Friday MSNBC highlighted a climate change protest in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, where three people stood under gallows on ice blocks with nooses around their necks.
Host Yasmin Vossoughian said, “Millions of young people are taking to the streets to call for action on climate change. The global march includes events in 150 countries. What started this morning in Australia, Asia and Africa is now surging across Europe and the Americas. In Berlin, protesters used a striking visual message to push for action. Standing on ice blocks with nooses around their necks. A stark call for change before it’s too late.”
House Judiciary Committee Chairman and Democrat New York Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) claimed Friday that the impact of climate change will reduce the planet to “bacteria and maybe a few plants.”
Nadler’s remarks were made as he spoke in Washington, D.C., at one of several global climate strike protests.
“People think, well, the sea leavels are rising, it’ll cost us $100 billion to relocate, two million people will die in Bangladesh in India because that’s bad enough,” Nadler said. “It’s much, much worse.”
“I have a thirteen year-old grandaughter and when I look at her, I get terrified,” Nadler continued. “I don’t know if human life will survive fifty years. We may face, the climate scientists tell us, that we may face the sixth mass extiniction in the history of the globe.”
Nadler then shifted his focus to the acidification of the oceans, which he says will “destroy the entire food chain.”
“If the oceans acidify, which they’re beginning to do, they will destroy the entire food chain and essentially all that will be left will be bacteria and maybe some plants.”
A California abortionist testified this week during the preliminary criminal hearing of the Planned Parenthood video journalists that there is “no question” some second-trimester induced abortions discussed in the videos resulted in live births.
An unlikely witness for the defense, Dr. Forrest Smith, an OB/GYN who touted to the court he is “the longest practicing abortion doctor in the United States today,” addressed in his testimony video footage produced by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP), reported LifeSiteNews.
According to the report, Smith said it was quite probable some of the abortionists featured in the undercover videos that exposed Planned Parenthood’s fetal tissue practices purposely changed abortion procedures in order to be more likely to harvest body parts that would be fresher.
One video, created by journalists David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, showed a presentation by Alisa Goldberg during a 2014 Planned Parenthood conference. Goldberg was advocating for the use of high doses of abortion drug misoprostol to complete a second-trimester induced abortion in only one day.
“According to Smith, Goldberg’s presentation suggests that Planned Parenthood abortionists were employing a method that was likely to result in live births,” LifeSiteNews reported.
The procedure recommended in the video presentation used large doses (300 to 400 mg) of the abortion drug every three to four hours to induce labor for a late-term abortion so that the unborn baby “comes out without any assistance from the abortion doctor,” in a “fetal expulsion.”
“In this case clearly the intent is same-day surgery,” Smith testified. “They fully intend to put the uterus into labor.”
Smith said that “very few people in abortion, outside of Planned Parenthood, do that.”
He added another CMP video in which Perrin Larton, procurement manager for biomedical company Advanced Bioscience Research (ABR), discussed a “fetus falling out” was also likely a situation involving “fetal expulsion.”
Peter Breen of the Thomas More Society, one of Daleiden’s attorneys, asked Smith whether “fetal expulsion” would result in a live birth.
LifeSiteNews reported:
“There’s no question in my mind that at least some of these fetuses were live births,” Smith replied.
In response to Breen’s question, Smith said he was aware that the drug digoxin — which overwhelms the baby’s heart — is used in abortion to “induce fetal demise, a euphemism they like.”
If a baby was expelled during an abortion using misoprostol and the drug digoxin had not been used, would the baby be alive, Breen asked.
“No question it’s alive,” answered Smith.
Smith testified the sign of life is a beating heart and said abortionists featured in the CMP videos who appeared to use other criteria such as “no movement” or “no breathing” were “completely wrong.”
The report continued:
Smith testified that to comply with the partial-birth abortion ban, his technique in a D&E [dilation and evacuation] abortion is to extract the umbilical cord, and cut it so “exsanguination can occur.” He then “watches with my ultrasound” for a heartbeat.
The baby’s heart will continue to beat for “six-and-a-half to seven minutes,” he said. That’s been his consistent observation in the 25 years he’s used this method.
Smith continued the proper standard of care for babies born alive during an abortion was to “institute promptly all resuscitative care.”
Failure to do this, he said, means the fetus “dies by neglect.”
Smith admitted that abortion is killing a human being.
“You can kill a human being, which I admit abortion is, but you have to do it in certain ways,” he said.
Dr. Therese Deisher, who testified for the defense Wednesday, told LifeSiteNews Smith’s testimony “definitely proved that these babies are being deliberately born alive for the purposes of harvesting, the changes in the method and the refusal to use digoxin, which stops the heart.”
“They want those babies coming out with beating hearts,” she said, adding that Smith’s testimony made it “very clear that this is intentional.”
In June the Trump administration announced it will no longer provide taxpayer funding for research in its programs that use human fetal tissue derived from the body parts of aborted babies.
Prior to that announcement, the Department of Health and Human Services ended a contract between ABR and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) amid concerns the biomedical company was providing the government with “fresh” aborted baby tissue to engineer humanized mice for drug experimentation.
Daleiden and Merritt are the first undercover journalists to be criminally prosecuted in the history of the state of California.
The two journalists were slapped with 15 felony counts of recording confidential information without consent by the office of the California Attorney General (AG), including its past AG, current U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, and her successor, Xavier Becerra.
Harris received thousands of dollars in campaign donations from Planned Parenthood, and, subsequently, she and her office raided Daleiden’s home and seized his personal property, including his laptop, instead of prosecuting Planned Parenthood.
The preliminary hearing at San Francisco’s Superior Court will determine if any of the charges against the journalists could proceed to a trial.
An activist went on a frenzied rant on climate change and lamented sitting in school to “learn about a future that might not exist” at the global climate strike in Washington D.C., Friday.
Thousands gathered for the global climate change protest in Washington, D.C. Friday, which was inspired, in part, by the actions of 16-year-old Swedish climate change activist Greta Thunberg, who testified before Congress this week.
Activists took the stage at the West Front of the U.S. Capitol, giving impassioned speeches on climate change. One female activist delivered brief remarks, screaming about the future that “may not exist.”
“We are on a timeline. This is a fight for our lives, for our security, for all future generations to come. They want us to just sit quiet?” she asked the crowd, which responded with a resounding “No!”
“They want us to just sit in school and learn about a future that might not exist?” she shouted.
“We are here because our generations past have put us in an instable [sic] place,” she continued.
“And you know what? I’m sick of hearing about their actions. I’m sick of their apologies. I’m sick of their shame. And I’m sick of the future that they put on us of doom and of gloom,” she added.
“I’m sick of it, and so are all of you. And we’re not here to talk about our sacrifices and our doom and gloom and our not existing. We are here to create,” the activist shouted at the top of her lungs.
“We are creating this movement every day, because every day of inaction draws more action from us,” she screamed.
As Breitbart News reported, climate change alarmists have dropped the ball on dozens of doomsday predictions – including Ice Ages, acid rain, oil depletion, super hurricanes, killer bees, and an ice-free Arctic – in years past.
Several hundred Tea Party activists gathered Thursday morning on the steps of the Capitol for a “Stop Socialism, Chose Freedom” rally hosted by the Tea Party Patriots and featuring members of the House and Senate and conservative activists, who called on fellow Americans to reject the resurgent socialism among the left.
Speakers pointed to positions of the 2020 Democrat presidential candidates, arguing that they have been skewing further left to meet the demands of progressives on everything from wealth distribution, gun control, health care, and abortion.
One rally-going donned a “Don’t Tread on Me” cape. (Credit: Matt Perdie / Breitbart News)
Alek Skarlatos, who was one of three Americans who stopped an attempted terrorist attack while in France, implored attendees to stand up for liberty.
“I think that socialism is leading us in the absolutely wrong direction for this country. I think that everyone in this country has a right to defend themselves. And I mean, I carry a gun on me everyday,” said Skarlatos, who served in the Army National Guard and is now running for Congress in Oregon’s 4th Congressional District.
“This next election is going to be incredibly important, to take a stand against socialism simply because the Democrats have gotten increasingly more socialist. Even if you just look at the presidential candidates, you have Beto O’Rourke saying, ‘We’re going to come take your AR-15s, your AK-47s.’ That’s something that not even Democrats — just going back to last cycle — would never admit publicly. Now we know what their true agenda is,” he said.
“It’s all about personal liberty, and not using our taxpayer dollars to pay for other people’s lives,” he argued.
Rally-goers gathered on the steps of the Capitol in Washington, D.C. (Credit: Matt Perdie / Breitbart News)
Oskar Arreaza Hernandez, who fled socialist Venezuela and has been in the United States for five years, urged everyone to look at Venezuela for an example of how socialism can ruin a country.
“How can the richest country in South America become the poorest in South America?” he asked. “There is only one word: Socialism.”
Morgan Zegars, founder of Young Americans Against Socialism, spoke about the spread of socialism among young Americans.
“My generation was raised on participation trophies. So we lack those values of hard work. We went through the education system where we weren’t really taught about the dangers of socialism and communism,” she said.
“It’s official. There are polls that will say that a majority of young Americans, my generation, would choose socialism over capitalism. It’s official. So we’ve got to do something about it,” she said.
“Politicians are training my generation to accept the idea of wealth distribution by saying, ‘You have a lot of debt, these evil rich people, the one percent, the millionaires and billionaires,’ as Bernie likes to say, they have all the money and we’re going to give it to you because you deserve it, you just have to give us power,” she added.
Some rally-goers brought signs in support of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. (Credit: Matt Perdie / Breitbart News)
Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) was among members of the House Freedom Caucus to address the crowd.
“Free enterprise says you have the right to decide what you’re going to do with your God given talents, and you have the right, with the money that you’re able to earn, to determine how you are going to best take care of your family,” he said.
He warned that socialists were trying to take away Americans’ power by allowing non-citizens voting rights.
“Socialism is an anathema to freedom and liberty. It is an anathema to free enterprise. And it guarantees one thing — that’s economic failure and poverty,” he said.
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), another member of the House Freedom Caucus, spoke at the rally. “You see all the Democratic nominees for president running right now. They want to take from you, to redistribute wealth, we should never stand for that.”
Reps. Jody Hice (R-GA) and Louie Gohmert (R-TX) also addressed the crowd.
Several hundred rally-goers attended the event to show their support. (Credit: Matt Perdie / Breitbart News)
Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), noted that although the Tea Party movement does not get as much attention as it once did, it “remains strong.”
“The spirit of the Constitution lives on in our hearts. It’s made a difference in who we elect. And for many of us it makes a big difference — all the difference — in how we vote,” he said.
“Socialism, my friends, is not compatible with the U.S. Constitution. It doesn’t belong on U.S. soil, let’s keep it out,” he added.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) delivered an impassioned rebuke of Democrat candidates’ economic plans, which he said would raise taxes for Americans.
“You see them embracing positions as they gallop to the left, further and further and further left, every one of them is saying we’re going to raise your taxes. Every one of them is saying we are going to triple the price of gas at the gas pump,” he said.
“Every one of them is supporting open borders. And not only that, they’re saying we got to provide free taxpayer health care for every illegal alien in America,” he said. “You want to know what those Democrats are all about, they’re all about socialism.”
Cruz, whose father was born in Cuba, urged Americans to look at how socialism worked in other countries:
Look at Venezuela. Look at Cuba. Look at Nicaragua. Did you know that in 1950 Venezuela was the fourth wealthiest country on the face of the earth? … Today people are literally starving in the streets, they’re eating from trashcans. And what are the people’s nationalist Democrats who are running now say, ‘Let’s bring more of that here.’
Conservative host and author Mark Levin also spoke to the crowd. (Credit: Matt Perdie / Breitbart News)
“The greatest enemy poverty has ever seen in the history of humanity is the American free enterprise system,” he added.
Jennifer Zeng, who escaped socialist China and is a member of the Falun Gong, a group persecuted in China, shared a gripping story of being arrested four times in China, imprisoned in a labor camp, and tortured.
She said labor camp prisoners were forced to squat outside in the hot sun with their hands behind their head. If any fainted, they would be prodded with an electric rod so they would regain consciousness and continue squatting, she said. She said they were also forced into slave labor for products that would be exported, including to the U.S.
“I never wanted to live in any sort of socialism again. But here in the U.S. I’m starting to feel that it has followed me…the majority of young Americans are attracted by it,” she said, adding:
The [Chinese Communist Party] controls everything…it can make all the rules, it can take away people’s liberty, property, and dignity, and persecute them at will,” she said. “Socialists promise heaven on earth but always end up giving you a one-way ticket to hell.”
Mark Levin, a popular conservative personality and author, fired up the crowd towards the end of the rally.
“We are here today because we believe in one word. Liberty. Socialism is the opposite of liberty. Under socialism you surrender your heart, your soul, and your mind to Elizabeth Warren, to Bernie Sanders, and Corey Booker, and the rest of them,” he said. He continued:
When I hear them pushing their leftwing progressive agenda…telling us this country was founded in slavery, they’re very confused, they must be talking about Red China, they must be talking about the Red Soviet Union and Russia, they must be talking about modern day Iran and North Korea. Look around you, this is liberty. You’re free to move. Mobility! You’re free to speak! You’re free to start your own press enterprise! You are free people! In the vast majority of the world, people are not free, they’re starving, they don’t have a roof over their head. They have nothing and not one damn one of those countries is capitalist.
That’s what the framers of the Constitution gave us — life, liberty, happiness and prosperity, and I’ll be damned if we’re going to swap Elizabeth Warren for James Madison, and I’ll be damned if we’re going to swap Bernie Sanders for George Washington, and I’ll be damned if we’re going to swap any one of them for any of our founders and framers of the Constitution.
Levin also blasted the mainstream media, arguing that they are doing more harm to a free press than the government could ever do.
“We don’t have a free press. We have a modern mass media filled with progressives and ideologues and Democrats and social activists who have done more to destroy freedom of the press more than any government to do,” he said.
“We, average Americans, we live better than any human beings lived on the planet before,” he said. “This election is a choice between … capitalism and socialism. It’s a choice between liberty and tyranny.”
“This can be lost. And in most societies it is lost. … that is left to us,” he warned. “We are here to tell the press and the Congress that we are not going anywhere.”
He finished with a message to President Trump: “Stand strong, keep in the fight, we back you. Because you stand between us and them.”
Rally-goers also showed their support for President Trump. (Credit: Matt Perdie / Breitbart News)
Court documents filed this week revealed that at least ten men were victimized by prevalent Democratic donor Ed Buck’s alleged predatory behavior.
Uncharged with the overdose deaths of two men in his West Hollywood home this past year and a half, USA Today reported, Buck was arrested Tuesday after a third man experienced a near-fatal methamphetamine overdose on the property last week.
According to the outlet, the former Los Angeles City Council candidate and “well-known political activist in LGBTQ circles” has been charged with multiple felonies by the state of California including “battery causing serious injury, administering methamphetamine and maintaining a drug house.”
Buck was also charged in federal court with distribution of methamphetamine resulting in death.
State and federal prosecutors indicate in their court filings that the former activist had a set modus operandi that consisted of luring homeless young black men to his West Hollywood home with promises of money, sex and intravenous drugs.
The U.S. attorney for the district termed him a “serious threat to public safety,” while Los Angeles county prosecutors referred to him as “a violent, dangerous sexual predator.”
“From his home, in a position of power, Buck manipulates his victims into participating in his sexual fetishes,” they reportedly wrote.
Open Secrets political donation database reveals Buck also gave thousands upon thousands to a laundry list of progressive political action committees and Democratic candidates.
That list includes such figures as President Barack Obama, two-time presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton and Rep. Adam Schiff of California.
The phrase “small time” is aimed at covering for the Democratic Party. Now if Ed Buck had been a Republican, it would have been “mega-donor and right wing activist” https://t.co/i9Fu4jvYNi
Buck is not the only prominent Democratic donor to be implicated in stomach-churning sexual crimes this year.
Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, who committed suicide while imprisoned for sex crimes in August, was a well-known political donor, having given more than $130,000 in political contributions, primarily to Democrats, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, according to another Open Secrets report.
“It’s worth noting that Democrats only started distancing themselves from Buck after the *second* young man died in his house. Democrats called it The Ted Kennedy Rule — where anyone who furthers the cause gets one.” https://t.co/cihvXMoRag
Fellow Democratic donor and co-founder of the LGBT Human Rights Campaign Terry Bean was also re-indicted earlier this year on two charges of sodomy and one charge of sexual abuse of a minor. According to The Oregonian, it was revealed in September that Bean’s lawyer and the accuser’s lawyer had been colluding to bribe the victim to remain silent.
Buck stands to do a maximum of five years and eight months in prison if convicted at the state level, but should he be convicted in federal court, he faces 20 years to life in imprisonment without the opportunity for parole, USA Today reported.
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
Elizabeth Warren Takes a Shot at Men: ‘We’re Not Here Because of Men at All’
Drew Angerer / Getty Images2020 Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) arrives for a rally in Washington Square Park on Sept. 16, 2019, in New York City. (Drew Angerer / Getty Images)
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren appealed to the liberal, feminist crowd at a New York City rally Monday by declaring “we’re not here because of men at all.”
The 2020 Democratic presidential candidate made the remarks while standing in Washington Square Park in front of the arch that was built in celebration of the 100th anniversary of George Washington’s inauguration as president.
“We’re not here today because of famous arches or famous men,” Warren said. “In fact, we’re not here because of men at all.
“We’re here because of some hardworking women,” she added, according to Breitbart News. “Women who more than 100 years ago worked long hours in a brown ten-story building just a block that way. Women who worked at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory.”
Warren was referencing the 1911 fire caused by the poor conditions in the factory, Politico reported. One hundred forty-six people died during the accident, and most of them were female immigrants.
After the fire, Frances Perkins, one of the witnesses, helped organize and implement labor reforms. She went on to become the first female Cabinet member as labor secretary for former President Franklin Roosevelt.
“So what did one woman — one very persistent woman, backed up by millions of people across this country — get done?” Warren said. “Social Security. Unemployment insurance. Abolition of child labor. Minimum wage. The right to join a union. Even the very existence of the weekend.”
Do you think Warren’s comments will cause men to vote for a different candidate?
0% (0 Votes)
0% (0 Votes)
“One woman, and millions of people to back her up.”
Despite the great things Perkins did, these are seemingly strange remarks from someone who will need men to vote for her if she is President Donald Trump’s challenger in 2020.
One commentator, Miranda Devine, wrote in an Op-Ed for the New York Post that “Elizabeth Warren’s war on men is an insulting, losing strategy.”
“The problem for Warren is that, as Hillary Clinton discovered, most women don’t want any part of an identity politics that pitches them against men,” Devine wrote. “They don’t want men to be losers because they don’t want to marry losers, and they sure don’t want their sons to be losers.”
“Most women love men. They love their husbands, their sons, their fathers. They’ve had male mentors and male coaches and male teachers who’ve been good people.”
According to an April tweet from Obama-era White House communications director Jen Psaki, even Warren had a little help from two men to get to where she is now.
“Elizabeth Warren would be a beloved Harvard Law Professor not a presidential candidate if @barackobama and @JoeBiden had not worked with her to make her idea to form a consumer financial protection bureau law,” Psaki tweeted.
Devine also pointed out that Warren would do best not to take advice from Clinton, who blamed her loss on women who were pressured by “fathers and husbands and boyfriends and male employers not to vote for ‘the girl.’”
According to the RealClearPolitics polling average, Warren currently has 18.3 percent support for her candidacy, 10 percentage points behind former Vice President Joe Biden and almost 2 percentage points above Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
CNN’s Martin Savidge traveled to the iron range area of Minnesota this week. The Iron Range near Lake Superior is traditionally a Democratic stronghold. Not anymore. Miners and working families are voting for Trump.
Democrats and their Socialist promises scare the hell out of middle America.
CNN’s Martin Savidge speaks with voters in a Democratic stronghold in Minnesota as local attitudes about politics begin to shift. —– Democratic voter on President Trump: He’s our guy pic.twitter.com/EOvAUQ6eHU
Prayer at legislative
gatherings is as old as the United States—perhaps older, if we reach back in
time to the Pilgrims’ landing at Plymouth Rock.
Legislative prayer is such a
traditional part of who we are as a country, in fact, that it should be one of
the least questionable topics of our day.
That’s why some on Ohio’s
Cleveland City Council would like to bring the practice back to its
meetings. And the law supports them if they do.
In fact, they should feel more confident than their opponents. Not only has the Supreme Court twice upheld the constitutionality of prayers before public meetings, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit—in which Cleveland sits—has also upheld the practice.
In Jackson County, Michigan,
lawmakers had a decades-old tradition of opening their meetings with a prayer,
led by one of the elected members of the County Commission. Commissioners would
rotate as prayer-giver every meeting, each praying, or not, according to their
particular religious tradition.
But then in 2013, a local activist claimed the prayers violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment. His lawsuit claimed that because elected lawmakers were leading prayers, the state had unlawfully established a religion in violation of the “wall separating church and state”—a phrase which, notably, never appears in the Constitution.
A federal appellate court disagreed. In 2017, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the county’s tradition in Bormuth v. County of Jackson. Judge Richard Allen Griffin, writing for the majority, explained that the Supreme Court had twice upheld the practice of legislative prayer.
Indeed, in the 1983 Supreme
Court decision in Marsh v. Chambers,
the justices had come down solidly on the side of legislative prayer.
Chief Justice Warren Burger
explained that prayer before public meetings “presents no more potential for
establishment [of religion] than the provision of school transportation,
beneficial grants for higher education, or tax exemptions for religious
organizations”—practices which the court has long upheld as constitutional.
The 6th Circuit agreed, but the Jackson case presented a twist: What
if the prayers were issued by a lawmaker rather than a chaplain or private
citizen, as was the case in Marsh
and, more recently, Town of Greece v.
Galloway?
Griffin explained that the
constitutional analysis remains unchanged.
He reasoned that it would be
nonsensical to approve a prayer issued by a chaplain, but disapprove the same
prayer issued by an elected official. Thankfully, the Constitution makes
no distinction: lawmakers, as well as chaplains and citizens, are permitted to
provide legislative prayers.
Judge Jeffrey Sutton
concurred. In his opinion, he said judges should stay out of the business of
scrutinizing legislative prayers, acting like a “helicopter parent,
scolding/revising/okaying the content of this legislative prayer or that
one.”
Rather, he noted that “for
all of American history” we have welcomed prayers before public meetings,
including by those elected officials for whom the prayers were meant.
So, he posed the rhetorical
question: “If the explanation for an invocation prayer is the humble act of
seeking divine guidance before a session of government, is it not strange for
judges to interfere with the content (e.g. God, Allah, or Jesus) or symbols
(e.g. making the sign of the cross or not) of that official’s prayer?”
In that case, Justice Samuel
Alito, writing for the majority, noted that “religiously expressive” practices,
such as legislative prayer that have long been a part of our nation’s history
and heritage, bear “a strong presumption of constitutionality.”
And, just a few weeks ago, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, in Fields v. Speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, extended that presumption to prayers before the Pennsylvania Legislature.
Without question, as we
recently explained in a letter sent to the council members, the Cleveland City
Council is on solid legal ground to restart its practice of legislative
prayers. So, too, are state legislatures, city councils, county commissions, and
school boards throughout the 6th Circuit and beyond.
Those prayers may even be led
by those elected to govern. And, when they stand to solemnize the
proceedings by their prayers, they are welcome to pray according to their
particular religious tradition.
Extending that level of freedom to all Americans, whether they are private citizens or elected officials, reflects the very best of the American brand of freedom.
It acknowledges the rich contribution religion provides to our nation. It recognizes that citizens retain their God-given freedoms even upon their election to office.
And, it connects us to the long line of Americans before us who employed the same freedom in their day.
President Donald Trump welcomes Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison to the White House on September 20, 2019. (Photo by ALEX EDELMAN/AFP/Getty Images)
(CNSNews.com) – An Oval Office photo-op with the Australian prime minister turned into a mini-news conference for President Trump on Friday morning, as he answered questions about everything from Iran to the latest whistleblower controversy/mystery.
“It’s a partisan whistleblower. They shouldn’t even have information,” President Trump told reporters, although he admitted he doesn’t know who it is.
This person, now working in the intelligence community, complained to the Intelligence Community inspector general, reportedly about a “promise” that President Trump supposedly made to a foreign leader. Press reports said the flap involves Ukraine, but that has not been confirmed.
Despite the lack of any facts, speculation ran amok Friday morning, with people on liberal cable channels hypothesizing that the whistleblower may have complained about Trump holding up U.S. military aid to Ukraine to press for an investigation of the Biden family’s dealings in Ukraine.
Trump on Friday told reporters he’s had conversations with “many leaders” and those conversations are “always appropriate.”
“And anything I do, I fight for this country. I fight so strongly for this country. It’s just another political hack job,” Trump said of new calls by Democrats to investigate the whistleblower’s complaint, whatever it turns out to be.
Trump said it doesn’t matter what he discussed, adding that “somebody ought to look into Joe Biden’s statement because it was disgraceful, where he talked about billions of dollars that he’s not giving to a certain country (Ukraine) unless a certain prosecutor is taken off the (Hunter Biden corruption) case. So somebody ought to look into that, and you wouldn’t because he’s a Democrat, and the fake news doesn’t look into things like that. It’s a disgrace.
“But I had a great conversation with numerous people. I don’t even know who you’re talking about,” Trump added. “And I always look for the conversation that’s going to help the United States the most. That’s very important.”
Trump noted that the press has had “a very bad week with Justice Kavanaugh and all of those ridiculous charges and all of the mistakes made in The New York Times and other places — you’ve had a very bad week, and this will be better than all of them. This is another one, so keep playing it up because you’re going to look really bad when it falls.”
Trump would not speak specifically about his conversation in July with the new Ukrainian president, “other than to say, great conversation. Totally appropriate conversation. Couldn’t have been better.
“And keep asking questions. And build it up as big as possible so you can have a bigger downfall,” he told reporters.
The New York Times reported on May 1, 2019, that Joe Biden, then the vice president, was tasked with pressuring Ukraine to clean up its corrupt government. According to the Times:
And one of his (Biden’s) most memorable performances came on a trip to Kiev in March 2016, when he threatened to withhold $1 billion in United States loan guarantees if Ukraine’s leaders did not dismiss the country’s top prosecutor, who had been accused of turning a blind eye to corruption in his own office and among the political elite.
The pressure campaign worked. The prosecutor general, long a target of criticism from other Western nations and international lenders, was soon voted out by the Ukrainian Parliament.
Among those who had a stake in the outcome was Hunter Biden, Mr. Biden’s younger son, who at the time was on the board of an energy company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch who had been in the sights of the fired prosecutor general…
The former vice president’s campaign said that he had always acted to carry out United States policy without regard to any activities of his son, that he had never discussed the matter with Hunter Biden and that he learned of his son’s role with the Ukrainian energy company from news reports.
But new details about Hunter Biden’s involvement, and a decision this year by the current Ukrainian prosecutor general to reverse himself and reopen an investigation into Burisma, have pushed the issue back into the spotlight just as the senior Mr. Biden is beginning his 2020 presidential campaign.
