What a clown show. Nancy Pelosi tried to take credit for the historic Trump USMCA trade agreement during her Thursday press conference.
Speaker Pelosi sat on the deal for 14 months and only allowed a vote on it after Democrats impeached Trump on a straight party-line vote.
Yesterday, President Trump did not invite the corrupt Democrat leader to attend the USMCA signing ceremony.
Trump invited Minnesota pig farmers instead.
They were more appreciative.
Pelosi will go down as the first person in history to lose control of the US House of Representatives — TWICE — when she turns over the gavel in 2021.
She can wear that around her neck into the history books.
Oh my gosh, this is good!
Senator Rick Scott from the great state of Florida published a video on Tuesday lashing out at the Democrat Party’s embarrassingly weak impeachment case against President Trump.
The Florida Senator goes off in an EPIC RANT! …”It’s absurd. Good-bye! Go home!”
Senator Rick Scott: Hi I’m Rick Scott. As you have heard I’ve been taken hostage along with 99 other people in the US Capitol. We are receiving only milk and water. And we are being subjected to the cruel and unusual punishment of listening to the rantings of Adam Schiff, a person from a parallel universe. On a more serious note, everything that is happening in Washington around this impeachment fiasco is political theater. None of it is real and nothing will come of it. This entire drama that has consumed our federal government for months should have been conducted at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts not the US Capitol. One more thing you the taxpayers, you’re funding this entire production. But there’s no plot twist in this drama. It’s all very straight forward. The Democrats HATE Donald Trump. They don’t just dislike the guy. They hate him. They decided to impeach him even before he took office. The case they presented to the Senate was embarrassingly weak. Therefore, they wanted to use the Senate to go fishing for more evidence by calling more witnesses. They have admitted to the jury that their case is lame.
My message to the Democrats is simple. I’ve listened to your case and listened and listened. It’s absurd, good-bye, go home!
Scott is fantastic!
I’ve been held hostage with 99 other people in the U.S. Capitol. Why? Because the Democrats hate @realDonaldTrump and are trying to cover up @JoeBiden’s corruption.
More than a day before he arrives, President Trump’s supporters are already waiting outside for him in Des Moines https://t.co/dA7PdWwdb2 via @DMRegister
President Trump’s supporters are already waiting outside for him in Des Moines January 30 2020. Event Schedule: Des Moines, IA 07:00 pm (CST) The Knapp Center at Drake University 2601 Forest Ave Des Moines, IA — Four days before the Iowa caucuses. pic.twitter.com/u6xB1xEpxk
One-party blue city San Francisco has a corruption problem.
Turns out the sewage on the streets isn’t the only thing filthy about San Francisco. Its man in charge of that clean-up, Mohammed Nuru, was busted with a septic tank full of corruption charges.
In the biggest public corruption scandal to shake City Hall since 2015, [San Francisco Public Works Director Mohammed] Nuru and local entrepreneur Nick Bovis of famed Union Square sports bar Lefty O’Doul’s have each been charged with one count of wire fraud.
Nuru, 57, and Bovis, 56, allegedly attempted to bribe an airport commissioner to help win a bid for a restaurant lease at San Francisco International Airport in exchange for an envelope full of cash and an apparent vacation.
The alleged kickback scheme was just one of five that federal authorities described in a complaint released Tuesday after surveilling Nuru and Bovis with FBI wiretaps and undercover operators since at least 2018.
The allegations against Nuru also involve sharing a $2,070 bottle of wine with a billionaire developer in China and having city contractors work on his vacation home near the Mendocino National Forest.
The detailed descriptions of the string of corruption crimes Nuru was involved in must have made him a lawman’s dream, given the large number of violations they were able to demonstrate, a veritable sewage pit of systemic corruption.
Nuru, whose Twitter handle was “Mr. Clean,” and last seen in the news as the chief of San Francisco’s famous “poop patrols” now faces charges in pay-to-play set-ups for homeless toilet contracts, a bribery plot to an airport commissioner who said no, money from developers from China, and forcing city workers to fix up his planned retirement estate for free or nearly free in what lawmen said was a bid to keep contracts coming. The Examiner says the retirement hideaway is in Mendocino, but SFGate says it’s Colusa County, same obscure place ex-Gov. Jerry Brown retired to. If the latter is correct, it probably points to some additional digging to be done by lawmen on why that pair is so close they choose to retire together to that same little-known place with no electricity.
It gets worse. What the FBI found was just a Tuesday snapshot, what’s really been going on is a long deep intense sewage sludge act of crimes. There are signs it’s all over. YouTube shows videos of all this guy’s travels to fancy places like Spain. Spain, really?
This piece, written nearly ten years ago by the HuffPost, described the problems with putting this guy in his $300,000 a year job (his street sweepers reportedly make six figure salaries, too) at Department of Public Works. It should make anyone blanch. Emphasis mine:
Nuru’s work at SLUG [an NGO called the San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners] drew notice of then-Mayor Willie Brown, who took Nuru (who had already volunteered on two of Brown’s electroal campaigns) under his wing in 2000 and hired him as DPW’s second-in-command, making him the city’s point man on graffiti cleanup. Nuru’s program, Operation Scrub Down, which involved spraying down city streets with a high-pressure hose and confiscating shopping carts filled with the belongings of homeless people, earned Nuru the nickname “Mr. Clean.”
The project proved controversial when homeless advocates complained that it violated the civil rights of the people whose belongings were confiscated.
In the years since Nuru departed SLUG, the group has since shut down operations. [Like the Clinton Foundation did? -ed]
During his tenure at DPW, a series of allegations of ethical improprieties began to swirl around Nuru. It was claimed that he broke city rules by replacing city employees with SLUG trainees, pushed pork-loaded street cleaning contracts to his former organization and charged the city over $100,000 to clean up vacant lots near his home in the Bayview.
Citing his work as City Attorney investigating Nuru, Herrera charged that, “for ten years, Nuru’s questionable ethics and repeated misappropriation of taxpayer dollars didn’t seem to merit a slap on the wrist from Ed Lee. Now, as Mayor, Ed Lee thinks it merits a promotion.”
This guy’s been filthy for a long long time, it’s been out there and nothing happened, at least not during the Obama years. Nuru, though is tied to every element of San Francisco’s blue city aristocracy — Willie Brown, Kamala Harris, Ed Lee, Gavin Newsom, Jerry Brown…which should make him a heckuva witness.
As Nuru was apparently lining his pockets, the city on his watch turned into a hellhole, a place where apps were developed to show visitors where the poop was, and poop-covered maps were created showing the extent of the vileness in the city, which was driving convention visitors away. This, despite the DPW’s $312 million budget and $5.6 billion with a ‘b’ capital portfolio.
It was so bad residents were last seen conducting “boulder warfare” in a desperate bid to keep the homeless from camping out on their sidewalks. The boulders, of course, were removed. Last year, I wrote this:
And yes, sure enough, it is the same people who run the unresponsive poop patrols who had that get-go to clear the boulders — the San Francisco Department of Public Works, run by one Mohammed Nuru, quoted extensively in both the poop patrol pieces and the decision to remove the reactionary boulders. Same guy. He can’t keep the neighborhood clean, but oh, he’s Johnny on the spot when it comes time to clear the anti-camping boulders.
It not only shows that taxpaying residents of the city are desperate for some kind of relief, but also shows that the city doesn’t actually care. It’s got a homeless empire to defend. So it’s getting Hobbesian as the city gets mired in special interest groups seeking to defend their interests, and to heck with a public polity.
The root of the problem is in three things: the incentivization of homelessness, which draws street poopers from all corners of the world to the fair city, free to do their business. San Francisco spends $279 million on homelessness ‘programs’ having raised the amount $29 million this year, which is a great thing for bureaucrats, but serves as a magnet for more homeless to come in as mendicants of the bureaucrats. One hand washes the other. There are ‘navigation‘ programs, pregnant women programs, housing subsidies to non-profits to provide housing to the homeless, public-private partnerships, Homeward Bound, Operation Outreach, public toilets, and well, now we see Poop City as the current sum result. Throwing more money onto the problem will just create … more poop.
The city went downhill, not just from liberal policies, but a raw sewage pit of corruption, decisions made for personal benefit instead of the city’s interests.
All during the Obama years as this guy made his rise, and the blue city consolidated, Nuru seemed to be protected.
Now he’s not. And opening that septic tank is one smelly project indeed. One only hopes that Nuru, the protected rat-king of corruption, isn’t the only one who’s going to be circling the drain when this gets sorted out. In a one-party blue state, the corruption runs very very deep.
One-party blue city San Francisco has a corruption problem.
Turns out the sewage on the streets isn’t the only thing filthy about San Francisco. Its man in charge of that clean-up, Mohammed Nuru, was busted with a septic tank full of corruption charges.
In the biggest public corruption scandal to shake City Hall since 2015, [San Francisco Public Works Director Mohammed] Nuru and local entrepreneur Nick Bovis of famed Union Square sports bar Lefty O’Doul’s have each been charged with one count of wire fraud.
Nuru, 57, and Bovis, 56, allegedly attempted to bribe an airport commissioner to help win a bid for a restaurant lease at San Francisco International Airport in exchange for an envelope full of cash and an apparent vacation.
The alleged kickback scheme was just one of five that federal authorities described in a complaint released Tuesday after surveilling Nuru and Bovis with FBI wiretaps and undercover operators since at least 2018.
The allegations against Nuru also involve sharing a $2,070 bottle of wine with a billionaire developer in China and having city contractors work on his vacation home near the Mendocino National Forest.
The detailed descriptions of the string of corruption crimes Nuru was involved in must have made him a lawman’s dream, given the large number of violations they were able to demonstrate, a veritable sewage pit of systemic corruption.
Nuru, whose Twitter handle was “Mr. Clean,” and last seen in the news as the chief of San Francisco’s famous “poop patrols” now faces charges in pay-to-play set-ups for homeless toilet contracts, a bribery plot to an airport commissioner who said no, money from developers from China, and forcing city workers to fix up his planned retirement estate for free or nearly free in what lawmen said was a bid to keep contracts coming. The Examiner says the retirement hideaway is in Mendocino, but SFGate says it’s Colusa County, same obscure place ex-Gov. Jerry Brown retired to. If the latter is correct, it probably points to some additional digging to be done by lawmen on why that pair is so close they choose to retire together to that same little-known place with no electricity.
It gets worse. What the FBI found was just a Tuesday snapshot, what’s really been going on is a long deep intense sewage sludge act of crimes. There are signs it’s all over. YouTube shows videos of all this guy’s travels to fancy places like Spain. Spain, really?
This piece, written nearly ten years ago by the HuffPost, described the problems with putting this guy in his $300,000 a year job (his street sweepers reportedly make six figure salaries, too) at Department of Public Works. It should make anyone blanch. Emphasis mine:
Nuru’s work at SLUG [an NGO called the San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners] drew notice of then-Mayor Willie Brown, who took Nuru (who had already volunteered on two of Brown’s electroal campaigns) under his wing in 2000 and hired him as DPW’s second-in-command, making him the city’s point man on graffiti cleanup. Nuru’s program, Operation Scrub Down, which involved spraying down city streets with a high-pressure hose and confiscating shopping carts filled with the belongings of homeless people, earned Nuru the nickname “Mr. Clean.”
The project proved controversial when homeless advocates complained that it violated the civil rights of the people whose belongings were confiscated.
In the years since Nuru departed SLUG, the group has since shut down operations. [Like the Clinton Foundation did? -ed]
During his tenure at DPW, a series of allegations of ethical improprieties began to swirl around Nuru. It was claimed that he broke city rules by replacing city employees with SLUG trainees, pushed pork-loaded street cleaning contracts to his former organization and charged the city over $100,000 to clean up vacant lots near his home in the Bayview.
Citing his work as City Attorney investigating Nuru, Herrera charged that, “for ten years, Nuru’s questionable ethics and repeated misappropriation of taxpayer dollars didn’t seem to merit a slap on the wrist from Ed Lee. Now, as Mayor, Ed Lee thinks it merits a promotion.”
This guy’s been filthy for a long long time, it’s been out there and nothing happened, at least not during the Obama years. Nuru, though is tied to every element of San Francisco’s blue city aristocracy — Willie Brown, Kamala Harris, Ed Lee, Gavin Newsom, Jerry Brown…which should make him a heckuva witness.
As Nuru was apparently lining his pockets, the city on his watch turned into a hellhole, a place where apps were developed to show visitors where the poop was, and poop-covered maps were created showing the extent of the vileness in the city, which was driving convention visitors away. This, despite the DPW’s $312 million budget and $5.6 billion with a ‘b’ capital portfolio.
It was so bad residents were last seen conducting “boulder warfare” in a desperate bid to keep the homeless from camping out on their sidewalks. The boulders, of course, were removed. Last year, I wrote this:
And yes, sure enough, it is the same people who run the unresponsive poop patrols who had that get-go to clear the boulders — the San Francisco Department of Public Works, run by one Mohammed Nuru, quoted extensively in both the poop patrol pieces and the decision to remove the reactionary boulders. Same guy. He can’t keep the neighborhood clean, but oh, he’s Johnny on the spot when it comes time to clear the anti-camping boulders.
It not only shows that taxpaying residents of the city are desperate for some kind of relief, but also shows that the city doesn’t actually care. It’s got a homeless empire to defend. So it’s getting Hobbesian as the city gets mired in special interest groups seeking to defend their interests, and to heck with a public polity.
The root of the problem is in three things: the incentivization of homelessness, which draws street poopers from all corners of the world to the fair city, free to do their business. San Francisco spends $279 million on homelessness ‘programs’ having raised the amount $29 million this year, which is a great thing for bureaucrats, but serves as a magnet for more homeless to come in as mendicants of the bureaucrats. One hand washes the other. There are ‘navigation‘ programs, pregnant women programs, housing subsidies to non-profits to provide housing to the homeless, public-private partnerships, Homeward Bound, Operation Outreach, public toilets, and well, now we see Poop City as the current sum result. Throwing more money onto the problem will just create … more poop.
The city went downhill, not just from liberal policies, but a raw sewage pit of corruption, decisions made for personal benefit instead of the city’s interests.
All during the Obama years as this guy made his rise, and the blue city consolidated, Nuru seemed to be protected.
Now he’s not. And opening that septic tank is one smelly project indeed. One only hopes that Nuru, the protected rat-king of corruption, isn’t the only one who’s going to be circling the drain when this gets sorted out. In a one-party blue state, the corruption runs very very deep.
Working-class Americans who have been betrayed by globalization of the United States’ economy are turning to President Trump’s economic nationalist Republican Party for support.
A report by the New York Times details the shift among U.S. voters. Trump’s GOP is increasingly made up of the working and lower-middle-class devastated by the free trade policies of 30 years, while Democrats represent affluent suburbia and major cities that have bounced back since the Great Recession.
Shawn Hoskins, for example, of Dayton, Ohio was a staunch Democrat voter until 2012, when he switched parties. Hoskins told the Times he “liked the way things were going” when he worked at General Motors’ (GM) Moraine Assembly plant until his livelihood was upended by GM’s decision to close the plant in 2008:
In a way Mr. Hoskins feels betrayed: In the face of economic insecurity, his loyalty to the union and the Democratic Party did not protect him. And the Republicans were an increasingly attractive alternative. [Emphasis added]
…
But at the end of the day, “when it came time for the doors to shut at G.M., the Democrats weren’t looking out for me,” Mr. Hoskins said. “Losing my job opened my eyes. I had to pay attention to other things going on in the world.” [Emphasis added]
For the first time since 1988, a Republican presidential candidate won Montgomery County, Ohio — where Hoskins lives in Dayton. Trump won the county by eight percentage points, committing to throwing out the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade deal, pushing for a national infrastructure plan, and placing tariffs on cheap foreign imports to end decades-long job-killing free trade policies.
Former union activist Lela Klein told the Times that while Columbus, Ohio — an economically stable college town — has “become bluer,” communities like Dayton that have been left behind “have become redder.”
Evergreen: In the last decade, rural America has decreased by 3.5M people. Wealthy zipcodes have grown by more than 10M. The blue areas (metropolises) have seen the most economic gains. The dark red (deep South & rural communities) are the most distressed. https://t.co/IGxz3jZvtOpic.twitter.com/EU5mSIRdu6
That change, the Times notes, can be seen across the nation. In Macomb County, Michigan, for instance, Trump secured 54 percent of the vote with his economic nationalist message. At the same time, Macomb County “income per person has dropped from 110 percent of the national average to 87 percent in the last two decades,” the Times reports.
Columbus County, North Carolina has likewise shifted towards the GOP as working and middle-class communities were devastated when manufacturers fled the region to outsource overseas. In 2016, Trump won more than 60 percent of the vote. Income per person in Columbus County has dropped to 61 percent of the national average.
“By 2016, the nation’s political map corresponded neatly to the distribution of prosperity: Mr. Trump won 58 percent of the vote in the counties with the poorest 10 percent of the population. In the richest, his share was 31 percent,” the Times reported.
Local Dayton union director Stacey Benson-Taylor told the Times that “There were a lot of union votes that did flip” in the 2016 election.
Even voters like Will Minehart, a 45-year-old Dayton-Phoenix machinist, who has continuously voted for Democrats, told the Times that his party loyalty is long gone since he was laid off by GM.
“I am not a Republican nor a Democrat,” Minehart said. “I’m working class.”
Breitbart News has chronicled Trump’s shifting of the party to one that looks out for the needs of the nation’s working and middle-class workforce with fair trade, tight labor markets, and an anti-outsourcing agenda — far from the party’s business-centric, economic libertarian platform that helped lose the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections.
Meanwhile, Democrat voters — increasingly concentrated in large metropolises — and their elected officials have become a party opposed to protecting American workers from the negative impacts of free trade.
The latest Economist/YouGov poll finds that the overwhelming majority of Republican voters, nearly 7-in-10 or 69 percent, say tariffs on foreign imports “help” or “neither help nor hurt” the U.S. economy. The plurality of those Republicans, 43 percent, said tariffs help the U.S. economy. Only 16 percent of Republicans today say tariffs “hurt” the U.S. economy.
(Screenshot via Economist/YouGov)
On the other hand, 63 percent of Democrat voters — more than any other political demographic group — say tariffs explicitly hurt the U.S. economy. Only 12 percent of Democrats say tariffs on foreign imports help.
That position has been fully realized in the 2020 Democrat presidential primary, where candidates like Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar, Tom Steyer, and Pete Buttigieg have all promised to immediately end tariffs imposed on Chinese imports.
As Breitbart News has chronicled, decades-long free trade deals, NAFTA, and China’s entering the World Trade Organization (WTO) eliminated about five million American manufacturing jobs and 50,000 U.S. manufacturing plants since 1994. American manufacturing is vital to the U.S. economy, as every one manufacturing job supports an additional 7.4 American jobs in other industries.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
You’ve got to hand it to the Democrats — they can hold their caucus together for the flimsiest of causes. The GOP, though, has all these RINOs who have to establish their independence; they’re willing to break party unity when it serves their own ambitions. Three senators – Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, and Mitt Romney of Utah – are rumored to be willing for witnesses to be called in the impeachment trial now underway in the Senate. Obviously, such a slowdown benefits the Democrats, who want the impeachment to headline news reports as long as possible. Further and more importantly, it was the House’s responsibility to build its case by compiling evidence and presenting it to the Senate for a trial; it is not the Senate’s responsibility to gather evidence.
The Democratic case lacks “overwhelming evidence” as Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa said, calling the whole process “a political exercise.” Ernst and others, like Lindsey Graham, are unwilling to extend the trial and accomplish the Democrat’s goal of dominating headlines in the run-up to the November elections.
The question is whether the three RINOs mentioned above will put the good of the country above their own emotional needs or self-interest.
Take Senator Mitt Romney. Remember when he needed endorsements when running for President? He went to New York to ask for Trump’s endorsement. He got it. Remember, after he lost the Presidency, he ran for senator from Utah. He sought and received Trump’s endorsement. Typically, such political favors generate appreciation and are reciprocated. Not so with Romney. With the usual caveats of being “deeply concerned” and finding it “very troubling,” Romney turned against Trump over the Ukraine farce, calling the President’s actions illegal and unpresidential. Now that the impeachment circus has moved to the Senate for trial, Romney is joining with those demanding witnesses. Digging deeper, it turns out that one of Romney’s top advisors is a former high-ranking CIA official Joseph Cofer Black who, it just happens, is on the board of Burisma Holdings, the same company that has been so generous to Hunter Biden. There is little question that Romney will ultimately do what benefits him most when it comes to his votes in the impeachment trial.
Senator Susan Collins is following the trial very closely and is taking copious notes. She reacted strongly to House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler’s accusation against the Republican senators; he claimed they voted “for a cover-up when they opposed subpoenas at the trial.” She sent a note to Chief Justice John Roberts and granted an interview to Politico complaining about the accusation. In this election year, Senator Collins is between the proverbial rock and a hard place. She has to hold on to independent voters to win her fifth six-year term in November. She is showing the stress of the pressures to get her to push for witnesses and additional evidence. George Conway (Kellyanne’s husband and well-known Anti-Trump tweeter who has founded a super-PAC opposing the president) is demanding that Collins “do her job” instead of “covering” for the president. Already, Collins has shown her willingness to break ranks with the GOP; she voted as the lone Republican “for one of the 11 amendments proposed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer” even though the amendment was doomed for defeat. It remains to be seen what she will consider in her personal best interest as the trial moves forward.
Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska is considered a sure ally of the Democrats, but she has gone on record “questioning whether it makes sense to call for fresh evidence.” Further, she pointed out the irony of the Democrats not wanting to slow things down by involving the courts, but now wanting to get the courts involved. Then, there is the irony of the Democrats rushing the case through the House without allowing time for witnesses for the defense, but now wanting to drag things out by calling for new witnesses. With the leak of information from former National Security Advisor John Bolton’s forthcoming book about his time on the President’s staff, Murkowski has signaled her openness to hearing testimony from Bolton.
As the Senate trial moves from opening statements from the GOP to the Q and A period, the votes of the three RINOs will be key in determining whether Bolton and Biden, as well as other witnesses, will be allowed the draw out the trial or whether Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell can hold his caucus together and wrap up the trial putting an end this orchestrated attempt to remove the duly elected president that began the moment he was sworn in. This sham business is so egregious that on Monday, Harvard law professor and television legal commentator, Alan Dershowitz — not a Trump ally by any stretch of the imagination — declared authoritatively that even if the accusations in Bolton’s book are true, they do not “rise to the level of an abuse of power or an impeachable offense.”
Dershowitz, along with Jonathan Turley, has declared the impeachment case to be — in today’s lingo — a nothingburger. Certainly, nothing yet throws McConnell’s fast-track trial timeline into question. The RINO trio — Murkowski, Romney, and Collins — could threaten that timeline. Reports indicate they are discussing joining the Democrats to demand testimony from witnesses — specifically John Bolton. Despite that possibility, latest projections are that the GOP majority will likely vote — as soon as the end of this work week — to acquit Trump and end the tawdry circus. As Trump attorney Jay Sekulow said, “We deal with transcript evidence, we deal with publicly available information. We do not deal with speculation, allegations that are not based on evidentiary standards at all.”
With a case based entirely on speculation and secondhand suppositions as to motivation and intent, most people see no scenario where the Senate will vote to remove Trump from office. Why continue the trial for a sham of an impeachment? In his New York Post op-ed, Michael Goodwin, summarized the situation: “Even with Bolton, the basic facts of the Ukraine matter remain too light and too small to bear the enormous burden of removing an elected president.”
This impeachment is a specious attempt to overturn a legitimate election conducted in accordance with the provisions of our constitution. Further, it is a naked abuse of power and cannot be allowed to succeed — not in order to benefit Trump’s political standing, but for the sake of the continuation of this great republic and the voting processes that keep it truly a representative republic. Our nation was brought into existence by patriots who risked all that they had and their very lives to grant us the opportunity to govern ourselves free from the tyranny of a ruling class — a ruling class not unlike the current cabal of elitists who are intent on wresting control over our government from the hands of “We the People.”
You’ve got to hand it to the Democrats — they can hold their caucus together for the flimsiest of causes. The GOP, though, has all these RINOs who have to establish their independence; they’re willing to break party unity when it serves their own ambitions. Three senators – Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, and Mitt Romney of Utah – are rumored to be willing for witnesses to be called in the impeachment trial now underway in the Senate. Obviously, such a slowdown benefits the Democrats, who want the impeachment to headline news reports as long as possible. Further and more importantly, it was the House’s responsibility to build its case by compiling evidence and presenting it to the Senate for a trial; it is not the Senate’s responsibility to gather evidence.
The Democratic case lacks “overwhelming evidence” as Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa said, calling the whole process “a political exercise.” Ernst and others, like Lindsey Graham, are unwilling to extend the trial and accomplish the Democrat’s goal of dominating headlines in the run-up to the November elections.
The question is whether the three RINOs mentioned above will put the good of the country above their own emotional needs or self-interest.
Take Senator Mitt Romney. Remember when he needed endorsements when running for President? He went to New York to ask for Trump’s endorsement. He got it. Remember, after he lost the Presidency, he ran for senator from Utah. He sought and received Trump’s endorsement. Typically, such political favors generate appreciation and are reciprocated. Not so with Romney. With the usual caveats of being “deeply concerned” and finding it “very troubling,” Romney turned against Trump over the Ukraine farce, calling the President’s actions illegal and unpresidential. Now that the impeachment circus has moved to the Senate for trial, Romney is joining with those demanding witnesses. Digging deeper, it turns out that one of Romney’s top advisors is a former high-ranking CIA official Joseph Cofer Black who, it just happens, is on the board of Burisma Holdings, the same company that has been so generous to Hunter Biden. There is little question that Romney will ultimately do what benefits him most when it comes to his votes in the impeachment trial.
Senator Susan Collins is following the trial very closely and is taking copious notes. She reacted strongly to House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler’s accusation against the Republican senators; he claimed they voted “for a cover-up when they opposed subpoenas at the trial.” She sent a note to Chief Justice John Roberts and granted an interview to Politico complaining about the accusation. In this election year, Senator Collins is between the proverbial rock and a hard place. She has to hold on to independent voters to win her fifth six-year term in November. She is showing the stress of the pressures to get her to push for witnesses and additional evidence. George Conway (Kellyanne’s husband and well-known Anti-Trump tweeter who has founded a super-PAC opposing the president) is demanding that Collins “do her job” instead of “covering” for the president. Already, Collins has shown her willingness to break ranks with the GOP; she voted as the lone Republican “for one of the 11 amendments proposed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer” even though the amendment was doomed for defeat. It remains to be seen what she will consider in her personal best interest as the trial moves forward.
Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska is considered a sure ally of the Democrats, but she has gone on record “questioning whether it makes sense to call for fresh evidence.” Further, she pointed out the irony of the Democrats not wanting to slow things down by involving the courts, but now wanting to get the courts involved. Then, there is the irony of the Democrats rushing the case through the House without allowing time for witnesses for the defense, but now wanting to drag things out by calling for new witnesses. With the leak of information from former National Security Advisor John Bolton’s forthcoming book about his time on the President’s staff, Murkowski has signaled her openness to hearing testimony from Bolton.
As the Senate trial moves from opening statements from the GOP to the Q and A period, the votes of the three RINOs will be key in determining whether Bolton and Biden, as well as other witnesses, will be allowed the draw out the trial or whether Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell can hold his caucus together and wrap up the trial putting an end this orchestrated attempt to remove the duly elected president that began the moment he was sworn in. This sham business is so egregious that on Monday, Harvard law professor and television legal commentator, Alan Dershowitz — not a Trump ally by any stretch of the imagination — declared authoritatively that even if the accusations in Bolton’s book are true, they do not “rise to the level of an abuse of power or an impeachable offense.”
Dershowitz, along with Jonathan Turley, has declared the impeachment case to be — in today’s lingo — a nothingburger. Certainly, nothing yet throws McConnell’s fast-track trial timeline into question. The RINO trio — Murkowski, Romney, and Collins — could threaten that timeline. Reports indicate they are discussing joining the Democrats to demand testimony from witnesses — specifically John Bolton. Despite that possibility, latest projections are that the GOP majority will likely vote — as soon as the end of this work week — to acquit Trump and end the tawdry circus. As Trump attorney Jay Sekulow said, “We deal with transcript evidence, we deal with publicly available information. We do not deal with speculation, allegations that are not based on evidentiary standards at all.”
With a case based entirely on speculation and secondhand suppositions as to motivation and intent, most people see no scenario where the Senate will vote to remove Trump from office. Why continue the trial for a sham of an impeachment? In his New York Post op-ed, Michael Goodwin, summarized the situation: “Even with Bolton, the basic facts of the Ukraine matter remain too light and too small to bear the enormous burden of removing an elected president.”
This impeachment is a specious attempt to overturn a legitimate election conducted in accordance with the provisions of our constitution. Further, it is a naked abuse of power and cannot be allowed to succeed — not in order to benefit Trump’s political standing, but for the sake of the continuation of this great republic and the voting processes that keep it truly a representative republic. Our nation was brought into existence by patriots who risked all that they had and their very lives to grant us the opportunity to govern ourselves free from the tyranny of a ruling class — a ruling class not unlike the current cabal of elitists who are intent on wresting control over our government from the hands of “We the People.”
Late in 2019, Boeing was awarded a $265.2 million contract modification for the Ground-based Midcourse Defense anti-ballistic missile system (GMD). This award shows a strong commitment from the federal government to upgrade and continue funding the only technology available to protect American citizens from a long-range missile attack. The emerging threat coming from Iran shows the need for upgrading the last line of defense to a potential nuclear missile attack targeting American cities.
The Trump Doctrine, as it relates to Iran, is simple.
According to President Donald J. Trump, speaking on Jan. 8, 2020, “As long as I am president of the United States, Iran will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.” The president recognizes through his actions and words that a strong missile defense system is the last line of defense to protect American citizens on American soil if, in the future, Iran does acquire one nuclear weapon beyond his presidency.
The GMD program is the only technology that can protect the homeland from intercontinental missile attacks with either a conventional or nuclear payload. It is important for Congress and the Pentagon to continue support for further deployment of these defenses now with the threats coming from rogue nations North Korea and Iran, and traditional adversaries Russia and China, which are clearly in possession of nuclear devices of varying sophistication.
On July 1, 2019, the International Atomic Energy Agency announced that Iran exceeded its limit on its stockpile of enriched uranium, putting concerns about an Iranian nuclear weapon back in the headlines. Iran then proclaimed it had enriched uranium to about 4.5% purity. Since then, Iran has announced numerous other accelerations of its nuclear program that specifically exceed the provisions of the Iran nuclear deal and shorten the time it would take to build a nuclear weapon. For these, and other reasons, President Trump withdrew the United States from the unratified agreement with Iran that was designed to limit their nuclear progression. Couple this with Iran’s recent ballistic missile attacks in the region and the need for continued GMD funding becomes apparent.
Despite the new contract, GMD is not in good shape. Barely one percent of the U.S. military budget is spent on missile defense, and only a fraction of that goes to defense of the homeland. GMD is facing challenges in assuring the reliability of its interceptor missiles and preserving the supply chain for essential parts as the system ages. As it grows older, the sole defense of America against a long-range missile attack is gradually degrading. This is in no small part to a handful of bureaucrats at the Pentagon who have undermined the program and the Trump efforts to strengthen our national defense infrastructure.
Earlier in 2019 an effective pause was placed on the GMD putting millions of Americans and our national economy in jeopardy. Despite the pushback many elected politicians disagreed with the unelected bean counters at the Pentagon. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL) argued on January 17th of last year, “Missile defense is vital to securing our homeland, our forces abroad and our allies, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.” He made the case that the Trump Administration was going in the right direction with the release of the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Review, including “smart and strategic policies that will guide our missile defenses and posture to counter our adversaries through an increased focus on advanced technology.” These are laudable goals that have not yet been met.
It is time for the bureaucrats to catch up to the president’s rhetoric and promises to do more to protect America from Iran, China, North Korea, Russia and any other nations, or non-state actors, who want to fire a missile at American citizens. American citizens cannot afford 13 days, or 13 minutes, of nuclear threat.
Phil Kiver, Ph.D. is an Army veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. He received his doctorate in Strategic Studies at Henley-Putnam University.
Late in 2019, Boeing was awarded a $265.2 million contract modification for the Ground-based Midcourse Defense anti-ballistic missile system (GMD). This award shows a strong commitment from the federal government to upgrade and continue funding the only technology available to protect American citizens from a long-range missile attack. The emerging threat coming from Iran shows the need for upgrading the last line of defense to a potential nuclear missile attack targeting American cities.
The Trump Doctrine, as it relates to Iran, is simple.
According to President Donald J. Trump, speaking on Jan. 8, 2020, “As long as I am president of the United States, Iran will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.” The president recognizes through his actions and words that a strong missile defense system is the last line of defense to protect American citizens on American soil if, in the future, Iran does acquire one nuclear weapon beyond his presidency.
The GMD program is the only technology that can protect the homeland from intercontinental missile attacks with either a conventional or nuclear payload. It is important for Congress and the Pentagon to continue support for further deployment of these defenses now with the threats coming from rogue nations North Korea and Iran, and traditional adversaries Russia and China, which are clearly in possession of nuclear devices of varying sophistication.
On July 1, 2019, the International Atomic Energy Agency announced that Iran exceeded its limit on its stockpile of enriched uranium, putting concerns about an Iranian nuclear weapon back in the headlines. Iran then proclaimed it had enriched uranium to about 4.5% purity. Since then, Iran has announced numerous other accelerations of its nuclear program that specifically exceed the provisions of the Iran nuclear deal and shorten the time it would take to build a nuclear weapon. For these, and other reasons, President Trump withdrew the United States from the unratified agreement with Iran that was designed to limit their nuclear progression. Couple this with Iran’s recent ballistic missile attacks in the region and the need for continued GMD funding becomes apparent.
Despite the new contract, GMD is not in good shape. Barely one percent of the U.S. military budget is spent on missile defense, and only a fraction of that goes to defense of the homeland. GMD is facing challenges in assuring the reliability of its interceptor missiles and preserving the supply chain for essential parts as the system ages. As it grows older, the sole defense of America against a long-range missile attack is gradually degrading. This is in no small part to a handful of bureaucrats at the Pentagon who have undermined the program and the Trump efforts to strengthen our national defense infrastructure.
Earlier in 2019 an effective pause was placed on the GMD putting millions of Americans and our national economy in jeopardy. Despite the pushback many elected politicians disagreed with the unelected bean counters at the Pentagon. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL) argued on January 17th of last year, “Missile defense is vital to securing our homeland, our forces abroad and our allies, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.” He made the case that the Trump Administration was going in the right direction with the release of the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Review, including “smart and strategic policies that will guide our missile defenses and posture to counter our adversaries through an increased focus on advanced technology.” These are laudable goals that have not yet been met.
It is time for the bureaucrats to catch up to the president’s rhetoric and promises to do more to protect America from Iran, China, North Korea, Russia and any other nations, or non-state actors, who want to fire a missile at American citizens. American citizens cannot afford 13 days, or 13 minutes, of nuclear threat.
Phil Kiver, Ph.D. is an Army veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. He received his doctorate in Strategic Studies at Henley-Putnam University.
By now, we have all heard about Sen. Chuck Schumer looking for Republicans willing to go along with the Democrat’s impeachment scam. Democrats are still trying to overturn the results of the 2016 election, and all Americans should be concerned because the impeachment scam has set a dangerous precedent. It opened the door for corrupt politicians to overthrow future presidents through phony congressional kangaroo courts.
Moreover, all Americans should be outraged because the charges are completely false, and we have no idea how many Republicans (Never Trumpers) are willing to go along with the scam for personal gain or satisfaction. It’s disheartening just knowing that some Republicans feigned concern about the President’s phone call to Ukraine after the transcript of the call was released to the public.
Anyone who read the transcript should have concluded that there was no quid pro quo, and the charges are false. There was no mention of withholding military aid in that phone call. In addition, the President of Ukraine told Time that there was no “quid pro quo.” Even one of the Democrat’s own witnesses, Ambassador Gordon Sondland, stated that the President told him directly that he wanted “no quid-pro-quo.”
Senator Susan Collins is following the trial very closely and is taking copious notes. She reacted strongly to House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler’s accusation against the Republican senators; 
By now, we have all heard about Sen. Chuck Schumer looking for Republicans willing to go along with the Democrat’s impeachment scam. Democrats are still trying to overturn the results of the 2016 election, and all Americans should be concerned because the impeachment scam has set a dangerous precedent. It opened the door for corrupt politicians to overthrow future presidents through phony congressional kangaroo courts.