Month: February 2019

The American pro-life position will get primetime treatment during President Trump’s State of the Union address next Tuesday in response to the radical abortion laws being pushed in Democrat-controlled states like New York and Virginia.

According to Politico, sources close to the White House have confirmed that President Trump has told conservative allies he wants to push the abortion issue during his speech next week.

“President Donald Trump is telling conservative allies he wants to incorporate firm anti-abortion language into his State of the Union address Tuesday, and potentially include an anti-abortion figure among his list of invitees, according to four sources familiar with his plans,” reports the outlet.

While certainly the morally correct move, President Trump’s decision to push the abortion issue so forcefully is also politically momentous, considering that it will galvanize his evangelical base and possibly persuade moderate voters.

“Trump sees an opening to energize his evangelical supporters and capture moderate voters who administration officials believe may be turned off by widespread coverage of New York’s newest abortion law, which allows for termination of some pregnancies after the 24-week mark for health reasons,” notes Politico.

Conservatives were largely unified this week in response to comments issued by Virginia Governor Ralph Northam that endorsed infanticide when he said that a baby born alive could be left to die on the table if the mother did not want it. He said:

When we talk about third-trimester abortions, these are done with the consent of the mother, with the consent of physicians, more than one physician by the way, and it’s done in cases where there may be severe deformities, there may be a fetus which is non-viable. So in this particular example, if the mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen, the infant would be delivered, the infant would be kept comfortable, the infant would be resuscitated if this is what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physician and the mother.

Governor Northam’s comments came shortly after Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York signed into law last week one of the most radical abortion measures in United States history, ensuring that women have a “fundamental right” to kill their babies at any time throughout the pregnancy if an authorized abortionist determines in “good faith” that it would “protect the patient’s life or health.” Under the new law, a woman in New York can literally abort her baby at any time up to the moment of its birth.

Sources close to the White House confirmed to Politico that President Trump has been speaking with Christian leaders on ways to craft his pro-life message.

“The president wants to reaffirm his commitment to pro-life things,” said the source.

Earlier this week, during an interview with The Daily Caller, President Trump denounced Northam’s words as “terrible.”

“I thought it was terrible,” he said. “Do you remember when I said Hillary Clinton was willing to rip the baby out of the womb? That’s what it is, that’s what they’re doing, it’s terrible.”

“This is going to lift up the whole pro-life movement like maybe it’s never been lifted up before,” he added. “The pro-life movement is very much a 50-50, it’s a very 50-50 issue, actually it’s gained a point or two over the years.”

Angel dad Chris Odette questioned why House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has not presented a bill to tear down the border wall if she really thinks it is “immoral.”

Odette, a military veteran, told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview Wednesday that he has tweeted Speaker Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer numerous times, inviting Pelosi to meet and talk about his daughter’s death, but he has received no response.

Odette’s daughter, Chrishia Odette, was just 13 years old when, on September 12, 2014, unlicensed driver and illegal alien Ramiro Tolentino Guevara careened into the girl’s body. Odette recounted the authorities’ description of the blood that streamed from her face after being struck and the professionals who said she may have lived for minutes with her injuries before dying.

He said he would ask them about this “manufactured crisis, asking is this really a manufactured crisis?” He would inquire, “Why don’t you talk to me about my daughter’s death?”

Odette said he has a card with his daughter’s name, photo, and date of death, along with his contact information, which he wanted to give Pelosi.

I’d absolutely love to sit down with her and have her explain to me how this is manufactured, and I would like to ask her why she never came to my daughter’s funeral,” said Odette. “You know, she’s concerned about so much. Chuck Schumer’s concerned about, you know, border security and not building a wall that would actually control in the direction of people’s movements.” 

“Is it immoral that she has a wall around her house?” Odette posited of Pelosi and her residence. “She’s keeping people out as much as she’s trying to keep her family safe.” 

During an October Harvard Institute of Politics event, Pelosi called a U.S. southern border wall “immoral, expensive, ineffective, not something that people do between countries.” She pledged then to give “nothing” for the border wall if Democrats won back the House.

“If that wall is immoral now and it wasn’t a few years ago, then why hasn’t she introduced legislation to have it all torn down?” Odette questioned in Wednesday’s interview.

President Donald Trump posed essentially the same question during an executive order signing at the White House Thursday. “If walls are immoral, maybe we should take down all the walls that are built right now. You would see a mess like you’ve never seen before,” Trump said.

Angel families flooded Pelosi’s office on January 15, asking for a meeting and pointing to the fact that walls were what separated Pelosi from them. The speaker refused to meet with them.

Odette described from the perspective of a “combat engineer” his first MOS, the concept of a wall along the southern border. He said the idea is “mobility, countermobility.” He described setting up a minefield to force an enemy to either clear the field or move around it, “force them into a direction you want them to go.” Erecting a wall of either steel slats or concrete barrier forces similar movement.

He challenged Pelosi and Schumer to allow a wall, and if it did not work, they could claim victory. 

Odette then turned to Pelosi’s canceling the president’s State of the Union address. The angel dad was in Washington, DC, this week because he was going to be Congressman Michael Burgess’s guest at the event–until Pelosi canceled on short notice. He challenged Pelosi’s claim that there were security issues with holding the event while the government was shut down; the claim was quickly refuted by authorities in charge of that security. Odette then challenged Pelosi’s claim of concern over those government employees not getting paid during the shutdown. “Then why were you about to take a trip and spending money on personal security that you were quoting to get work? So you don’t like people working without getting paid. Well, then why were you about to go on a trip overseas?”

Odette then pointed to Pelosi’s past spending on overseas congressional trips. He questioned if she would be willing to cut out spending on alcohol for the trips and restrict the trips to only members of Congress, not family members or others. He further challenged if Pelosi and others were actually so concerned with those going without pay that they would be willing to pass legislation that imposes a pay cut on Congress during a shutdown. He suggested, “How about instead of denying them a paycheck, [Congress] deny [itself] that paycheck and put the people ahead of us?”

Michelle Moons is a White House Correspondent for Breitbart News — follow on Twitter @MichelleDiana and Facebook.

Construction spending rose sharply in November, reinforcing the idea that the housing market’s recent slump may have reached its nadir.

Construction spending grew 0.8 percent in November, bouncing back from October’s 0.1 percent contraction. Economists had forecast a much more modest 0.1 percent rise.

On a year-over-year basis, spending is up 3.4 percent.

Residential construction had been a source of weakness in recent months, in part because expectations for higher interest rates were expected to depress demand. But this rose 3.5 percent in November.
New home sales, reported Thursday, were also stronger than expected in November.

President Donald Trump’s promise to improve America’s public infrastructure appears to be playing a role. Highway constructions spending is up 5.8 percent for the year.

The construction data’s release was delayed because of the partial shutdown of the federal government.

President Donald Trump continues to lavish attention on the New York Times, in an effort to win more positive coverage from his hometown paper.

The president welcomed New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Peter Baker to the Oval Office for an interview Thursday as well as publisher A. G. Sulzberger.

A transcript of the lengthy discussion about the media, the news and the freedom of the press was published by the Times.

“I came from Jamaica, Queens, Jamaica Estates, and I became president of the United States,” Trump told them. “I’m sort of entitled to a great story — just one — from my newspaper.”

The president expressed his willingness to speak with either of the two reporters on the record to discuss their stories before they were published.

“If I were a reporter and I called somebody and they didn’t call me back, I’d probably be psychologically, maybe not even on purpose, I would probably be inclined to do bad stories,” he said.

Trump complained about stories written by Baker in recent weeks.

“Peter’s been very tough on us the last couple of months,” he said. “I don’t know why, because I really think I’m doing a great job.”

Sulzberger objected, noting that every president felt that the Times treated them unfairly.

“The centrality of a free press and the First Amendment, demands that a free press asks tough questions and hold the powerful to account,” he said.

Sulzberger said that Trump should feel free to criticize the New York Times for their coverage, but said that his denigration of the entire media was uncomfortable.

“The broad-based attacks on journalism and journalists continue to have seems to be growing,” he warned Trump, pointing to the Saudi’s murder of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi as an example.

Sulzberger reminded Trump that Hillary Clinton also complained about tough stories they did during the campaign, but said that they would not back down from aggressive coverage of political figures.

Going forward, Trump had some advice for the Times reporters.

“I will tell you, I would love if I was just covered fairly. If I were covered fairly — like this should be a fair story,” Trump said. “I don’t know what the story is, this should be a fair story. I actually think your readers would respect it.”

While Gov. Ralph Northam is the Democrat most closely associated with the controversy regarding the Virginia abortion bill which would allow a child to be killed up until more or less the moment of birth, someone had to come up with the legislation. That someone is Virginia Delegate Kathy Tran, who introduced HB 2491, “Abortion; eliminate certain requirements.”

According to the summary, the bill “eliminates the requirement that an abortion in the second trimester of pregnancy and prior to the third trimester be performed in a hospital. The bill eliminates all the procedures and processes, including the performance of an ultrasound, required to effect a woman’s informed written consent to the performance of an abortion; however, the bill does not change the requirement that a woman’s informed written consent be first obtained.

“The bill eliminates the requirement that two other physicians certify that a third trimester abortion is necessary to prevent the woman’s death or impairment of her mental or physical health, as well as the need to find that any such impairment to the woman’s health would be substantial and irremediable,” it continues.

“The bill also removes language classifying facilities that perform five or more first-trimester abortions per month as hospitals for the purpose of complying with regulations establishing minimum standards for hospitals.”

That’s some extremely anti-life stuff. However, on the same day, it’s worth pointing out she did introduce a pro-life bill. I mean, provided that you’re a caterpillar.

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On Jan. 9 — the same day that the radical abortion bill was introduced — Tran also introduced HB 2495, which “prohibits localities from spraying pesticides intended to suppress an infestation of the fall cankerworm during the period between March 1 and August 1.”

Well, thank God we’re looking out for the cankerworm, a caterpillar which becomes a gypsy moth.

Tran, by the way, has gotten off of social media now that the controversy over her bill has hit; according to The Daily Caller, she deleted her accounts once the abortion bill became a major issue.

The Virginia GOP, meanwhile, had this to say about it:

What do an unborn baby in the third trimester and Delegate Kathy Tran’s Twitter account have in common?

Neither can defend themselves on Twitter.

— Virginia GOP (RPV) (@VA_GOP) January 30, 2019

The great irony of this is that even though this contentious bill may have made Tran decide on radio silence, it didn’t actually receive much play in the media until Gov. Northam decided to go above and beyond what she had proposed.

“When we talk about third-trimester abortions, these are done with the consent of the mother, with the consent of physicians, more than one physician by the way, and it’s done in cases where there may be severe deformities, there may be a fetus which is non-viable,” Northam said.

“So in this particular example, if the mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen, the infant would be delivered, the infant would be kept comfortable, the infant would be resuscitated if this is what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physician and the mother.”

RELATED: New Video Shows VA Gov. (Who’s Also a Physician) Doubling Down on Pro-Infanticide Comments

So  Gov. Northam appears to be [roposing infanticide. (Northam’s people insisted the governor wasn’t talking about termination as an option, something that the context doesn’t support.) Tran believes that killing a baby a few minutes before birth is all right but a few minutes after birth would be murderous.

And she believes caterpillars ought to be protected, too. Don’t forget that.

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The Jussie Smollett investigation hasn’t necessarily produced a whole lot of results thus far. There isn’t video of the alleged incident, where two white individuals allegedly assaulted the gay, black “Empire” actor, putting a rope around his neck and telling him, “This is MAGA country.” Chicago Police are still looking for two persons of interest, neither of whom has been located.

As of Thursday afternoon, Chicago Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said there were no scheduled briefings in the case, which is odd considering it’s one of the highest-profile hate crimes in recent history. Part of that, one could speculate, has to do with the problems in Smollett’s story — in particular, the actor’s refusal to turn over a key piece of evidence.

Several sources confirmed that Smollett and his manager have refused to turn over their phones or phone records to Chicago Police; both would be considered key pieces of evidence because the actor says he was on the phone with the manager, Brandon Z. Moore, when the attack occurred.

Moore has said he heard the homophobic slurs and MAGA-related epithets hurled at Smollett. However, neither one has provided the department with access to evidence proving that the call even happened.

Confirmed with two Chicago PD sources that Jussie Smollett and his manager refused a request to turn over phone records to show Smollett’s manager was on the phone with Jussie when the attack took place. Its not clear if Chicago PD will move to obtain records independently

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) January 31, 2019

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However, detectives are unable to “independently verify” the call occurred because Smollett refused to turn over his phone.

— Rob Elgas (@RobElgasABC7) January 31, 2019

In a statement Thursday, Chicago Police confirmed they didn’t have the records and that Smollett and Moore were stonewalling them on that account.

“Both the victim and the manager made independent statements to detectives that they were on the phone with one another during the alleged attack,” the statement said, according to The Wrap.

“CPD has no reason to doubt these claims. Detectives however were not able to independently verify the statements as cell phone records were not provided to investigators when asked. Therefore we are not able to confirm this.”

And again, it’s not like this was an airtight story before. Controversy regarding Smollett’s version of the events began when news came out that he hadn’t mentioned the “MAGA country” part during his initial interview with police.

Guglielmi confirmed that while Smollett hadn’t provided that information at first, he relayed it “to detectives during their initial follow-up investigation. They were not made initially to responding officers but detectives completed a supplemental report with the updated information.”

CNN also reported that a letter containing a white, powdery substance was sent to the “Empire” set in Chicago a week before the alleged Jan. 29 attack; the substance was determined to be aspirin, although the HAZMAT unit was called out to the scene.

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According to TMZ, the letter was directed to Smollett, reading “You will die, black f—.” It also included “MAGA” as the return address. In the aftermath of the incident, however, Smollett declined extra security.

What can glean about the case from what we know? Smollett was threatened via a hoax anthrax letter just seven days before he claims to have been assaulted, a letter which brought out the HAZMAT team. In wake of this, not only did he refuse additional security, he decided to go out to get a sandwich at 2 a.m. and talk on the phone with his manager — at which point, he says, he was attacked.

Smollett claims he was assaulted in one of the most heavily surveilled parts of Chicago, yet no camera seems to have caught the incident as it happened. During his first interview with cops, he declined or forgot to give the Chicago Police a key piece of evidence — namely, the part about “MAGA country.” The fact that Smollett neglected to mention that his attackers were self-identified Trump supporters seems odd, given that it would have tied the assault back to the threatening letter he received just seven days prior.

Now, both he and his manager refuse to turn over their phones or records that would prove they were on the phone with each other, another key piece of evidence given Smollett’s statement to police.

Yet, it seems as if half of the Democrat field for 2020, however, have cosigned this putrefying story as if it were fact, as has every liberal for whom the phrase “MAGA country” is irresistible bait to them. The lesson from Covington Catholic, one can extrapolate from this, remains unlearned: If an incident backs up your preconceived notions about an issue almost too conveniently — as if the cultural issues it presented were custom-designed for your personal use — it may help to wait to see just how true it is.

As for Smollett, the fact that he refuses to turn over his phone or the records to Chicago Police isn’t exactly a wonderful portent for the veracity of his claims. There’s nothing in Smollett’s phone records that should justify not turning them over to police, particularly when they would prove his story; the refusal is basically blowing a hole in everything he’s said.

And, as for those who view Smollett’s claims uncritically, if you can still believe this narrative without reservations, I admire your effort but question your motives.

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