Democrats wage anti-Trump offensive for their own gain
By Michael Goodwin
This is a first: Donald
Trump is guilty of an understatement, of making a molehill out of a mountain.
He called the Washington
furor over Russian hacking a “witch hunt” when it is actually far more sinister
and dangerous.
Witch hunts
end. The Washington mob aims to make sure the election never ends and that
Trump can never govern.
There are no modern
precedents to the scandalous attempts to smear and undermine the president-elect.
Nearly nine weeks after his victory and less than two weeks before he takes the
oath, the voter-nullification plot is growing more
vile.
It began when the
Clinton campaign and her donors tried to overturn results in key states,
then tried to steal the election outright by intimidating electors of the
Electoral College.
When all that failed,
the establishment forces that opposed Trump all along — the Obama White House,
members of both parties, the Democratic media and Big Government activists — switched
their goal to thwarting his presidency. One example: They aim to deny
confirmation to as many as eight Cabinet picks.
This is not mere
politics. This is half the country going rogue in a fit of madness.
Most alarming is the
newest recruit to the confederacy. The intelligence community, including
leaders of the FBI and CIA, is pushing the Russian hacking narrative in
unscrupulous ways.
Consider that the
same media organizations that led the campaign assault on Trump were leaked
details of the hacking report before Trump saw it.
The leaks came after
Trump expressed doubts about Russia’s role and any election impact. Lest the
rookie miss the message, Chuck Schumer, the Dems’ man in the Senate, made like
a Soprano in a TV interview: “Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence
community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”
Going public with
classified information, which the leakers did, is a crime, but these days
it’s acceptable if it serves the left’s political purpose.
Is Schumer suggesting
CIA analysts would stay silent about a terrorist plot? Would they feed Trump
misinformation to get back at him?
As for the report
itself, there’s not much there there, at least in the version made public.
It is full of assertions that Vladimir Putin wanted to hurt Clinton and help
Trump, but zero evidence is offered. I repeat: zero evidence.
Instead, the 25-page
document serves up a dog’s stew of innuendo and anecdotes. Examples include
that Russian television operating in America said nice things about Occupy Wall
Street.
Well, so did
President Obama and half the Democratic Party. Is Obama a Russian agent?
Another silly example
is that Russian TV runs lots of anti-fracking reports. Well, Gov. Cuomo also
opposes fracking. The report cites the fact that Russian TV anchors are
required to have social-media accounts as proof of Putin’s evil intent.
Here’s a fact that
really matters and it’s not in the report: The FBI concluded that Russians
hacked the Democratic National Committee without ever inspecting its computers.
The gumshoes say the DNC balked, but party leaders say the FBI never asked. In
the end, it let a private firm search the computers for evidence.
None of this is
normal. And it’s no excuse that Trump himself often veers outside the lines. He
won the election fair and square, period.
Then again, some
Democrats can’t bring themselves to admit that. Nancy Pelosi, the House
minority leader, was spitting fire after she was briefed on the classified
report.
Asked if she believed
hacking cost Clinton the election, Pelosi declared to reporters: “You
were accomplices in this. Every single day you reported there was an e-mail
that was embarrassing to the Clinton operation, without saying we know this
because of a disruption by a foreign power of our election system. You knew
that.”
Wow, so journalists
are “accomplices” when they report embarrassing news. Nothing could be
more Putin-like than her view of the media’s job.
To be clear, it may
be true that Putin ordered that the e-mails of John Podesta and the DNC be
stolen and given to WikiLeaks. But officials also admit that Russia hacked
our government and industries for years and always pushes negative propaganda
about America, including during the 2012 campaign.
So why the sudden
DefCon outrage, especially when the intelligence report concludes there was
no attempt to change vote tallies?
The furor amounts to
sounding five alarms for a dumpster fire. It’s a dumb overreaction, or part of
the effort to thwart a president the establishment doesn’t want. Either way,
intelligence leaders are proving they are part of the swamp that must be
drained.
By all means, America
needs better cybersecurity and a retaliation policy to act as a deterrent. The
current president has no interest in the issue, so perhaps we’ll get better
policies when we get a new president. Assuming, of course, the man who won
the election actually makes it to the Oval Office.
______________
What We Learned, or Didn't, from the 'Russian' Hackers
Of all the tantrums
being thrown by the Democrats in their inability to accept defeat and move
on, perhaps the most absurd is the Great Russian Hacking Scandal.
Did the Russians
under express orders of Communist Party General Secretary... scratch that...
President Vladimir Putin himself direct the hacking of the computers of the
Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign?
Well, yeah, probably
-- if we are to believe our (for the next two weeks) Director of National
Intelligence James Clapper, who regrettably is not able to show the
actual evidence to the public for fear of "compromising sources"
or some such.
Clapper, it will be
remembered, blatantly lied to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on
March 13, 2013, when he replied to Senator Ron Wyden's question "Does
the NSA collect any type of data at all on
millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" with a resounding
"no," which the DNI then doubled down on.
Poor Clapper got a
bit of egg on his face, several dozen actually, only three months later when
Eric Snowden revealed to the world that the NSA was collecting just such data on those
millions of Americans via our cellphones.
But no matter.
Let's assume, arguendo, that James is telling the truth
this time. After all, John McCain and Lindsey Graham assure us it's true.
(If you're interested in more on Clapper, I recommend the wryly
titled hasjamesclapperbeenindictedyet.com, now at day 1397.)
Let's ignore too the
well known fact that every country, friend or foe, with sufficient
computer capability is cyberspying on as many allies and
enemies as much as possible all the time. Let's also ignore the other
well-known fact that the USA over the years has covertly monkeyed with the
elections of other countries on several occasions, against friends and foes,
most recently our supposed great ally Israel. It's no surprise Barack
Obama would do just about anything in his power to upend someone
he despised far more, until a few weeks ago, than Vladimir Putin -- Benjamin
Netanyahu.
Huckabee: If Obama's So
Against Foreign Election Interference, Why Did He Interfere Against Netanyahu
in Israel?!?
In fact, I'd be
willing to bet that Obama spent more U.S. taxpayer money -- via his
cut-out OneVoice -- to defeat Netanyahu than Putin ever did to defeat Hillary.
You know how I know?
Hacking into the Podesta emails must have cost about five dollars -- okay,
fifteen. Can you imagine this conversation?
FSB AGENT: Comrade,
er, President Putin. You will never believe this. We were able to
obtain the emails of John Podesta, the campaign manager of Mrs.
Clinton, with a simple "phishing" trick.
Which leads me to the
real question. What was learned by the American people, the Russians, or
anybody else by the supposed Russian hack of the Hillary campaign and the DNC?
Let's break it down to three basic areas that appeared via WikiLeaks.
- The
mainstream media was 99.9% in the pocket of
the Democratic Party and their candidate Hillary Clinton.
- Backbiting
goes on inside political campaigns.
- Democratic Party officials wanted Hillary, and
absolutely not Bernie Sanders, to be the nominee .
Am I missing anything
of importance? I don't think so. More importantly, was there anything in the
WikiLeaks that anyone with an IQ in the proverbial triple digits wouldn't
have assumed in the first place? Not that I can think of.
Yes, it was amusing
to read the details and imagine some scoundrels being embarrassed, but they
really weren't affected in the end anyway. Glenn Thrush, then of Politico, a
"reporter" literally caught submitting his articles to
Podesta for approval in advance of publication, instead of being
fired, got promoted to The New York Times. (The next Walter
Duranty?)
So the whole thing
was a big nothing. In any case, there wasn't anything there that would have
changed an election, yet we still have a sudden brouhaha about the Russians
doing something that they have been doing literally every day since the Cheka and even before with the czars' Okhrana. Those of us who have been to Russia or
the Soviet Union know that spying is a lifestyle with them. I think we can
assume we've been doing something back. This latest bit is nothing but a
sideshow.
One last point: the
Russians allegedly tried to hack into the Republican National Committee and
failed. Wouldn't you prefer to be governed by people who know something
about cybersecurity or at least took it seriously enough to protect their data?
As Vladimir says in my mock-dialogue above, "This is 2016." Scratch
that, 2017.
Roger L. Simon is an
award-winning novelist, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and co-founder of
PJ Media. His latest book is I Know Best:
How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Republic, If It Hasn't
Already.
_______________
New York Post
Opinion
Celebrity divas insult half of America with their Trump ‘resistance’
By Kyle Smith
At the Golden Globes Sunday night, and the Oscars next month, expect lots of gold-plated bitching about Donald Trump. Honorees will mourn the “dark times in America” in their $20,000 frocks. Or they’ll mutter “fight the fascists” as they head back to their Malibu estates.
Opinion
Celebrity divas insult half of America with their Trump ‘resistance’
By Kyle Smith
At the Golden Globes Sunday night, and the Oscars next month, expect lots of gold-plated bitching about Donald Trump. Honorees will mourn the “dark times in America” in their $20,000 frocks. Or they’ll mutter “fight the fascists” as they head back to their Malibu estates.
They’re going gaga in
La La Land. Chris Kelly, co-head writer of “SNL,” said in March that “Donald Trump is
winning because everyone you’ve ever been on a bus with gets to vote too.” The
tweet wasn’t shocking because of its sneering disdain for Americans. What was
breathtaking was the blitheness with which it dismissed a principle as formidable
and established as democracy.
Four days after
Donald Trump was elected president, “SNL” transmuted that disgust for the
people into contempt for its own animating principle — that it should at least
try to be funny. It opened the show with an open display of grief, Kate
McKinnon’s weepy, earnest (and consequently) embarrassing performance of
“Hallelujah” while dressed as Hillary Clinton. The show’s first post-9/11
segment was not nearly as sorrowful in tone.
McKinnon, Kelly and
many other entertainers might as well have told 46 percent of their audience
to take their business elsewhere. How contemptuous is that? Even Krusty the
Clown, in one of his darkest hours, vowed to spit on only one of every 50
Krusty Burgers to punish America. That’s only 2 percent! When you hate 23 times
as much as Krusty, seek therapy.
Jennifer Lawrence,
who wasn’t strongly identified with liberal politics before the election, wrote an angry open
letter after it,
telling America, “Do not let this defeat you — let this enrage you! Let it
motivate you! Let this be the fire you didn’t have before.”
Her latest movie,
“Passengers,” which will need to earn well over $300 million to be profitable,
has fizzled, bringing in only $130 million in its opening weeks. Might be a
coincidence. Or maybe her new Dixie Chick shtick is turning off her fans.
“RISE UP” and “THE REVOLUTION
IS COMING” tweeted Katy Perry in defiance of Trump’s election. “This is an
embarrassing night for America. We’ve let a hatemonger lead our great nation,”
agreed Captain America, Chris Evans, whose tweet virtually
tagged
46 percent of American voters as supporters of the hate that Trump supposedly
mongered. Chrissy Teigen, also on Twitter, called Trump a “POS” (meaning “piece
of s–t”) for saying Mike Pence should not have been hectored from the stage by
a star of “Hamilton.”
Michael Shannon —
General Zod in “Man of Steel” — joined fellow actors Debra Messing and Rosie
O’Donnell in signing an open letter published
in The New York Times
exhorting, “Fill the streets of DC with millions, millions more demonstrate in
every major city and small town all over US and the world, demanding that
Trump-Pence be prevented from taking office before January 20.” It was
an open call for mob rule to overturn the results of an election. And somehow Trump is the fascist?
Celebrities have
every right to say what they think, including the remarkably dumb things they
think, and if they want to turn their backs on half of America, their
diminished relevance and pay is of little concern to the rest of us.
Possibly the craving
of performers to be taken seriously is understandable when you consider how
intellectually insecure they can be. Lawrence has been acting since she was
14 and didn’t attend college. Shannon is a high-school dropout. Perry left high
school at age 15. Evans did not attend college. Teigen attended community
college “for a couple of days.” They look around and see a Nobel Prize
winning columnist like Paul Krugman of The New York Times inveighing against
Trump, and they long to be valued as much for their thoughts as their looks.
They hunger to be known as “activists” in addition to mere actors or singers.
But they’re supposed
to spread joy, not rancor. And they’re oblivious to the way they motivate Trump
supporters. A central reason for his victory was the widespread conviction of
his backers that progressive politics, as relentless and fanatical as the Viet Cong,
was infiltrating and attacking every nook of American life, not excluding
bakeries, the national anthem, restrooms and now even pronouns. (Don’t call her
a her if she wants to be called zir, zid or indeed Zod.)
Dragging politics in
where it doesn’t belong makes life more combative, irritating and exhausting.
It means no escape, no outlet, no letup, anywhere. The Viet Progs not only
never give up, they never take a week off or stop advancing into new territory.
We keep saying the country is too divided and it is. But five minutes ago the
national anthem was considered uncontroversial. Now it’s a fount of disputation
and bitterness. Whose fault is that, progressives?
