After the clock struck midnight on the East Coast last night, toward the final hours of the marathon U.S. Senate impeachment trial session that featured both the U.S. House manager prosecution and the presidential defense team dueling about the trial&#8217;s procedural rules, Chief Justice John Roberts was peeved. The nation&#8217;s highest jurist, <a href="https://www.heritage.org/constitution/#!/articles/1/essays/17/trial-of-impeachment">constitutionally required</a> to preside over a Senate impeachment trial of a president, excoriated both sides for the rambunctiousness and juvenility of their respective rhetoric.
&#8220;A marathon, 12-hour first day in the Senate impeachment trial against President Trump erupted into a shouting match well after midnight Wednesday morning, as Trump&#8217;s legal team unloaded on Democratic impeachment manager Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-(NY) — in an exchange that prompted a bleary-eyed Chief Justice John Roberts to sternly admonish both sides for misconduct in the chamber,&#8221; Fox News <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/senate-impeachment-trial-begins-with-win-for-the-white-house-as-dems-rules-proposal-is-nixed">reported</a>.
&#8220;Nadler, who was overheard apparently planning to impeach Trump back in 2018, said it would be a &#8216;treacherous vote&#8217; and a &#8216;cover-up&#8217; for Republicans to reject the [former National Security Advisor John] Bolton subpoena amendment, claiming that &#8216;only guilty people try to hide evidence,'&#8221; the outlet continued. &#8220;Bolton has reportedly described Trump&#8217;s conduct as akin to a &#8216;drug deal,&#8217; and he has indicated he would be willing to testify and provide relevant information.&#8221;
President Trump&#8217;s two main defense lawyers, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and Jay Sekulow, both fired back against Nadler. &#8220;Mr. Nadler came up here and made false allegations against our team,&#8221; Cipollone said. &#8220;He made false allegations against all of you [senators]; he accused you of a cover-up. He&#8217;s been making false allegations against the president. The only one who should be embarrassed, Mr. Nadler is you, for the way you&#8217;ve addressed the United States Senate. This is the United States Senate. You&#8217;re not in charge here. &#8230; It’s about time we bring this power trip in for a landing.&#8221;
This exchange proved too much for the chief justice.
&#8220;It is appropriate at this point for me to admonish both the House managers and the president&#8217;s counsel in equal terms to remember that they are addressing the world&#8217;s greatest deliberative body,&#8221; Roberts sternly rebuked. &#8220;One reason it has earned that title is because its members avoid speaking in a manner, and using language, that is not conducive to civil discourse.&#8221;
&#8220;In the 1905 [Judge Charles] Swayne [impeachment] trial, a senator objected when one of the managers used the word &#8216;pettifogging&#8217; — and the presiding officer said the word ought not to have been used,&#8221; the chief justice continued. &#8220;I don&#8217;t think we need to aspire to that high a standard, but I do think those addressing the Senate should remember where they are.&#8221;
That the chief justice saw fit to reprimand both sides did not sit well with every Republican senator in the &#8220;world&#8217;s greatest deliberative body.&#8221; Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), himself a lawyer and former U.S. Supreme Court law clerk for Justice Samuel Alito, <a href="https://video.foxnews.com/v/6125557687001#sp=show-clips">told Fox News</a> earlier today that he thought it was &#8220;unfair&#8221; for Roberts to include Trump&#8217;s defense lawyers alongside the Democratic prosecution as part of his critical remarks.
Chief Justice Roberts, a George W. Bush high court nominee who is <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-kavanaugh-and-gorsuch-have-issues-john-josh-hammer">widely reputed to care tremendously</a> about preserving the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-it-past-time-trump-openly-defy-court-order-josh-hammer">purported</a> non-politicization of Alexander Hamilton&#8217;s <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed78.asp">&#8220;least dangerous&#8221;</a> branch, famously analogized the role of a Supreme Court justice to that of a baseball home plate umpire calling balls and strikes during his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing. Politico <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/01/20/john-roberts-trump-impeachment-101114">recently observed</a> how his role overseeing the nation&#8217;s first presidential impeachment trial in two-plus decades could afford him a unique opportunity to bring that analogy to fruition:
<blockquote>[I]n his 14 years as chief justice, Roberts hasn’t really had the role of umpire — and he knows it. That said, Roberts’s comment about balls and strikes probably reflected an aspiration. To the extent that the Court can be perceived (rightly or wrongly) as acting with principled neutrality, its reputation as an arbiter floating above the political scrum is strengthened. And for judges who like to be perceived as doing nothing more than faithfully applying the law, the umpire analogy is always tempting. There’s something appealing about just getting to call balls and strikes.
Now for the first time, the impeachment trial is giving Roberts that chance. For once, Roberts will have a decision-making role in a forum where he himself is not a major player in the drama. The big players are people like McConnell and Schumer, Romney and Murkowski, Nadler and Schiff, Starr and Dershowitz, the witnesses (if any) who testify—and, offstage, the president. Roberts is there, at the center, and he needs to make decisions. But this time, he really is just the umpire. He’s not the one we’re tuning in to see, and the game’s most important decisions and actions belong to other people. And the rulings he makes, for once, can be made under an umpire’s decision-making conditions: All by himself, yes or no, and maybe in real time.
</blockquote>
Roberts, the infamous deciding vote in favor of constitutionally upholding Obamacare&#8217;s individual mandate back in 2012, has long drawn the ire of many conservative critics. Last summer, I opined in a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-kavanaugh-and-gorsuch-have-issues-john-josh-hammer">Daily Wire op-ed</a> about the lessons conservatives should learn from his oftentimes lackluster career on the nation&#8217;s highest court:
<blockquote>
The lessons to learn from Roberts’ tremendously disappointing career on the Court are the same <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/47351/hammer-draw-right-lessons-kavanaughs-bad-start-no-josh-hammer" data-reader-unique-id="67">lessons that conservatives ought to learn</a> from [Justice Brett] Kavanaugh’s similarly disappointing start. I have <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/44037/hammer-three-things-conservatives-must-look-future-josh-hammer" data-reader-unique-id="68">identified three broad criteria</a> for which we ought to carefully vet the next Supreme Court nominee: (1) full-spectrum conservatism, (2) stiff resistance to the “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect_(United_States_Supreme_Court)" data-reader-unique-id="69">Greenhouse Effect</a>,” and (3) eagerness to aggressively correct course. And for the love of God, also make sure the nominee is also someone with a lengthy paper trail and who will not be tempted by non-legal concerns — such as Roberts’ obvious and indefensible preoccupation with the Court’s “institutional integrity.”
</blockquote>

Chief Justice John Roberts

Chief Justice Roberts, Finally The &#8216;Umpire&#8217; He Wanted To Be, Criticizes Both Sides Of Impeachment Trial

Democratic Party

Donald Trump

Impeachment

Jerry Nadler

John Roberts

Republican Party

Supreme Court

U.S. Senate

As the 2020 Democratic Party presidential candidates <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/48863/who-will-win-democratic-primary-latest-2020-josh-hammer">battle it out for the nomination</a>, politicos must also pay close attention to President Donald Trump&#8217;s approval rating across the 50 states. While Trump&#8217;s national approval rating has been hovering below 50% for his entire presidency, it was <a href="https://emersonpolling.reportablenews.com/pr/july-national-poll-biden-extends-lead-in-democratic-primary-trump-closes-the-gap-in-the-general-election">on the upswing</a> for the beginning of the summer before faltering a bit toward the end of July. The president&#8217;s approval rating recovered a bit in September before falling again as news of the Ukraine phone call incident rattled national headlines. Since the onset of congressional Democrats&#8217; partisan impeachment efforts, it has more or less stabilized in the mid-40s. If anything, Trump&#8217;s approval rating has recently been on the affirmative rise, as evidence continues to mount that Democrats have <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/defeated-democrats-announce-vote-on-sending-impeachment-articles-but-not-wholl-be-running-the-show">overplayed their hand</a> on impeachment.
Historically, presidents have fared well in re-election campaigns when they maintain approval ratings above 50%. This president, to be sure, has never had such an approval rating at any point throughout his presidency. But President Trump oversees a soaring economy, with record-low unemployment rates, and has a hardened base of core supporters. One must also never forget the sheer power of incumbency: Since FDR, only Presidents Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush were elected and then subsequently not re-elected four years later.
As of January 21, 2020, the <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_trump_job_approval-6179.html">RealClearPolitics average</a> for Trump&#8217;s national job approval rating sits at 44.0% — or 8.6% underwater. To be sure, many still have hardened views — in both directions — about the president, but there is still a core nucleus of moderate, independent, largely suburban swing voters who will help determine the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
Henry Olsen of The Washington Post had an <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/11/06/trump-is-down-far-out" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&amp;q=https://email.dailywire.com/e2t/c/*W3HmRfg8wKtnCW4cGZSL1CSrXg0/*W5BKVhh96Gpb4W8-1y2m5m6ghN0/5/f18dQhb0Sq5J8Y9XHdW80JfVF1k63-nW7sTg0H2P2ZFHW6Dk5Sd1Vq7GqVLDpF18CSvhfW8CRtsF3P0gztW5yJNx18l2p1TW1nPLDM8rZZ3CW3L3hj18BVHkvW3knCMv8yXl2fN5x53HbSbM86W8CZT8L8tBst7VScmWZ5wMTWVW5wL96L1sL3M0W3Mybvy6RNDcsN5wYBLnZvRBfVRH-mh1l5XsBW55nSC91VJH71W4c2Rr971B_trW1x4lQB6GKLK6W1s0LSF5mKjF6W3m2jX953X_ZpW52Ylfx3_8mplW9fgwMT4fdf2wW1CKFgB4fCj-4W6yGjGM57QYy5W1zslkT7LNKKVW2twnxd6z4yN9W1GQ1T21fqP84W1BQNJF2PXVH6N8W1FtxGX70sW5YCjHQ1HGqqhW3mV5CD6Y6gM5W1j14QF1j9W8pN7KWJRDpdj-nV4slhZ3MYtL8W4HrzTg45Ly2MVkwRN48b6cnqW2GFB531GH84tW27PQWj8tVZYWVj8tbN4c-1VzW6PZLJt8zhkqrW4ffn6C5LdRRhW8qBft_2PLnMWW4rGbTz5ymY9KMZpcmq9ZLg8f2CCSW411&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1574867914609000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHkSMBe5OEEGUjYZNH6vGN2ZmbXFw">incisive piece</a> in November that analyzed the relationship between Trump’s approval ratings and his re-election chances. According to Olsen’s historically informed analysis, Trump would need his approval rating to rise to roughly 46% – 47% in order to confidently position himself to capture the Electoral College next November. That ought not to be too difficult, given Trump&#8217;s current polling, although it will require the president to truly focus on reaching out to persuadable moderates, independents, and suburban swing voters. To that end, I have previously offered some <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-trump-needs-to-focus-on-a-safety-and-security-agenda-for-2020">unsolicited advice</a> to the Trump campaign: Focus on a safety and security agenda to appeal to these persuadable voters.
The Daily Wire will also be tracking Trump&#8217;s state-by-state approval rating as the general election nears. Here is the latest Trump approval rating information from across all the various swing states.
Battleground State-By-State Trump Approval Rating (latest data via <a href="https://morningconsult.com/tracking-trump-2/">Morning Consult&#8217;s December 2019</a> monthly survey)
ARIZONA:
<ul>
<li>2016 presidential result: Trump + 3.57%</li>
<li>Governor: Republican</li>
<li>U.S. Senate: Republican, Democrat</li>
<li>Current Trump approval rating: -3%</li>
</ul>
COLORADO:
<ul>
<li>2016 presidential result: Clinton + 4.91%</li>
<li>Governor: Democrat</li>
<li>U.S. Senate: Republican, Democrat</li>
<li>Current Trump approval rating: -18%</li>
</ul>
FLORIDA:
<ul>
<li>2016 presidential result: Trump + 1.20%</li>
<li>Governor: Republican</li>
<li>U.S. Senate: Republican, Republican</li>
<li>Current Trump approval rating: EVEN</li>
</ul>
GEORGIA:
<ul>
<li>2016 presidential result: Trump + 5.09%</li>
<li>Governor: Republican</li>
<li>U.S. Senate: Republican, Republican</li>
<li>Current Trump approval rating: -2%</li>
</ul>
IOWA:
<ul>
<li>2016 presidential result: Trump + 9.41%</li>
<li>Governor: Republican</li>
<li>U.S. Senate: Republican, Republican</li>
<li>Current Trump approval rating: -9%</li>
</ul>
MICHIGAN:
<ul>
<li>2016 presidential result: Trump + 0.23%</li>
<li>Governor: Democrat</li>
<li>U.S. Senate: Democrat, Democrat</li>
<li>Current Trump approval rating: -15%</li>
</ul>
MINNESOTA:
<ul>
<li>2016 presidential result: Clinton + 1.51%</li>
<li>Governor: Democrat</li>
<li>U.S. Senate: Democrat, Democrat</li>
<li>Current Trump approval rating: -10%</li>
</ul>
NEVADA:
<ul>
<li>2016 presidential result: Clinton + 2.42%</li>
<li>Governor: Democrat</li>
<li>U.S. Senate: Democrat, Democrat</li>
<li>Current Trump approval rating: -12%</li>
</ul>
NEW HAMPSHIRE:
<ul>
<li>2016 presidential result: Clinton + 0.37%</li>
<li>Governor: Democrat</li>
<li>U.S. Senate: Democrat, Democrat</li>
<li>Current Trump approval rating: -19%</li>
</ul>
NORTH CAROLINA:
<ul>
<li>2016 presidential result: Trump + 3.66%</li>
<li>Governor: Democrat</li>
<li>U.S. Senate: Republican, Republican</li>
<li>Current Trump approval rating: EVEN</li>
</ul>
OHIO:
<ul>
<li>2016 presidential result: Trump + 8.13%</li>
<li>Governor: Republican</li>
<li>U.S. Senate: Republican, Democrat</li>
<li>Current Trump approval rating: -3%</li>
</ul>
PENNSYLVANIA:
<ul>
<li>2016 presidential result: Trump + 0.72%</li>
<li>Governor: Democrat</li>
<li>U.S. Senate: Republican, Democrat</li>
<li>Current Trump approval rating: -6%</li>
</ul>
TEXAS:
<ul>
<li>2016 presidential result: Trump + 8.99%</li>
<li>Governor: Republican</li>
<li>U.S. Senate: Republican, Republican</li>
<li>Current Trump approval rating: +1%</li>
</ul>
VIRGINIA:
<ul>
<li>2016 presidential result: Clinton + 5.32%</li>
<li>Governor: Democrat</li>
<li>U.S. Senate: Democrat, Democrat</li>
<li>Current Trump approval rating: -5%</li>
</ul>
WISCONSIN:
<ul>
<li>2016 presidential result: Trump + 0.77%</li>
<li>Governor: Democrat</li>
<li>U.S. Senate: Republican, Democrat</li>
<li>Current Trump approval rating: -10%</li>
</ul>
This article has been updated to reflect the most recent survey data.

Trump rally Kentucky

Will Trump Win? The Latest On Trump’s National And State-By-State Approval Ratings.

2020 Election

Economy

President Trump held another one of his jam-packed rallies Thursday night — the first of 2020 — this time in the crucial battleground state of Ohio, making clear how much his campaign values securing the state&#8217;s 18 electoral votes he won by eight points in 2016.
During the raucous rally in Toledo, Trump pointed to his decision to order an airstrike on Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani as evidence that he will bring &#8220;<a href="https://www.daytondailynews.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/president-trump-ohio-tonight-for-2020-kickoff-campaign/iAPspsmIwCvRhc0eAn80PI/">American justice</a>&#8221; to those who pose a threat to Americans and America&#8217;s interests and taunted Democrats over the standoff with Iran, suggesting he should win the Nobel Peace Prize for his handling of the situation.
In a series of tweets highlighting photos and video from the rally, Trump touted the &#8220;tremendous crowd&#8221; and summed up some of the themes of the night, including his commitment to &#8220;NEVER make excuses for America&#8217;s enemies&#8221; and to &#8220;never hesitate in defending American lives.&#8221; He also offered up a new slogan for the Republicans, along with a withering summary of the Democratic Party&#8217;s platform.
&#8220;Heading to Toledo, Ohio, for first Rally of the year. Tremendous crowd. Here we go for a big 2020 Win!&#8221; Trump wrote in the first of a series of rally-themed tweets Thursday evening (posts below).
&#8220;Under my administration, we will NEVER make excuses for America’s enemies – we will never hesitate in defending American lives – and we will never stop working to defeat Radical Islamic Terrorism!&#8221; he wrote in a tweet showing him on stage in the packed-out Huntington Center in Toledo.
&#8220;After years of rebuilding OTHER nations, we are finally rebuilding OUR nation. We are finally putting AMERICA FIRST!&#8221; the president added in another post featuring a shot of the crowd.
Trump then contrasted the radical policies increasingly embraced by the Democrats with the goals of the Republican Party: &#8220;Democrats are now the party of high taxes, high crime, open borders, late-term abortion, socialism, and blatant corruption. The Republican Party is the party of the American Worker, the American Family, and the American Dream!
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Heading to Toledo, Ohio, for first Rally of the year. Tremendous crowd. Here we go for a big 2020 Win!
&mdash; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1215406817297088512?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 9, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
THANK YOU TOLEDO, OHIO!<a href="https://t.co/PL96KjQWat">https://t.co/PL96KjQWat</a>
&mdash; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1215452636260061185?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 10, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Under my administration, we will NEVER make excuses for America’s enemies – we will never hesitate in defending American lives – and we will never stop working to defeat Radical Islamic Terrorism! <a href="https://t.co/022PjwhHjs">pic.twitter.com/022PjwhHjs</a>
&mdash; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1215454244519718912?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 10, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
After years of rebuilding OTHER nations, we are finally rebuilding OUR nation. We are finally putting AMERICA FIRST! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/KAG2020?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#KAG2020</a> <a href="https://t.co/azKL54A6BU">pic.twitter.com/azKL54A6BU</a>
&mdash; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1215455064183230465?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 10, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Democrats are now the party of high taxes, high crime, open borders, late-term abortion, socialism, and blatant corruption. The Republican Party is the party of the American Worker, the American Family, and the American Dream! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/KAG2020?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#KAG2020</a> <a href="https://t.co/05XRX2odxN">pic.twitter.com/05XRX2odxN</a>
&mdash; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1215457108327571458?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 10, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Trump&#8217;s rally followed a significant series of events for his presidency. After he ordered an airstrike that took out Iran&#8217;s top military leader and the man responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans and countless terrorist operations, Iran retaliated Tuesday by firing over a dozen ballistic missiles at two Iraqi bases at which U.S. and coalition personnel were stationed.
The attack resulted in no American or Iraqi casualties, and Iran quickly <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/iran-sent-messages-through-three-back-channels-to-u-s-after-attack-to-say-they-were-done">signaled to the U.S.</a> that it hoped to de-escalate the situation. The next morning, Trump gave a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-trump-addresses-nation-after-attack-no-lives-lost-iran-appears-to-be-standing-down">televised national address</a> announcing that Iran appeared to be &#8220;backing down&#8221; and unveiling new economic sanctions on the terror-sponsoring state.
“Iran appears to be standing down, which is a good thing for all parties concerned, and a very good thing for the world,” said the president. “No American or Iraqi lives were lost because of the precautions taken, the dispersal of forces, and an early warning system that worked very well.”
While Trump was providing Americans the welcome news, the Democrats were preparing to vote on a War Powers Resolution to limit his ability to take military action against Iran, a resolution that passed in the House on Thursday. While House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insists that the resolution is an important check on Trump&#8217;s authority, Republicans have dismissed it as &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-targets-pelosi-ahead-of-vote-on-toothless-war-powers-resolution">toothless.</a>&#8220;

President Donald Trump

Trump Holds Packed-Out Rally In Ohio, Taunts Dems Over Iran, Tests Out New Slogan For GOP

Iran

Qassem Soleimani

The killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in Iraq at the hands of an American drone has stirred up a partisan hornet’s nest. Republicans overwhelmingly approve of the killing of the individual responsible for the recent <a href="https://time.com/5757228/us-iran-events-timeline/">attack on the U.S. embassy in Iraq</a>. Democrats, on the other hand, are overwhelmingly focused on the risks of “escalation” with Iran.
Former Vice President Joe Biden, the leading Democrat for his party’s 2020 presidential nomination, acknowledged blood on Soleimani’s hands, but the main thrust of his <a href="https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1212954848666234880">statement</a> concerns the risk of escalation: &#8220;President Trump just tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox, and he owes the American people an explanation of the strategy and a plan to keep safe our troops and embassy personnel, our people and our interests.&#8221; Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), another 2020 presidential candidate, <a href="https://twitter.com/ewarren/status/1212951889060470788">called</a> the move “reckless” and feared it would “lead to a new Middle East conflict.” Similar sentiments were <a href="https://www.reed.senate.gov/news/releases/reed-statement-on-us-strike-that-killed-iranian-gen-soleimani">offered</a> by Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, <a href="https://twitter.com/SenatorShaheen/status/1212949251514388481">as well as</a> Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), <a href="https://www.murray.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/mobile/newsreleases?ID=4A1363EF-535C-42C9-8438-2A4F2F3988FA">Patty Murray</a> (D-WA), and many others.
Some went further. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) made no condemnation of Soleimani’s actions, instead <a href="https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1212959357425651713?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1212959357425651713&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rollingstone.com%2Fpolitics%2Fpolitics-news%2Flawmakers-react-after-us-strike-kills-iranian-military-leader-933470%2F">decrying</a> President Trump for putting us on a path to “endless war.” Senator Warren later suggested that killing Soleimani was <a href="https://www.axios.com/warren-trump-soleimani-killing-impeachment-e548dbfe-f0a3-488d-8ab6-3303c61fb7e1.html">motivated</a> by a desire to distract from impeachment. The usually hawkish Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, <a href="https://twitter.com/RepEliotEngel/status/1213625152937680896">said</a> he would do everything he could to prevent war with Iran — suggesting the killing of Soleimani, rather than Iran’s numerous attacks on the U.S., would be responsible for any such war. Legislation to tie the administration’s hands has <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/01/04/qasem-soleimani-bernie-sanders-khanna-bill-would-limit-iran-action/2812727001/">already been</a> introduced.
Republicans, on the other hand, were having none of it. Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) <a href="https://www.sasse.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=DE21FF49-EBEB-4694-8E94-AEE3AE29083D">accused</a> fellow Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), who largely <a href="https://twitter.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/1212913952436445185">echoed</a> the party line, of “<a href="https://twitter.com/SenSasse/status/1212938721387057153">drunk partisanship</a>.” Sasse <a href="https://www.sasse.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=DE21FF49-EBEB-4694-8E94-AEE3AE29083D">declared</a> that “General Soleimani is dead because he was an evil bastard who murdered Americans.” Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) put it most <a href="https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=D2E041A4-B231-4743-A4EA-879A9F8EEB01">starkly</a>: “For too long, this evil man operated without constraint, and countless innocents have suffered for it. Now his terrorist leadership has been ended.”
In short, to paraphrase a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK0_Ob9qCI0">popular film</a>, most Democrats are critical of the Trump administration risking “open war,&#8221; while Republicans insist that “open war” is already upon us.
The Republicans have the better argument. There has been a steady escalation of tensions in recent months — by Iran, not the U.S. In addition to the previously mentioned attack on the American embassy in Iraq, which was not a “protest,” but an attack perpetrated by Kataib Hezbollah, one of <a href="https://www.pri.org/stories/2020-01-03/kataib-hezbollah-attacked-us-embassy-baghdad-who-are-they">Soleimani&#8217;s most loyal terrorist proxy militias</a> in Iraq, Soleimani was responsible for repeated escalation.
Republicans have eagerly pointed this out. Sen. James Risch (R-ID), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, noted that Soleimani had been actively involved in an attack that <a href="https://www.risch.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=B77D9F0A-D077-437B-B66C-7E3198C60A92">killed</a> an American contractor and wounded four American troops just days before the embassy attack. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) pointed out that there had been <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/qassem-soleimani-iran-marco-rubio-transcript-on-face-the-nation-january-5-2019/">over 10 rocket attacks</a> against Americans since October. Moreover, Iran’s <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/15/middleeast/saudi-oil-attack-lister-analysis-intl/index.html">attack</a> on Saudi oil fields, <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9550516/royal-navy-captains-frantic-call-urging-brit-tanker-ignore-iran-threats-change-course/">attack</a> on a British ship in the Persian Gulf, and <a href="https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/iran-us-drone-shot-down-latest-intl/index.html">downing</a> of a U.S. drone are all part of Iran’s provocations. These events were seen as escalations by both sides of the isle.
All this is not even considering that, according to the State Department, Iran, and thus Soleimani, its chief unconventional warfare strategist, is <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/iran-responsible-for-deaths-of-more-than-600-american-troops-in-iraq">responsible</a> for the deaths of over 600 American soldiers in previous years — nor is it even considering Soleimani’s <a href="https://www.trtworld.com/opinion/qasem-soleimani-s-disastrous-syria-legacy-lives-on-32762">boundless support</a> for Bashar al-Assad in Syria vis-à-vis proxy groups. Nor, still, is it considering Soleimani’s part in Iran’s support of the <a href="https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/yemen-houthis-protest-killing-of-iranian-iraqi-chiefs/1694428">radical Houthi </a><a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-security-blast-yemen/yemen-government-backs-soleimanis-killing-minister-idUSKBN1Z2209">movement </a>in Yemen, resulting in one of the bloodiest civil wars in recent history. The list goes on.
Unlike the killing of Osama bin Laden or Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the killing of Soleimani presents significant risk. Soleimani was at the height of his power, and while the Quds Force he oversaw is indisputably a terrorist organization, it is also a branch of a state actor. This creates a more complicated, and dangerous, situation.
However, the focus on U.S. “escalation,” ignoring recent history, is a potentially catastrophic mistake. The word “appeasement” is overused, but no other word accurately describes the position of most Democratic politicians, who are ignoring the pattern of increasingly bellicose Iranian behavior. As Garry Kasparov recently said, appeasement kills <a href="https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1213576615780847617">because</a> it “raises the stakes, postpones the inevitable, and encourages aggressors to assume they can act with impunity.”
Moreover, Democratic worries about endless escalation seem unwarranted. Iran’s recent “retaliation,” launching missiles that resulted in <a href="https://www.militarytimes.com/flashpoints/2020/01/08/no-us-casualties-in-iran-missile-strike-preliminary-reports-say/">zero U.S. or Iraqi casualties</a> and even giving the Iraqi government <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/iran-fires-missiles-at-military-bases-iraq-used-by-us-coalition-troops-today-live-updates-2020-01-08/">advance notice</a>, seems aimed at face-saving more than a desire to escalate further.
The temptation to take a partisan stance on such a major issue, during an election year, may be almost irresistible. But that doesn’t make it right. Leader McConnell was indignant, asking in a <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/01/06/mcconnell_on_impeachment_and_iran_senate_must_put_national_interest_ahead_of_factionalism.html">rousing speech</a>, “Can we not maintain a shred, just a shred, of national unity for five minutes … before deepening the partisan trenches?” As former Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Lieberman <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-democrats-and-iran-11578262553?redirect=amp&amp;fbclid=IwAR3TRr4mMZTInU3PDRqBpPOWlpuyf9RwYvVbesc3vmBUasQ7aeZykIo1lWs#click=https://t.co/PBOkugbjBe">recently wrote</a>, “In their uniformly skeptical or negative reactions to Soleimani’s death, Democrats are … creating the risk that the U.S. will be seen as acting and speaking with less authority abroad at this important time.”
The late Sen. Arthur Vandenberg’s (R-MI) maxim that “politics stops at the water’s edge” has always been more aspirational than real. But in preaching what amounts to appeasement, Democrats are endangering the country.
&nbsp;
Cliff Smith (<a href="https://twitter.com/cliffsmithzbrdz?lang=en">@CliffSmithZBRDZ</a>) is Washington Project Director for the <a href="https://www.meforum.org/">Middle East Forum</a>.

Neville Chamberlain

SMITH: Republicans, Democrats And The Killing Of Soleimani: Is Appeasement Back In Style?

Foreign Policy

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps

Middle East

Earlier this month, in the lead-up to House Democrats&#8217; (<a href="https://twitter.com/josh_hammer/status/1207731722995023872">kind of</a>/<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/us/trump-feldman-impeach.html">sort of</a>) formal impeachment of President Donald Trump, the Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY)-led House Judiciary Committee convened a panel of three law professors: Pamela Karlan of Stanford, Noah Feldman of Harvard, and Jonathan Turley of George Washington. The ostensible reason for Nadler&#8217;s summoning of this troika was to air a public discussion of what the U.S. Constitution&#8217;s &#8220;high crimes and misdemeanors&#8221; impeachment criterion actually means — a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-todays-judiciary-committee-impeachment-hearing-is-yet-another-waste-of-time">rather curious use of time and taxpayer resources</a>, alas, considering that Alexander Hamilton told us precisely what it meant in <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed65.asp">The Federalist No. 65</a>.
This triumvirate of ivory tower overlords, moreover, was hardly politically or ideologically diverse. Karlan is an unreconstructed leftist so radical that former President Barack Obama did not even consider her for a U.S. Supreme Court nomination. Feldman is a traditional liberal — hardly one to find compelling the notion that a legal text ought to only be interpreted according to its original public meaning. Turley, the Republican-called witness who was <a href="https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-12-09/opinion-trump-impeachment-hearings-democrats">most favorable toward</a> Trump&#8217;s impeachment defense narrative, is nonetheless best described as a left-leaning civil libertarian. He is <a href="https://www.newsmax.com/politics/turley-democrats-republicans-gop/2019/12/28/id/947594/">hardly a partisan Trump supporter</a>.
Alas, Turley&#8217;s testimony elicited intensive backlash from fellow liberals and fellow members of the cloistered legal academy. As Turley snarkily tweeted, linking to an op-ed he published over the holiday weekend at The Hill: &#8220;The Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not testify for Republicans.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
The Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not testify for Republicans <a href="https://t.co/AhlGtYMYsC">https://t.co/AhlGtYMYsC</a>
&mdash; Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) <a href="https://twitter.com/JonathanTurley/status/1210938223444267010?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 28, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;Journalist Henry Louis Mencken once observed, &#8216;Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them,'&#8221; Turley began. &#8220;Despite unending respect for Mencken, this is an occasion in which I found him mistaken, after I violated the Eleventh Commandment, &#8216;Thou shalt not testify for Republicans.'&#8221;
Turley&#8217;s piece continued with oftentimes dripping sarcasm. The professor clearly harbors no small amount of disdain for the intellectual and political monoculture that the Left oftentimes attempts to forcibly impose from the heights of academe.
&#8220;What is most striking about this commandment is that it does not matter if your testimony is made in good faith,&#8221; he wrote. &#8220;For instance, under the Ninth Commandment, you are only guilty if you give false evidence against your neighbor. But under the Eleventh Commandment, it does matter if your testimony is true or false. A law fearing academic must not give any testimony for Republicans. &#8230; It is the act of testifying for Republicans that is deemed a sin against the legal academy.&#8221;
&#8220;[H]eresy demands condemnation, whether or not it is based in reality,&#8221; Turley concluded. &#8220;This is all meant to get people to not seriously consider the flaws in this impeachment, including the articles that ultimately were dropped. For any academic who is tempted to testify for Republicans in an impeachment, I can only caution that the Bible said, &#8216;Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.'&#8221;
Political and ideological diversity is an infamous and pervasive problem throughout much of American academia — with legal academia among the most grievous of all offenders. Recently, conservative law professor Stephen Bainbridge of UCLA wrote a <a href="https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/ucla-professor-bainbridge-hero-of-diversity/">widely disseminated</a> <a href="https://www.professorbainbridge.com/professorbainbridgecom/2019/12/i-submit-herewith-my-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-statement-for-my-merit-raise-at-uclaw.html">blog post</a> about how he, as a conservative white Catholic, actively contributes to diversity (properly understood) at UCLA School of Law:
<blockquote>At UCLA, we know that the campus as a whole leans substantially to the left. “A study of various university faculties showed that at Cornell the ratio of liberal to conservative faculty members was 166 to 6, at Stanford it was 151 to 17, at UCLA it was 141 to 9, and at the University of Colorado it was 116 to 5.” Conservative students at UCLA have been “harassed, stalked, and threatened.” I recently searched the opensecrets.org donor database for political contributions made by persons who claimed UCLA School of Law as their employer. Thirty-eight of those persons contributed solely to Democratic candidates, the Democratic Party and various affiliates, and liberal PACs. One person contributed to both Republicans and Democrats. Three persons contributed exclusively to Republican candidates, the Republican Party, and various NRC affiliates. Of the faculty members who contributed exclusively to Republican candidates, the most recently hired of the two was hired in 1997. As a monetary matter, 92.67% of all contributions went to Democrats and affiliated groups.
Because conservative students and students of faith often feel alienated and estranged in an environment that is so relentlessly liberal and secular, I have made particular efforts to reach out to and support such students. I have served as a mentor for leaders of The Federalist Society and Christian Law Students Association. I have given talks to both organizations. I taught a Perspectives on law and Lawyering seminar devoted to Catholic Social Thought and the Law, which gave students — whether Catholic or not — an opportunity to consider how their faith (or lack thereof) related to the law and an opportunity to learn about a coherent body of Christian scholarship that might inform their lives as lawyers. I have also tried to lead by example, such as by serving as a volunteer with the Good Shepherd Catholic Church’s St. Vincent de Paul chapter, which raises funds for distribution to poor persons who are in danger of losing their home due to inability to make rent or mortgage payments.</blockquote>

Jonathan Turley testifying

Liberal Law Prof Turley: Not A ‘Sin’ To Testify For Republicans

academia

Congress

Constitution

Leftism

Liberalism

U.S. House of Representatives

Former Vice President Joe Biden responded positively on Monday to someone asking him whether he would consider tapping a Republican to be his 2020 running mate. 
“The answer is I would, but I can’t think of one now,” Biden told the crowd, which laughed in response, according to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/30/us/politics/joe-biden-running-mate.html">The New York Times</a>. 
“No, I’m serious,” said Biden, reports <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/dec/30/joe-biden-says-hed-consider-tapping-republican-run/">The Washington Times</a>. “There’s some really decent Republicans that are out there still, but here’s the problem right now with the well-known ones: They’ve got to step up. You know what I mean?”
Biden also emphasized that, should he become the Democrats&#8217; 2020 presidential nominee, he would choose someone who understood his priorities. Although he doesn’t like to talk specifics, Biden has previously floated several names as potential running mates, including Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams (D-GA), and former Assistant Attorney General Sally Yates. 
After the campaign stop, Biden gave another speech in which he said that the job of the president should be to bring the country together. “I refuse to accept the notion that we’ll be in perpetual war with Republicans,” said Biden, according to <a href="https://twitter.com/daveweigel/status/1211763169926012930">The Washington Post</a>. 
Biden has not been shy about his willingness to cultivate relationships with those with whom he politically disagrees, but his answer to the question has drawn the ire of many online progressives. 
Tim Wise, a self-proclaimed “antiracist essayist,” called for the GOP to be crushed in response to Biden’s comments: “If Biden believes the answer to right wing fanaticism is kumbaya unity (i.e. a GOP running mate) he is truly demented and insulting the Democratic Party base&#8230;the GOP would never do this&#8230;outreach &amp; unity is only for Dems I suppose? Screw that. Crush them don’t unify with them.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
If Biden believes the answer to right wing fanaticism is kumbaya unity (i.e. a GOP running mate) he is truly demented and insulting the Democratic Party base&#8230;the GOP would never do this&#8230;outreach &amp; unity is only for Dems I suppose? Screw that. Crush them don&#8217;t unify with them
— Tim Wise (@timjacobwise) <a href="https://twitter.com/timjacobwise/status/1211762744959160323?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 30, 2019</a></blockquote>
Larry Sabato, the director at the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, responded by saying that there are no viable Republicans left for Biden to consider: “Joe Biden says he’d consider having a Republican VP. OK, there are some good choices out there — Nelson Rockefeller, Earl Warren, Bill Scranton. Oh wait, they’re all dead.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Joe Biden says he&#8217;d consider having a Republican VP. OK, there are some good choices out there&#8211;Nelson Rockefeller, Earl Warren, Bill Scranton. Oh wait, they&#8217;re all dead.
— Larry Sabato (@LarrySabato) <a href="https://twitter.com/LarrySabato/status/1211782110895202304?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 30, 2019</a></blockquote>
Amanda Marcotte, a politics writer at Salon, suggested that Biden is not up for the challenge of the presidency because he failed to deflect from the question: “This was a dumb, trick question and his inability to deflect with grace shows he is not up to this.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-cards="hidden" data-lang="en">
This was a dumb, trick question and his inability to deflect with grace shows he is not up to this. <a href="https://t.co/nK9qARIPqa">https://t.co/nK9qARIPqa</a>
— Amanda Marcotte (@AmandaMarcotte) <a href="https://twitter.com/AmandaMarcotte/status/1211848222462881793?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 31, 2019</a></blockquote>
Many political pundits, however, were quick to point out the ridiculous nature of the online outrage. 
Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro weighed in, saying: “Twitter Democrats are ripping apart Biden for the great sin of suggesting he would consider a Republican VP if he could think of any worth considering. This is the essence of Twitter insularity.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Twitter Democrats are ripping Biden apart for the great sin of suggesting he would consider a Republican VP if he could think of any worth considering. This is the essence of Twitter insularity.
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) <a href="https://twitter.com/benshapiro/status/1211774697601298432?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 30, 2019</a></blockquote>
Ezra Klein, the editor-at-large of Vox, also responded to the outrage, saying: &#8220;The degree to which this website takes everything Biden says literally, as opposed to politically, is odd. He’s not going to choose a Republican VP. He thinks it’s good politics to signal that he’ll work with Republicans if they’ll meet him halfway. He’s probably right.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
The degree to which this web site takes everything Biden says literally, as opposed to politically, is odd.
He&#8217;s not going to choose a Republican VP. He thinks it&#8217;s good politics to signal that he&#8217;ll work with Republicans if they&#8217;ll meet him halfway. He&#8217;s probably right.
— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) <a href="https://twitter.com/ezraklein/status/1211791480693542913?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 30, 2019</a></blockquote>

Presidential Candidate Joe Biden Holds Campaign Town Halls In New Hampshire

Biden Floats Potential GOP Running Mate, Draws Ire Of Online Progressives

Joe Biden

Many people reading this will have already taken down their Christmas lights. Just a few decades ago, it was pretty normal for Christians in America to leave up their lights for all 12 days of Christmas. Now, many think Christmas Day is the 12th day instead of the first. My lights will burn bright until Jan. 5, where, by tradition, the lights must be off before sunset. On Jan. 6, which is Epiphany, Mardi Gras season starts in earnest for those of us from Louisiana.
As I get older, I love the Christmas season more and more. Easter comes as a weekend. Christmas comes as a month of Advent on the heels of Thanksgiving. It gives time for more reflection, often centered around some pretty deep theology in carols. The basic gist of the caroling is all the same. God became flesh and humbled himself by being born in a manger and giving up the trappings of royalty and then dying a criminal&#8217;s death having committed no crime.
In the United States, whether we like to admit it or not, we are already deep into political campaign season. Impeachment season is upon us as well. Everything is now political. Just two weeks ago, the author J.K. Rowling walked into a firestorm for having the audacity to be pro-science. She declared sex is immutable. Men cannot become women, and vice versa. Though she endorsed this scientific fact, woke protestors decided to burn her books. Even opinion writers in The New York Times denounced her for expressing an opinion others in The New York Times have expressed in the past.
Everything has become political. Every political cause has taken on religious fervor. It can wear a person out. In wokeness, every principled position firmly held will eventually give way to something more extreme, radical and wholly disconnected from reason. Truthfully, though, none of it matters. Too many people have separated themselves from the eternal to focus on the here and now. They have decided to seek a future utopia of some kind, aware their mortal life is limited and unaware there is an eternity. Behaviors change when one recognizes eternity.
Too many partisans have forgotten eternity. On both sides of the political spectrum, people are looking for political saviors to save them from people on the other side of that spectrum. It is sad to see secular progressives running in hamster wheels of outrage, perpetually spun up about some perceived injustice. It is hilarious to see Christian evangelicals insistent on loyalty to a politician to save them from the other side. Apparently, having the God of the universe on their side is not enough.
Americans need a recalibration on priorities. So much of what we argue about does not really matter. No Republican was ever profoundly impacted by Barack Obama except, arguably, in the area of health care. No Democrat has ever been profoundly impacted by Donald Trump except, arguably, in their take-home pay. Both sides treat Washington as more important than it is.
What is actually important is this: You have a soul, you will live forever, and there is a God who wants a relationship with you. One day you will stand before him, and he will judge you. Everything else should flow from that. For those who do not believe, one day they will, and hopefully that belief will come on this side of the grave. For everyone else, behaving in politics as if eternity does not matter might ultimately suggest one is not as truly committed to the idea of eternity as one might claim.
Protestant Christians believe we are saved by faith alone, and good works derive from our faith. Regardless of how one sees salvation, I would suggest a lot of us could stand to dwell more on it than on Washington. We find our welfare in our local communities, not in far off cities that affect us far less than we claim. As we move beyond Christmas and into a new year, I would urge you (and me) to dwell less on the here and now and more on eternity.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Church candle.

ERICKSON: The Eternal And The Here And Now

Christianity

Christmas

In a revealing recent interview with Rolling Stone, Chuck Todd, host of NBC&#8217;s &#8220;Meet the Press,&#8221; discusses what led him to begin approaching Republicans and others on &#8220;the right&#8221; with more skepticism and reporting on their claims in a less &#8220;naive&#8221; way than he had in the past. In his comments, Todd indicates that he does not view Democrats and their claims in the same skeptical light.
The <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/how-disinformation-spreads-according-to-chuck-todd-interview-929912/">interview</a> was conducted as part of an upcoming &#8220;Meet the Press&#8221; special on the &#8220;weaponization of disinformation,&#8221; which, according to Todd&#8217;s comments to the Rolling Stone, appears to approach the topic from a glaringly one-sided angle.
Asked what made him decide to devote a show to the topic of &#8220;disinformation and fake news,&#8221; Todd said it began with an interest in the impact of social media on politics, which he said is ultimately really about &#8220;misinformation.&#8221;
&#8220;This is bigger than social media,&#8221; said Todd. &#8220;The Ukraine story for me really crystallized it. And for good or bad, our show has been at the forefront of this.&#8221;
Todd then traced the topic back to what he suggested was its source: the Trump administration&#8217;s claims about his inauguration.
&#8220;The first Sunday of the Trump administration is when the phrase, &#8216;alternative facts&#8217; was debuted,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It was on Meet the Press Rudy that Giuliani used the phrase &#8216;Truth isn’t truth.'&#8221;
&#8220;So look, whether we’d liked it or not, our platform has been used, or they’ve attempted to use our platform to essentially disseminate, or to sort of, what I would say, is lay the groundwork for this,&#8221; Todd explained.
After describing the dissemination of &#8220;misinformation&#8221; — for which he and the interviewer only give examples from the Trump administration and Republicans — as an &#8220;epidemic,&#8221; Todd addressed the issue of political advertising.
&#8220;I think our biggest problem going into 2020 is that we have two sets of standards simply on political advertising,&#8221; he said. &#8220;If you choose to advertise on cable or television, on linear television, there’s a certain set of standards on fact that you have to surpass in order to get your ad on television. Not the case on social media. And we have seen the Trump campaign literally use two different ads — one that allows them to say their misinformation about Biden in the areas that they can.&#8221;
Asked if he was &#8220;surprised by the consistency that the Trump administration was willing to spread disinformation&#8221; about the crowd size at the inauguration, Todd said yes.
&#8220;I fully admit, listening to you ask that question now, and me giving you the honest answer of, yeah, I guess I really believed they wouldn’t do this,&#8221; said Todd. &#8220;Just so absurdly naive in hindsight.&#8221;
Todd then presented his succinct summary of his view of Trump: &#8220;Donald Trump’s entire life has been spent using misinformation,&#8221; he said. &#8220;His entire life.&#8221;
But it&#8217;s not just Trump and his administration that Todd now views in what he described as a less &#8220;naive&#8221; way, it&#8217;s Republicans and everyone else on &#8220;the right.&#8221;
&#8220;The fact is, and by the way, this isn’t going to be easy to show, but I actually think when we outline this it will, the right has an incentive structure to utter the misinformation,&#8221; he said in response to a question about Republicans supposedly pushing &#8220;Russian talking points&#8221; about Ukraine. &#8220;&#8230; I do think one of the things that I want to explore on this is the incentive structure. One of the things we don’t fully appreciate in mainstream media on these attacks is that it’s become fun to attack the press, if that makes sense, on the right. It doesn’t matter if we’re right or wrong, attack them anyway.&#8221;
Throughout the interview, neither Todd nor the interviewer acknowledges even the possibility that Democrats and those on the left have spread &#8220;misinformation&#8221; and made overtly false claims on the airwaves; instead, the problem is presented as a purely Republican/right issue.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/feud-between-trump-and-christianity-today-results-in-resignation-from-another-publication">Feud Between Trump And Christianity Today Results In Resignation From Another Publication</a>

Chuck Todd

NBC’s Chuck Todd Explains Why He’s Changed How He Reports On Republicans

Fake News

Media Bias

NBC News

In a bizarre interview on Sunday, David Remnick, author of “The Bridge: The Life And Rise Of Barack Obama” and editor for The New Yorker magazine, expressed his frustration with Trump voters to CNN’s “Reliable Sources” host Brian Stelter. 
Responding to a question about whether anything will change following President Trump’s impeachment by House Democrats, Remnick stated that, “We’ve seen the Republicans stuck where they are. Their illusions about Trump remain,” adding that “the stakes here are immense.”
The Media Research Center <a href="https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/nicholas-fondacaro/2019/12/22/new-yorker-editor-future-earth-hangs-trumps-impeachment" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">reports</a> that Remnick began to connect the impeachment hearing to the “future” of the planet, thereby linking it to one of the Left’s biggest political issues: Global warming.   
“It’s not just about the political future of one man, Donald Trump — it’s about the future of democracy and democratic process. And this is a trend throughout the world. It’s about the future of the Earth. We have a party that has decided to be disbelieving about climate change. It’s about issues as essential as that,” he said. 
Of course, Stelter did not bother to ask how global warming is somehow connected to the House Democrats’ move to impeach President Trump. Instead, allowing The New Yorker editor to continue to pontificate, Remnick went to discuss how the mainstream media are at a loss as to why President Trump remains popular in certain sectors of the country. 
“Right now, you have a country that is split, and to the great frustration of people like you and people like me, we don’t somehow understand,” he opined. “We don’t understand why the evidence of things, why facts don’t penetrate so many of our brothers and sisters in the United States of America. And it’s a source of great frustration for the press and for anybody who is thinking about these issues that are so important.”
He emphasized, “And this is a source of great frustration for the press. And for anyone who is thinking about these issues that are so important.”
Stelter echoed the sentiments, repeating, “for the press.” He then asked about the “eclipse of reason” of the Republican Party.
“Let’s not be deluded here. It&#8217;s not as if reason and fact and truth-telling were pervasive in any political party, much less the Republican Party. But things have gotten markedly worse,” Remnick answered. “So much of the Republican Party, their candidates, their leadership know the score. Everybody in the Senate and the House knows this is a man of low character, of ethical, of ethics run amuck. &#8230; Nobody in the Republican Party thinks this is a good and decent man. These are people who are looking to their political advantages. They think if they act against him somehow or speak against him, they&#8217;ll lose their seats. So, the only people speaking against him are people set to retire.”
This interview highlights a lack of self-awareness that is prevalent across large swaths of the news industry. As they try to connect global warming to the vote to impeach Trump, many Americans grow weary of such showboating by the press and congressional Democrats. 
The Daily Wire’s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/klavan-cnn-accidentally-reveals-that-its-a-cult" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Andrew Klavan</a> has previously commented on the direction of the media and of Brian Stelter’s program, in particular. 
“I mean, it is comical that they can’t see themselves,” he said. “So it drives the Right crazy, it drives me crazy. This is the news. You turn on the news, CNN, the most trusted name in news, but that’s what you see on the news, and it drives you crazy.” 
<a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/new-yorker-editor-david-remnick-says-trumps-impeachment-is-about-the-future-of-the-earth" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Fox News</a>’ Brian Flood noted how the Remnick interview was mocked on social media, with Brit Hume pointing out, “Fortunately for the country and the planet, people seem to have sense enough not to believe this sort of claptrap.”
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Fortunately for the country and the planet, people seem to have sense enough not to believe this sort of claptrap. <a href="https://t.co/X9KyPyhiFy">https://t.co/X9KyPyhiFy</a>
&mdash; Brit Hume (@brithume) <a href="https://twitter.com/brithume/status/1208931836161904641?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 23, 2019</a></blockquote>
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The 2019 New Yorker Festival &#8211; Terry Gross Talks With David Remnick

New Yorker Editor David Remnick To Nodding Stelter: &#8216;It’s A Great Frustration&#8217; Why People Vote For Trump

2019 in Washington

Andrew Klavan

Brian Stelter

Brit Hume

Climate Change

David Remnick

Global Warming

Media

In another blatant display of media bias masquerading as uncomfortably frank objectivity, CNBC editor-at-large John Harwood declared the GOP to be &#8220;fundamentally broken&#8221; and lamented how journalists are being supposedly too fair in their coverage of the party.
On Sunday, Harwood responded to a tweet from CNN&#8217;s Brian Stelter, who quoted Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan lamenting how media objectivity gave power to the GOP.
&#8220;In an unceasing effort to be seen as neutral, journalists, time after time, fell into the trap of presenting facts and lies as roughly equivalent and then blaming political tribalism for not seeming to know the difference,&#8221; Sullivan said.
In response, Harwood tweeted: &#8220;Good description of the challenge for journalism &#8230; hard for reporters to say plainly that the Republican Party, at this point in our history, is fundamentally broken &#8230; but it is.&#8221;
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good description of the challenge for journalism
hard for reporters to say plainly that the Republican Party, at this point in our history, is fundamentally broken
but it is <a href="https://t.co/HXHn3cmJ4N">https://t.co/HXHn3cmJ4N</a>
&mdash; John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) <a href="https://twitter.com/JohnJHarwood/status/1208763170778701826?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 22, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Anybody with even a modicum of understanding of the mainstream media&#8217;s political coverage, especially during the Trump administration, knows Harwood&#8217;s assertion to be misleading. And as reported by Fox News, conservatives across social media have been roundly trolling Harwood for making such a silly argument.
&#8220;&#8216;The problem with journalism is that it’s just too fair to the right,&#8217; sounds like a totally not insane thing to say. My goodness these people have lost all touch with reality,&#8221; <a href="https://twitter.com/MZHemingway/status/1208952697350692864?s=20">tweeted</a> Mollie Hemingway of The Federalist.
&#8220;This is precisely what reporters should not be doing. They should report on political parties without fear or favor and leave it to readers and viewers to decide whether a party is &#8216;broken&#8217; or not,&#8221; <a href="https://twitter.com/brithume/status/1208936482897051650?s=20">tweeted</a> Brit Hume of Fox News.
&#8220;Actually, it&#8217;s [journalism] that is fundamentally broken. Trump just helped pull back the curtain,&#8221; <a href="https://twitter.com/dangainor/status/1208980128396648448?s=20">tweeted</a> Dan Gainor of Newsbusters.
Beyond the pundit class, casual observers of today&#8217;s political climate chimed in with their own takes.
&#8220;The media is broken and overtly biased. Trust in it is low, and your tweet, John, is an example of why,&#8221; said on Twitter user.
&#8220;It’s absolutely bonkers to me that there are people who think the problem with the press is they’ve been too fair to the republicans. This is weapons-grade delusion,&#8221; tweeted another user.
&#8220;Sorry John, but your fundamentally full of hypocrisy, and you views are not worth the paper or the bandwidth they&#8217;re written on &#8230;&#8221; tweeted another.
Ironically, Harwood made his declaration about media objectivity after a recent poll showed that a majority of voters believed the media&#8217;s coverage of the president&#8217;s impeachment inquiry has been overwhelmingly biased. From <a href="https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/471546-poll-plurality-of-voters-say-media-coverage-of-impeachment-inquiry-is-biased">The Hill</a>:
<blockquote>A plurality of voters say that the media&#8217;s coverage of the Democratic-led impeachment inquiry into President Trump is biased, according to a Hill-HarrisX poll released on Thursday.
Forty-six percent of Americans said the media’s coverage of the ongoing probe was biased against Trump, compared to 12 percent who thought coverage was actually biased in favor of the president.
A significant portion, 42 percent, said that media coverage wasn’t biased one way or the other.
The results were largely split along party lines: 67 percent of Republicans said Trump is being treated unfairly by the media’s coverage of impeachment, while just 27 percent of Democrats agreed with that sentiment.
Fifty percent of independents sided with Republicans, saying the media wasn&#8217;t treating Trump fairly in their coverage of the probe.</blockquote>

Harwood

CNBC’s John Harwood Is Getting Trolled For Saying Journalists Are Too Fair To The ‘Fundamentally Broken’ GOP

CNBC

John Harwood

Former Governor of South Carolina and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley recently appeared on PBS’ “Firing Line with Margaret Hoover.”
During the interview, which last nearly half an hour, Hoover and Haley discussed multiple topics, including Haley’s time at the U.N., and the way in which the United States should deal with Iran and North Korea.
Near the end of the interview, Hoover asked Haley about how the Republican Party can captivate the next generation.
<blockquote>HOOVER: I’m gonna ask about the future of the Republican Party. You talk about your son from time to time, and I think about the millennial generation and how they think about politics. Where the Republican Party is now is not in a place where it’s speaking to the generation of your son – the values, the sensibilities. What is it going to take to motivate and capture the imagination of your son’s generation to the ideas that you espouse as a Republican?</blockquote>
Haley replied, first noting that she has great “hope” for younger generations, in part because they “know the power of their voice,” and “they’re gonna use it.”
“We have to make sure we get the right information in front of them so that they have the facts to do that,” Haley stated.
She continued:
<blockquote>But I think the Republican Party should always want to get better, and I think, in order for the Republican Party to get strong now, they have to go places that are uncomfortable to go. They have to talk to people they’ve never talked to before &#8230; I know that when I go to the Indian-American communities or the Jewish communities, in so many ways, they espouse Republican values, and they believe in Republican values – but because we’ve never shown up to them, because we’ve never gone and listened to them, there’s less [of a] likelihood that they come and join our party, and I think we need to start communicating differently.
We need to really put ourselves out there and explain why we believe what we believe. But more importantly, before we say that, we need to listen to what they care about and then put our values with what they care about.</blockquote>
Haley added that there is a “younger generation” of “strong” Republicans who understand this message, and that they need their voices amplified, which requires great support.
Hoover interjected: “With all due respect, to borrow a phrase, this doesn’t feel like what the leadership of this party is doing right now, what you just described.”
Haley replied, saying that this “should not be about one person,” but a host of people properly espousing these beliefs.
Hoover again interjected: “The bully pulpit of the presidency is the most important sort of speaker phone that we have, and that megaphone is not broadcasting the solution that you just outlined.”
To this, Haley offered a deft response and made a salient point about the difference between messaging and results, and how those can be effectively blended:
<blockquote>And I think we have to do that. I think if we take our voice and our way of doing things and match it with the results of this President, I think that’s how we bring the Republican Party back.
And you may not agree with his style, and I tell people that all the time. His style is not my style. But his results are my results. Those are the things we want. We want more people to have jobs; we want to see the economy continue to grow; we want to have a strong standing in the world as we move forward; we want to take on the next problems of the next generation and handle it with strength and with dignity and with grace. And so there is a way to come out of this where we can continue to have our values, but change the style and communication in the way we do that.</blockquote>
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Nikki Haley.

WATCH: Nikki Haley Makes Salient Point About Blending Trump’s ‘Results’ With A More Palatable ‘Style’

Nikki Haley

Multiple Democrats voted against Democrats&#8217; first article of impeachment against President Donald Trump on Wednesday, while no Republicans defected and supported the Democrats&#8217; partisan effort.
On the first article of impeachment, &#8220;abuse of power,&#8221; Democrats voted 228–2, Republicans voted 0–195, and the one independent member of Congress voted for impeachment.
The final vote on the first article of impeachment was 230–197–1.
The vote on the second article of impeachment, &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-at-the-new-york-post-obstruction-of-congress-is-an-utterly-ridiculous-impeachment-charge">obstruction of Congress</a>,&#8221; concluded with even more Democrats defecting from their party and voting against impeachment.
The final vote on the second article of impeachment is Democrats voted 228–3, Republicans voted 0–195, and the one independent member of Congress voted for impeachment.
The final vote on the second article of impeachment was 229–198–1.
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ABC reports: bipartisan vote was against impeachment<a href="https://t.co/mueiS6u1Xu">https://t.co/mueiS6u1Xu</a> <a href="https://t.co/nYJhzLjvlP">pic.twitter.com/nYJhzLjvlP</a>
&mdash; RNC Research (@RNCResearch) <a href="https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1207482975576834049?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 19, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Current Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii did not vote for either of the Democrats&#8217; partisan articles of impeachment and instead voted present.
Gabbard said, &#8220;I could not in good conscience vote for impeachment because removal of a sitting President must not be the culmination of a partisan process, fueled by tribal animosities that have so gravely divided our country.&#8221;
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Dem HI Rep Gabbard on her “present” vote on impeachment: I could not in good conscience vote for impeachment because removal of a sitting President must not be the culmination of a partisan process, fueled by tribal animosities that have so gravely divided our country.
&mdash; Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) <a href="https://twitter.com/ChadPergram/status/1207477655643271169?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 19, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Trump now becomes the third president in U.S. history to be impeached and becomes the only president to ever be impeached in a purely partisan effort while there was a bipartisan effort in opposition to impeachment.
Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) responded to the partisan impeachment by writing on Twitter, &#8220;Today will be remembered as the day your House Democrat majority voted to impeach President @realDonaldTrump for a crime they couldn’t find and a case they couldn’t prove. You won’t forget. And neither will we.&#8221;
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Today will be remembered as the day your House Democrat majority voted to impeach President <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@realDonaldTrump</a> for a crime they couldn’t find and a case they couldn’t prove.
You won’t forget. And neither will we.
&mdash; Mark Meadows (@RepMarkMeadows) <a href="https://twitter.com/RepMarkMeadows/status/1207478863472799744?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 19, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Daily Wire Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer, a constitutional attorney by training and a former Fifth Circuit law clerk, responded to Democrats&#8217; partisan impeachment by writing on Twitter, &#8220;They are realizing all of Alexander Hamilton’s worst fears that he expressed in The Federalist No. 65. He presciently warned against this precise scenario.&#8221;
Hamilton <a href="https://www.congress.gov/resources/display/content/The+Federalist+Papers#TheFederalistPapers-65">wrote</a>:
<blockquote>A well-constituted court for the trial of impeachments is an object not more to be desired than difficult to be obtained in a government wholly elective. The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself. The prosecution of them, for this reason, will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community, and to divide it into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused. In many cases it will connect itself with the pre-existing factions, and will enlist all their animosities, partialities, influence, and interest on one side or on the other; and in such cases there will always be the greatest danger that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt.</blockquote>
Trump was at a campaign rally when the impeachment vote occurred and he responded to it by saying, “I don’t know about you, but I’m having a great time.”
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Trump says it doesn’t feel like he’s being impeached.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m having a great time”
&mdash; Brent Scher (@BrentScher) <a href="https://twitter.com/BrentScher/status/1207482008563310592?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 19, 2019</a></blockquote>
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White House social media director Dan Scavino noted additional remarks from Trump: “With today’s illegal, unconstitutional and partisan impeachment, House Democrats are declaring their deep hatred and disdain for American Voters. This lawless and partisan impeachment is a political suicide march for the Democrat Party!”
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🚨MOMENTS AGO🚨 “With today’s illegal, unconstitutional and partisan impeachment, House Democrats are declaring their deep hatred and disdain for American Voters. This lawless and partisan impeachment is a political suicide march for the Democrat Party!” President Donald J. Trump <a href="https://t.co/Z78vcBEQ7n">pic.twitter.com/Z78vcBEQ7n</a>
&mdash; Dan Scavino (@DanScavino) <a href="https://twitter.com/DanScavino/status/1207491373965959168?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 19, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-pelosi-forced-to-stop-democrats-from-cheering-impeachment-vote-taking-selfies">WATCH: Pelosi Forced To Stop Democrats From Cheering Impeachment Vote, Taking Selfies</a>

Pelosi Nadler

Multiple Democrats Vote Against Impeachment, Only Democrats Vote For It

House Republicans

&#8220;It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.&#8221; – James Madison, <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed62.asp">The Federalist No. 62</a>
&nbsp;
In the year 2019, nine years after the constitutionalist and populist Tea Party wave midterm election of 2010, how many Republicans in Congress actually agree with James Madison?
While all the eyes of political media this week remain fixated upon the dueling melodramas of expected House impeachment later today and the next Democratic Party presidential primary debate tomorrow evening, Congress is gearing up to pass yet another year-end <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/walsh-congress-decides-18-year-olds-are-too-young-to-buy-tobacco-heres-a-bunch-of-things-they-still-arent-too-young-to-do">budget betrayal</a>. To be sure, we already knew that fiscal conservatism was dead and that <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-fiscal-conservatism-dead-republicans-killed-josh-hammer">Republicans themselves killed it</a>. But it seems that Republicans&#8217; insatiable desire for fiscal profligacy will not be quenched until they can also spit upon fiscal conservatism&#8217;s proverbial corpse.
Daniel Horowitz of Blaze Media has a <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/trump-signs-omnibus-bills-hell-lose-last-legislative-leverage/">devastating breakdown</a> of the nature of the latest boondoggle — a boondoggle rearing its ugly head, lest we forget, less than two years after President Donald Trump himself <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/trump-signing-omnibus-spending-bill-859148">vowed</a> to &#8220;never sign a bill like this again.&#8221; Over 2,400 pages of legislation. Nearly one and a half trillion dollars of additional spending. Increased funding for the EPA, but no increased funding for ICE. MS-13 trafficking and amnesty loopholes galore. More backdoor <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/citizenship-4000-liberian-illegal-aliens-snuck-3430-page-defense-bill/">amnesty</a> for Liberian nationals. Incentivizing illegal aliens to attempt to enter the federal workforce. Re-authorization of the corporate welfare- and crony capitalism-abetting Export-Import Bank. Raising the national tobacco purchasing age to 21. Tens of millions of dollars toward &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/congress-spending-boondoggle-includes-millions-of-dollars-for-federal-agencies-to-research-gun-violence">gun violence research</a>.&#8221; Zero attention paid to the neo-Confederate nationwide plague of sanctuary city lawlessness. Zero attention paid to the fact that murderous transnational criminal cartels still effectively control large swaths of our southern border. Zero attention paid to our nationwide crisis of revanchist and power-hungry <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-conservatives-how-much-longer-are-you-josh-hammer">judicial supremacism</a>.
And so forth. It&#8217;s enough to make one wonder why we elect Republicans into office, in the first instance. Is there anyone on the Republican side of the aisle who still cares about <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-who-will-stand-for-the-forgotten-american">the forgotten American</a>?
Over the past few years, there has been an <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/shapiro-the-problem-with-common-good-conservatism">ongoing</a> and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-government-exists-to-establish-justice-not-promote-liberty">roiling</a> dialogue over the intellectual meaning and political future of American conservatism. It is undoubtedly an important and healthy discussion for us conservatives to air out among ourselves. My <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-path-forward-conservative-movement-josh-hammer">own take</a> is that there will be no going back to the pre-Trump &#8220;<a href="https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2019/03/against-the-dead-consensus">dead consensus</a>,&#8221; with the only open question being the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-national-conservatism-conference-josh-hammer">proper path</a> <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-on-chick-fil-a-political-tribalism-and-the-need-for-national-solidarity">forward</a>.
But as every card-carrying conservative knows, &#8220;Republican&#8221; and &#8220;conservative&#8221; are hardly synonymous terms. And while the debate over what it means to be a conservative rages on, it is an <a href="https://twitter.com/josh_hammer/status/1207086692416577538">entirely distinct question</a> to ask what exactly it is that contemporary elected Republicans claim to actually stand for. After all, it certainly does not seem to be fiscal restraint. It certainly does not seem to be cultural traditionalism. It certainly does not seem to be national sovereignty.
Instead, the least common denominator that unifies seemingly all elected Republicans, in the year 2019, seems to be a shared hatred of the Left — or &#8220;triggering the libs,&#8221; as my colleague Michael Knowles <a href="https://twitter.com/michaeljknowles/status/1207092532695318529">aptly phrased it</a> yesterday. Indeed, there is actually some historical precedent for this: The <a href="https://twitter.com/josh_hammer/status/1207091426791743488">sole unifying factor</a> among all three &#8220;legs&#8221; of the traditional post-William F. Buckley Jr./Reagan-era conservative &#8220;stool&#8221; — fiscal conservatism, social conservatism, and national security hawkishness — was opposition to the existential threat of Soviet-era communism.
The modern, post-Kavanagh fiasco Left is indeed a vicious and malicious political foe. The Left&#8217;s reckless radicalization and trend toward full-on totalitarian socialism is <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-here-are-three-reasons-why-i-plan-vote-josh-hammer">one of the three factors</a> that fortifies my confidence in voting for Donald Trump next November. But surely it is not too much to ask Republicans to actually stand for something beyond mere hatred of the dreaded enemy.
Or is it?

GOP elephant

HAMMER: What Exactly Do Republicans Claim To Stand For?

Conservatism

Trump Administration

On Monday’s episode of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” the Daily Wire editor-in-chief talks about Congressman Jeff Van Drew, a New Jersey Democrat who plans on switching to the Republican Party amidst impeachment, and the Democratic Party’s reaction to his decision. Video and partial transcript below: 
Meanwhile, Representative Jeff Van Drew, who&#8217;s an anti-impeachment Democrat, is now going to switch parties. This demonstrates, again, that these Democrats are not quite as popular on this thing among independents as they say they are. 
According to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/14/us/politics/jeff-van-drew-democrat-republican.html">The New York Times</a>: 
<blockquote>Representative Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, a moderate Democrat who is among the party&#8217;s staunchest opponents of impeaching President Trump, told aides on Saturday that he is planning to switch parties and declare himself a Republican as soon as next week, just as the House is casting its historic vote on articles of impeachment.
At a White House meeting on Friday, Mr. Van Drew sought Mr. Trump&#8217;s blessing for the move, which could be critical to his ability to avoid a primary challenge next year, and the president urged him to make the jump, according to two Democrats and one Republican who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the talks were intended to be private.
Mr. Van Drew has spoken with senior advisers to Mr. Trump about announcing his switch at an event at the White House either immediately before or just after the House votes on two articles of impeachment, which is expected to happen on Wednesday, according to Republicans and Democrats.</blockquote>
Now typically, when a member of a big political party has switched, that&#8217;s been big news all the way back to Jim Jeffords switching parties, and the switch in control of the Senate of the United States back in the early 2000s. But this is obviously big news in the middle of an impeachment hearing. You have a guy who is a blue vote in a red district in New Jersey switching parties because he believes that he&#8217;s not gonna be able to win re-election if he supports the impeachment. 
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<blockquote>&#8230; the move would also provide a silver lining for Mr. Trump as he becomes the third president ever to be impeached &#8230;
The decision by Mr. Van Drew reflects the heavy political consequences hanging over next week&#8217;s impeachment vote, particularly for moderate Democrats in districts that supported Mr. Trump in 2016.</blockquote>
About 30 Democrats are sitting in districts that supported Trump, [and] Republicans are targeting those districts heavily, the impeachment vote could come back to haunt all of those people. Jerry Nadler, for his part leading the House Judiciary Committee, ripped into Van Drew, saying that the real reason he&#8217;s not doing this, the real reason he&#8217;s switching is not out of principle, it&#8217;s out of political fear. 
<blockquote>NADLER: He&#8217;s reacting to the public polling that shows he can&#8217;t get renominated in his electorate, his district is 24% to renominate him and 60% to nominate somebody else. To more of the point, this is not political. We should not be looking at those things. This is the defense of our democracy. Do we stay a democratic republic or do we turn into a tyranny? </blockquote>
What is fascinating here is that members of Van Drew’s own constituency — Michael Suleyman, the Atlantic County Democratic chairman, actually wrote a letter to Van Drew, saying [according to the Times] “I&#8217;m imploring you to vote in favor of impeachment,” and that “a ‘no’ vote on impeachment will suppress Democratic turnout down-ballot, which my organization cannot sustain.” 
In other words, if they tried this impeachment and it turns out to come to nothing, that could actually suppress the Democratic efforts to get out the vote. Everybody is so depressed — and it is interesting, the Democrats are, this early, playing the card that they almost expect Trump to win if he&#8217;s not impeached. That&#8217;s the only reason they put out there the preventative message that if Trump is elected, it&#8217;s illegitimate, because you actually expect that he&#8217;s going to win. 
Meanwhile in the Senate, Chuck Schumer is attempting to militate, but he has no power in the Senate, so it doesn&#8217;t really matter. 
<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ben-shapiro-show/id1047335260">Listen to full episodes of “The Ben Shapiro Show” on iTunes. 
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House Democrats Elect New Leaders

SHAPIRO: Dems Rip Democratic Congressman For His Impeachment Stance

Jeff Van Drew

On Monday, businesswoman and former 2016 GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina said it is &#8220;vital&#8221; that President Donald Trump be impeached, adding that the Republican Party now &#8220;sadly&#8221; stands for &#8220;loyalty to Trump.&#8221;
&#8220;I think [Trump] is going to be impeached, and I think he won’t be removed from office,&#8221; Fiorina told CNN host Poppy Harlow.
&#8220;I think it is vital that he be impeached,&#8221; she continued, according to <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/12/16/carly_fiorina_it_is_vital_that_trump_is_impeached.html">RealClear Politics</a>. &#8220;Whether removed this close to an election, I don’t know, but I think the conduct is impeachable.&#8221;
&#8220;And what I regret is that the principles that are being debated in this impeachment trial – separation of powers, abuse of power, obstruction of Congress – those principles are not as immediate or intense as partisanship or people’s belief that the policies that I care about impact me personally,&#8221; Fiorina added. &#8220;So for example, there is a large pro-life community in this country, and they feel disrespected by the Democrat Party, and my prediction is, they will stand by Trump through everything, because that issue is not only important to them, but it&#8217;s personal to them.&#8221;
&#8220;It is notable that you, a Republican, who has run for office for the Senate as a Republican, for president as a Republican, who may run again as a Republican, is saying it is, quote, vital that he be impeached,&#8221; Harlow commented.
Fiorina told Harlow that her &#8220;message&#8221; to her Republican friends in the House and Senate would be that &#8220;hanging onto a job is not the most important thing.&#8221;
&#8220;In this country, we don&#8217;t pledge allegiance to a party or to a president,&#8221; she said. &#8220;In this country, principles matter, and in particular the principle that we have co-equal branches of government and that no one is above the law, and that it is Congress&#8217; duty to oversee and to investigate.&#8221;
When asked about what the Republican Party stands for following the 2016 presidential election, Fiorina hit the same note.
&#8220;Loyalty to Trump is what I think it stands for,&#8221; she answered. &#8220;Sadly, sadly.&#8221;
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Question: &quot;What does the Republican Party today stand for?&quot;
Carly Fiorina: &quot;I don&#39;t know. Loyalty to Trump is what I think it stands for.&quot; <a href="https://t.co/GO6q0QI1BB">pic.twitter.com/GO6q0QI1BB</a>
&mdash; The Hill (@thehill) <a href="https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1206718397087731712?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 16, 2019</a></blockquote>
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During the 2016 presidential election, then-candidate Trump took a shot at Fiorina&#8217;s appearance. <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/09/10/trump-fiorina-look-face/71992454/">USA Today</a> reported in 2015:
<blockquote>
A newly published Rolling Stone article shows GOP front-runner Donald Trump mocking fellow candidate Carly Fiorina&#8217;s looks when he sees her on TV.
When the anchor throws to Carly Fiorina for her reaction to Trump&#8217;s momentum, Trump&#8217;s expression sours in schoolboy disgust as the camera bores in on Fiorina. &#8220;Look at that face!&#8221; he cries. &#8220;Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?!&#8221;
</blockquote>
Fiorina responded to the comments during an appearance on Fox News&#8217; &#8220;The Kelly File,&#8221; hosted by Megyn Kelly.
&#8220;Well, I think those comments speak for themselves and all the many, many thousands of voters that are helping me climb in the polls out there,&#8221; Fiorina said. &#8220;Yes, they&#8217;re very serious.&#8221;
Trump later defended his comments on &#8220;Fox &amp; Friends.&#8221;
&#8220;Probably I did say something like that about Carly — I&#8217;m talking about persona, I&#8217;m not talking not about looks,&#8221; he contended, adding, &#8220;When I get criticized constantly about my hair, nobody does a story about &#8216;Oh, isn&#8217;t that terrible, they criticized Donald Trump&#8217;s hair.'&#8221;
WATCH the full interview, below:
<iframe title="Carly Fiorina: It is &quot;vital&quot; Trump be impeached" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/x-RWNgeJ-sE?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Carly Fiorina

WATCH: Carly Fiorina Says It’s &#8216;Vital&#8217; To Impeach Trump, Republican Party Stands For ‘Loyalty To Trump, Sadly’

Anti-Semitic Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) attacked Republicans on Sunday during an interview on far-left MSNBC, claiming that the Republican Party is synonymous with hateful and &#8220;sinful&#8221; rhetoric.
&#8220;There&#8217;s a brand around you that has made you a target, even in your re-election,&#8221; host Joy Reid said. &#8220;We just had members of the Navy during the Army Navy football game were flashing what looked like the white power sign, like these are the things that we&#8217;re talking about in the news. How do you process that as somebody who is an elected official, and how do your constituents process it?&#8221;
&#8220;Yeah, I mean hate, sinful, [unintelligible] rhetoric is very dangerous and it&#8217;s becoming synonymous with the Republican Party,&#8221; Omar responded. &#8220;They have refused to condemn and distance themselves from members within their party that have threatened my life and the lives of others, that have caused the deaths of people in this country who follow their message, and have put their names, the names of our president, and many of the Republican leaders in their manifestos as they have taken innocent lives.&#8221;
Omar added, &#8220;But what we have to remember is we don&#8217;t have to be that; we don&#8217;t have to be that country, and so my message has always been love trumps hate. We have a lot of compassion to go around.&#8221;
WATCH:
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WOW 
Watch Ilhan Omar say that Hate is becoming &quot;synonymous with the Republican Party&quot; 
I&#39;m old enough to remember when some Congresswoman Tweeted some pretty Hateful things herself. <a href="https://t.co/3fjBdbC0KC">pic.twitter.com/3fjBdbC0KC</a>
&mdash; Benny (@bennyjohnson) <a href="https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1206354899799334912?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 15, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Omar has a documented history of being sympathetic to Islamic terrorists. Here are just a few examples:
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.fox9.com/news/minnesota-isis-sentencing-ilhan-omar-letter">Advocated for leniency and “compassion” in the sentencing of men who were convicted of trying to join ISIS</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.jpost.com/American-Politics/Ilhan-Omar-calls-for-release-of-Egyptian-prisoner-with-terrorist-ties-586456">Called for a senior Muslim Brotherhood member to be released from jail in Egypt</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.cnsnews.com/blog/melanie-arter/rep-ilhan-omar-voted-against-bill-let-insurance-companies-deny-payouts-terrorists">Voted against a bill that allowed insurance companies to deny life insurance payouts to terrorist’s families</a></li>
</ul>
Omar, who has been <a href="https://apnews.com/a97b8b2d48c163c5965c2574ccbbe3d3">praised</a> by former KKK grand wizard David Duke, is among the most anti-Semitic members of Congress.
The following is an excerpt on one example of Omar&#8217;s anti-Semitism from a Daily Wire report earlier this year:
In 2012, she tweeted: “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.”
Responding to criticism over the tweet, Omar <a href="https://twitter.com/IlhanMN/status/1002295140172664832">claimed</a> she was “drawing attention to the apartheid Israeli regime.”
“The oft-repeated notion that Israel is an ‘apartheid’ nation is incorrect on multiple grounds,” The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/37690/dem-candidate-ilhan-omar-defending-tweet-evil-frank-camp">reported</a> in October. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) <a href="http://www.adl.org/resources/fact-sheets/response-to-common-inaccuracy-israel-is-an-apartheid-state">refutes</a> the notion that Israel is an “apartheid” nation:
<blockquote>Arab citizens of Israel enjoy the full range of civil and political rights, including the right to organize politically, the right to vote and the right to speak and publish freely. Israeli Arabs and other non-Jewish Israelis serve as members of Israel’s security forces, are elected to parliament and appointed to the country’s highest courts. They are afforded equal educational opportunities, and there are ongoing initiatives to further improve the economic standing of all of Israel’s minorities.</blockquote>
In a New York Times column, Bari Weiss <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/21/opinion/ilhan-omar-israel-jews.html">slammed</a> Omar’s conspiracy-minded views on Israel:
<blockquote>The conspiracy theory of the Jew as the hypnotic conspirator, the duplicitous manipulator, the sinister puppeteer is one with ancient roots and a bloody history. In the New Testament, it is a small band of Jews who get Rome — then the greatest power in the world — to do their bidding by killing Christ. Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, speaks to the Jews about Jesus in the book of John: “Take him yourselves and judge him according to your own law.” But the Jews punt the decision back to Pilate: “We are not permitted to put anyone to death.” And so Pilate does the deed on their behalf. In the book of Matthew, the implications of this manipulation are spelled out: “His blood is on us and our children,” the Jews say — a line that has been so historically destructive that even Mel Gibson cut it from his “Passion of the Christ.”
In the two millenniums that followed, even after 1965, when the Catholic Church formally disavowed the belief that the Jews killed Jesus, this was the template for the anti-Semitic conspiracy: the ability of this tiny minority to use its wiles and its proximity to power to con others into accomplishing their evil ends. It has led to countless expulsions, murders, massacres and pogroms throughout Europe and elsewhere.
The Jewish power to hypnotize the world, as Ms. Omar put it, is the plot of Jud Süss — the most successful Nazi film ever made. In the film, produced by Joseph Goebbels himself, Josef Süss Oppenheimer, an 18th-century religious Jew, emerges from the ghetto, makes himself over as an assimilated man, and rises to become the treasurer to the Duke of Württemberg. Silly duke: Allowing a single Jew into his city leads to death and destruction.</blockquote>
Read more examples of Omar&#8217;s anti-Semitism <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ocasio-cortez-omar-tlaib-take-democrats-anti-ryan-saavedra">here</a>.

Introduction of Legislation to End School Pushout in Washington, US

Ilhan Omar: ‘Hate, Sinful’ Rhetoric Is ‘Synonymous’ With GOP; GOP Inspires Terror Attacks

Anti-Semitism

Ilhan Omar

New Jersey Democratic Congressman Jeff Van Drew, who has strongly opposed the Democrats&#8217; impeachment efforts, is leaving the Democratic Party and becoming a member of the Republican Party after meeting with President Donald Trump.
&#8220;Van Drew’s congressional and campaign staff were informed he was planning to switch parties on Saturday, according to Democratic sources,&#8221; Politico <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/14/jeff-van-drew-change-parties-085036">reported</a>. &#8220;The question was now when, not if, Van Drew was joining the Republican Party, according to several Democrats with knowledge of the ongoing conversations.&#8221;
Van Drew reportedly met &#8220;at length&#8221; with Trump on Friday and his decision to switch parties is supposed to be officially announced in the near future, a top GOP source told Politico.
The Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/trump-urges-rep-van-drew-anti-impeachment-democrat-to-switch-parties/2019/12/14/b201bb4a-1ea0-11ea-8d58-5ac3600967a1_story.html">reported</a> that his decision to switch parties delivered &#8220;a political jolt to Democrats ahead of next week’s expected vote to impeach the president.&#8221;
News of Van Drew&#8217;s defection went viral online moments after the story broke with many noting that the move is highly damaging to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi&#8217;s impeachment efforts.
Federalist co-founder Sean Davis tweeted: &#8220;Nancy Pelosi isn&#8217;t just hemorrhaging votes for her impeachment gambit, she&#8217;s now facing wholesale defections from the Democrat party because of its impeachment hysteria.&#8221;
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Nancy Pelosi isn&#39;t just hemorrhaging votes for her impeachment gambit, she&#39;s now facing wholesale defections from the Democrat party because of its impeachment hysteria. <a href="https://t.co/iWkH1bcous">https://t.co/iWkH1bcous</a>
&mdash; Sean Davis (@seanmdav) <a href="https://twitter.com/seanmdav/status/1205949015734575104?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 14, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Bryan Dean Wright, a Democrat and former CIA officer, responded to the news by writing on Twitter: &#8220;Turns out people get tired of defending a party that’s spent the past three years embracing Socialists, anti-Semites, and hysteria.&#8221;
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Turns out people get tired of defending a party that’s spent the past three years embracing Socialists, anti-Semites, and hysteria. <a href="https://t.co/8Wnr0Vw1EH">https://t.co/8Wnr0Vw1EH</a>
&mdash; Bryan Dean Wright (@BryanDeanWright) <a href="https://twitter.com/BryanDeanWright/status/1205957528040833024?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 14, 2019</a></blockquote>
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In a recent interview with USA Today, Van Drew <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/democrat-congressman-warns-his-party-be-careful-what-you-wish-for-on-impeachment-its-tearing-the-nation-apart">said</a>, “My job isn’t really to like or dislike him. My job is to exact as much goodwill and help for my district and for this nation and for this world that I possibly can while he’s president.”
On the issue of impeachment, Van Drew said, “To some folks, that’s reminiscent of what was done to kings and queens many years ago. Everything our country doesn’t stand for.”
Speaking on impeachment this week, Van Drew told reporters: “It was supposed to be bipartisan, it was supposed to be incontrovertible. It was supposed to be something that was always on the rarest of circumstances. Well it’s not bipartisan.”
Van Drew is not the only Democrat to warn his party on impeachment, Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY) <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/democrat-warns-party-not-to-impeach-trump-because-of-who-gop-will-nominate-in-2020">warned</a> the Democrats that if Trump gets removed from office that it could be a bad move politically because of who the Democrats may have to face from the GOP in 2020.
“I do think that it’s the right thing to do to remove him from office. I believe he is an imminent danger to this country and to our democracy, but I was saying that the political consequences may not be very good for the Democrats,” Yarmuth said. “I will guarantee you the Republican Party would not nominate Mike Pence to succeed him. They would nominate someone like Nikki Haley who would be much more difficult for Democrats to defeat.”
In late November, Democrat Rep. Brenda Lawrence (MI) said that Trump should be censured but not removed from office.
“You can censure, you don’t have to remove the president,” Lawrence <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/tide-turning-on-impeachment-as-democrat-congresswoman-flips-i-dont-see-the-value-of-kicking-him-out-of-office">said</a>. “We are so close to an election. I will tell you, sitting here, knowing how divided this country is, I don’t see the value of kicking him out of office, but I do see the value of putting down a marker saying his behavior is not acceptable.”

Democrat Congressman Leaving Party Over Impeachment, Becoming Republican

On Tuesday’s episode of “The Michael Knowles Show,” Knowles talks about how Senator Lindsey Graham wants a short impeachment trial. Video and partial transcript below: 
Nothing could be better for Trump than this impeachment. You know, Lindsey Graham on the Judiciary Committee is saying that once the House impeaches and it goes to trial in the Senate, they&#8217;re going to get this impeachment over with ASAP.
No, do not do that — drag this thing out — that&#8217;s a terrible idea. This is so helpful to Trump, this should drag on for two months. Now, I think what Lindsey Graham is thinking, what Republicans on the Hill are thinking is, “We need to wrap this up because we&#8217;ve already won, impeachment has helped us. Let&#8217;s just get it over with before something bad happens.” 
What could happen? You could call Joe Biden to testify and he could start crying and show himself to be a sympathetic witness and turn the impeachment in his favor. You could get Hunter Biden to testify, a complete degenerate, but he could still evoke some sympathy — the Bidens are very good at this. Fine, don&#8217;t get them to testify. I don&#8217;t think you need to get either of those guys to testify. Just keep dragging out all these Democratic lawyers who are so awful — Pamela Karlan, Daniel Goldman, Noah Feldman — all these guys that are just so unlikable and so elitist and so disconnected from the American people. 
Drag out Adam Schiff, get Adam Schiff to testify before the Senate. Drag out associates of the Bidens. I don’t know, drag out Hunter Biden&#8217;s coke dealer — who knows? Drag that out for a long time. That really helps Trump, it drills the point home the Democrats have nothing. And the Democrats will pretend to have something even when they&#8217;ve gotten nothing. 
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The thing is, if you wrap up impeachment right now, the Democrats are going to declare a victory even though they&#8217;ve lost on every single stage of this. So you&#8217;ve got to keep showing the American people that the Democrats have nothing. Otherwise, the mainstream media aren&#8217;t going to do it for you. A great example of this is the IG report. The IG report just came out, here is ABC News&#8217;s take.
<blockquote>NARRATOR: After years of President Trump calling it a deep state, saying the FBI was anti-Trump when it launched an investigation into possible ties between his campaign and Russia, tonight, the long-awaited independent report, the Justice Department&#8217;s inspector general, revealing there was no evidence of a witch hunt. Determining the FBI had enough evidence pointing to either a federal crime or a threat to national security or both to justify the probe at the height of the election, and that the agents who made the final decision to launch the investigation were not influenced by political bias. </blockquote>
Okay, so no witch hunt. The FBI: Totally fine. Democrats good, orange man bad — now I get it. Except, of course, that&#8217;s not that&#8217;s not really what happened. The IG report — I mean, the IG report is extremely long so you can read the executive summary or something — it said that the FBI committed a whole slew of errors in the lead up to wiretapping and spying on the Trump campaign. Now ultimately, the IG said this wasn&#8217;t some politically motivated conspiracy, it was just incompetence and a number of mistakes. 
<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-michael-knowles-show/id1266577963?mt=2">Listen to full episodes of “The Michael Knowles Show” on iTunes. 
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Senator Lindsey Graham Holds News Conference On Impeachment

KNOWLES: If Republicans Are Smart, The Impeachment Trial Will Drag On For Months

Hunter Biden

Lindsey Graham

As National Review <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/exclusive-u-s-representatives-call-on-barr-to-prosecute-obscene-pornography/">reports,</a> a small group of Republican lawmakers have sent a letter calling for Attorney General Bill Barr to enforce obscenity laws as a way to fight hardcore pornography. Representative Jim Banks of Indiana explains that pornography causes measurable harm in a number of significant ways:
<blockquote>Child pornography is <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/child-pornography-basic-f_b_4094430">on the rise</a> as one of the fastest-growing online businesses with an annual revenue over $3 billion.The <a href="https://www.asacp.org/whitepaper/ASACP-whitepaper-9-10-2010.pdf">United States</a> has nearly 50% of all commercialized child pornography websites. Pornography is ubiquitous in our culture and our <a href="https://www.10tv.com/article/children-being-exposed-pornography-through-parents-internet-searches-2019-jul">children are being exposed</a> at younger ages. <a href="http://www.unh.edu/ccrc/pdf/CV169.pdf">Nine in every ten</a> boys under the age of 18 have seen porn. <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5507751/NSPCC-offers-counselling-children-young-11-addicted-porn.html">Children</a> are struggling with pornography addiction.</blockquote>
For these reasons and others, several states have already declared pornography a public health crisis, as the lawmakers mentioned in their letter. To be clear, what they are requesting is the enforcement of existing laws that would help to tamp down some forms of pornography. They are not calling for new laws to be put on the books. Personally, I&#8217;d hope that this is a first step towards a wider-ranging war on hardcore porn, though that&#8217;s not what the lawmakers are advocating. At the very least, this should be the beginning of a conversation about the proliferation of hardcore porn, and the government&#8217;s role in addressing the problem.
But this is not a conversation most people want to have. Of course, you&#8217;d expect those on the political Left to resist any effort to restrict or ban porn. After all, that&#8217;s the side that generally supports explicit sex education for children, child drag queens, trans kids, and so on. They are committed to exposing children to all manner of sexual confusion and degeneracy at increasingly younger and younger ages. The real shame is that many on the Right are just as likely to valiantly stand up for the rights of internet pimps and smut peddlers. Any talk of porn restriction is waved off with slogans about &#8220;limited government&#8221; and declarations about the ineffectiveness of prohibition.
<iframe title="It’s Time for a War on Porn | The Matt Walsh Show Ep. 386" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8DxLxTwXBGI?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
I agree that government should be limited. I also agree that the government can&#8217;t go around prohibiting everything that the bureaucrats currently comprising it happen to dislike. But I still think there is a role for the government to play in the porn problem. I&#8217;ll explain why.
The most common defense of porn is that it&#8217;s a matter involving consenting adults and has no effect on anyone else. If this were true, I&#8217;d probably agree that the government has no place in restricting it, even if it is morally objectionable. However, this is not only untrue — it is laughably untrue. First of all, the <a href="https://fightthenewdrug.org/by-the-numbers-porn-sex-trafficking-connected/">link</a> between the sex trafficking industry and porn is well established. The porn viewer may assume that the figures on the screen are acting consensually, but the fact is that, at least some of the time, they are not. The viewer may also assume that the people involved are all adults (unless he&#8217;s intentionally accessing child porn, which is a <a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20050818005532/en/Illegal-Child-Pornography-Fastest-Growing-Internet-Businesses">billion dollar industry</a> in its own right), but sometimes they are not. The viewer simply has no way of knowing whether he&#8217;s watching the rape of a trafficked woman, or the abuse of a minor, or a consensual act between sober and clear-minded adults. But he&#8217;s not too concerned, as long as he gets what he wants out of the deal.
This is reason enough for, at a minimum, much heavier regulation on internet porn. It&#8217;s true that sex trafficking and child porn are both illegal already, but legal porn provides a platform for both. It&#8217;s impossible to sufficiently fight trafficking and child porn without heavier regulations on the types of porn that allegedly involve neither. But even if this significant concern could be put to the side, the case for regulating or banning porn would remain. That&#8217;s because porn — even consensual, adult porn — harms children.
On average, children are <a href="https://www.netnanny.com/blog/the-detrimental-effects-of-pornography-on-small-children/">first exposed</a> to hardcore porn at the age of 11, if not sooner. This exposure is not neutral in its impact. Children are <a href="https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_interest/child_law/resources/child_law_practiceonline/child_law_practice/vol-33/may-2014/how-pornography-harms-children--the-advocate-s-role/">damaged in quantifiable ways</a>, affecting their emotional and psychological development, their attitude towards themselves and others, their behavior, and their ability to form healthy sexual relationships in the future. Porn even <a href="https://fightthenewdrug.org/how-porn-changes-the-brain/">produces neurological changes</a> in the brain. Is there not, at minimum, a reason to consider involving the state in this assault on our children&#8217;s minds and bodies?
Consenting adults may well have the right to do what they want with each other in the privacy of their homes. But do they have a right to film it and then publish it on a forum where children in elementary school might easily access it? Where does this right originate? God? Did God instill in all humans the inalienable and sacred right to publish footage of their orgies on the internet for all to view? If God did not, then from where or what does this right spring? Perhaps we should consider the possibility that there is no such right. It is a privilege that society can either choose to grant or not. Now the question is whether the privilege of adults to post their sexual escapades online is more important than the privilege of children to be protected from the profound psychological harm caused by exposure to such escapades.
You might argue that this is something for parents, and not government, to handle. But this argument ignores the reality of the situation. Parents cannot possibly shield their children from a porn epidemic that is so ubiquitous and accessible. Even if they restrict all internet access in their own homes, and refuse to allow their children to have phones with internet access (a wise move, to be sure), all it requires is one friend whose parents have not taken that step. And every kid will have at least one friend like that — probably many more than just one. This is a problem that parents cannot handle on their own. That&#8217;s why the state may have a role.

Google search sex

WALSH: A Group Of Republicans Want The Government To Start Fighting Hardcore Pornography. They’re Right. Here’s Why.

Human Trafficking

Sexuality

William Barr

On Monday, House Republicans released a 123-page report walking through all the key evidence presented after several weeks of closed-door interviews and public testimonies of witnesses. The Democrats, the Republicans maintain, not only failed to make their case that President Trump committed an impeachable offense, they abused their power in the process.
&#8220;The Democrats’ impeachment inquiry is not the organic outgrowth of serious misconduct; it is an orchestrated campaign to upend our political system,&#8221; the Republican report reads. It states:
<blockquote>The Democrats are trying to impeach a duly elected President based on the accusations and assumptions of unelected bureaucrats who disagreed with President Trump’s policy initiatives and processes. They are trying to impeach President Trump because some unelected bureaucrats were discomforted by an elected President’s telephone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. They are trying to impeach President Trump because some unelected bureaucrats chafed at an elected President’s &#8216;outside the beltway&#8217; approach to diplomacy.</blockquote>
&#8220;The Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, led by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, is merely the outgrowth of their obsession with re-litigating the results of the 2016 presidential election,&#8221; Republicans maintain. &#8220;Despite their best efforts, the evidence gathered during the Democrats’ partisan and one-sided impeachment inquiry does not support that President Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate his political rival to benefit the President in the 2020 presidential election. The evidence does not establish any impeachable offense.&#8221;
In the Findings section of the report, the Republicans detail the key evidence and context they say the Democrats are attempting to downplay or outright ignore to make their ultimately &#8220;failed&#8221; case for impeachment:
FINDINGS
Democrats allege that President Trump pressured Ukraine to initiate investigations into his political rival, former Vice President Biden, for the purpose of benefiting the President in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. The evidence does not support the Democrats’ allegations. Instead, the findings outlined below are based on the evidence presented and information available in the public realm.
<ul>
<li>President Trump has a deep-seated, genuine, and reasonable skepticism of Ukraine due to its history of pervasive corruption.</li>
<li>President Trump has a long-held skepticism of U.S. foreign assistance and believes that Europe should pay its fair share for mutual defense.</li>
<li>President Trump’s concerns about Hunter Biden’s role on Burisma’s board are valid. The Obama State Department noted concerns about Hunter Biden’s relationship with Burisma in 2015 and 2016.</li>
<li>There is indisputable evidence that senior Ukrainian government officials opposed President Trump’s candidacy in the 2016 election and did so publicly. It has been publicly reported that a Democratic National Committee operative worked with Ukrainian officials, including the Ukrainian Embassy, to dig up dirt on then-candidate Trump.</li>
<li>The evidence does not establish that President Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate Burisma Holdings, Vice President Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, or Ukrainian influence in the 2016 election for the purpose of benefiting him in the 2020 election.</li>
<li>The evidence does not establish that President Trump withheld a meeting with President Zelensky for the purpose of pressuring Ukraine to investigate Burisma Holdings, Vice President Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, or Ukrainian influence in the 2016 election.</li>
<li>The evidence does not support that President Trump withheld U.S. security assistance to Ukraine for the purpose of pressuring Ukraine to investigate Burisma Holdings, Vice President Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, or Ukrainian influence in the 2016 election.</li>
<li>The evidence does not support that President Trump orchestrated a shadow foreign policy apparatus for the purpose of pressuring Ukraine to investigate Burisma Holdings, Vice President Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, or Ukrainian influence in the 2016 election.</li>
<li>The evidence does not support that President Trump covered up the substance of his telephone conversation with President Zelensky by restricting access to the call summary.</li>
<li>President Trump’s assertion of longstanding claims of executive privilege is a legitimate response to an unfair, abusive, and partisan process, and does not constitute obstruction of a legitimate impeachment inquiry.</li>
</ul>
Below is the full text of the report&#8217;s Executive Summary (footnotes removed).
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
On November 8, 2016, nearly 63 million Americans from around the country chose Donald J. Trump to be the 45th President of the United States. Now, less than a year before the next presidential election, 231 House Democrats in Washington, D.C., are trying to undo the will of the American people. As one Democrat admitted, the pursuit of this extreme course of action is because they want to stop President Trump’s re-election.
Democrats in the House of Representatives have been working to impeach President Trump since his election. Democrats introduced four separate resolutions in 2017 and 2018 seeking to impeach President Trump. In January 2019, on their first day in power, House Democrats again introduced articles of impeachment. That same day, a newly elected Congresswoman promised to an audience of her supporters, “we’re going to go in there and we’re going to impeach the [expletive deleted].” Her comments are not isolated. Speaker Nancy Pelosi called President Trump “an impostor” and said it is “dangerous” to allow American voters to evaluate his performance in 2020.
The Democrats’ impeachment inquiry is not the organic outgrowth of serious misconduct; it is an orchestrated campaign to upend our political system. The Democrats are trying to impeach a duly elected President based on the accusations and assumptions of unelected bureaucrats who disagreed with President Trump’s policy initiatives and processes. They are trying to impeach President Trump because some unelected bureaucrats were discomforted by an elected President’s telephone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. They are trying to impeach President Trump because some unelected bureaucrats chafed at an elected President’s “outside the beltway” approach to diplomacy.
The sum and substance of the Democrats’ case for impeachment is that President Trump abused his authority to pressure Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, President Trump’s potential political rival, for President Trump’s benefit in the 2020 election. Democrats say this pressure campaign encompassed leveraging a White House meeting and the release of U.S. security assistance to force the Ukrainian President to succumb to President Trump’s political wishes. Democrats say that Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the President’s personal attorney, and a “shadow” group of U.S. officials conspired to benefit the President politically.
The evidence presented does not prove any of these Democrat allegations, and none of the Democrats’ witnesses testified to having evidence of bribery, extortion, or any high crime or misdemeanor.
The evidence does not support the accusation that President Trump pressured President Zelensky to initiate investigations for the purpose of benefiting the President in the 2020 election. The evidence does not support the accusation that President Trump covered up the summary of his phone conversation with President Zelensky. The evidence does not support the accusation that President Trump obstructed the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry.
At the heart of the matter, the impeachment inquiry involves the actions of only two people: President Trump and President Zelensky. The summary of their July 25, 2019, telephone conversation shows no quid pro quo or indication of conditionality, threats, or pressure—much less evidence of bribery or extortion. The summary reflects laughter, pleasantries, and cordiality. President Zelensky has said publicly and repeatedly that he felt no pressure. President Trump has said publicly and repeatedly that he exerted no pressure.
Even examining evidence beyond the presidential phone call shows no quid pro quo, bribery, extortion, or abuse of power. The evidence shows that President Trump holds a deepseated, genuine, and reasonable skepticism of Ukraine due to its history of pervasive corruption. The President has also been vocal about his skepticism of U.S. foreign aid and the need for European allies to shoulder more of the financial burden for regional defense. Senior Ukrainian officials under former President Petro Poroshenko publicly attacked then-candidate Trump during the 2016 campaign—including some senior Ukrainian officials who remained in their positions after President Zelensky’s term began. All of these factors bear on the President’s state of mind and help to explain the President’s actions toward Ukraine and President Zelensky.
Understood in this proper context, the President’s initial hesitation to meet with President Zelensky or to provide U.S. taxpayer-funded security assistance to Ukraine without thoughtful review is entirely prudent. Ultimately, President Zelensky took decisive action demonstrating his commitment to promoting reform, combatting corruption, and replacing Poroshenko-era holdovers with new leadership in his Administration. President Trump then released security assistance to Ukraine and met with President Zelensky in September 2019—all without Ukraine taking any action to investigate President Trump’s political rival.
House Democrats allege that Ukraine felt pressure to bend to the President’s political will, but the evidence shows a different reality. Ukraine felt good about its relationship with the United States in the early months of the Zelensky Administration, having had several high-level meetings with senior U.S. officials between July and September. Although U.S. security assistance was temporarily paused, the U.S. government did not convey the pause to the Ukrainians because U.S. officials believed the pause would get worked out and, if publicized, may be mischaracterized as a shift in U.S. policy towards Ukraine. U.S. officials said that the Ukrainian government in Kyiv never knew the aid was delayed until reading about it in the U.S. media. Ambassador Kurt Volker, the key American interlocutor trusted by the Ukrainian government, said the Ukrainians never raised concerns to him until after the pause became public in late August.
The Democrats’ impeachment narrative ignores Ukraine’s dramatic transformation in its fight against endemic corruption. President Trump was skeptical of Ukrainian corruption and his Administration sought proof that newly-elected President Zelensky was a true reformer. And after winning a parliamentary majority, the new Zelensky administration took rapid strides to crack down on corruption. Several high-level U.S. officials observed firsthand these anticorruption achievements in Kyiv, and the security assistance was released soon afterward.
The Democrats’ impeachment narrative also ignores President Trump’s steadfast support for Ukraine in its war against Russian occupation. Several of the Democrats’ witnesses described how President Trump’s policies toward Ukraine to combat Russian aggression have been substantially stronger than those of President Obama—then under the stewardship of Vice President Biden. Where President Obama and Vice President Biden gave the Ukrainians nightvision goggles and blankets, the Trump Administration provided the Ukrainians with lethal defensive assistance, including Javelin anti-tank missiles.
The Democrats nonetheless tell a story of an illicit pressure campaign run by President Trump through his personal attorney, Mayor Giuliani, to coerce Ukraine to investigate the President’s political rival by withholding a meeting and security assistance. There is, however, no direct, firsthand evidence of any such scheme. The Democrats are alleging guilt on the basis of hearsay, presumptions, and speculation—all of which are reflected in the anonymous whistleblower complaint that sparked this inquiry. The Democrats’ narrative is so dependent on speculation that one Democrat publicly justified hearsay as “better” than direct evidence. Where there are ambiguous facts, the Democrats interpret them in a light most unfavorable to the President. In the absence of real evidence, the Democrats appeal to emotion—evaluating how unelected bureaucrats felt about the events in question.
The fundamental disagreement apparent in the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry is a difference of world views and a discomfort with President Trump’s policy decisions. To the extent that some unelected bureaucrats believed President Trump had established an “irregular” foreign policy apparatus, it was because they were not a part of that apparatus. There is nothing illicit about three senior U.S. officials—each with official interests relating to Ukraine—shepherding the U.S.-Ukraine relationship and reporting their actions to State Department and NSC leadership. There is nothing inherently improper with Mayor Giuliani’s involvement as well because the Ukrainians knew that he was a conduit to convince President Trump that President Zelensky was serious about reform.
There is also nothing wrong with asking serious questions about the presence of Vice President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, on the board of directors of Burisma, a corrupt Ukrainian company, or about Ukraine’s attempts to influence the 2016 presidential election. Biden’s Burisma has an international reputation as a corrupt company. As far back as 2015, the Obama State Department had concerns about Hunter Biden’s role on Burisma’s board. Ukrainian anticorruption activists noted concerns as well. Publicly available—and irrefutable—evidence shows how senior Ukrainian government officials sought to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election in opposition to President Trump’s candidacy, and that some in the Ukrainian embassy in Washington worked with a Democrat operative to achieve that goal. While Democrats reflexively dismiss these truths as conspiracy theories, the facts are indisputable and bear heavily on the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry.
In our system of government, power resides with the American people, who delegate executive power to the President through an election once every four years. Unelected officials and career bureaucrats assist in the execution of the laws. The unelected bureaucracy exists to serve the elected representatives of the American people. The Democrats’ impeachment narrative flips our system on its head in service of their political ambitions.
The Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, led by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, is merely the outgrowth of their obsession with re-litigating the results of the 2016 presidential election. Despite their best efforts, the evidence gathered during the Democrats’ partisan and one-sided impeachment inquiry does not support that President Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate his political rival to benefit the President in the 2020 presidential election. The evidence does not establish any impeachable offense.
But that is not for Democrats’ want of trying.
For the first phase of the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, Chairman Schiff led the inquiry from his Capitol basement bunker, preventing transparency on the process and accountability for his actions. Because the fact-finding was unclassified, the closed-door process was purely for information control. This arrangement allowed Chairman Schiff—who had already publicly fabricated evidence and misled Americans about his interaction with the anonymous whistleblower—to selectively leak information to paint misleading public narratives, while simultaneously imposing a gag rule on Republican members. From his basement bunker,
Chairman Schiff provided no due process protections for the President and he directed witnesses called by the Democrats not to answer Republican questions. Chairman Schiff also ignored Republican requests to secure the testimony of the anonymous whistleblower, despite promising earlier that the whistleblower would provide “unfiltered testimony.”
When the Democrats emerged from the bunker for the public phase of their impeachment inquiry, Chairman Schiff continued to deny fundamental fairness and minority rights. Chairman Schiff interrupted Republican Members and directed witnesses not to answer Republican questions. Chairman Schiff refused to allow Republicans to exercise the limited procedural rights afforded to them. Chairman Schiff rejected witnesses identified by Republicans who would inject some semblance of fairness and objectivity. Chairman Schiff denied Republican subpoenas for testimony and documents, violating the Democrats’ own rules to vote down these subpoenas with no notice to Republicans.
Speaker Pelosi, Chairman Schiff, and House Democrats seek to impeach President Trump—not because they have proof of a high crime or misdemeanor, but because they disagreed with the President’s actions and his policies. But in our system of government, the President is accountable to the American people. The accountability to the American people comes at the ballot box, not in House Democrats’ star chamber.
<a href="https://apps.npr.org/documents/document.html?id=6564763-2019-12-02-Report-of-Evidence-in-the-Democrats">Read the full report here</a>.

President Trump

GOP Impeachment Report: Here’s All The Evidence Democrats Are Ignoring

Adam Schiff

Ukraine

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