsel made no announcement, no interim finding of no collusion, as Trump detractors continued to claim that a sitting American president might be a tool of the Putin regime. For month after month, the president was forced to govern under a cloud of suspicion. Why?”

His op-ed ends there.

To make an educated guess, it is probably best to acknowledge that Mueller, above all else, is a politically compliant creature, someone to whom national security always takes a back seat to political concerns. To get started on the corroborating evidence, see Rep, Louie Gohmert’s extensive brief, “Robert Mueller, Unmasked” here, and my own separate compilation, “Mueller’s FBI” here.

The man who really got Mueller’s number earliest on (“Eric Holder’s gift to Justice”), however, is the late William Safire, as discussed, for example, here.

From long-forgotten “Iraqgate,” to 9/11 and after, Mueller’s career-mission has been to guard and protect the Deep State. In our own time, take the FBI counter-intelligence operation known as “Ghost Stories,” which for ten years was tracking a covert ring of deep-cover Russian intelligence operatives known as “illegals.” One day in June, 2010, when Obama was president and Mueller was FBI Director, this ring was rolled up and abruptly deported back to Mother Russia.

Why? The available evidence strongly suggests that this FBI work of a decade was thrown away to protect Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the once and future presidential candidate, then at risk of being compromised by a member of the Russian ring. As FBI counterintelligence chief Frank Figliuzzi put it: “We were becoming very concerned they were getting close enough to a sitting U.S. cabinet member that we thought we could no longer allow this to continue.”

Indeed, Hillary Clinton “worked feverishly” to get these Russian agents deported before they could be adequately debriefed or otherwise exploited, as J. Michael Waller has written about the case. Remember, June 2010 was a busy month for Bill and Hillary Clinton, President Obama, and the Russians: Rosatom was initiating its purchase of Uranium One; Bill Clinton was pocketing $500,000 from that KGB-linked Moscow bank, Renaissance Capital, which was “talking up” Uranium One shares (even as $145 million was sloshing into the Clinton Foundation), while President Obama was pushing for Russian membership in the World Trade Organization. Who needed secret Russian agents running around when everything was going so well for the Kremlin? They had to go and they went.

And FBI Director Mueller? Was he in a lather over this particularly egregious form of Russian “meddling,” or “influence” on the Obama administration? Last time I looked, he did not resign from his FBI directorship in protest of any of it. Maybe he was too busy himself hiding evidence from Congress of the so-called Mikerin probe, the investigation into a Russian bribery scheme to control an American uranium trucking firm, even as U.S. lawmakers were examining the proposed sale of Uranium One to the Russian government.

In fact, in FBI Director Mueller’s 2010 treatment of the Russian espionage ring we see a funhouse-mirror-image of Special Counsel Mueller’s Russian “hacking” indictments in 2018. In 2010, without a single indictment or anything comparable, Mueller’s FBI did its part in deporting from American soil a network of high-value Kremlin intelligence operatives for political reasons; in 2018, without any expectation of prosecution—and, according to a formidable group of intelligence community whistleblowers led by former NSA tech director William Binney, without credible evidence—Mueller’s Special Counsel office indicted a bunch of random Russian intelligence officers, also for political reasons.

In both cases, it is our national security that suffers while Mueller’s political masters benefit. In 2010, they wanted Obama-Clinton protected from real Russian exposure; in 2018 they wanted Trump destroyed by the concocted smear of Russian “collusion.”

Things didn’t go as planned. It is 2019 and Trump is still standing tall, despite the vicious and toxic attacks of the past several years. The anti-Trump conspiracy is in tactical retreat, concentrating its forces to protect itself as it regroups.

That is the hidden message of the Mueller Report: Its long overdue “exoneration” is a shiny distraction; its doubling-down on the phony Russian hacking story is where our eyes should fall.

What I think is unfolding is that Mueller et. al. are tacking back to the core mission: protecting the Deep State from exposure for its role in a criminal conspiracy to overturn an election.

Diana West is an award-winning journalist and author whose latest book is “The Red Thread: A Search for Ideological Drivers Inside the Anti-Trump Conspiracy.”  

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Diana West’s “Red Thread” Book Launch Featuring the Author and Panel of Experts

Buy here

Watch a panel of experts explore the themes of The Red Thread:

  • Diana West, Author of The Red Thread, American Betrayal and Death of the Grownup
  • Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., Executive Chairman of the Center for Security Policy
  • Chris Farrell, Director for Investigations and Research at Judicial Watch
  • Rich Higgins, Former Pentagon Official Who Served in the NSC Strategic-Planning Office

About The Red Thread:

The first investigation into why a ring of senior Washington officials went rogue to derail the election and the presidency of Donald Trump.

There was nothing normal about the 2016 presidential election, not when senior U.S. officials were turning the surveillance powers of the federal government — designed to stop terrorist attacks — against the Republican presidential team. These were the ruthless tactics of a Soviet-style police state, not a democratic republic.

The Red Thread asks the simple question: Why? What is it that motivated these anti-Trump conspirators from inside and around the Obama administration and Clinton networks to depart so drastically from “politics as usual” to participate in a seditious effort to overturn an election?

Finding clues in an array of sources, Diana West uses her trademark investigative skills, honed in her dazzling work, American Betrayal, to construct a fascinating series of ideological profiles of well-known but little understood anti-Trump actors, from James Comey to Christopher Steele to Nellie Ohr, and the rest of the Fusion GPS team; from John Brennan to the numerous Clintonistas still patrolling the Washington Swamp after all these years, and more.

Once, we knew these officials by august titles and reputation; after The Red Thread, readers will recognize their multi-generational and inter-connecting communist and socialist pedigrees, and see them for what they really are: foot-soldiers of the Left, deployed to take down America’s first “America First” and most anti-Communist president.

If we just give it a pull, the “red thread” is very long and very deep.

Conservative Leaders Ask Trump To Oppose Prison Reform Bill: ‘It’s Prison Release’

Originally published on Breitbart:

Conservative leaders are asking President Trump to oppose prison reform legislation, telling him to “trust” his instincts and calling the bill “prison release.”

The Center for Urban Renewal & Education’s Star Parker, Sheriff David Clarke Jr., the Center for Security Policy’s Frank Gaffney and Clare Lopez, Conservative Review’s Daniel Horowitz, as well as 27 other leaders from prominent conservative organizations have sent a letter to Trump asking him not to support the First Step Act.

The letter states:

Despite what the proponents of soft-on-crime policies like criminal leniency suggest, the data is clear and confirmed by common-sense: taking criminals off the streets reduces the rate of crime. [Emphasis added]

Now, a leniency-industrial complex is urging you to support a bill that would reduce the sentences for federal drug traffickers, and allow large numbers of those same traffickers to “serve” their sentences outside prison in “home confinement.” [Emphasis added]

Mr. President, don’t do it. Trust your instincts. [Emphasis added]

Retired Customs and Border Protection officer Phil Haney said he wants the Congress to “first concentrate” on supporting law enforcement officials “before undertaking efforts to reform the current prison sentencing structure.”

“The biggest flaw driving this impetuous push for dismantling our criminal justice system is that there is no balance of equities between the desires or needs of convicts with the needs of victims and public safety,” Horowitz said, going on:

At a time when the prison population is plummeting and violent crime is going back up in many parts of the country, we need to be even more careful to ensure that we don’t repeat the mistakes of the pre-Reagan era of soft-on-crime-policies. Let’s study this issue with the right balance and the most up-to-date facts and trends at our disposal. Let’s hear the input from law enforcement, prosecutors, and victims rather than just hearing from political groups and Hollywood attention-seekers.

The prison reform legislation — promoted by White House advisers Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump — would cut the penalty for drug trafficking in half. This would allow a repeat-fentanyl trafficker with more than 400 grams of fentanyl to receive only seven years and 10 months in prison. Current law mandates that the repeat-fentanyl trafficker receive at least 20 years in prison.

The 400 grams of fentanyl is so deadly that it is enough to kill 100,000 Americans.

“The current criminal justice reform legislation is a formula for getting more unreformed criminals – including drug dealers and jihadists – back on the streets, threatening public safety and even the national security,” Gaffney said. “We mustn’t go there.”

The prison reform legislation would also immediately release about 4,000 felons back into American communities, as Breitbart News has reported. These 4,000 felons would include convicts who have violent criminal and gang records and they would not have to participate in the legislation’s anti-recidivism programs.

For heroin and fentanyl traffickers, the prison reform legislation allows them to earn early release from prison so long as they earn credits for participating in “productive activities.” This portion of the legislation allows for drug traffickers to get an early prison release by joining recreational leagues.

Trump said on Thursday that he would support the prison reform legislation against the advice of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the law enforcement community.

Executives working for the billionaire GOP mega-donors, the Koch brothers — many of which have close ties to Vice President Mike Pence and former Legislative Affairs Director Marc Short — held meetings at the White House with Trump officials in May and were reportedly successful in convincing the president to back the plan, despite his “Law and Order” agenda.

Read the full letter here:

Conservative Leaders Ask Trump to Oppose ‘Prison Release’ Legislation by John Binder on Scribd

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.