Tag: Trump

Socialist Andrew Gillum calls for confederacy to pass Universal Healthcare

In a rocky race so far for Florida Governor, Democrat candidate Andrew Gillum suggested to CNN’s Chris Cuomo that we needed a “confederacy of states” in order to get Universal Healthcare.  Gillum’s confederacy would ironically be a southern confederacy. Gillum also charged DeSantis with using a “bullhorn” which is a common racist dog whistle for Gillum’s base, bringing up connotations of ignorant segregationists. See? Two can play at that game.

But Gillum’s point about a southern confederacy is even more ridiculous than the gaffe itself.  Gillum’s point was actually valid.  If Florida doubled their state taxes in order to pay for government controlled healthcare, the state would empty out.  People would move to surrounding states to get away from his Universal Healthcare boondoggle.  Universal Healthcare requires shared misery to work.  That’s why Obamacare had a mandate.  Gillum realizes he can’t destroy Florida’s healthcare system unless their neighbors join him so people have nowhere to go.

Sounds like a winner.

Trump is expected to announce a new type of retirement plan in a rally in North Carolina.  The pooled 401k would allow small businesses to pool their resources and put together retirement plans while sharing the cost.  Trump also took action to reduce government spending by cancelling raises for Federal workers.  At the same time, he scored a major victory with the NAFTA redo with Mexico.  Canada has until today to decide if they are going to join.

Administration moves towards allowing pooled retirement plans

Many are speculating Mueller will make moves today.  Mueller has until September 6th to take any major action before we get into the election season.  Media outlets have recklessly speculated, without evidence, that Mueller will indict Don Jr and Jared Kushner, that he will subpoena Trump to testify, or that he will grant Michael Cohen a cooperation plea deal to get dirt on Trump.  So far, it’s been eerily quiet.

Currently no one is speculating that Mueller will step up efforts against Bruce Ohr, Peter Strzok, Andrew McCabe, Hillary Clinton, James Comey, or any of the other co-conspirators who solicited dirt from foreign agents to set up the Russian investigation in the first place.

Mueller could move today

Democrats stunned in Florida upset

The primaries took a turn for the worst for the establishment DNC on Tuesday when front runner Gwen Graham lost to progressive socialist Andrew Gillum in Florida.  The Florida governor primary race results came as a shock.  Gillum, the 39 year old mayor of Tallahassee, was outspent and barely known until Bernie Sanders came down to campaign for him.  Gillum is from the Ocasio-Cortez wing of the Democrat party and is also currently under an FBI investigation for illegal real estate deals.  He is promising a $15 minimum wage and Medicare for all, despite the massive job losses caused by such a drastically high wage floor in other states and no way to pay for Universal Healthcare.

On the Republican side of the aisle, Ron DeSantis won easily after a Trump endorsement gave him statewide notoriety.  He was already a very popular congressman in the Northeast part of the state.  DeSantis is also a member of the House “Freedom Caucus” made up of more libertarian leaning Republicans.  This sets up a stark contrast for November.

History will play on both sides of the race.  Gillum would be the first black governor of Florida if elected.  On the other side, Florida continues to do incredibly well under Republican governors.  Economic growth in Florida has skyrocketed under outgoing Governor Rick Scott.  Gillum meanwhile presides over a city known for high crime and falling behind other Florida cities.  In the end though, the race may simply turn into a Bernie Sanders versus Donald Trump cult of personality referendum.

Establishment Democrats lose Florida primary to Ocasio-Cortez style 39 year old mayor

Narrative alert: for the second day in a row the mainstream media hit Trump for making a claim “without citing evidence”.  The first was Trump’s claim that Google searches for his name were directing people to left leaning news organizations.  Trump did not cite the article in his tweet, but was referring to a PJ Media report. 

Yesterday the Daily Caller reported that China had hacked Hillary’s email account and set up code that was sending a courtesy duplicate of every email she sent to a Chinese run company in DC.  The Daily Caller did not name their sources, but after the CNN/Lanny Davis screwup, the MSM can hardly complain about that.

Trump isn’t citing stories without evidence.  He simply isn’t linking to the articles he is reading.  Mainstream media outlets likely don’t read news that conflicts with their narrative, and that may be why they missed these two stories.  I wonder where the “without evidence” narrative disappeared to when Florida’s Bill Nelson claimed the Russians had hacked our voting machines?

The “without evidence” narrative is back in the Mainstream Media

White House counsel Don McGhan may be moving on.  That’s the rumors coming from left-leaning Axios.  But the tone of the headline doesn’t match the story.  This isn’t the first time that’s been the case with a McGhan story either.  After McGhan spent 30 hours with Mueller representing the President, media outlets speculated that he had flipped on Trump.  That turned out not to be true.  The new rumors also do not indicate a split between Trump and McGhan.  In fact, the story demonstrates the value he has shown to the administration and why he may be moving on.  McGhan could be replaced by Emmet Flood.  Flood has represented Clinton and Bush against Congressional investigations and is known for fighting against investigator overreach.

Don McGhan’s work may be done

Breaking: Lanny Davis recants!

In a severely under-reported interview with Anderson Cooper Thursday night, attorney Lanny Davis recanted some serious allegations he had made against Trump.  Davis is representing Michael Cohen in his plea deal with New York prosecutors on bank and fraud charges.  Lanny Davis is a Clinton ally and has represented Bill Clinton.

Davis had said that Cohen would testify that Trump knew about the meeting between Don, Jr and a Russian attorney at Trump Tower.  He also suggested that Trump knew ahead of time about the Russian hack of the DNC server.  The Trump Tower meeting is nothing.  Even if Trump had known, the most that would demonstrate is that Trump lied about not knowing.  Foreknowledge about the DNC server hack would be significantly problematic for Trump because it could lead to actual Russian collusion charges.

It turns out neither claim was true.

Davis struggled to respond to Cooper’s questioning, saying that “the reporting of the story got mixed up”.  But then Davis admitted that Cohen had truthfully testified that “Trump was not aware (of the Trump Tower meeting) ahead of time”.  Cooper asked “Michael Cohen does not have information that Trump knew about the Trump Tower meeting?” Davis responded “No, he does not”.

When Cooper asked about the possibility that Trump knew about the DNC hack ahead of time, Davis tried to say that he had been tentative about that statement in the first place.  He then said “It’s not a certainty”.  It sounds as though Davis had been trying to get his client a better plea deal, but really had nothing to work with.

When it comes to Cohen coordinating the pay off of Stormy Daniels with the campaign, Davis faltered on that point as well.  When pressed by Cooper, he admitted “I can’t say if there is someone in the campaign who coordinated with Cohen.”

Throughout the interview, it almost seemed like Davis either hadn’t discussed the claims with Cohen before making them on TV, or that Cohen had fed him a bunch of baloney to try to get a better plea deal.  Davis ended up looking like a deer in the headlights in the Cooper interview.  But in the end, it’s clear that Cohen has nothing that would prove Trump knew about the Trump Tower meeting or the DNC hack ahead of time.  The Cohen story appears to be over.  It appears that Cohen was reimbursed from his retainer rather than the campaign too, so there is nothing there.

Here is the interview:

Why we need Jeff Sessions

The frustration Trump has with Jeff Sessions is not unreasonable.  In fact, it’s felt by many on the right, and some on the left who are concerned with stopping crime.  In case you missed it, we have a former FBI director who worked in concert with a former Attorney General to protect a political candidate and exonerate her of criminal mishandling of classified materials at all costs.  Comey pulled out all the stops to make sure Hillary Clinton faced nothing worse than a strong rebuke for her obvious and willful negligence.  Comey had to at least say something.  Other people were going to jail for the exact same thing.

But Comey knew Loretta Lynch was never going to prosecute Hillary Clinton.  And he knew, according to his own testimony, that Hillary Clinton was going to be the next President.  So he suppressed evidence.  He offered plea deals to Hillary’s attorneys that included destroying the evidence of a coverup on their laptops.  He let her attorneys be in the room when he interviewed her to make sure they got their stories straight.  When Loretta Lynch told him he couldn’t use the word “negligent” in his testimony, he substituted the made up legal term “extremely careless”.  But it didn’t matter, cause he knew Hillary was going to win.

When Weiner’s laptop surfaced, Comey lied to congress.  He said the FBI examined every email on Weiner’s laptop.  In reality, they barely touched 1% of them.  Later in testimony, Comey said the only reason he reopened the investigation with Weiner’s laptop was because he knew Hillary was going to win and he didn’t want the discovery to somehow leak out and be a cloud over Hillary’s presidency.  As FBI director, Comey had set himself up for a sweet deal in the new Clinton administration.  But it never happened.

Comey then wrote a book trying to exonerate himself.  He told about how honorable he was and how dishonorable Trump is.  He suddenly found himself with memos about conversations he had with Trump.  Private conversations with the President.  He used his memos to get his friend Robert Mueller appointed as a special counsel.  When Mueller headed the FBI, he fed contracts to Comey’s employer Lockheed Martin and Comey made $6 million in one year on those contracts.  Comey and Mueller have a history of enriching one another.

So what does this have to do with Sessions?  We see all of this obvious corruption before our eyes, even documented in Congress and the press.  We see Inspector General Horowitz reading Peter Strzok’s texts about stopping Trump and saying those texts weren’t politically biased.  We see all of this injustice and the Left gloating about Hillary Clinton getting away with her illegal activities.  We see Hillary Clinton using campaign funds to collude with Russia through a foreign spy in the creation of the Trump dossier and her friends in the FBI using that dossier to get FISA warrants to spy on her opponent.  But we see no justice.

For the last 8 years, we have had Attorney Generals who did what the President said.  They protected the President.  Holder was the first Attorney General held in contempt of Congress and resigned shortly after the Justice Department started illegally seizing phone records of journalists.  In fact that was one of the only times Holder recused himself.  The other times had to do with criminal investigations into clients he had once represented, like Roger Clemens and a Swiss bank being used for tax havens.  Loretta Lynch never recused herself, even after her secret tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton during the Hillary Clinton investigation.

Holder and Lynch never would have appointed a special counsel to investigation wrongdoing by Obama.  Even the thought of that seems ridiculous.  They certainly wouldn’t have recused themselves.  Sessions felt that because he had been part of Trump’s campaign, he should not be involved in these investigations.  In doing so, Sessions has left the Department of Justice in the hands of the conspirators who sought to take Trump down.  McCabe, Strzok, Ohr, Comey, Page, Yates, we know all the names because we’ve seen their internal communications plotting to take Trump out.  The fact that Trump is still standing without a single charge against him and not even being the target of the investigation demonstrates that the justice system overall is working.

But there’s still no justice against criminals like Hillary Clinton.  All we can do is be patient.  In the meantime, I applaud Jeff Sessions for not being like Holder and Lynch.  We know that the result of Mueller’s investigation is not skewed by partisanship to the right.  We know that Sessions’ DOJ is going to be fair.  We don’t have to worry about a situation like we had with Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch where we knew justice was an illusion and the system was rigged to protect Obama and his potential successors.

As painful and frustrating as that is to conservatives, Trump supporters, and those who truly love justice, it is necessary.  The last 8 years have destroyed our confidence in the United States justice system.  Sessions has helped restore that confidence by going back to a policy of abundant non-partisanship and avoiding the appearance of evil.  For that, as hard as it is to say this, we are thankful.  We need more good people like Jeff Sessions in the Department of Justice.

Did Trump say flipping should be illegal?

CNBC is reporting that Trump wants to make “flipping” illegal.  Flipping is the term generally used to describe when someone is in hot water and flips on their associates in crime to work out a deal with Justice.  So did Trump really say he wants to make flipping illegal?  Or is this fake news?

As usual, there is nuance in what Trump is saying.  You can see a portion of the interview here.  Trump spoke about flipping in the context of Cohen “making stuff up”.  In fact, he reiterates several times that he’s talking about when someone gets themselves in deep trouble and makes stuff up to get a lower prison sentence.  Trump says this kind of flipping should be “almost illegal”.

Trump mentioned the curious case of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’s IT guy Imran Awan, who was arrested under suspicion that he had possibly been involved in the DNC server hack and may have stolen from the DNC.  Awan struck a deal in July and was convicted for lying on a loan application.  The charges against his wife were dropped.  The case has led to plenty of conspiracy theories and there has been zero media interest as to what Awan might have given up in his plea deal.

In the interview, Trump also pointed out that Cohen’s accusations about Trump campaign violations are wrong.  Trump said that the payments to reimburse Cohen came out of his retainer paid from his businesses to Cohen.  As the John Edwards case showed, that is not a crime.  In fact, in Edwards case it was campaign donors who paid off his mistress, not his personal attorney in the process of creating an NDA.  That would make what Trump did even more innocent than what Edwards did.

Trump did in fact tweet about the payments back in May.  So Cohen’s revelation is hardly news to anyone who is interested.  Trump tweeted that he reimbursed Cohen through his legal retainer and not from campaign funds.  At the time Trump also claimed that there was no affair, that Daniels was attempting to extort him, and that they would pursue action against her based on the arbitration provisions in the NDA.  Perhaps this is why Cohen still has no cooperation agreement despite his claims of dirt on Trump.

I wonder if the question will ever come up if Cohen’s attorney, Lanny Davis, is making these claims to affect the outcome of an election?  Davis is a Clinton ally and has been speaking on Cohen’s behalf.  He is a liberal Democrat who hates Trump and wants Republicans to lose in November.  There doesn’t appear to be any evidence at this point to support some of his outlandish claims.  But those claims being repeated over and over in the media will certainly affect the election in November.  Maybe some forms of “flipping” should be “almost illegal”.

Still no cooperation deal for Cohen

Despite claims from Michael Cohen that he violated campaign finance laws on Trump’s behalf and that Trump knew ahead of time about the DNC hack, there is still no cooperation deal on the table.  That means prosecutors either for New York or Mueller have not come to Cohen to offer him a deal.  Additionally, some have noted that his attorney taking the claims to television rather than working with prosecutors behind closed doors underscores that Cohen has nothing to offer.  Cohen faces years in jail even with the plea deal and could face additional charges in the future.  His attorney, Lanny Davis, is a huge Bill Clinton supporter and Trump hater.

No cooperation deal yet for Cohen

“Deeply confused or dishonest” Bill Nelson was hit by the Florida Sun Sentinel newspaper after the FBI and DHS issued a joint statement that Nelson’s Russian interference claim was false.  Nelson had stated that Russia had infiltrated Florida’s election system, but the claim turned out to be a lie.  Scott’s charge that Nelson may be deeply confused may be a comment about Nelson’s age.  At 75 years old, Nelson is actually only the 16th oldest Senator.

Confirmed: Bill Nelson lied about Russian infiltration

Iran has a “new” fighter jet.  The Kowsar fighter jet is supposedly domestically designed and built by Iran.  There’s only one problem, the plane looks exactly like a US fighter jet from 1974.

Military experts say Iran’s new fighter jet is remake of 1970s US jet

Impeachment? The answer is still no

Michael Cohen is on his way to jail for a very long time.  But as his ship sinks, he and his attorney are grasping for straws to reduce that sentence.  Cohen has agreed to sing if it means a reduced sentence.  But Mueller already passed on a Cohen plea bargain.

But what if everything Cohen is saying is true?  Is Trump in trouble?  According to precedent, the answer is no.  Let’s start with John Edwards.  Friends and megadonors paid nearly $1 million to Edwards’ mistress to cover up his affair right before an election.  The DOJ brought the charge that those were reportable campaign contributions because they were made to benefit Edwards’ campaign and influence the election.  Edwards was acquitted.  The DOJ could not successfully make the argument that those amounts to pay off his mistress should have been reported.

President Obama found himself in hot water after failing to report $1.8 million in campaign donations made through normal channels and for keeping donations that were in excess of allowed limits.  His campaign paid a $350,000 fine, the largest in history, and moved on with life as though nothing happened.

Bill Clinton lied about an affair during a sexual harassment trial that suddenly fell into the scope of the White Water special counsel.  But he was under oath.  He actually committed perjury.  But nothing happened to him.

In Trump’s case, he paid Michael Cohen a retainer as an attorney to represent him and to deal with issues like paying off people he had an affair with.  Does that make Trump a Clinton grade slimeball?  Of course.  Who didn’t know that already?  But even the leftovers from Obama’s DOJ are going to have a hard time turning a $130,000 payment into something they couldn’t get with the million dollars spent on Edwards’ mistress.  Additionally, the liar and singer Michael Cohen, who stated in the past that Trump didn’t know about the payoffs, never had affairs, etc is going to have to provide hard evidence.  So far the Cohen tapes have disappointed in that area.

From our analysis, the only charge Cohen has made that could put Trump in serious trouble is that Trump knew about the DNC hack before it happened.  Even then, knowing about it is a far cry from causing it.  But that could get Trump into enough trouble that a Democrat run House could at least introduce impeachment charges.  They would never get 75 votes in the Senate.  But more importantly, we’d have to see more than the word of a man on his way to jail being advised by Bill Clinton’s personal attorney, Lanny Davis.  Cohen would need to produce a tape of Trump talking about the DNC hack along with timestamp proof that it was before the hack took place.

I’m pretty sure if that existed, we would have heard it by now.  But who knows, maybe it’ll be an October surprise.

Narratives crumble on eventful Tuesday

First let’s talk about media censorship.  As we’ve documented, reporters like CNN’s Jim Acosta went crazy when Trump suggested Fake News was the enemy of the people.  Over 200 newspapers wrote coordinated editorials attacking Trump based on the narrative that he was anti-Press.  But in West Virginia, Trump shot down that narrative by going after social media censors.  “I would rather have fake news than have anybody — including liberals, socialists, anything –than have anybody stopped and censored,” Trump said.  He added warnings about the dangers of censoring opposing viewpoints.

Trump makes statement opposing censorship of any viewpoints, including liberals

The Left is frothing at the mouth over convictions of Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen.  But there’s very little chance it will amount to anything.  The media also seems to be confused into thinking that paying people for non-disclosure agreements of affairs is somehow illegal.  What was illegal was Cohen submitting the payoff to one of Trump’s companies as some sort of expense reimbursement.  For investigators to even begin to think they have a crime to charge Trump with, they have to get evidence beyond Cohen’s unreliable testimony.  But beyond that, Trump can’t be indicted.  He can only be impeached if evidence of criminal activity can be proven.  An impeachment vote won’t pass with the current House makeup and even after November there is no way the Senate will have 75 yes votes on impeachment.

But more importantly, the Russian collusion narrative is once again proven to be dead.  Manafort’s convictions are all for pre-Trump campaign financial crimes that have nothing to do with Trump.  Despite Cohen’s willingness to sing like a bird to Mueller, he had nothing to offer when it comes to Russia.  These two were literally the best hope Mueller had of ever having anything on Trump when it comes to Russia.  Both flipped.  Neither one had anything to offer.  There was no Russian collusion with Trump.

Trump could be in political trouble, but won’t be impeached

In another Russia related story that the media is dutifully ignoring, Rick Scott announced Tuesday that the Department of Homeland Security and FBI informed him that there is no evidence that Russia has infiltrated the Florida election system.  This was a wild and baseless claim made by his opponent Sen. Bill Nelson.  Nelson provided no evidence for the claims, but seemed to be indicating that it was classified.  After being called out on his claim by even the Washington Post, Nelson got quiet but hasn’t apologized for lying.

DHS and FBI confirm Bill Nelson lied about Russian meddling in Florida

Manafort and Cohen Guilty

On Tuesday, Paul Manafort was found guilty on 8 of the 18 charges against him.  The jury was hung on the other 10 charges.  All of the charges were related to Manafort’s actions before working with the Trump campaign.  They included tax and bank fraud and hiding a foreign account.  This was when Manafort was working with the Podesta Group.  None of the charges had any relation to Russian collusion or the 2016 election.

Michael Cohen plead guilty in a plea deal to tax and bank fraud and is facing 3-5 years in jail.  Cohen was Trump’s personal attorney.  While this had nothing to do with Russia, collusion, or election meddling, there is a charge with Cohen that could touch Trump.  Cohen is charged with two counts of illegal campaign contributions related to his paying off two porn stars who had alleged affairs with Trump.  The key here is that in Cohen’s plea he said he was directed by the candidate to make those payments.

If Trump directed Cohen to pay off Stormy Daniels, and then reimbursed Cohen from the campaign, that could be trouble for Trump.  However, if Cohen was paid by Trump’s company as a reimbursement as deputy US attorney Robert Khuzami explained, it could result in nothing more than an IRS issue for the President.  Even then, a prosecutor would have to prove that Trump knew Cohen’s invoice was fraudulent.  Cohen is less than trustworthy as a witness and had great incentive to rat on Trump.

Cohen also indicated that he would be willing to testify to Mueller that Trump knew about the Trump Tower meeting between his son and a Russian attorney, but there doesn’t seem to be anything illegal about that meeting even if he did.

The two biggest takeaways from these huge stories is that Russian collusion still has not materialized, but that Trump likely has not been honest about his affair with Stormy Daniels.  That leaves Trump in the same boat as Bill Clinton in 1998, but without the perjury or obstruction of justice.

Hogg rages against Pelosi and “older Democrats”

The media is finally catching up with Trump.  Boasting an “exclusive”, Reuters is finally reporting the real reason Trump doesn’t want to meet with Mueller.  Anyone who has been paying attention knows that Rudy Guiliani has been talking about their fears of the perjury trap for weeks.  Mostly though the media has misunderstood what Guiliani was saying and instead speculated about why Trump’s lawyers might be meeting with Mueller.  When McGahn met with Mueller for 30 hours with no attorney client immunity, the New York Times speculated that he was flipping on Trump rather than speaking on his behalf.

Trump’s concern has been that if Mueller interviews him and he happens to say something contrary to what Comey or someone else has said, Mueller will slap Trump with a perjury charge.  Of course, it would be a he said, he said situation, but Mueller would likely take Comey’s word for it.  Unlike Bill Clinton who committed perjury and was proven to have lied by the DNA on Lewinsky’s dress, Trump would be giving his word versus Comey or some other long time Mueller ally/business associate.

Media discovers Trump is avoiding perjury trap

Speaking of the unhinged media, NY Times columnist Michelle Goldberg said on MSNBC’s The Lid that she believes Trump wants to “murder people without due process”.  Goldberg was explaining why she felt Trump was no longer the leader of the free world, but instead should be classified as a murderous dictator.  When asked if she thought he would murder people without due process, Goldberg replied “he would certainly like to.”

 

David Hogg is back in the news, giving an interview to New York Magazine.  In the interview, Hogg expressed frustration with “older Democrats”, saying they should get out of the way and let him take over.  He also called Pelosi old and suggested there should be an age limit for people in Congress.  In case you were still taking him seriously, Hogg also said Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was going to be the President of the United States.

Hogg: Pelosi is too old for Congress, Ocasio-Cortez will be President