Month: November 2018

President Donald Trump tore into CNN’s Jim Acosta during a press conference in the White House on Wednesday, attacking the reporter as a “rude, terrible person,” Fox News reported.

“I want to challenge you on one of the statements you made in the campaign, in the terms that this caravan was an invasion,” Acosta asked. “As you know Mr. President the caravan was not an invasion. It’s a group of migrants moving up from Central America towards the border with the U.S. and why did you characterize it as such.

“Because I consider it an invasion,” the president answered. “You and I have a difference of opinion.”

“But do you think that you demonized immigrants in this election to try to keep — ,” Acosta said.

“Not at all, not at all,” Trump said. “I want them to come into the country, but they have to come in legally. You know, they have to come in, Jim, through a process.”

TRENDING: Tucker Unloads Constitutional Justice on Caravan ‘Lawyer’ Crying About Illegal Aliens Rights

Acosta then asked Trump about a campaign ad, implying for some reason that the video evidence of migrants storming border fences was not indicative of how those same individuals would behave when they reach the U.S. border.

The exchange then grew less polite when the president tried to end his discourse with Acosta and a young female aide tried to take the microphone and deliver it to NBC’s Peter Alexander.

“That’s enough. Put down the mic,” Trump ordered Acosta, as a White House aide tried to take the microphone from him, only for Acosta to initially refuse to turn it over and push her arm down, though he had already asked — and gotten answers to — a number of questions.

“I tell you what, CNN should be ashamed of itself having you working for them,” Trump then said. “You are a rude, terrible person, you shouldn’t be working for CNN.”

“You’re a very rude person,” he added. “The way you treat (White House press secretary) Sarah Huckabee is horrible.”

You can watch the entire incident here:

After the incident, CNN’s public relations department defended Acosta in a tweet:

CNN’s response to @realDonaldTrump’s press conference today: pic.twitter.com/tJ3nZDnYwO

RELATED: Watch: Slow-Mo Video Catches Angry Acosta Shoving Woman at White House

Donald Trump is the president of the United States, and Acosta should respect the office even if he doesn’t respect the man.

If he disagrees with the president’s treatment of the White House press corps, that’s certainly his right. But it does seem hypocritical to blame Trump for his behavior and then turn around and engage in exactly the same sort of behavior.

Again, however, being a hypocrite is also Acosta’s right.

Of course, the White House would be within its rights to cancel Acosta’s media credentials and ban his access to the president completely. Acosta and his string-pullers at CNN should bear that in mind.

We hope the president doesn’t do that, however. The exchanges — which Acosta inevitably comes out on the losing side of — are just too fun to watch.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

ZIP |
November 7, 2018 4:00 pm

That’s all you got?

Two years of non-stop campaigning, denouncing and doxing — and all the Resistance has to show for it is a House majority smaller than the one Republicans currently have and a net loss of three Senate seats? (Thank you, Justice Brett Kavanaugh!)

Democratic leaders may try saying, “THIS IS JUST WHAT WE WANTED! We wanted to be down by three Senate seats.” But I think their voters are saying, We were hoping for more of a rebuke.

The media exhausted itself on this election! Can they go back to that level of hysteria today?

President Clinton lost 54 House seats and eight Senate seats in his first midterm, as voters responded to Hillary’s attempt to socialize health care. President Obama lost 63 House seats and six Senate seats in his first midterm, as voters responded to the Democrats’ successful party-line vote to socialize health care.

America’s response to Trump’s first two years? Republicans lost fewer than 40 House seats and gained Senate seats. (Again: Thank you, Justice Kavanaugh.)

And that was with more than 40 House Republicans being spooked into retiring rather than go down to certain defeat in what the media convinced them would be a big blue wave.

It’s always a bad idea to give Democrats control of any part of government. You don’t want those guys running a lemonade stand.

But — wow — are there silver linings!

First, all the worst Republican House members were defeated, such as cheap labor advocate Kevin Yoder of Kansas and Florida’s Rep. Carlos Curbelo, a second-generation immigrant who goes around calling his fellow Republicans white supremacists. (Alleged white supremacist Steve King won and Curbelo lost — hahahahaha!)

As the movie character Ninotchka said of Stalin’s reign of terror: “The last mass trials were a great success! There are going to be fewer but better Russians.”

Second, the main accomplishment of the Resistance in the first midterm was to help Trump win his re-election bid.

Even voters skeptical about Trump will embrace him after two minutes, let alone two years, of watching Speaker Nancy Pelosi run the House, Rep. Maxine Waters chair the House Financial Services Committee, Rep. Jerry Nadler head the Judiciary Committee — and Rep. Adam Schiff run around issuing subpoenas all over town.

How about Rep. Alcee Hastings, an impeached and convicted bribe-taker? His seniority surely requires giving him a committee chairmanship! Is Pelosi going to discriminate against Hastings just because he’s a proud black man? Right now, Pelosi is trying to determine which committee chairmanship requires no honesty whatsoever.

If you were hoping the Democrats would seize this opportunity to make utter fools of themselves — impeachment hearings, resurrecting the Kavanaugh gang rape claims, and Russia, Russia, Russia — I’ve got good news! That’s exactly what their base is demanding. I promise you, Maxine Waters is not going to say, “Don’t worry, guys. I’ll be keeping a very low profile.”

Voters will be pleading, Couldn’t we get an infrastructure bill? Will you please do something about all these criminal aliens in my sanctuary city? And the Democrats will be carrying on about Trump’s taxes.

The Senate math was on Republicans’ side, but countering that were several GOP retirements. Republicans not only held the Senate with a bigger margin … but now with no Jeff Flake, John McCain or Bob Corker!

The only GOP senator to lose his re-election was Dean Heller of Nevada. That makes him the fourth Republican who supported Marco Rubio’s 2013 amnesty bill to lose his seat. Inasmuch as about 85 percent of incumbent senators win re-election, at least for the past quarter-century, this is quite an accomplishment!

Mercifully, of the 14 GOP traitors who voted for Rubio’s amnesty, only six remain in office. Four were beaten, three retired one step ahead of the guillotine and one took the easy way out by dying.

Which raises the question: What exactly was Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s plan for victory? Hope a Supreme Court justice retired and that the Democrats would make vicious and false claims against our nominee?

The Republicans’ stunning Senate victories resulted from nothing they did. These are the guys who ran like little girls from Trump’s campaign promises on immigration. Republicans didn’t even bother forcing Democrats to cast wildly unpopular votes on the wall, sanctuary cities or anchor babies. In fact, Republicans did very little of interest to any voters.

The one and only reason Republicans picked up Senate seats in a midterm election is the utter derangement of the Resistance, which — by complete happenstance — was recently put on display when Democrats got the bright idea to falsely accuse a sweet nerd like Brett Kavanaugh of gang rape.

As Trump is accused of the foulest treason over the next two years, he might want to remember Kavanaugh.

You think having MSNBC gloat over your tax returns and Robert Mueller accusing you of collusion with Russia is outrageous? I imagine it was also unpleasant to be accused from every media outlet of gang rape. But Justice Kavanaugh and his family soldiered on, winning the nomination — and winning three Senate seats for the GOP.

Just remember, Mr. President, every time Adam Schiff appears on TV, the RNC should be sending a receipt to the Democrats.

President Trump dropped a bombshell in Washington on Wednesday when he asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions to resign and appointed his former chief of staff, Matthew Whitaker, to serve as acting attorney general.

The move throws into question the fate of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, which is still ongoing after almost a year and a half.

Sessions had recused himself from overseeing the investigation due to his role on the Trump campaign.

Whitaker, however, would not have that same issue. The Justice Department on Wednesday indicated that Whitaker would indeed supervise the Mueller investigation.

“The Acting Attorney General is in charge of all matters under the purview of the Department of Justice,” Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores told Breitbart News in an email.

In a sign of how Whitaker would handle the Mueller investigation if he does take oversight, he notably authored a piece for CNN last August, entitled, “Mueller’s investigation of Trump is going to far.”

Whitaker wrote that Trump is “absolutely correct” that Mueller investigating the finances of Trump and his family as part of the investigation would cross a line.

“The President is absolutely correct. Mueller has come up to a red line in the Russia 2016 election-meddling investigation that he is dangerously close to crossing,” Whitaker wrote in the piece.

He also wrote that it was “deeply concerning” that some Trump associates were being investigated “to encourage subjects of the investigation to cooperate.” He wrote:

This information is deeply concerning to me. It does not take a lawyer or even a former federal prosecutor like myself to conclude that investigating Donald Trump’s finances or his family’s finances falls completely outside of the realm of his 2016 campaign and allegations that the campaign coordinated with the Russian government or anyone else. That goes beyond the scope of the appointment of the special counsel.

In fact, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s letter appointing special counsel Robert Mueller does not give Mueller broad, far-reaching powers in this investigation. He is only authorized to investigate matters that involved any potential links to and coordination between two entities — the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

People are wrongly pointing to, and taking out of context, the phrase “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation” to characterize special counsel’s authority as broad.

The word “investigation” is clearly defined directly preceding it in the same sentence specifically as coordination between individuals associated with the campaign of Donald Trump and Russia. The Trump Organization’s business dealings are plainly not within the scope of the investigation, nor should they be.

Whitaker wrote that any investigation into Trump or his family’s finances would require Mueller to return to Rosenstein for additional authority, and that if he did not, it would raise concerns that the investigation was a “mere witch hunt.”

“If Mueller is indeed going down this path, Rosenstein should act to ensure the investigation is within its jurisdiction and within the authority of the original directive,” he said.

Whitaker wrote:

It is time for Rosenstein, who is the acting attorney general for the purposes of this investigation, to order Mueller to limit the scope of his investigation to the four corners of the order appointing him special counsel.

If he doesn’t, then Mueller’s investigation will eventually start to look like a political fishing expedition. This would not only be out of character for a respected figure like Mueller, but also could be damaging to the President of the United States and his family — and by extension, to the country.

If Whitaker takes over overseeing the investigation, in his view, Mueller would have to ask him for additional authority to investigate Trump’s finances.

Rosenstein’s future has also been under question, after the New York Times reported in September that he allegedly suggested he could wear a wire in the Oval Office with Trump, and discussed using the 25th Amendment to have the president removed.

Rosenstein denied the report’s accuracy, but has avoided meeting with House Republicans to discuss the matter. He has also irritated House Republicans for fulfilling lawmakers’ requests for documents as they investigate DOJ and FBI bias in their investigation of the Trump campaign.

Rosenstein has also drawn heavy criticism from House Republicans for not recusing himself from overseeing the investigation, since he was involved in the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign. He had signed off on a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant that allowed the FBI to surveil former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

Whitaker’s appointment comes the day after the midterm elections, when Democrats regained control of the House. Democrats had promised to reopen the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation into Trump, to investigate Trump’s finances, and to obtain his tax returns.

Democrats rushed to defend Robert Mueller’s far-reaching investigation of President Donald Trump’s past business affairs following the surprise appointment of Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker to replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions. 

Former AG Eric Holder declared “Anyone who attempts to interfere with or obstruct the Mueller inquiry must be held accountable. This is a red line. We are a nation of laws and norms not subject to the self interested actions of one man.”

Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal declared: “This is a break the glass moment…I will be introducing legislation to ensure that Congress and the American people see the results of Special Counsel Mueller’s work.”

The appointment of Whitaker “is is a brazen attack on the rule of law, and requires immediate action to ensure the integrity of the investigation,” said Neera Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats’ leader in the House, declared:

Given his record of threats to undermine & weaken the Russia investigation, Matthew Whitaker should recuse himself from any involvement in Mueller’s investigation. Congress must take immediate action to protect the rule of law and integrity of the investigation

Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Democrats’ leader in the Senate, also called on Whitaker to recuse himself from oversight of the Mueller probe:

Given his previous comments advocating defunding and imposing limitations on the Mueller investigation, Mr. Whitaker should recuse himself from its oversight for the duration of his time as acting attorney general.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Jeff Sessions’ resignation: “Protecting Mueller and his investigation is paramount. It would create a constitutional crisis if this were a prelude to ending or greatly limiting the Mueller investigation.” https://t.co/5Mi7dqOr9Q pic.twitter.com/GUvdNVlWpk

— ABC News (@ABC) November 7, 2018

In contrast, conservatives lamented Sessions’ departure, in large part because has been the most determined and effective supporter of Trump’s immigration policy in the cabinet.

 

 

 

Former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) chief John Brennan told MSNBC that the firing of Attorney General Jeff Sessions Wednesday shows the United States may be facing a constitutional crisis “very soon.”

(Watch: 45:00 – 48:50 )

A partial transcript is as follows: 

NICOLLE WALLACE: You, as former director of the CIA, had to have had a working relationship with the Justice Department. In every administration, that’s the case. How would the intelligence community work with somebody like Mr. Whitaker [Sessions’s temporary replacement], who has his thumb on the scale? We already know exactly how he feels about the Mueller probe. He has pre-judged it before it’s come to its conclusion. We already know how he feels about Donald Trump Jr.’s participation in the Trump tower meeting. He thinks it’s a nothing burger. That is something under investigation by Robert Mueller in both the obstruction of justice prong of that investigation, for the lies told afterward, and the conspiracy to coordinate with a foreign government, an American adversary, the other avenue.

How would career professionals in the law enforcement community and other U.S. Attorney’s offices — the Southern District of New York that also has big cases against the president, Michael Cohen has alleged that Donald Trump directed him to pay hush money to a porn star — how do career national security, intelligence, and law enforcement officials deal with somebody who is essentially a political stand-in for the president’s interests?

BRENNAN: I think the intelligence community professionals and those professionals within the Department of Justice and FBI have had quite a bit of experience having to deal with political loyalists who are appointed to senior positions. But in most instances — not all instances — in most instances, when those political loyalists get into positions of tremendous responsibility and authority, and they realize the gravity of these issues, they tend to take the right path because they should not be complicit in any type of action that is going to inhibit and thwart the rule of law. So Jeff Sessions, credit to him, for recusing himself. And so Matt Whitaker comes with a lot of baggage and it’s going to be quite evident whether or not he is going to fulfill his responsibilities now in that position.

…

WALLACE: Are you saying that Mr. Whitaker, with his public statements, public writings, and his comments on television should be recused from overseeing the Mueller probe, based on those statements?

BRENNAN: I would think that there is a very strong case that, given his public acknowledgment of his prejudiced view on this issue, that he should recuse himself. I think there are a lot of people out there raising their eyebrows now, rightly so, and wondering whether Matt Whitaker in this acting capacity, has the credentials, has the credibility needed to lead the Department of Justice at such a crucial and critical time in our history when we indeed may be facing a constitutional crisis very soon.

Blue wave?

These damned meteorologists keep getting it wrong. Well, at least it is safe to come back out on the beach again.

Skateboarding socialist Robert Francis O’Rourke did not make history in Texas Tuesday night. Neither did Andrew Gillum in Florida.

They were supposed to be the Second Coming of Barack Obama.

Despite the massive media hype, each will have to be content as asterisks sloshing around in a rolling blue puddle for now.

Taylor Swift, meanwhile, is packing up her country boots and band equipment and headed back to Hollywood. Her man in Tennessee lost by more than ten points.

Consider this: a dead pimp running as a Trump Republican in Nevada won. Ouch.

Mr. Trump’s Republicans lost control of the House, but that was to be expected in his first midterm face-off. And it was not the bloodbath former presidents Obama and Bill Clinton suffered in their first midterms.

Amazingly, the president’s party will actually expand their majority in the U.S. Senate.

In a direct proxy war over Trump and his agenda, Republican Ron DeSantis narrowly defeated Democrat Andrew Gillum for governor of Florida, the fiercest of battleground states.

It was a race decided by issues, Mr. Trump’s strong suit.

Robert Francis O’Rourke — “Beto” for political purposes — narrowly lost to Senate incumbent Ted Cruz in Texas, a state Mr. Cruz should have carried by double digits.

But races have a habit of narrowing when the national political media step in and dump millions and millions of dollars in free, glowing advertising for the socialist on a skateboard.

Now come the endless investigations, hearings and impeachment circus in the House under Speaker Nancy Pelosi. My question is this: If that strategy did not work very well in a midterm when the Democratic base was super energized, why would it work in two years?

Anyway, for nearly two decades, Republicans all across the country have been running campaigns against Nancy Pelosi and winning bigly. That strategy will certainly work again in 2020 after two years of Ms. Pelosi back with the gavel.

President Trump, meanwhile, can turn to the Senate, where Republicans expanded their majority, perhaps by as many as four seats.

As Mr. Trump has already demonstrated, nothing thrills conservative Republican voters more than putting highly qualified constitutionalists onto the federal courts. Tuesday’s election just made that a whole lot easier.

• Charles Hurt can be reached at churt@washingtontimes.com; follow him on Twitter via @charleshurt.