August 2020 Archives

This is surprising. At least hundreds of Trump supporters parading on the freeway in Portland.

TRUMP CAR PARADE IN PORTLAND!!🇺🇸🚘

There has never been a car or boat parade for Joe Biden!
pic.twitter.com/22QN4tA1Bs

— Kyle Martinsen (@KyleMartinsen_) August 30, 2020

Democrats are floating another trial balloon to test which way the winds are blowing: would voters let Biden get away with not debating Trump?

She explained she did not think "the president of the United States has comported himself in a way that anybody should, and has any association with truth, evidence, data, and facts," and as a result, any debate with him would just be an "exercise in skullduggery" by Trump.

"I wouldn't legitimize a conversation with him, nor a debate in terms of the presidency of the United States," she said, though she acknowledged that the Biden campaign had a different view on the debates. Pelosi called Trumps's conduct during his 2016 debates with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton "disgraceful."

So far Biden is staying committed to debating the President.

Biden campaign spokesperson Andrew Bates said Biden would continue to take part in the debates. The campaign would "certainly agree with Speaker Pelosi on her view of the President's behavior. But just as she has powerfully confronted that behavior in the Oval Office and the Cabinet Room, Joe Biden looks forward to doing the same on the debate stage."

Asked later Thursday on MSNBC about Pelosi's comments, Biden said "as long as the (Commission on Presidential Debates) continues down the straight and narrow as they have, I'm going to debate him."

"I'm gonna be a fact-checker on the floor when I'm debating him," he said.

Biden has to appear 100% committed until and unless he decides he can get away without debating, in which case he'd have to flip immediately and give a good explanation for his decision. Any wavering on a decision like this would be devastating.

Personally, I don't think a candidate could win without debating in this day and age. It's certainly fair to wonder whether or not debate performance is a useful indicator for governing ability, but that's beside the point. Presidential debates are more like trial-by-combat, and there's something very primal about the ritual. Something deep inside us knows that you don't get to lead the tribe if you won't even fight for it.

Former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith pled guilty to altering an official document in the Trump-Russia investigation by inserting the word "not". It's likely that this plea deal paves the way for Clinesmith's testimony against other malefactors.

Other, more senior FBI officials must have been involved in these FISA abuses, though Durham hasn't said so yet. Some committed abuse themselves. Others knew about it or should have known. Still others must have discovered the misrepresentations, but failed to report them to the FISA court, as they were required to do. Those failures are felonies.

Clinesmith has said he gave other FBI members the true document, not just the altered one. The 23rd paragraph of the charging information says Clinesmith "provided the unchanged C.I.A. email to Crossfire Hurricane agents and the Justice Department lawyer drafting the original wiretap application." That's a smoking bazooka.

Clinesmith actually worked on Robert Mueller's team. He was tasked from the bureau to work with that team, which then submitted his falsified document to the FISA court. That's crucially important. If attorneys on the special counsel team knew about his crime and did nothing to inform the court, if they continued to use a document they knew was fraudulent, they will face charges. That would implicate Mueller's team for the first time in illegal activity to undermine the Trump presidency. That's a much bigger matter than writing a biased report.

Did Clinesmith act alone or did anyone tell him to alter the document? That's a critical question, and Durham has not answered it yet. Nor has he said who knew what Clinesmith had done. Again, the key to proving that is either a paper trail or multiple cooperating witnesses. We should get Durham's answers when he issues more indictments.

This is exactly how an air-tight prosecution should be built. Stay tuned.

Andrew C. McCarthy provides pretty convincing evidence that the Obama Administration (and holdovers) wrongly use its law enforcement and counterintelligence powers to cripple Donald Trump, both as a candidate and later as president. I'll just quote the conclusion -- follow the link for a summary of the evidence.

The Obama administration and the FBI knew that it was they who were meddling in a presidential campaign -- using executive intelligence powers to monitor the president's political opposition. This, they also knew, would rightly be regarded as a scandalous abuse of power if it ever became public. There was no rational or good-faith evidentiary basis to believe that Trump was in a criminal conspiracy with the Kremlin or that he'd had any role in Russian intelligence's suspected hacking of Democratic Party email accounts.

You didn't have to believe Trump was a savory man to know that. His top advisers were Flynn, a decorated combat veteran; Christie, a former U.S. attorney who vigorously investigated national-security cases; Rudy Giuliani, a legendary former U.S. attorney and New York City mayor who'd rallied the country against anti-American terrorism; and Jeff Sessions, a longtime U.S. senator with a strong national-defense track record. To believe Trump was unfit for the presidency on temperamental or policy grounds was a perfectly reasonable position for Obama officials to take -- though an irrelevant one, since it's up to the voters to decide who is suitable. But to claim to suspect that Trump was in a cyberespionage conspiracy with the Kremlin was inane . . . except as a subterfuge to conduct political spying, which Obama officials well knew was an abuse of power.

So they concealed it. They structured the investigation on the fiction that there was a principled distinction between Trump himself and the Trump campaign. In truth, the animating assumption of the probe was that Trump himself was acting on Russia's behalf, either willfully or under the duress of blackmail. By purporting to focus on the campaign, investigators had the fig leaf of deniability they needed to monitor the candidate.

You don't have to like or support Trump to be outraged by this illegal and immoral activity.

In the aftermath of the explosion in Beirut (video) we must send material aid, but we also must pray for the people and the city. Pray that the wounded would receive the medical care they need, and that the families of the dead will find comfort. Pray that the leaders of the country and city will have wisdom and humility. Pray that the city will have peace and security. Pray that God's love will shine brightly through people even in this tragedy.