Month: September 2019

via Weasel Zippers

Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: https://www.weaselzippers.us

Another year, another record. Inbound tourist arrivals for Israel over the past 12 months were expected to reach 4.6 million by the end of next week, setting a new record and building on a similar boom recorded in 2018, the Tourism Ministry said Thursday.

The big numbers come in direct defiance of efforts by the anti-Israel, Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement which seeks to isolate the Jewish state and endless reports of violence in other parts of the troubled Middle East.

It also comes on the heels of a successful hosting of the Eurovision song contest finals in May and a rush in visitors over that period driven by a global advertising campaign.

The new figures show an 18 percent increase compared to the period between September 2017 and September 2018, when 3.9 million visited. It marked the third consecutive year that numbers have climbed to a new level – and then some.

Over the past week, an estimated 82,000 tourists arrived in Israel, and another 24,000 are expected to arrive ahead of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, which begins on Sunday night, the ministry said.

“These impressive increases are a direct result of the strenuous work and revolutionary changes made by the Tourism Ministry, with an emphasis on expanding accommodation options in the country and reducing the cost of vacationing in Israel,” Tourism Minister Yariv Levin said in the statement.

He was backed by Director-General of the Ministry of Tourism Amir Halevi who applauded the momentum in the tourism industry, adding it, “creates opportunities and we are happy with the trend of increasing numbers of entrepreneurs who see tourism as an economic growth engine and invest in Israel.”

Jerusalem traditionally leads the nation as the most sought-after tourist stop, 40 percent of tourists coming in are landing on return visits and the majority of them are Christians [61 percent] followed by Jewish tourists [22 percent].

Follow Simon Kent on Twitter: Follow @SunSimonKent or e-mail to: skent@breitbart.com

via Breitbart News

Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: https://www.breitbart.com

via Breitbart News

Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: https://www.breitbart.com

The United States must recognize China as a "real enemy" in its dealings with the country, Washington Free Beacon senior editor Bill Gertz told The Epoch Times.

The U.S. took a "30-year gamble" in the hopes that trading with China would neutralize the communist state, an assumption that has been an"utter disaster," according to Gertz. The economic benefits the regime has reaped through growing financial ties to American industries have only emboldened communist party leaders.

"We had this idea that if we engage with China, and by engage, I mean do business with them, and if we moderate our policies and we don’t criticize China and if we’re nice to the communist regime in Beijing, that this would create a benign non-communist power," Gertz said while discussing his new book, Deceiving the Sky: Inside Communist China’s Drive for Global Supremacy.

The United States has made many mistakes with China, Gertz said. He said President Bill Clinton’s decision to institute a nuclear cooperation program with China was one of the most serious.

"Within a very few short years of that program, the CIA concluded in a public assessment that secrets related to every deployed nuclear warhead in the U.S. arsenal was stolen by China through espionage," Gertz said, adding that China then sold these secrets to Pakistan, which in turn shared them with North Korea, Iran, and Libya.

"We’re still dealing with the aftereffects of that," Gertz said.

Gertz concluded that the United States needs to fundamentally change the way it approaches China and "liberate the Chinese people" from communism.

"We’ve gone part of the way by identifying China as a strategic competitor or adversary, but not as a real enemy," he said. "And I think that we need to do that first. We need to be clear on the nature of the threat."

The post Gertz: The United States Must Identify China as a ‘Real Enemy’ appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

via Washington Free Beacon

Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: https://freebeacon.com

Western progressives are no doubt horrified that, on Wednesday, Israeli president Reuven Rivlin tasked current prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu with forming Israel’s next government. Netanyahu has until Oct. 24 to form a governing coalition of at least 61 of the 120 members in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. Currently, 55 members of the Knesset have recommended Netanyahu for prime minister, while the premier’s rival, Benny Gantz, has secured 54 recommendations. Rivlin, who said Netanyahu has a better chance of obtaining the necessary support, originally offered Gantz and Netanyahu an opportunity to form a unity government, under which the political rivals would rotate as prime minister. Both men refused the offer.

Progressives are horrified because they believe Netanyahu is, along with President Trump, responsible for destroying the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and thus any hope of a two-state solution. Earlier this month, for example, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) described Netanyahu’s stated intention to apply Israeli sovereignty to the Jordan Valley—a step that Israel has the legal right to do and that Gantz, too, has said he would take as prime minister—as "the nail in the coffin to a two-state solution or any peace deal." Rep. Ro Khanna (D., Calif.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) similarly said at the time that Netanyahu would "shatter what is left of a two-state solution" and "make a two-state solution nearly impossible."

Never mind that the Palestinians refuse to recognize Israel as a Jewish state—thus rejecting the foundation of a two-state solution—and that they have repeatedly rejected offers of statehood, including remarkably generous Israeli proposals. Netanyahu is still the problem.

Progressives also regard Netanyahu as a foreign Trump, a corrupt and racist authoritarian destroying liberal democracy. In March, Sanders warned against equating "anti-Semitism with legitimate criticism of the right-wing, Netanyahu government in Israel," and in a speech last year, the senator accused "Israel’s Netanyahu government" of giving non-Jewish citizens "second-class status." Even establishment, centrist Democrats seem to share progressives’ antipathy for Netanyahu—antipathy that led left-wing members of Congress to call on Israelis to vote against the premier.

These voices fail to recognize that Gantz as prime minister would be Netanyahu-lite—a man with very similar positions on security and foreign and defense policy, just with less flair for the dramatic. Gantz would bomb Hamas in Gaza, strike Iranian targets across the Middle East, and not change Israeli policy toward the Palestinians in the West Bank in any meaningful way. "Jerusalem will always be Israel’s undivided capital, and the Jordan Valley will always be our eastern security border," he said in March. The main differences between the two men concern internal matters, most of which should not particularly concern the West.

Ironically for progressives, a Gantz premiership would reveal that they really hate the Jewish state, not just Netanyahu, whom they could no longer use as their bogeyman. Look at how progressives single out Israel’s treatment of religion and its approach to the Palestinians while ignoring all other comparable examples: logically, how can one reach a different conclusion?

Moreover, these anti-Israel activists, commentators, and politicians have a bizarre obsession with the Jewish state, demonizing and delegitimizing it when, by all relevant standards, other countries ruled by non-democratic regimes are far more deserving of such treatment. Indeed, they often say Israel governs by apartheid and commits ethnic cleansing, if not genocide, against the Palestinians. Such accusations are of course absurd. The Palestinian populations in Gaza and the West Bank have skyrocketed over the last 50 years, and Arabs comprise about 20 percent of Israel’s population. Israel, it seems, is remarkably bad at genocide and ethnic cleansing. And regarding apartheid, Israel’s election last week should—but won’t—put an end to such accusations. The Joint List, an alliance of Israel’s main Arab political parties, won the third most seats in parliament, only trailing Gantz and Netanyahu’s parties. And most of the Joint List’s members even recommended Gantz as prime minister—not because they like the former general, but because they loathe Netanyahu. Many of these Arab parties are deeply hostile toward Israel’s policies, yet they are comprised of Israelis who enjoy equal rights and can have a significant influence in government. Israel is failing miserably at instituting apartheid.

The success of Joint List raises a question that few people, especially Israel’s critics, have asked: Why don’t the Palestinians have a Joint List of Jewish parties?

There are two reasons, neither of which Israel’s haters want to hear. First, the Palestinian Authority (PA), which governs the West Bank, is authoritarian and does not hold elections—President Mahmoud Abbas is still serving a four-year term that began in 2005. Second, and more importantly, the Palestinians want a state free of Jews. This is the harsh reality: Israelis welcome Arabs in Israel—they just don’t want Palestinian terrorists to kill them—while Palestinians don’t want Jews in a future Palestine simply because they’re Jews. Look at Palestinian law, under which selling or attempting to sell land to Jews is a crime, punishable by hard labor, imprisonment, and even execution. Also under Palestinian law, the PA allocates hundreds of millions of dollars of its annual budget to reward terrorists who murder Jews and Israelis. Add the fact that Palestinian leadership refuses to accept Jews’ right to self-determination, and it would appear the Palestinians are actually the ones who want ethnic cleansing.

As Israel’s chaotic electoral politics play out over the next several weeks, progressives will fume about Palestinian rights—especially as Netanyahu is in position to remain prime minister. But, in the wake of Israel’s election, progressives who genuinely want a two-state solution should not direct their ire at Israeli leadership. Instead, they should direct their gaze toward the Palestinians, who do not even have regular elections and are the ones seeking a regime of apartheid. And that is just the PA, let alone Hamas, the only governing alternative for Palestinians, a genocidal organization whose sole purpose is to destroy Israel.

The truth is, no matter who heads Israel’s government, a two-state solution will remain elusive. Only when the Palestinians have their own Joint Jewish List winning seats in parliament will there maybe, just maybe be peace at last.

The post With or Without Netanyahu, No Two-State Solution Is Coming appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

via Washington Free Beacon

Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: https://freebeacon.com

The House Intelligence Committee led by shifty Rep. Adam Schiff and ranking member Rep. Devin Nunes is holding a committee hearing on the anti-Trump whistleblower report with DNI Director Maguire.

As Devin Nunes said in his opening statment: This operation began with media reports—from the prime instigators of the Russian collusion hoax—that a whistleblower is claiming President Trump made a nefarious “promise” to a foreign leader. The released transcript of the call has already debunked that central assertion, but that didn’t matter. The Democrats simply moved the goalposts and began claiming that there doesn’t need to be a quid pro quo for this conversation to serve as the basis for impeaching the president.

Rep. John Ratcliffe destroyed all hopes for impeachment during his questioning of DNI Maguire.

Ratcliffe: The Democrats are intent on impeaching President Trump for lawful conduct pic.twitter.com/w2SiSpQasG

— Jack Posobiec ?? (@JackPosobiec) September 26, 2019

Ratcliffe, who was asked by President Trump to take over the Director of National Intelligence but withdrew his name, tore into the liberal media lies and omissions.

Rep. Ratcliffe pointed out numerous errors, conjecture and lies in the whistleblower report on President Trump’s July conversation with President Zelensky from Ukraine.

Rep. Ratcliffe:  Chairman Schiff wrote a letter on September 13th accusing you of being part of an “unlawful coverup” and then the Speaker of the House took it one step further. She went on national TV and said not once but twice that you broke the law… You were publicly accused of committing a crime and you were also falsely accused of committing a crime. You were required as you noted to follow the opinion of the Justice Department, 11 page report, on whether or not you were required to report the whistleblower complaint. Correct?… So you were publicly accused and you were wrongly accused and yet here today I have not heard an apology. Welcome to the House of Representatives with Democrats in charge… The whistleblower is in fact wrong in numerous respect… The Democrats are intent on impeaching President Trump for lawful conduct… The whistleblower then goes on to say, ‘I was not a direct witness to the events described’ … In other words, all of this is secondhand information. None of it is firsthand information. The sources the whistleblower bases his complaints on include the Washington Post, The New York Times, Politico, The Hill, Bloomberg, ABC News and others. In other words, much like the Steel Dossier the allegations in whistleblower’s complaints are based on third-hand mainstream media sources, rather than first hand information

Rep. Ratcliffe DESTROYED the liberal hack and whistleblower.
It was an incredible drubbing of this latest Democrat clown show.

The post BOOM! Rep. Ratcliffe DEFLATES Democrat Impeachment Hopes! Lists Off Partisan Whistleblower’s Numerous Errors and Lies (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

via The Gateway Pundit

Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com

A former Oklahoma police officer made an impassioned defense of Second Amendment rights Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee, and breathed defiance in the face of Democrats who have supported taking away guns.

The hearing was part of effort in Congress to pass gun control laws — an effort that gained steam after this summer’s shootings in El Paso and Dayton.

This month, Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke, a former congressman from Texas, said that if elected, he would push for a mandatory so-called “buyback” of AR-15s.

On Wednesday, Dianna Muller, who was with the Tulsa Police Department in Oklahoma for 22 years and founded The DC Project, a gun rights group,  told Congress that a ban on so-called “assault weapons” is bad policy.

“I find it ironic in today’s effort of criminal justice reform that you are taking steps to be lenient on people who have actually committed crimes against laws you created, while at the same time you are proposing more laws, like the Assault Weapons Ban of 2019, that turn ordinary, law-abiding citizens into criminals,” Muller said in a prepared statement that she delivered.

TRENDING: Rep. Eric Swalwell Claims Airline Passenger ‘Punched’ Him While Demanding Trump Impeachment

“I submit that we work on holding people accountable for the laws that are already on the books before we pass any further legislation, that would only be a burden on the law-abiding. If these laws were the answer, Chicago, Baltimore, LA and even this city, would be the safest cities in America.”

Muller deviated from her prepared remarks to make the issue plain for the members of Congress she spoke to.

“Please don’t legislate the 150 million people just like me into being criminals. It has happened. You’ve already done it,” Muller said, citing the Trump administration’s move to make bump stocks illegal, according to Fox News.

“I was a bump stock owner, and I had to make a decision: Do I become a felon, or do I comply?” she said.

Do you believe Democrats want to take away your guns?

0% (0 Votes)

0% (0 Votes)

She did once, she said. Not again.

Muller said if a so-called “assault” weapons ban is passed, “I will not comply.”

Muller said she was at the hearing to give voice to women who were victims of gun violence and who could not protect themselves because of anti-gun legislation

“Gun rights are women’s rights. That’s why I’m honored to be here, to be a voice for the millions of women who share my beliefs, but are not represented in mainstream media or are squelched on social media,” she said.

Watch her testimony below:

RELATED: Sandy Hook Mom Writes Tribute to the Son She Lost: ‘My Butterfly Is Gone But Never Forgotten’

Muller brought up the Parkland tragedy in Florida, in which 17 people were killed last February.

“If we learn anything from the Parkland tragedy, it is the repeated failure of government, laws and policy. Students ‘saw something and said something’ to school administration; law enforcement responded to the shooter’s residence more than 30 times, with no action taken,” she said. “The ultimate failure in Parkland was from the responding officers that fateful day. They remained outside while students were continuing to be murdered inside. Parkland reminds us that law enforcement has no constitutional duty to protect.”

“If you ask what would have stopped the Parkland shooter, it’s the same answer as in every shooting: being confronted with equal force,” she said.

Muller said that Congress should abide by common sense and not “a very well-organized, well-funded effort, assisted by the mainstream media, masterfully crafting campaigns to demonize guns and gun owners, and disarm our citizenry from politicians, mainstream media and our schools using their megaphones to paint gun owners as ‘deplorables’ or ‘domestic terrorists’ to now discriminating against gun owners.”

“Common sense tells us that banning ‘assault rifles’ will not stop the problem of mass murders. Common sense tells me that if you succeed in banning this gun, you will go after the next gun when the next tragedy happens,” she said. “My own experience with prior Assault Weapons Ban was it was ineffective. I saw zero impact on the streets and the FBI statistics confirmed it.”

Muller said accounts that emerge every day of citizens who use guns to protect themselves should prove that banning guns puts lives at risk.

“Any ban on firearms will inhibit a citizen’s ability to protect themselves and their families and their homes. Can you understand my hesitancy to support any laws that are designed to restrict or infringe on my God-given rights? The Constitution guarantees the government will not infringe on the right to keep and bear arms,” she said.

She then reminded the members of Congress at the hearing that allowing some people to be protected by guns and not others is a form of hypocrisy.

“Each of you is actually pro-gun. Everyday in this very building, you are surrounded and protected by men and women with firearms; some of you just are against me and others having firearms. What about ordinary Americans who don’t have the luxury of having someone else carry guns for us to protect us?” she said.

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

via The Western Journal

Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: https://www.westernjournal.com

It only took an instant for the tables to turn.

During a news conference Wednesday at the United Nations, President Donald Trump took a question about the current Ukraine controversy and turned it neatly back on the questioner.

And shifted public attention onto the Obama administration and its role in the events surrounding the 2016 election.

The issue arose when CNBC correspondent Eamon Javers asked Trump:

“Can you explain why it is appropriate for an American president to ask a foreign leader about a political rival? And what you would have said if you discovered that Barack Obama, perhaps, had asked a foreign leader for information about you” during the campaign for the presidency.

TRENDING: Rep. Eric Swalwell Claims Airline Passenger ‘Punched’ Him While Demanding Trump Impeachment

Trump didn’t miss a beat.

“Well, that’s what he did, isn’t it? Really, when you think about it,” he said, referring to the origins of the Russia “collusion” hoax that clouded Trump’s election and first two years in office. “Look, that whole witch hunt was started and, hopefully that will all come out.”

Check out the video here:

.@EamonJavers asks President Trump why it would be appropriate to ask a foreign leader about a political rival and what he would’ve said if Obama had perhaps asked a foreign leader about him during a campaign.

Trump says his call was “perfect” and he “didn’t do it” pic.twitter.com/1g8WdxmIhx

— CNBC Now (@CNBCnow) September 25, 2019

The exchange was largely ignored in coverage of the news-packed day, though liberal outlets like Newsweek and HuffPost deigned to notice it.

The lead sentence on the Newsweek story used the words “without any evidence” to describe Trump’s statement, while HuffPost disparaged Trump’s statement right from the headline: “Trump Baselessly Claims Obama Asked Foreign Leaders For Intel On Him.”

Leaving aside the important point that Trump did not ask the Ukraine president for information about a political rival, his answer to the question was dead on.

And if there’s a semantic objection to Trump’s words – possibly a “foreign leader” was not involved — they’re missing Trump’s point – probably deliberately.

There is now no question that American intelligence agencies under then-President Barack Obama were working with foreigners to spy on the Trump campaign. Christopher Steele, an ex-British intelligence agent, was on the payroll of the FBI that was fully aware of his anti-Trump animus.

RELATED: Obama Did Invite Foreign Govt Influence in Last Election: Trump

Do you think President Obama tried to sink Trump in the 2016 election?

0% (0 Votes)

0% (0 Votes)

And it was the Australian government that passed on to the FBI the tip that Trump campaign associate George Papadopoulos might have information related to Russia and the Trump campaign (at least that’s the FBI’s story).

In fact, the whole “Crossfire Hurricane” operation — the FBI’s code name for the Trump investigation — is chockablock with foreigners in prominent roles, like Steele, Alexander Downer, the former Australian high commissioner to the U.K., and the mysterious Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud.

Much of the investigation had links to London, as even The New York Times described one meeting from right out of a Le Carre novel involving Papadopoulos, an American Cambridge professor named Stefan Halper and a beautiful woman who was apparently Halper’s “assistant.”

To say the Obama FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign during the 2016 election had an international flavor would be an understatement. And it’s almost impossible to believe that much or all of all of that – the Australian contacts about Papadopoulos, the FBI’s operations in London – was not known of and approved at some very high levels by the foreign governments in question.

To say the agents conducting the investigation of Trump had an overwhelming bias against Trump would not even come close to the truth. The FBI’s Peter Strzok was fanatically determined to stop ensure the Trump campaign failed, and he was getting plenty of help from his employers, including former FBI Director James Comey.

All of that adds up to Trump’s essential point — that Obama and his minions had trafficked with foreign nationals to damage him politically in the run-up to the 2016 elections.

And as anyone who’s been awake for the past three years knows, they the deep state’s anti-Trump efforts haven’t stopped.

“What [Democrats] have done to this country is a disgrace,” Trump said on Wednesday. “They’ve hurt this country very badly, and no other president should have to go through what I’ve gone through.”

Any fair-minded person could understand that statement.

But even Trump critics should be able to see that in that Wednesday answer, Trump turned the tables on the question completely.

And in the process, he raised questions once again about the Obama administration that the mainstream media has no interest in ever answering.

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

via The Western Journal

Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: https://www.westernjournal.com

The fake news media are accusing President Trump of a coverup because — get this — the White House added a layer of security to prevent the president’s phone calls with foreign leaders from being illegally leaked … again.

Let’s start with the most distrusted name in news:

The whistleblower said White House officials intervened to “lock down” records of the call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky, according to the complaint.

“The allegation here is a coverup. Period. Full stop,” CNN’s Dana Bash says. https://t.co/tWXbbG9xPu pic.twitter.com/X7uPqOoqkS

— CNN Newsroom (@CNNnewsroom) September 26, 2019

But there’s more and more and more and more… And there will be even more.

Anyway, the basis for the media accusing Trump of a coverup is the transcript of Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Zelenskiy was, according to this phony whistleblower, “placed in a computer system managed directly by the National Security Council Directorate for Intelligence Programs. This is a standalone computer system reserved for codeword-level intelligence information, such as covert action.”

But here’s what the media doesn’t want you to know…

Later, in that phony whistleblower’s report, the phony whistleblower admits, “According to White House officials I spoke with, this was ‘not the first time’ under this Administration that a Presidential transcript was placed into this codeword-level system solely for the purpose of protecting politically sensitive — rather than national security sensitive — information.”

Oh, so it was not only THIS conversation that the White House chose to add what is basically an extra layer of security to, there were … others.

Two things…

Never in the history of the Republic have phone calls between a sitting American president and a foreign leader been illegally leaked by the corrupt intelligence community (IC) … until now.

Twice already — twice! — some traitor in the corrupted IC has illegally leaked a phone call between our president and a foreign leader, and has done so purely for political purposes.

Back in August of 2017, the far-left Washington Post published leaked transcripts of Trump’s call with Mexico President Peña Nieto along with the transcript of a call between Trump and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

The transcripts of these calls were not leaked due to any wrongdoing on Trump’s part, they were leaked to try and embarrass the president.

Question…

Knowing this, does it not make sense that the White House would want to add an extra layer of security to the president’s phone calls?

Do you have any idea how crippling it would be if foreign leaders had to worry about their calls with Trump being leaked to the media?

And that was another obvious goal of the IC leaker: to cripple Trump’s ability to do business with foreign leaders.

Secondly, if past is prologue, it won’t be long before we find out that Barry Obama did the exact same thing with some of his phone calls.

It’s all fake news, y’all…

Already, we have had the far-left Washington Post publish a pile of fake news.

Already, ABC News has published a pile of fake news.

And now, an entire coverup theory is based on this fake news.

Trump just released the full, un-redacted phone call and the full, un-redacted whistleblower complaint.

Where’s the coverup?

After spending three years deliberately lying to us about Trump colluding with Russia, the media are now so desperate and incompetent, they are screaming impeach over a “coverup” that doesn’t require a Special Counsel to investigate. This time, they’re screaming impeach over a coverup that is debunked just a few sentences later in the phony whistleblower’s own phony report.

Anyway, let me again welcome you to Russian Collusion 2: Even More Fake Newsier! 

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.

 

via Breitbart News

Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: https://www.breitbart.com

Rep. Adam Schiff has long been a Trump hater. But he took that hatred to an all new high as he chaired a House Intelligence Committee hearing on Thursday featuring testimony from acting Director of National Intelligence  Joseph Maguire.

Midway through his opening statement, the California Democrat decided to deliver a “parody” of what transpired in a July 25 phone call between President Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“What happened on the call?” Schiff said.

“Zelensky begins by ingratiating himself, and he tries to enlist the support of the president. He expresses his interest in meeting the president and says his country wants to acquire more weapons to defend itself. And what is the president’s response? Well, it reads like a classic organized crime shakedown. Shorn of its rambling character and in not so many words, this is the essence of what the president communicates.”

Then Schiff played Trump as a mafioso. ” ‘We’ve been very good to your country, very good, no other country has done as much as we have, but you know what, I don’t see much reciprocity here. I hear what you want. I have a favor I want from you, though. And I’m going to say this only seven times, so you better listen good. I want you to make up dirt on my political opponent, understand, lots of it, on this and on that. I’m going to put you in touch with people, not just any people, I’m going to put you in touch with the Attorney General of the United States, my Attorney General Bill Barr. He’s got the whole weight of the American law enforcement behind him. And I’m going to put you in touch with Rudy — you’re going to love him, trust me. You know what I’m asking, and so I’m only going to say this a few more times in a few more ways. And by the way, don’t call me again, I’ll call you when you’ve done what I’ve asked.’

“This is in sum and character what the president was trying to communicate with the president of Ukraine. It would be funny if it wasn’t such a graphic betrayal of the president’s oath of office,” Schiff said.

But that’s not what transpired in the [phone call — not even close.

In a transcript of the call released Tuesday, here’s exactly what Trump said regarding Biden’s son:

“I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that’s really unfair. A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some very bad people involved. Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what’s happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great. The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news so I just want to let you know that. The other thing, There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it … It sounds horrible to me.”

That’s it. He never demanded Zelensky “investigate” Biden’s son, simply asks him to if he can “look into it.”

But that also has to be taken in context. Trump had previously expressed his interest in allegations that Ukraine had played some role in meddling with the 2016 election. Here’s what Trump said to the Ukraine president:

“I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike … I guess you have one of your wealthy people … The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you’re surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like to get to the bottom of it. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible.”

That was clearly an effort by Trump to probe backward into the 2016 election. That’s the “favor” Trump was asking — no pressure, just a favor.

As for that quid pro quo, that didn’t happen, either.

In the call, Trump told Zelensky the US has been “very, very good” to Ukraine.

“A lot of European countries are the same way, so I think it’s something you want to look at but the United States has been very very good to Ukraine. I wouldn’t say that it’s reciprocal necessarily because things are happening that are not good but the United States has been very, very good to Ukraine,” he said.

Zelensky agreed, telling Trump the United States has been a “much bigger partner” to Ukraine than other European countries regarding sanctions on Russia. Then he said Ukraine was “almost ready” to buy additional Javelin anti-tank missiles from the U.S.

Trump makes no mention of the $391 million in foreign aid that he had directed Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, to put a hold days before the July 25 call. Trump has said that the money was put on hold to press foreign leaders in the region to pony up their own aid. The White House released the funds to Ukraine in September.

So, no quid pro quo, either.

After a Republican bashed Schiff for making light of a serious situation, Schiff said: “As an aside, I want to mention that my colleague is right on both counts. It’s not OK, but also, my summary of the president’s call was meant to be at least part in parody. The fact that’s not clear is a separate problem in and of itself. Of course, the president never said if you don’t understand me, I’m going to say it seven more times. My point is that’s the message that the Ukraine president was receiving in not so many words.”>Watch the video below (skip to 3:58).

The post Schiff Rewrites Trump Transcript So It Says What The California Congressman WISHES It Said appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

via The Gateway Pundit

Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com