The U.S. Attorney who former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions tasked with investigating Hillary Clinton, the Clinton Foundation and the Uranium One deal, and the FBI’s inquiry into Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state has reportedly found “nothing worth pursuing.”
All the tweets calling her “Crooked Hillary”, all the rallies where he encouraged his followers to mindlessly chant “lock her up”, all the insinuations on Fox News…and it seems they have found nothing.
So when it was the Mueller investigation, it was the Democrats wasting taxpayers money for the #RussiaHoax. And nowadays we apparently have more taxpayers money wasted for the #ImpeachmentHoax.
So using that logic, that means that Trump has been wasting taxpayers money for what can only be called the #UraniumHoax???
We returned to blogging yesterday as part of a New Year’s Resolution to post more often about Irish politics, but of course that doesn’t mean we’re just going to ignore the US President altogether!
Even the fleas on the dogs in the street know that when the US Senate eventually gets around to having a trial on Trump’s Impeachment, he’s going to be “acquitted”, mostly because of the extremely high bar of 67 out of 100 votes required to do so.
Another thing we all know is that Trump is going to Lord it over everyone once that happens. He will see himself to have moved on, to be fully exonerated, and if anyone should bring up the subject again, they are nothing but sore losers. Anyone who has followed his twitter account over the past few years will know this will be his way of thinking.
With that inevitability being established, let us consider his way of thinking in the above tweet. It was originally posted as a follow-up to one where he essentially praised himself for the way the storming of the American Embassy in Baghdad was handled by the US troops. This message was a little sting in the tail to serve as “red meat for his base”, so let’s explore his premise shall we.
There were a total of TEN investigations into the 2012 terrorist attack on the US government facility in Benghazi, Libya, but by far the most significant was Trey Gowdy’s one for the House Select Committee, which ran for two years and included over 8 hours of tesitmony by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. All suspicions that the investigation was a political exercise (witch hunt???) were confirmed by Republican congressman (and current House Minority Leader) Kevin McCarthy when he said on Fox :
“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known any of that had happened, had we not fought.”
Although the exhaustive investigations did find areas where the government departments could have performed better, there were no conclusive findings of serious wrongdoings against anyone, including Clinton. Or to put it another way, she was EXONERATED.
Yet here we have the President still referring to it (sidenote – on his first attempt at the tweet he spelled Benghazi wrong) and thanks to years of Fox News constantly finding infinite different ways to brainwash their viewers into believing “Benghazi > Death of US soldiers > Hillary’s fault” regardless of the actual findings, it still proves an effective weapon for him today.
Since he is so keen to invoke the Benghazi situation, perhaps that means he himself is willing to testify about Ukraine before the Senate? And since his current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was also a leading figure in Gowdy’s committee, he should be more than willing to do the same?
I won’t hold my breath. And while Trump’s ability to get away with blatant hypocrisy is indeed scary, I’d be much more worried about the role of Fox News in this narrative.
Yes, we know we’ve been out of commission for a while – there are good reasons for that but we choose to invoke Executive Privilege when it comes to posting them…
“I’ll say it with great respect: No. 1, she’s not my type. No. 2, it never happened. It never happened, OK?” the president said in an interview with The Hill.
Article by Antonia Blumberg in HuffingtonPost.com on Monday, June 24, 2019
Can you believe this quote??? I mean, seriously???
Just for the purpose of this post, I’d like to put a pin in the whole “EJ Carroll v Donald Trump” issue. My intention here is not to explore what actually transpired, rather how he has responded to the allegation.
Might I suggest a ‘Number 3’ for the president’s list – “No. 3 I WOULD NOT DO THAT”. In fact, while I’m at it, how about he moves that up his list to number one??? In fact, while I’m at it, how about he doesn’t bother with the other two points???
This man is such a (to quote his first choice as Secretary of State) “fucking moron” that he doesn’t even know how to respond to an accusation of sexual assault, and it’s not as though it’s his first time.
And if he’s this dumb, what does that say about all of those who still support him?
Finally, to take that pin back out, of course I believe the accuser, though I certainly wouldn’t want him to be denied a day in court to prove his supposed innocence.
The current crisis between the US and Iran was created by Trump so no matter what he does about it, the whole situation was totally unnecessary and it’s clear that his is in way over his head when it comes to foreign policy.
Article by Makini Brice in Reuters.com on Monday, June 24, 2019
Trump made the comments amid an escalation in tensions with Iran, as Washington has blamed Tehran for attacks on two oil tankers
I’m certainly not going to pretend to be anything of a foreign policy expert, but the situation regarding Iran and it’s capacity to make nuclear weapons appears to be very simple.
Few agreements are perfect, even fewer international treaties are. This is because thrashing them out involves compromise.
Whether or not Trump appreciates this, his viewpoint has always been that the JPCOA, negotiated by Obama and the international community was a ‘disaster’, mostly because he doesn’t trust them to hold up their side of the bargain.
So he pulled the US out of the agreement and increased sanctions not only on Iran, but also on anyone doing business with them, yet all the while still holding them to their side of the agreement he ripped up???
Before any of the events of the past week, the situation was already absurd, all due to Trump’s own actions.
Now as he makes the sanctions even tighter, it comes at no surprise that the Iranian equivalent of John Bolton is going to have an itchy trigger finger and thus we have seen an attack on a Japanese vessel as well as the shooting down of an unmanned US drone.
Now we’re expected to think the POTUS is some kind of hero because he pulls out of planned retaliation at the last minute??? Then he tells Chuck Todd that the only thing he wants from Iran is ‘No Nuclear Weapons’ only to add ‘Stop terror campaigns’ in a tweet a couple of days later?
Now a whole week after the attack on the Japanese vessel all of a sudden he’s whining about having to protect the shipping lanes????
I know I’m no expert on foreign policy, but I didn’t seek election and I certainly didn’t do so by telling everyone I could make the situation better. He has made it abundantly clear that he hasn’t a clue.
Despite being a congresswoman for just a few months, both major US political parties are pushing a narrative that Representative Ilhan Omar from Minnesota is unworthy of her position.
“You have to wonder if she is an American first”
Brian Kilmeade, Fox News
I’m sharing this Young Turks video not to highlight the actions of Fox News, more to point out that it is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to elite opposition to Congresswoman Omar.
Nobody who has watched Fox News with a critical eye will be surprised by the blatant spin presented in the above video – Omar’s words are taken wildly out of context.
The Washington Post also did a good job in this video putting her words into the proper context…
But Rupert Murdoch’s right wing spin factory is not the only source of this misrepresentation, and her statement referenced here is far from the only example.
She was recently attacked for remarks she made that referenced AIPAC, a powerful lobby group that represents the Jewish-American community.
Again, whatever side of the issue you might be on, we have to wonder why her words were so blatantly taken out of context, not only by Fox News and Republican politicians, but also by the leadership of the Democrat Party and most significantly, the mainstream media.
It’s not as though the CNNs and MSNBCs are normally shy when it comes to playing clips of quotes when it suits them. For example, how many times has Trump’s infamous ‘grab them by the pussy’ line been given airtime? Seems to be at least once or twice a week even now.
Yet Congresswoman Omar’s quote, in which she clearly referred to herself when the entire passage is taken in context, was frequently branded as ‘Anti Semitic’ on political panels without her actual statement being played.
It took a comedienne to do what the broadcasters couldn’t…
Why the widespread revulsion against Omar?
Is it because she is Muslim? Is it because the Washington establishment is genuinely concerned that she does not put ‘America first’? Is it because they really do believe she is anti-Semitic?
None of the above, as far as I’m concerned. I believe the push against is all about one of her first appearances on the House Foreign Relations Committee.
One of the principle consequences of the 2018 Midterms was that although the House was won back by the Democrats, the Progressive caucus was so strong that Nancy Pelosi had to make several concessions to guarantee that she returned to the Speaker role.
Among those concessions was the placement of prominent Progressives on key House committees like Intelligence, Judiciary, Ways and Means and in Omar’s case, Foreign Relations.
When she had one of her first opportunities to ask questions at a hearing, it was to none other than Elliott Abrams, who was involved in many questionable foreign incursions by the US in the past, and has now been appointed as President Trump’s ‘special envoy’ for Venezuela.
OMAR: On February 8, 1982, you testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about U.S. policy in El Salvador. In that hearing, you dismissed as communist propaganda reports about the massacre at El Mozote in which more than 800 civilians, including children as young as 2 years old, were brutally murdered by U.S.-trained troops. During that massacre, some of those troops bragged about raping a 12-year-old girl, girls, before they killed them. You later said that the U.S. policy in El Salvador was a “fabulous achievement.” Yes or no, do you still think so?
I haven’t taken the time to check all of the congressional records since 1982 (or mainstream media interviews for that matter) but I’ll bet anything that Abrams hasn’t asked a question like this publicly in that time.
That is why Omar is being so blatantly smeared; the ‘Military Industrial Complex’, a major donor for prominent politicians from both parties, do not want questions like that asked in a public forum. In fact, the President himself gave the game away in one of his attacks on her “She should resign from Congress, or at least from the committee.” (paraphrase).
Just to be clear, I’m not 100% aware of Omar’s politics, but when anyone is taken so wildly out of context it needs to be pointed out.
The majority of the corporate media may well be ‘anti-Trump’ but they also take care to make sure progressive issues are at best, ignored or at worst, belittled.
Clip by Lawrence O’Donnell in YouTube on Wednesday, July 18, 2018
“…the most perfect of White House press corps teamwork unfolded…”
It’s hard to disagree with Lawrence O’Donnell and for the most part I enjoy his MSNBC show The Last Word, particularly in the Trump era. But much like news coverage by the Irish national broadcaster RTÉ, you often have to ask yourself if they are always covering a given topic to its fullest and consider what is being left out.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ press briefings are always contentious occasions, but yesterday’s was always going to be even more so given all that happened surrounding Trump’s Monday meeting with Russian despot/president Vladimir Putin in Helsinki and its aftermath.
Of course Lawrence is right when he points out in the above clip that it was nice to see NBC’s Halle Jackson and The Hill’s Jordan Fabian working together to prevent ‘SHuckS’ (why isn’t everybody calling her that????) from dodging important questions, having seen the entire briefing I think it would have been prudent for him to also mention what happened regarding April Ryan from the American Urban Radio Network.
Ryan and SHuckS have had several heated exchanges in the past and on this occasion, I thought her question was not only relevant but also one that was unlikely to have been asked by her fellow journalists in this session.
In her defence of the president’s approach to election security, SHuckS listed a range of measures she claims has been taken by the Trump administration. Ryan wanted to know if voter suppression, in other words actions taken by mostly Republican state legislatures around the country, was also on the list.
At first, her question was completely ignored. To be fair, Ryan was eventually allowed to ask it, yet while SHuckS offered some words in reply, none of them could really be considered a ‘straight answer’.
But this post is not about SHuckS, rather O’Donnell and the corporate media for which he works. If there really was a general sense of teamwork among the White House press corps, then Ryan would have received the same help from her colleagues that Jackson did.
But with Trump finding new creative ways to shoe horn himself into the headlines every day, I can’t see the very real issue of voter suppression coming even close to the mainstream again any time soon. JLP
First Person Plural 