As we approach the one-month “anniversary” of the Donald Trump presidency, it is instructive to review the full gamet of all of the Left’s multi-dimensional and fever-pitched, all-out daily attempts to discredit, delegitimize and mock the new administration and to continue to stymie the confirmation of as many cabinet nominees; and thereby frustrate the appointment of as many under-secretaries, administrators and staffers of the various federal departments, as possible. One consequence: Obama political appointment holdovers and career staffers continue to wield power in many agencies and might very well be the sources of the wave of adverse leaks fed to a ravenously hostile Press, including those that led to the dismissal of national security advisor Michael Flynn on February 13th, as discussed below. As was declared by some after Donald Trump’s upset election on November 8th, there will be no attempt to “normalize” relations with this president! And, as was said by others, the goal of this coordinated and multi-faceted “Resistance” to President Trump, conducted by the Left and their handmaidens – the Democrat Party, is nothing less than to make the country “ungovernable” under Mr. Trump’s stewardship! That towering legal intellect, Rep. Maxine Waters (D.-Ca.), has declared that articles of impeachment are already in the works! For what High Crime or Misdemeanor?
While admittedly, some of the chaos of the past few weeks can be attributed to President Trump’s tweeting – which often steps upon the story of a positive development the night before; his precedent-shattering “alternative” style in serving as president; the multiple power centers in the White House vying for the President’s ear; the current ad hoc status of the new administration’s nascent bureaucracy – caused by Senator Schumer’s delaying tactics, and the turmoil over the immigration order, inartfully-drafted by non-attorney Stephen Miller, the following are just some examples of the coordinated and integrated efforts of the Resistance by the Left over the last few weeks, carried-out with the one goal of making the nation “ungovernable” under this duly-elected president:
* Protests that occurred beginning on the night of Trump’s victory by college “snowflakes” quickly metamorphisized into coordinated rallies in dozens of U.S. cities protesting Trump’s win, illegally blocking freeways and city streets, and then in many cases turning into violent riots, most notably in Portland, Oregon, Oakland, California, Washington, DC and UC Berkeley. Chants of “not my president” and “this is what democracy looks like” rang in the air. All staged to what end? To overturn the results of the election, due to vague charges that Russia somehow affected the outcome of the election? That was already tried in the attempted electoral college coup of December 19th! Or were these initial protests nothing more than thousands of primal screams melded into one, lamenting that their candidate did not win?
The reality that these demonstrations; while perhaps spontaneous in the first few hours, were quickly hijacked by the Professional Left/Media Complex is obvious: witness the identical professionally-printed signs that sprung up in such disparate locales as Seattle, Boston, Miami and the Women’s March in DC and later, the posters of the Arab woman in the stars and stripes chador found everywhere during the protests over the immigration order. Additionally consider the rioting anarchists, all identically-clad in hooded black garb. Who outfitted them? And who paid for all of the buses that transported and assembled all of these “organic” demonstrators at the hundreds of marches and demonstrations; some of which turned into riots, and at all of the airports upon the outset of the immigration order? One can almost detect the whiff of George Soros’ billions behind this turmoil! Was DNC dirty-tricks chief Robert Kramer’s fingerprints also on these operations? Kramer was the Democratic apparatchik fingered by WikiLeaks as the coordinator of most of the mayhem that occurred within (and outside of) the Trump rallies during the campaign – violence, of course, blamed on the Trumpsters! Further, was Kramer working on behalf of Organizing for Action (OFA), the rump organization formerly known as Obama for America and was OFA coordinating these protests on a nationwide basis?
The fawning press coverage lauded these protests (and excused the over-rambunctious rioters) as signifying the birth of a new Tea-Party-like movement of the Left, sprung spontaneously from the soil as a knee-jerk reaction to the expectations of the new Donald Trump presidency! But are they? Nancy Pelosi famously labeled the Tea Party as “Astroturf”; artificially created by the GOP rather than organically arising from within the body politic, to protest the policies enacted by Barack Obama. The question arises: do these demonstrations signify a Left-Wing revolt that will catapult the Democrats to Congressional gains in the 2018 Mid-Term elections and the White House in 2020? Or, are these protests the true Astroturf, with the only affect of destabilizing the new administration?
* Another facet of the Resistance of the Left is the inauguration boycott of the 54 Democrat Congresspersons, led by civil-rights icon Congressman John Lewis (D.-Ga.), ostensibly called for by Lewis to protest alleged Russian interference in Donald Trump’s election. The Media failed to report that this was not the first time that Rep. Lewis boycotted a GOP inauguration. In 2001, he boycotted the first inauguration of George W. Bush as he declared that Bush was “not a legitimately elected president” due to the Florida recount. Further, there would have been a good chance Lewis would have also skipped the 2008 inauguration had John McCain won, as he had (for no discernible reason) called the McCain/Palin campaign a “throwback to (segregationist) George Wallace”.
Of course, in light of the fact that John Lewis, of Edmund Pettis Bridge fame, is an inviolable civil rights saint, the Mainstream Media did not bring up his past inaugural boycott and past statement about Senator McCain, nor questioned the wisdom of leading a boycott of a president that; like it or not, would be occupying the White House for at least, the next four years.
Nevertheless, John Lewis’ inaugural boycott certainly set the tone for the most contentious senatorial confirmation process in modern times. To date, only nine of the fifteen most senior positions requiring senatorial approval have been confirmed, 28 days into the new administration, despite the fact that the Democrats lack the votes to defeat any nominee. Using any obstructionist tactic at their disposal, including unprecedented mass boycotts of committee hearings on multiple nominees, the Democrats are acting on the wishes of their inflamed base, which demands zero accomodation with the Trump administration! What price may end up being paid by the country for this engineered turmoil?
* Another powerful front of the Resistance exists within the new Trump administration, in the form of Obama holdover political appointees, those Obama officials who transferred to career civil service positions and those ostensibly non-political bureaucrats who merely feel threatened by Donald Trump’s calls to shake up the bureaucracy, which may cost some jobs. It appears that the agencies most infected with this behind-the-scenes Resistance are the intelligence agencies and the Justice Department. These operatives of what has become in affect a “shadow government”, have acted daily to undermine and subvert the new administration, via selective leaks of highly sensitive intelligence and/or law enforcement communications that were monitored or wiretapped by the National Security Agency or other intelligence organs.
Donald Trump’s disparaging comments about the CIA in calling them “Nazis” (in commenting about the CIA’s role in the Russian prostitutes story; see below) while President Obama’s DCI John Brennan was still in full control of the intelligence apparatus, was a decision rife with potential peril! The foremost critic of the intelligence community during the Obama years and of Obama’s foreign policy, was Michael Flynn. Whether or not Flynn had conversations with the Russian ambassador on the issue of the fate of Obama-imposed sanctions under the incoming administration, is legally irrelevant as Flynn, the national security advisor-to be, had the perfect right to prospectively discuss the sanctions; consequently this episode did not run afoul, nor was even applicable, to the never-invoked Logan Act of 1799. Yet Flynn, for whatever reason, apparently hedged on whether sanctions were brought up. While the stated reason for his ouster was “lying” to Vice President Pence about whether he discussed the Obama-imposed sanctions on Russia with its ambassador (a knowing prevarication, or a mere lapse of total recall of the whole content of the December conversation?), the reason that Flynn was targeted in the first place by the shadow insurgents is the real story here. What apparently was not known by Flynn, Trump or his inner circle at the time, was that transcripts existed of Flynn’s December phone conversation, intercepted by Obama’s National Security Agency that were kept for the right time for release to the anti-Trump Media for the hit-job on Flynn.
The NSA regularly wiretaps foreign diplomats. The applicable law dictates that when an American citizen is a party to a telephone conversation with a foreigner that is monitored by U.S. intelligence, a warrant must be obtained by the secret FISA Court to unmask the identity of the American who was a party to the phone call. Was a warrant obtained to approve the release Michael Flynn’s identity to the Press? The release of his identity without such a warrant is a Federal felony. Additionally, these continuing leaks risk revealing intelligence means and methods. The FBI should immediately launch investigations for this subversion that is putting the nation’s security at risk!
Obama holdovers and/or sympathizers may also be behind other leaks involving intercepted communications from within President Trump’s inner circle, like the much-criticized private telephone calls between the President and the Mexican president and between Trump and the Australian prime minister. These are not the run-of-the-mill leaks of past administrations. Like other examples cited here, these are organized, systematic and undermining efforts by this “shadow government!”
Who will be the next victim to have his/her communications be “outed?”
A word on the alleged Russian connection: Democrat talking points that the Russians “stoled” the election from Hillary Clinton are baseless! No evidence has ever been received that any vote count was tampered with and some states’ ballot machines, (like crucial Michigan) weren’t even wired into the Internet to begin with! Despite what one hears on a daily basis in the liberal media echo chamber that Trump is a Kremlin tool, the hyper-critical New York Times reported on February 15th,(for a second time) that NO evidence has been unearthed that the Trump campaign, in any way, colluded with Russian intelligence during the election campaign! Yet, daily headlines scream that unnamed Trump operatives were in constant contact with unnamed Russian agents throughout the election season, on unspecified dates and times!
Russian intelligence has engaged in campaigns of “disinformation” since the 1920s, initiated by the KGB’s great-great grandfather Felix Dzerzhinsky. The FSB (the post-Soviet KGB) regularily floats misleading or discrediting stories to undermine elections in liberal democracies worldwide; the U.S. operation was not unique. And let’s not forget, the Russians also attempted to hack into the RNC systems; they were better protected than the vulnerable DNC computers (perhaps due to the fact that the password to John Podesta’s gmail account was “password!”). If WikiLeaks’ source for the hacking of the DNC systems were the Russians; denied by Julian Assange, the discreditation of the Clinton campaign by airing Hillary’s staffers’ own, undisputed words, wasn’t floated to aid Trump as much as to discredit Hillary Clinton, the odds-on favorite to win the election! The simple fact is, that unless Russia has developed an all-powerful future-predicting Oracle, THEY WERE AS SURPRISED AS ANYONE ELSE THAT DONALD TRUMP WON!!! The claim that the election was deliberately hijacked by the Russians with the specific intention of delivering a victory for Donald Trump, is pure malarky!!!
Donald Trump wants to pursue a strategy of attempting better relations with Russia, as Obama and George W. Bush had desired in the past. His goal: a common front to destroy ISIS. Franklin Roosevelt and the rabidly anti-communist Winston Churchill allied with Josef Stalin to defeat a common foe, Hitler’s Germany. Rationalizing the alliance with the monstrous mass-murderer Stalin, Churchill famously stated: “If Hitler invaded hell, I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.” President Trump has said he has never met Putin and does not know whether or not they will get along. Are Trump’s desires for an anti-ISIS alliance with Vladimir Putin naive? Maybe! But that fact alone does not mean Trump’s strings are being pulled from Moscow!!
*The Resistance is also embodied by the relentless, one-sided and daily attacks carried out by the Mainstream Media, allied with the constant condensation, ridicule and undisguised hatred carried-out by Hollywood and the entertainment industry, fronted by Saturday Night Live.
While the Media’s relationship with Mr. Trump was near zero during the election season, things reached a new low with internet rag BuzzFeed’s release of a previously rejected, totally baseless and unsubstantiated yarn about a visit Donald Trump made to Moscow and his alleged dalliance with urinating Russian prostitutes, released in the week prior to the inauguration. In light of the fact that Obama CIA chief John Brennan saw fit to brief incoming president Trump on this baseless story which had been floating out there for months and then released that fact to the Media, CNN saw justification to then label the tale as “news” and breathlessly aired this trash, which was then eagerly snapped up in a feeding frenzy by their comrades in arms! The salacious rumor was then quickly debunked but the journalistic tone had been set to a new micro-decibel low! Could you imagine such a rumor being advanced by any respected media source about Barack Obama? Suddenly, after an eight-year Rip Van Winkle-like spell of dreamy somnambulism; in which the classic “hard-hitting” question posed to Barack Obama at the beginning of his presidency was the New York Times’ Jeff Zeleny’s: “Mr. President, what has enchanted you the most in these first one hundred days of your presidency?”, the Mainstream Media has suddenly rediscovered aggressive, investigative journalism!
With President Obama, the watchword was always “keep the family out of it”, which was admirable and correct. Not so for the Trump household! Melania Trump was a former call girl who over-stayed her visa. Donald Trump has sexual desires (unrequited or consummated, depending on the account) with his daughter Ivanka. Young 10-year old Barron Trump has ADHD.
Already, a magazine has hit the racks with a cover depicting a sniperscope aimed behind the ear of the image of President Trump’s head. Will a recreation of the 2006 film “Death of the President”; a fantasy of the assassination of George W. Bush, be far behind for Donald Trump?
Around the same time as the release of the BuzzFeed garbage, actress Meryl Streep initiated what had now become a continuing hectoring assault of Mr. Trump at the Golden Globes Awards, where she lectured him that “disrespect invites disrespect and violence incites violence” and implored the “principled” press to hold power to account; to call them on the carpet for every outrage…” While that would have been refreshing to hear from golden Hollywood during the IRS scandal with Lois Lerner, the only violence that had been perpetrated as of that date, and currently, has come from the Left!
After the laughable Hollywood/ Television boycott of the inauguration (as if half of the country that had voted for Trump had not already tuned-out what they had to say), the Women’s March was staged and organized in Washington on the day after the inauguration. Among the plethora of vulgar signs and chants, Madonna mused that “she wished she could blow up the White House” (which would rate a knock on the door in any other age) and Ashley Judd said the new president “looked like he bathed in Cheeto dust”. (I thought skin color was out of bounds!). In the meantime, Chelsea Handler equated Melania Trump’s accent with stupidity (can Handler speak five languages?) and Sarah Silverman; so in love with the Constitution, calls for the U.S. military to stage a coup against the duly-elected president! The relentless assault by the entertainment glitterati has continued daily, with the spearhead being the now unwatchable, mean-spirited Saturday Night Live, with Alec Baldwin as Donald Trump (Darrell Hammond did a much better job); Melissa McCarthy as Sean Spicer and perhaps still, Rosie O’Donnell as Steve Bannon.
The lockstep hatred of Trump by the entertainment industry, along with the movement started in San Francisco to chase Trump-labeled products off the shelves; starting with Ivanka’s fashion line, is evidence that the elites and the glitterati prefer to sing to their own choir and have deliberately chosen to consciously write-off the other half of the country that voted for Trump, especially Middle America!
* The fracturing of the United States of America that is occurring before our eyes, which started with the sanctuary cities movement and the agitation for unlimited and uncontrolled illegal immigration, has gone to critical mass with the election of Donald Trump. This is another facet of the Resistance. Since the election, a referendum has been launched for California, Oregon and Washington-State to succeed from the Union to form the nation of “Pacifica” (they want Las Vegas too!). In the meantime, California has declared that it will become the first “sanctuary state.” There are now over 200 sanctuary cities nationwide; all controlled by Democrats, that have sworn to not only not cooperate with Federal immigration agencies but actually resist their operations!
In 1830, the powerful Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina formulated the political doctrine of Nullification, which postulated the idea that “states’ rights” superseded federal law and thereby a state need not follow a federal law and could therefore “nullify” a federal law if it so chose. The issue at hand was, of course, slavery, and the Nullification movement predated the Civil War by thirty years.
With the Left keeping the kettle of hatred and the refusal to accept the results of the election to a boil, are we witnessing the potential of a new civil war: Left vs. Right as opposed to free soil versus slave soil; the Coastal Enclaves vs. Middle America as opposed to North versus South? Do sanctuary cities represent a new doctrine of Nullification? What steps must be taken to reign in this unconstitutional anarchy?
Open border protesters staged demonstrations and shut down freeways last week to “resist” DHS Secretary Kelly’s first raids of illegal inmigrants with criminal convictions, which netted aporoximately 600 individuals. A couple of points of irony: (1) these raids were planned months before by the Obama administration, and (2) President Obama could well have been labeled the Deporter-in-Chief, by ordering the removal of over 3,000,000 illegals during his tenure, which provoked nothing but silence from the Left and the Mainstream Media!
A further fracturing of the body politic is evidenced by the sudden infiltration of out-of-district, Left-wing agitators to disrupt town hall meetings in reliably Republican congressional districts, such as ones of Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R.-Ut.) and James Sensenbrenner (R.-Wi.). Mainstream Media reports inaccurately identified the agitators as constituents “dissatisfied with Trump’s progress to enact his agenda” (after only three weeks?). In actuality, these infiltrating disrupters were actually leftist agitators; paid members of OFA: Organizing for Action, formerly Obama for America, now reputedly 32,000 strong and growing. (They gave themselves away with chants of “this is what democracy looks like” and agitating against the repeal of Obamacare!) OFA menbers may have also been involved in the blocking of the public school that new Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was attempting to visit in DC, the day after her confirmation. Will OFA operatives be utilized as the spearpoint of the anti-Trump Resistance from coast to coast?
The de facto central node of control of the Resistance will be shortly established on Kalorama Circle, a couple of miles North of the White House in Washington, DC, once he has had his fill of windsurfing in the British Virgin Islands. Barack Obama will be the first former president in modern times to stay in the capital to appraise; from not very far, the policies and decisions of his successor – a president from the opposite party who defeated his handpicked choice in a most bitter election! Obama has spoken out once already in this short month. He will not offer the courtesy of silence to Donald Trump that was afforded to him by his predecessor, George W. Bush. Barack Obama will not go gently into the night! His residence on Kalorama Circle will rapidly be seen as the headquarters of the Government-in-Exile and the Mainstream Media will no doubt flock to it seeking his latest pronouncement on the issue of the moment. Perhaps the most potent facet of the Resistance!
* The final front of the anti-Trump Resistance has turned out to be the Federal judiciary. In an exercise of blatant forum shopping, the Trump Administration’s immigration Order banning entry of residents from seven predominantly Muslim countries that lack effective central governments so that the identity of entrants from these countries can not be positively identified, was challenged in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge James Robart in Seattle, Washington, on the “Left Coast”. While it had been reported that Judge Robart was a Republican appointee by George W. Bush, in reality; via the tradition of Senatorial Courtesy, the choice of Judge Robart was left up by President Bush to left-wing Senator Patty Murray (D.-Wa.), “the senator in tennis shoes.”
Though the Immigration Order was admittedly flawed for calling for “extreme vetting” of entrants that had permanent resident status and bore both Green Cards and U.S. passports, in addition to individuals with no prior contact with the U.S., Judge Robart chose not to strike down the Trump administration’s Order on these narrow grounds, but instead staged a judicial coup d’etat that, without constitutional or statutory basis, enacted a sweeping injunction that usurped the executive branch’s primacy in matters of immigration, control of entry into the country and foreign affairs (and parenthetically, enjoined a ruling by the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston; a court superior to Judge Robart’s court, that found the Immigration Order constitutional). The Judge, in a novel and perhaps vindictive view, found that the Democratic-controlled plaintiff states of Washington and Minnesota had judicial “standing” to stand in the shoes and represent non-present, but aspiring entrants from the seven countries, who claimed some sort of affiliation with business firms or educational institutions in the two plaintiff states. But the court did not stop there!
“Discovering” additional rights in the Constitution in the “penumbras” that he apparently saw between the lines of the written text; as in Roe v. Wade more than forty years before, Judge Robart found that individuals who had no prior contact with America had a constitutional right to a due process hearing on their desires for entry into the U.S. Talk about an open borders philosophy! So denizens of Mogadishu, Aden or Khartoum, from across the seas, can now remotely petition the Federal judiciary for entry into the United States!
Robart did not stop there. Near the end of the text of the Constitution, there is an obscure clause that states “that no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” Obviously, the clear meaning of that constitutional provision is to prohibit the requirement that any person seeking a position in the federal government be forced to first submit to a religious quiz or test. Though the plain text of the Immigration Order made no reference to single out Muslim entrants for “extreme vetting”, and though the plain text of the religious test clause is only applicable to persons seeking federal employment, Judge Robart “discovered” a further “penumbra” between the lines of that clause of the Constitution and held that the Immigration Order amounted to an unconstitutional religious test for entrants from the seven nations involved, in violation of the Constitution!
Robarts further went beyond the “four corners” of the Immigration Order and cited statements made by Mr. Trump in the election campaign as evidence that the Immigration Order unconstitutionally discriminated against Muslims, despite the fact that the Order only affected 15% of Muslims worldwide. The use of extrinsic election campaign rhetoric to derive a hidden motivation in determining that a legal Order is unconstitutional, rather than ruling on the plain text of the Order, is highly improper!
The tip-off of the fact that Judge Robart’s injunction halting the Trump Administration’s Immigration Order in its tracks was blatantly unconstitutional, is the fact that his decision and ruling made no mention and ignored 8 U.S.C. Section 1182(f), the federal statute that grants a president “the authority to suspend the entry of any aliens or class of aliens into the U.S. if he believes they would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.”
In order to win a temporary restraining order (TRO), a petitioner must show: (1) that irreparable harm would occur if the injunction is not granted and (2) that the petitioner would likely prevail at trial on the merits.
Despite the problem with standing; despite the novel interpretations of alleged constitutional rights of the citizens of the world, and despite the the clear wordage of Section 1182(f), Judge Robart held that the petitioner states would likely prevail at trial, and issued the injunction!
A study had concluded that liberal, activist judges are more influenced by how their decisions would be received by their friends at cocktail parties and are more guided by their political affiliations, rather than by following the plain meeting of the Constitution, statutes and case law in making their rulings. This phenomenon is a good argument for the confirmation of Justice Neil Gorsuch! It is obvious that these factors were in play here, to explain Judge Robart’s ruling.
So when the administration appealed Robart’s ruling to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco (the future supreme court of Pacifica?), that appellate court would set things straight, right? Well, no………….The ultra-liberal Ninth “Circus” Court, the most reversed Appellate Circuit in the system, apparently also had cocktail party attendees to impress and upheld Judge Robart’s constitutionally-unsupported injunction! The final stage would be an appeal to U.S. Supreme Court, a risky proposition as the Court is still tied at four liberals and four conservatives as Justice Scalia’s seat is still left unfilled. A tie would leave the Ninth Circuit’s ruling stand, emasculating the president’s power to control the nation’s borders! Bad rulings make bad law!
All the facets of the integrated and coordinated anti-Trump “Resistance” of the Left and the Democrat Party, to reject “accepting the results of the election” continue to fire on all cylinders! How long will this turmoil continue? Until the 2018 mid-term elections? For the entire four years of the Trump presidency? And, irrespective of how long this agitation goes on, can the nation survive it?
-The Chicago Patriot