Archive for the ‘National Security’ Category

Let’s be blunt about something. The Democrats’ image crisis just got worse this weekend. It started with Sen. Schumer and Speaker Pelosi thought that it was a good idea to offer a rebuttal to President Trump’s Oval Office speech on why the nation needs a border barrier. If asked how I’d phrase how they looked that night, I’m betting that that first thing that’d pop into my mind would be that Chuck and Nancy looked ‘almost lifelike’.

The next day, President Trump invited the House and Senate leadership to the White House. Democrats insisted that President Trump re-open government immediately. President Trump asked whether Speaker Pelosi would fund his wall if he re-opened the government. She emphatically said she wouldn’t, at which point President Trump said that the Democrats were wasting his time before leaving the Situation Room.

The Democrats were winning the fight until Chuck and Nancy turned themselves into a skit for SNL. Then they insisted that they wouldn’t negotiate in good faith. At this point, public polling still shows them winning this fight. It won’t show that a month from now. That’s because 30 Democrats decided to accept lobbyists’ invitation to fly down to Puerto Rico.

I’m sure they worked hard while down there, though this picture suggests otherwise:

President Trump and his conservative allies are slamming some Democrats for traveling to Puerto Rico over the weekend as the longest government shutdown in U.S. history continues to drag on.

“I’ve been here all weekend. A lot of democrats were in Puerto Rico celebrating something,” the president told reporters Monday morning before heading to New Orleans to attend the American Farm Bureau Federation’s annual convention. “I don’t know, maybe they’re celebrating the shutdown.”

A contingent of more than 30 Democratic lawmakers, the largest delegation to visit Puerto Rico, traveled to the island to discuss post-Hurricane Maria recovery efforts, unpopular austerity measures and federal investment to the territory with local officials. The delegation is also there to participate in fundraising events hosted by Bold PAC, a political committee that serves as the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’ fundraising arm. Presidential hopeful and former Housing and Urban Development (HUD) secretary Julián Castro also traveled to the island after launching his White House bid in San Antonio Saturday.

While President Trump waits in the White House to negotiate in good faith, Democrats insist on not taking this nation’s security seriously. He’s made Democrats an offer. He’s even offered Democrats several immigration items that they’ve recently called for.

At some point in the not-so-distant future, Democrats will be seen as unreasonable. That’s when they polling will flip.

The Democrats are fighting a losing fight because they’re fighting for re-opening the government while President Trump fights for keeping people safe. That’s a fight any politician will win 99% of the time. People understand that walls work in providing security. Meanwhile, people that aren’t employed by the government generally don’t care if the government isn’t open because they don’t use government on a daily basis.

People definitely care whether the government protects them, though. That’s an expectation people have of their government. If the USDA or the EPA isn’t open, people will get over it because they don’t use those departments that often. While people don’t use ICE or the CBP each day, people rely on them to keep them safe each day.

As long as Democrats fight to re-open government and President Trump keeps fighting for beefing up the CBP or ICE, President Trump will win that fight each time. It gets more lopsided when Democrats trot out Ma & Pa Kettle to rebut President Trump’s fact-filled message:

Democrats dug this hole. Let’s see how much damage they do to themselves before this shutdown ends.

Sen. Marco Rubio’s tweets have highlighted the media’s double standards. In one tweet, Sen. Rubio tweeted “I too have concerns about how all this with #NorthKorea will turn out. But I don’t recall all the ‘experts’ criticizing Obama when he met with a brutal dictator in #Cuba who also oversaw a police state & also killed & jailed his opponents. #DoubleStandard”

In another tweet, Sen. Rubio tweeted “President’s meeting with #KJU exposed incredible hypocrisy of many in media. When Obama did these things, he was described as enlightened. When Trump does it he is reckless & foolish. 1 yr ago they attacked Trump for leading us towards war, now attack for being too quick for peace.”

For instance, Chris Matthews said of President Trump “These are awful people and he wants to become best friends with them.” I don’t recall Tingles getting upset with President Obama when he met with Raul Castro, the murderous dictator of Cuba.

When President Obama visited Cuba, they went to a baseball game. Obama proceeded to do the wave while sitting in the stands:

When President Trump met with KJU, it was all business. The negotiations lasted more than 5 hours. They talked about serious subjects. When President Obama was in Cuba, they attended a baseball game, where he was filmed doing the wave.

Today, Democrats are complaining that President Trump didn’t produce any deliverables. I don’t remember Sen. Schumer complaining about President Obama’s trip to Cuba not producing any deliverables. That’s because President Obama’s Cuba trip was about building Obama’s legacy. Trump’s trip was about him doing his best to stop the spread of nuclear weapons to state sponsors of terrorism.

President Obama’s presidency is best known for its missed opportunities. Thus far, President Trump’s legacy is about capitalizing on each opportunity.

When Bill Clinton spoke to the families after the bombing of the Murrah Building, he became the president of the entire United States. Prior to that, he’d been the Democrats’ president. This is when George Bush became president:

This morning, at his press conference after his Singapore Summit with Kim Jong-Un, President Trump displayed the graciousness and temperament expected of our presidents. That doesn’t mean he’ll continue acting with this level of humility and graciousness. I suspect he’ll revert back to his combative type. Still, I sensed a perspective from him during this press conference that I hadn’t seen before:

Rather than being combative like he’s frequently been at his campaign rallies, this President Trump showed humility. It was apparent that he understood the enormity of the moment. It’s apparent, too, that President Trump was more than well-prepared for this summit. His understanding of the subject material is strong. His negotiating strategy was impressive. The team he’s assembled around him is the best since Reagan’s. Perhaps, it’s even better than Reagan’s.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has accomplished more in 6 weeks on the job than John Kerry and Hillary Clinton accomplished in 8 years. Kerry’s ‘great accomplishment’ was the Iran deal, which has already been ripped up. Hillary’s accomplishment was the Russian Reset button. She screwed that up so badly that Putin didn’t take President Obama seriously for the duration of his presidency.

By comparison, Mike Pompeo did all the behind-the-scenes heavy lifting in putting the summit together, then bringing the agreement together. It’s time to recognize the Trump-Pompeo-Bolton-Mattis team as thoroughly impressive.

President Trump’s detractors have already started criticizing him. Nothing he does seems to be good enough.

Wow. If this is it… this is depressing. This is even thinner than most skeptics anticipated. I figured Trump wd at least get some missiles or a site closure or something concrete: https://t.co/tvhLVnlXpj. This looks pretty generic. Maybe there will be some surprise in presser? https://t.co/BbzZaeCzo0

— Robert E Kelly (@Robert_E_Kelly) June 12, 2018

President Trump got the North Koreans to a place no other president had ever gotten the nation. Unlike the other presidents who failed, President Trump is a world-class negotiator.

After reading Scott Johnson’s post, a contrarian thought popped into my head. In his post, Scott quoted Andrew McCarthy as saying that the “Obama administration decided to use its counterintelligence powers to spy on the Trump campaign, using at least one covert informant, electronic monitoring of communications, and other intelligence-gathering tactics.” He then quoted McCarthy as saying “It ignored the norm against deploying such tactics against political opponents, not based on evidence of a Trump-Russia criminal conspiracy, but on speculation about the Trump campaign’s Russia contacts and Russia sympathies. Speculation by a government, an administration, and a Democratic-party nominee with their own abysmal histories of Russia contacts and Russia sympathies.”

Anyone that’s paid a minute of attention to this case knows that the Clinton Slush Fund, aka the Clinton Foundation, had ties to some nasty Russian companies and oligarchs. My question for the legal eagles and people from the intelligence community is whether it’s plausible to think that the Obama administration used its intelligence capabilities to find out if Trump had discovered a connection between the Clinton Foundation and the Russian government or Russian oligarchs close to the Kremlin.

Marc Thiessen’s column highlights something about the Obama administration that’s important to highlight. Thiessen opens the column by writing “Democrats routinely express outrage over claims of collusion with a foreign power to undermine our democracy. So where is the outrage over revelations that former secretary of state John Kerry held not one but two secret meetings with Iran’s foreign minister to strategize over how to undermine President Trump’s plans to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal?” Later, he wrote “Think about what this means. Iran is a terrorist state responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans in Iraq, whose leaders hold rallies where thousands chant ‘Death to America!'”

First, it’s important to highlight the double standard that Democrats employ. It’s painfully obvious to any fair-minded person. Next, it’s important to understand what’s driving Kerry’s actions. Like President Obama, he has a monstrous-sized ego. He can’t tolerate seeing his signature accomplishment get ripped to shreds early in the next administration. Had he negotiated a better deal that could’ve gotten Senate ratification as a treaty, this wouldn’t have happened. Instead, Kerry put together a deal so awful that it was rejected by politicians from both parties.

Everything that Thiessen wrote is correct. Still, there’s a bigger point worth making. There’s nothing in President Obama’s legacy (or Secretary Kerry’s) that’s solid. Everything that they did in terms of foreign policy was written in pencil. Further, the deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran was easily criticized because it gave the Islamic Republic of Iran everything they wanted. President Obama and Secretary Kerry were so desperate for a deal for their legacies that they didn’t consider walking away from a terrible deal.

Kerry’s defenders compare him to Henry Kissinger and other former secretaries of state who regularly meet with world leaders. “Secretary Kerry stays in touch with his former counterparts around the world, just like every previous Secretary of State,” a Kerry spokesman said. But Kissinger does not conduct rogue diplomacy. When he meets with foreign leaders, he usually coordinates with the White House, often carrying messages for the president, and then briefs administration officials afterward. Kerry did none of this.

It’s one thing to talk with the US’s allies. It’s quite another to talk with the biggest state sponsor or terrorism. Not even Hillary Clinton stooped to doing this. It takes some doing to do something so despicable that a Clinton wouldn’t do.

Egotists like President Obama and Secretary Kerry can’t stand the thought that their signature accomplishments didn’t stand the test of time. The only thing historic about Obama’s presidency is that he’s the first black president in US history. Everything else is meaningless.

Technorati: Barack Obama, John Kerry, Iran, Collusion, Democrats

The Democrats’ lead in the generic ballot polling is just the symptom of a bigger problem that Democrats haven’t addressed. Right now, Democrats don’t have a unified economic message. It’s fair to argue that they don’t have an economic message. This article doesn’t touch on the pickle that Democrats find themselves in, though it highlights a few important things.

For instance, the article quotes Hank Sheinkopf as saying “Every time [Democrats] deny the economy is starting to turn or get better for certain parts of the population, they also hurt themselves. They appear to be cheering on bad news.”

While it’s true that that’s the public’s perception, that isn’t the heart of the matter. At the root of the Democrats’ problem is the civil war between the Bernie Sanders socialists and the Bill Clinton capitalists. (Think Bernie on the former, Doug Schoen on the latter.) Democrats are in a can’t win situation because socialists have the energy, aka the enthusiasm gap, on their side, whereas the capitalists have the ability to work with Republicans on things.

Therein lies another problem. It’s impossible to be part of the Resistance while being willing to work with Republicans. I’m betting that it’s impossible for Democrats to retake the House if they’re fueled essentially by blind hatred of President Trump. Further, it’s difficult to be a Democrat when their leaders make mistakes like this:

I’m old enough to remember the fights between the Daily Kos and the DLC. This is a nationally televised fight between the Daily Kos and the DLC:

This fight happened in 2007. It started earlier. As part of his stump speech, Howard Dean used to say “I’m from the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.” The point to all this is to highlight that this schism has existed within the Democratic Party for years. This isn’t a transient argument. That’s the definition of an existential argument.

Clearly, Trump’s policies are working. Consumer confidence is high. Unemployment is low, especially with African-Americans and Hispanics. The world is still volatile but prospects for stability are increasing. On Monday, the US Embassy in Jerusalem will open. There’s even a legitimate chance for denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

The point to all this is simple. If Republicans go on offense while highlighting President Trump’s economic and national security accomplishments, Democrats will have a difficult time. After all, you can’t beat something with nothing. At this point, all that Democrats have to offer is fear itself.

This morning, President Trump had the privilege of announcing the release of 3 North Korean hostages in this tweet. This is fantastic news for the hostages’ families and a victory for newly-installed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and President Trump.

It wasn’t that long ago that the Democrats and hard-left organizations like Indivisible were frantically predicting nuclear war with North Korea. Today, those Democrats and Indivisible are eating crow while people ask whether President Trump should get the Nobel Peace Prize if he closes the deal that denuclearizes the Korean Peninsula.

Here’s Trump’s tweet announcing the release of the hostages:

I am pleased to inform you that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is in the air and on his way back from North Korea with the 3 wonderful gentlemen that everyone is looking so forward to meeting. They seem to be in good health. Also, good meeting with Kim Jong Un. Date & Place set.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 9, 2018

Later, Mike ‘Pampeo‘ (Twitter ID of SecOfState70) tweeted this:

I can confirm that no pallets of cash were given in exchange for these 3 gentleman. https://t.co/KnM6HRtO5r

— Mike Pampeo (@SecOfState70) May 9, 2018

It’s still prudent to view the denuclearization deal with skepticism. Kim Jung-Un is still a shifty dictator. That being said, it’s possible that President Trump’s good cop-bad cop behavior might have Un worried that he’s dealing with a madman. History shows that dictators and autocrats make more concessions when they’re frightened by Republican presidents, especially if Democrats accuse that Republican president of wanting to start WWIII.

The truth is that everyone understands that the US is the world’s only superpower. In 1990, during the buildup to Operation Desert Storm, the media talked about the powerful Iraqi military, calling it a regional superpower. Within minutes of the start of the air war, the war was essentially over. The regional superpower was in shambles. The world superpower was proud of its first night accomplishments and hungry for more destruction to Iraq’s command-and-control capabilities.

The ‘conventional wisdom’ is that the US military has more to lose in a fight than Iran. That’s foolish thinking. I’m not saying the US should start a war with Iran. I’m saying that Iran would be decimated within moments if that confrontation started. Iran knows it, too.

That’s why I’m betting that, in the long run, Europe will side with the Trump administration in imposing new, tougher sanctions. When those sanctions hit Iran’s already-weak economy, Iran’s mullahs will pay a heavy political price.

North Korea already understands what it’s like to get pushed around by muscular US diplomats, aka President Trump and Mike Pompeo. Prior to the Trump administration, the North Koreans toyed with President Obama and John Kerry. Those days are over.

Technorati: Barack Obama, John Kerry, JCPOA, Strategic Patience, Democrats, Donald Trump, Mike Pompeo, Maximum Pressure, Nobel Peace Prize, National Security, Republicans, Kim Jung-Un, North Korea, Iran

After President Trump officially announced that he was pulling out of the JCPOA, President Obama criticized him, saying “today’s announcement is … misguided. Walking away from the JCPOA turns our back on America’s closest allies, and an agreement that our country’s leading diplomats, scientists, and intelligence professionals.” Actually, the JCPOA wasn’t negotiated by “our country’s leading diplomats, scientists, and intelligence professionals.” It was negotiated by dimwits like John Kerry, John Brennan and Susan Rice. I’d hardly call them the best and brightest of our diplomats. I’d call them the Three Stooges.

Included in President Obama criticism was the statement that “First, the JCPOA was not just an agreement between my Administration and the Iranian government. After years of building an international coalition that could impose crippling sanctions on Iran, we reached the JCPOA together with the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the European Union, Russia, China, and Iran. It is a multilateral arms control deal, unanimously endorsed by a United Nations Security Council Resolution.” That’s precisely what it was. It wasn’t a treaty ratified by the Senate. If it had been a negotiated treaty, it would’ve been subjected to a humiliating bipartisan rejection of President Obama’s national security policy towards Iran.

John Brennan criticized President Trump in this barely lucid diatribe:

Today, Donald Trump simultaneously lied about the Iranian nuclear deal, undermined global confidence in US commitments, alienated our closest allies, strengthened Iranian hawks, & gave North Korea more reason to keep its nukes. This madness is a danger to our national security.

— John O. Brennan (@JohnBrennan) May 8, 2018

Again, this wasn’t US agreement. That status is only conferred with treaty ratification. Without the Senate’s advice and consent, the agreement is nothing except an agreement between an idiot masquerading as a commander-in-chief and a room full of Islamic theocrats.

Further, President Trump’s decision instructs the world’s despots that he won’t tolerate wink-and-a-nod deals that don’t protect the American people. Like Charles Krauthammer once said, “it isn’t that there’s a new sheriff in town. It’s that there’s a sheriff in town.” President Trump’s official announcement sends the strong message that he’s putting a higher priority on national security than on weak-kneed diplomacy.

This paragraph illustrates how big of a liar President Obama is:

Third, the JCPOA does not rely on trust – it is rooted in the most far-reaching inspections and verification regime ever negotiated in an arms control deal. Iran’s nuclear facilities are strictly monitored. International monitors also have access to Iran’s entire nuclear supply chain, so that we can catch them if they cheat. Without the JCPOA, this monitoring and inspections regime would go away.

The inspection regime was virtually nonexistent. Inspectors couldn’t go anywhere at any time. They had to get permission from the IRGC. Then there was a thirty-day waiting time. That isn’t the definition of “far-reaching inspections.” That’s the definition of wimpy inspections agreed to by a weak-kneed American president and his pathetic ‘national security team’.

Technorati: JCPOA, Barack Obama, John Kerry, John Brennan, Susan Rice, Three Stooges, Iran, Democrats, Donald Trump, National Security, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Advice and Consent, Treaty Ratification, US Senate

Giving perhaps the strongest speech of his presidency, President Trump outlined Iran’s transgressions, highlighted the ways in which Iran causes trouble throughout the Middle East, supports terrorists while threatening our allies. Leftist pundits are already criticizing President Trump’s decision, with Juan Williams saying that “When the President spoke today, he didn’t say ‘Oh, yeah, here’s a major violation that proves these people are not to be trusted.”

Actually, included in President Trump’s speech was a paragraph where he said “Today, we have definitive proof that this Iranian promise was a lie. Last week, Israel published intelligence documents long concealed by Iran, conclusively showing the Iranian regime and its history of pursuing nuclear weapons.”

Shortly thereafter, President Trump said “In the years since the deal was reached, Iran’s military budget has grown by almost 40 percent, while its economy is doing very badly. After the sanctions were lifted, the dictatorship used its new funds to build nuclear-capable missiles, support terrorism, and cause havoc throughout the Middle East and beyond.”

President Trump wasn’t gentle with the Obama administration or the Kerry State Department:

At the heart of the Iran deal was a giant fiction that a murderous regime desired only a peaceful nuclear energy program.

With this speech, President Trump locked President Obama and John Kerry together in the history books as the people who agreed to and negotiated the worst foreign policy/national security deal in US history. Only desperate or foolish people negotiate a sweetheart deal like this with treacherous people who support terrorists and who want to destabilize the entire Middle East.

That’s right. The only man for a job like that is John Kerry, the only person who is more inept at negotiating important national security deals than Hillary Clinton.

Over the past few months, we have engaged extensively with our allies and partners around the world, including France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. We have also consulted with our friends from across the Middle East. We are unified in our understanding of the threat and in our conviction that Iran must never acquire a nuclear weapon. After these consultations, it is clear to me that we cannot prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb under the decaying and rotten structure of the current agreement.

The Iran deal is defective at its core. If we do nothing, we know exactly what will happen. In just a short period of time, the world’s leading state sponsor of terror will be on the cusp of acquiring the world’s most dangerous weapons. Therefore, I am announcing today that the United States will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.

President Obama has already criticized President Trump for pulling out of the deal:

There are few issues more important to the security of the United States than the potential spread of nuclear weapons, or the potential for even more destructive war in the Middle East. That’s why the United States negotiated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in the first place.

The reality is clear. The JCPOA is working; that is a view shared by our European allies, independent experts, and the current U.S. Secretary of Defense. The JCPOA is in America’s interest; it has significantly rolled back Iran’s nuclear program. And the JCPOA is a model for what diplomacy can accomplish; its inspections and verification regime is precisely what the United States should be working to put in place with North Korea. Indeed, at a time when we are all rooting for diplomacy with North Korea to succeed, walking away from the JCPOA risks losing a deal that accomplishes, with Iran, the very outcome that we are pursuing with the North Koreans.

Had John Kerry negotiated a worthwhile deal, President Obama could’ve sent that treaty to Congress for approval. The deal that Kerry negotiated was so terrible that Democrats rejected it. It was so bad that President Obama couldn’t have gotten it approved as a treaty if his life depended on it. As for our European allies urging us to stay in the deal, their motivation is simple. They want to do business with Iran. The more telling reaction is how the Saudis and Israelis reacted. First, here’s John Kerry’s reaction:

Let’s be clear about something. This isn’t the case of the United States backing out of one of its treaties. It’s a rare case of a president telling other nations that he isn’t bound to keep the personal promise that a previous president made.

Had President Obama tried to get the JCPOA approved as a treaty, it would’ve been rejected on a bipartisan basis. While President Obama is upset that another piece of his legacy just got thrown into history’s dumpster, President Trump won’t care because he knows a terrible deal when he sees it. Trump is intent on demolishing Obama’s legacy and getting the US back on the right track. Based on what he’s accomplished thus far, I’d say that he’s accomplishing his plan.

Technorati: Barack Obama, John Kerry, JCPOA, Democrats, Europeans, Donald Trump, Israelis, Saudis, National Security, Republicans