Category: US Politics

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) told Breitbart News exclusively on Thursday that the leftist mob that surrounded him on his way out of the White House after President Donald Trump’s Republican National Convention (RNC) speech last week, along with other leftist violence in Democrat-controlled cities, could be a game-changer in this election.

Asked to reflect on what happened to him and his wife Kelley Paul last Thursday, video of which Breitbart News captured on scene, Paul said that rioters and people who break the law will continue to do so until they face consequences for their actions.

“People who act this way and people who misbehave and break the law have to be punished,” Paul said. “What’s happening is they’re either being arrested or not arrested and then they don’t do anything. One of the people who was trying to get to us who tried to knock the policeman down had an altercation with the policeman just after they got us to our hotel and punched the policeman. The policeman had a cut around his eye that required stitches. The person wasn’t even held. They were let go without bail. So if we do this, if we don’t punish people who misbehave, there will continue to be misbehavior. If you let people roam the streets and throw molotov cocktails, and you don’t arrest these people, you’ll get more of it. I think the mayors of these cities have let us down. To a person, these mayors are Democrats. Democrats have run all of these cities not for a short period of time, but really for 50 years Democrats have been running these cities.”

This past week, as his poll numbers have tanked nationally and in battleground states, Democrat presidential nominee former Vice President Joe Biden appeared in Pittsburgh purportedly to condemn violence and rioting and looting. Instead, he just blamed President Trump for it. Asked about this, and whether he thinks Biden or his running mate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) are genuine on this, Paul ripped into both Biden and Harris. Paul specifically pointed to Harris pushing to fundraise for the Minnesota Freedom Fund earlier this summer, an organization that spent raised funds bailing rioters in Minnesota out of jail.

“We’ve asked Joe Biden and Kamala Harris both to condemn the attack and to tell their supporters to quit doing this,” Paul said. “Instead, we’ve got Kamala Harris offering bail money for rioters, and offering bail money for several people with long criminal histories and getting these people out of prison and back on the streets. So not only have we not been apologized to, Kamala Harris is leading an effort to get these people out of jail so they can recommit these crimes again. I’ve called on both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to both condemn this attack, and condemn all of this violence, but instead Joe Biden gets on television and in a disingenuous way blames it all on President Trump. The Democrats need to look in the mirror because you don’t see any Republicans going into Nancy Pelosi’s restaurant and taking her food and throwing it on the floor. You don’t see any Democrat politicians being attacked quite frankly. All you see is the left attacking the right. So it’s a little hard for me to understand how it’s all President Trump’s fault when all of the attacks are coming from the left. So this is really I think a big issue and if we want our whole country to look like Portland then that’s what’s going to happen if we get Joe Biden as president. He’s already talked about he says ‘I’m going to take funding from the police.’ He says ‘oh I’m not going to defund them I’m just going to reallocate the money somewhere else.’ That sounds like defunding the police to me. Also I think it’s a big mistake to elect Biden and Kamala Harris because they say they’re going to lock the economy down more. That’s the cause of our serious economic depression right now because the economy has been locked down primarily by Democrat governors. We’ve got to open it up. We’ve got to do the opposite of what Joe Biden’s saying. He wants to close it down. We have to open it up. So I think it’s a clear distinction not only on law and order but also on what we have to do to get the economy going again.”

What is truly remarkable about the incident with Paul and his wife outside the RNC, where a phalanx of police officers needed to escort them to their hotel near the White House to guide them through the violent mob, is that rioters were shouting at him to “say her name.” That was a reference to the incident of Breonna Taylor, who was killed in a no-knock raid in Louisville, Kentucky, Paul’s home state. But the “irony” here, Paul said, is that he is actually the author of the Justice for Breonna Taylor Act that would ban no-knock raids by police and is a supporter of criminal justice reform measures—and perhaps has done more than any other Republican in Congress on this issue. What he said this proves about the left’s riotous mobs is that they are devoid of reason, and filled with “complete and utter ignorance.”

“It’s complete and utter ignorance. I’ve been an opponent of no-knock raids for my entire political life,” Paul said. “We actually introduced a bill after we spoke with Breonna Taylor’s family to try to make sure this doesn’t happen again. So, I’ve supported not only that but in Louisville the Metro Council has voted unanimously to get rid of no-knock raids. I’ve been talking with police officers and sheriffs around the state and they say they’re rarely used outside of some of our major cities. A lot of our law enforcement folks say they actually don’t need them. But the irony is these thugs who were threatening to kill us if we don’t say her name and were threatening us in the street, that these people are somehow saying ‘say her name’ and don’t have any idea that I’ve authored this bill and that I’ve actually been the Republican who has offered more criminal justice reform bills than any other Republican—every bill I’ve authored has a Democrat and bipartisan sponsorship. So my questions to the Democrats are, the ones I’ve previously worked with, where are they now condemning this violence? Instead, they’re saying ‘get up in their face’ or ‘march in the streets.’ They’re encouraging this kind of behavior and I haven’t heard one prominent Democrat get up and say these people ought to be arrested and put away.”

As for the political ramifications of the leftist mobs and violence tearing apart American cities, Paul said that while he continues to believe the Democrats have an advantage in November even though he thinks the race is tight he believes this violence by leftists is swinging the race in Trump’s direction. Whether it will swing the race enough, he is uncertain. But he does think Trump has a “great chance” now that the Democrats have shown “their true colors.”

“I continue to think it’s a 50-50 election and that the Democrats have some advantage,” Paul said. “I would say in the last week or two though as the cities continue to burn—Kenosha, Portland, Seattle, all of these cities—as they continue to burn people are beginning to shift and say that’s ‘Joe Biden’s America’ and ‘Portland is what Joe Biden will do to America.’ So, yes, I think there is a shift and I think law and order may actually make a difference in the election. I can’t imagine a policeman, a single policeman, voting for Joe Biden. All across the land the Democrats have shown they don’t care to support our law enforcement at all. They’re more in favor of supporting the rioters than they are law enforcement. This is going to take a toll on them. It’s going to be a difficult election. I don’t foresee a landslide, but I think the president has a great chance now that they’ve shown their true colors as far as law and order goes.”

The riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin, over the past couple weeks really seem to have changed the game on this issue showing Americans this leftist riotous violence can hit any place in the country not just big cities and metropolises or coastal elitist enclaves. Paul noted that Kentucky is at risk too because of the Taylor case, and specifically called on the governor Democrat Andy BeShear to preemptively call up the National Guard ahead of the Attorney General’s decision on whether to charge the officer involved in Taylor’s death.

“We have a threat of it in Kentucky as well,” Paul said. “The Breonna Taylor case is in Louisville, our biggest city. The threat is if the mob doesn’t get what they want done that they’re going to burn the city. Frankly, I think it’s important that the National Guard be called out preemptively and that there’s a large and powerful show of force. This is a predictable thing coming. There is going to be a decision by the Attorney General whether to charge the policeman. If he doesn’t charge the policeman, they’ve threatened to burn the city down. So, I think the National Guard needs to be out in a big way. The governor has the power to do this, not the president. This is up to the governor. If the governor doesn’t do it, and Louisville burns, it’s all going to be on the shoulders of one man who failed to stop it.”

Paul concluded by noting that elections have consequences, and whether Americans elect Democrats or Republicans as mayors and governors and U.S. representatives and Senators and as president could have serious implications on whether their communities are safe.

“Yeah, I think so and every politician says every four years that this is the most important election,” Paul said. “I think all elections are important and this is an important one obviously, whether it’s the most important election I don’t know about that. But I would say we’re at a tipping point and we’re no longer talking about centrism or moderates. We’re talking about wild extremes here. We’re talking about Democrats who will get rid of the legislative filibuster, which means a simple majority can vote in socialism, a simple majority can vote in statehood for D.C., a simple majority could stack the Supreme Court. Once you get rid of the legislative filibuster, what you end up with is a society that could very quickly be transformed in the wrong direction. So, we’ll see what happens, but I think it’s important that not only do we keep control of the Senate but I think the presidential election is also incredibly important too. So we’ll see what happens over time but I think more and more Americans are waking up and seeing these images of people being stomped until blood is flowing from their ears that they don’t want that so I think people will end up voting and saying ‘I want to live in a safe country.’ We’ll see what happens but I have a feeling this may well make the difference in the election.”

Former National Security Advisor John Bolton has disputed a story in The Atlantic claiming that President Donald Trump called fallen World War I soldiers “losers.” Bolton told the New York Times Friday that “I was there” and “I didn’t hear that.”

The Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg published an article titled “Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’.” The story also claimed that Trump skipped a 2018 visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris, where the fallen of the battle of Belleau Wood are buried, because he feared rain would ruin his hair. Goldberg’s sources were all anonymous.

The White House vigorously denied the report, and several officials who accompanied Trump on his trip to Europe in 2018 denied that the president had ever said anything like that. Public documents also support the idea that the president’s visit was canceled due to weather, not because the president worried about his hair.

Bolton, who has emerged as an adversary of the president since leaving the administration last fall, wrote in his tell-all book about Trump that the visit to the cemetery by helicopter had been canceled because of weather. Driving, Bolton wrote, was not an option because of the “unacceptable risk” of being stuck in traffic if an emergency arose. He criticized the media for falsely reporting that Trump skipped his visit because he was “afraid of the rain.”

On Friday, Bolton confirmed his account in an interview with the Times, and added that he never heard Trump say “losers” or “suckers”:

He got support from an unlikely source on Friday when John R. Bolton, his former national security adviser who has broken with him and called him unfit for office, said he was on the trip in question and never heard Mr. Trump make those remarks. “I didn’t hear that,” Mr. Bolton said in an interview. “I’m not saying he didn’t say them later in the day or another time but I was there for that discussion.”

Democratic Party presidential nominee Joe Biden angrily demanded Friday morning that Trump apologize for his remarks, “if these statements are true.”

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

Now that a top Democrat data analytics firm has finally confirmed that Democrats plan to claim victory weeks after the presidential election once enough of their “votes” show up in the mail to be counted, I don’t think any rational observer could view this as anything but a promise to destroy the legitimacy of the 2020 election.  The Democrats’ mission to fracture America permanently should be codenamed “Operation Chaos,” because it is chaos that they are preparing to unleash.  

It was not a few thousand dollars worth of Russian Facebook posts and online internet trolls that nearly destroyed the Union after the 2016 election.  It was the way the Obama White House and an intelligence-law enforcement cabal run by the Democratic Party maliciously and intentionally magnified Russia’s limited hijinks into the greatest political hoax in American history.  The Democrats preferred to drag the United States through four years of nonsensical conspiracy theories, needless investigations, and cries of high treason rather than to acknowledge that President Trump had legitimately defeated Hillary Clinton.  The Democrats chose an unprecedented campaign of sabotage against an American president, and in doing so, they accomplished what Putin’s Russia could never have dreamed: they succeeded in convincing half of America that the 2016 election was stolen from them.  The Democrats and the Deep State that has aided and abetted their cause have sold bitter acrimony for four years and birthed our precarious pre-civil war tinderbox today.

With American peace now hanging in the balance, will Democrats choose country over socialism and temper passions already overinflamed?  Of course not.  If four years of the Russia hoax has brought our nation to the brink of civil strife, the Democrats’ Operation Chaos will make it nearly impossible for wisdom and reason to succeed in the months ahead.  This fact alone should disqualify Democrats from office in 2020.  A party that is driving the country to civil war cannot be trusted to have the country’s best interests at heart.  

Most Republicans (except the “useful idiots” who will look past corruption and fraud for the chance to remove President Trump) understand how the Democrats plan to use “cheat-by-mail” chaos to elevate a man who can’t remember his opponent’s name (or even his running mate’s) to commander in chief.  They have a three-tailed con in play: (1) attempt to win swing states fast and declare victory before fraudulent ballots can be scrutinized; (2) harvest loose ballots after election day until Trump vote leads disappear; (3) throw the whole mess into state and federal courts until a Democrat-leaning judge gives them a Democrat lead.  At any time that one of these tails secures a Democrat victory, the “useful idiot” #NeverTrumpers and hacks in the press will aid the Democrats in quickly declaring the election over and calling for President Trump’s concession.  (When executing a good con, it’s always best to have “disinterested” third parties move the con along.)  By that point, offending ballots will be “disappeared” before they can ever be scrutinized again.  And at any stage of this dangerous game, if President Trump and his supporters fight the outcome, our efforts — not Democrat vote fraud — will be framed as “threats to democracy.”  

All the chaos lying ahead was preventable, of course.  In the most modern and technically advanced nation in the history of the planet, the idea that the United States cannot vouchsafe the results of a democratic election is absurd.  All over the world successful elections take place without high-tech voting booths or sophisticated methods for tallying votes, but in America we are plagued with so much uncertainty as to whether our elections are the outcomes of massive fraud that election integrity is impossible.  You can’t have fair and equitable elections when every single American believes the vote is already rigged.  

Obviously, if our constitutional republic is to utilize democratic elections to decide whether we choose Donald Trump’s “America First” policies or Bernie Sanders’s Green New Deal, then safeguarding the American vote is paramount over any other responsibility of our federal and state governments.  Instead, because the political establishment in America routinely ignores the wishes of American voters, it has turned a blind eye to the corruption and inaccuracy of American elections.  

Democrats (and “Republican” enablers like Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan) argue that election fraud is a myth when it is, in fact, well documented.  They argue that non-citizen voting occurs in such low numbers as to be meaningless when meaningful elections every year are decided by a few hundred votes.  They argue that election judges can be trusted when many have been prosecuted for altering votes and stuffing ballots.  They argue that sensible voter identification laws are unnecessary (and racist) when votes routinely show up from dead voters, non-voters, and voters who long ago left the jurisdictions in which they’re now cast.  They argue that ballot harvesting is nothing to worry about when the outcomes of elections are overturned days and weeks after election day.  They argue that the same U.S. Postal Service that just endorsed the Democratic Party can be trusted to impartially handle Republican votes. 

By never letting a crisis go to waste, Democrats have so effectively guaranteed “cheat-by-mail” in swing states this year that stacks of ballots can go out with coupon mailers and come back without proper signatures or any other voter authentications and go right into the ballot box.  A recent election in New Jersey was just thrown out after it was determined that mail-in vote fraud had tainted 22% of the total vote, while twenty-eight million mail-in ballots have gone missing in the last four elections.  And a top Democrat operative revealed last week how he and others have been committing voter fraud on a “grand scale” for decades.  

Gone are the days when the United States recognized the solemnity of the vote by securing for each citizen a private and uncoerced secret ballot.  Now Democrat election operatives can simply go from hospital bed to hospital bed in nursing homes around the country “collecting” votes or swallow up entire mail drops at apartment buildings before residents even hold them in their hands.  Operation Chaos will test the limits of our country’s bonds.  

How does a free country governed by the people destroy itself?  When elected representatives make it impossible for the people to believe they are still governing.  

If we had a functioning free press in this country that hadn’t thrown out objectivity and professionalism for partisan entanglements and personal vendettas, the two biggest stories of the last four years would both center on the efforts of the Democratic Party to undermine American elections so completely that the breakup of the Union is not only a real possibility but the Democrats’ likely objective.  They sabotaged the peaceful transition of power in 2016 with the Russia hoax.  In 2020, whether they can eke out victory or not, they have implemented a “cheat-by-mail” voting catastrophe that will render the 2020 election outcome unavoidably illegitimate to the losing side.  It is a strategy intended to damage the country.  It is an operation meant to unleash chaos.  

Image: GPA PHOTO ARCHIVE

Now that a top Democrat data analytics firm has finally confirmed that Democrats plan to claim victory weeks after the presidential election once enough of their “votes” show up in the mail to be counted, I don’t think any rational observer could view this as anything but a promise to destroy the legitimacy of the 2020 election.  The Democrats’ mission to fracture America permanently should be codenamed “Operation Chaos,” because it is chaos that they are preparing to unleash.  

It was not a few thousand dollars worth of Russian Facebook posts and online internet trolls that nearly destroyed the Union after the 2016 election.  It was the way the Obama White House and an intelligence-law enforcement cabal run by the Democratic Party maliciously and intentionally magnified Russia’s limited hijinks into the greatest political hoax in American history.  The Democrats preferred to drag the United States through four years of nonsensical conspiracy theories, needless investigations, and cries of high treason rather than to acknowledge that President Trump had legitimately defeated Hillary Clinton.  The Democrats chose an unprecedented campaign of sabotage against an American president, and in doing so, they accomplished what Putin’s Russia could never have dreamed: they succeeded in convincing half of America that the 2016 election was stolen from them.  The Democrats and the Deep State that has aided and abetted their cause have sold bitter acrimony for four years and birthed our precarious pre-civil war tinderbox today.

With American peace now hanging in the balance, will Democrats choose country over socialism and temper passions already overinflamed?  Of course not.  If four years of the Russia hoax has brought our nation to the brink of civil strife, the Democrats’ Operation Chaos will make it nearly impossible for wisdom and reason to succeed in the months ahead.  This fact alone should disqualify Democrats from office in 2020.  A party that is driving the country to civil war cannot be trusted to have the country’s best interests at heart.  

Most Republicans (except the “useful idiots” who will look past corruption and fraud for the chance to remove President Trump) understand how the Democrats plan to use “cheat-by-mail” chaos to elevate a man who can’t remember his opponent’s name (or even his running mate’s) to commander in chief.  They have a three-tailed con in play: (1) attempt to win swing states fast and declare victory before fraudulent ballots can be scrutinized; (2) harvest loose ballots after election day until Trump vote leads disappear; (3) throw the whole mess into state and federal courts until a Democrat-leaning judge gives them a Democrat lead.  At any time that one of these tails secures a Democrat victory, the “useful idiot” #NeverTrumpers and hacks in the press will aid the Democrats in quickly declaring the election over and calling for President Trump’s concession.  (When executing a good con, it’s always best to have “disinterested” third parties move the con along.)  By that point, offending ballots will be “disappeared” before they can ever be scrutinized again.  And at any stage of this dangerous game, if President Trump and his supporters fight the outcome, our efforts — not Democrat vote fraud — will be framed as “threats to democracy.”  

All the chaos lying ahead was preventable, of course.  In the most modern and technically advanced nation in the history of the planet, the idea that the United States cannot vouchsafe the results of a democratic election is absurd.  All over the world successful elections take place without high-tech voting booths or sophisticated methods for tallying votes, but in America we are plagued with so much uncertainty as to whether our elections are the outcomes of massive fraud that election integrity is impossible.  You can’t have fair and equitable elections when every single American believes the vote is already rigged.  

Obviously, if our constitutional republic is to utilize democratic elections to decide whether we choose Donald Trump’s “America First” policies or Bernie Sanders’s Green New Deal, then safeguarding the American vote is paramount over any other responsibility of our federal and state governments.  Instead, because the political establishment in America routinely ignores the wishes of American voters, it has turned a blind eye to the corruption and inaccuracy of American elections.  

Democrats (and “Republican” enablers like Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan) argue that election fraud is a myth when it is, in fact, well documented.  They argue that non-citizen voting occurs in such low numbers as to be meaningless when meaningful elections every year are decided by a few hundred votes.  They argue that election judges can be trusted when many have been prosecuted for altering votes and stuffing ballots.  They argue that sensible voter identification laws are unnecessary (and racist) when votes routinely show up from dead voters, non-voters, and voters who long ago left the jurisdictions in which they’re now cast.  They argue that ballot harvesting is nothing to worry about when the outcomes of elections are overturned days and weeks after election day.  They argue that the same U.S. Postal Service that just endorsed the Democratic Party can be trusted to impartially handle Republican votes. 

By never letting a crisis go to waste, Democrats have so effectively guaranteed “cheat-by-mail” in swing states this year that stacks of ballots can go out with coupon mailers and come back without proper signatures or any other voter authentications and go right into the ballot box.  A recent election in New Jersey was just thrown out after it was determined that mail-in vote fraud had tainted 22% of the total vote, while twenty-eight million mail-in ballots have gone missing in the last four elections.  And a top Democrat operative revealed last week how he and others have been committing voter fraud on a “grand scale” for decades.  

Gone are the days when the United States recognized the solemnity of the vote by securing for each citizen a private and uncoerced secret ballot.  Now Democrat election operatives can simply go from hospital bed to hospital bed in nursing homes around the country “collecting” votes or swallow up entire mail drops at apartment buildings before residents even hold them in their hands.  Operation Chaos will test the limits of our country’s bonds.  

How does a free country governed by the people destroy itself?  When elected representatives make it impossible for the people to believe they are still governing.  

If we had a functioning free press in this country that hadn’t thrown out objectivity and professionalism for partisan entanglements and personal vendettas, the two biggest stories of the last four years would both center on the efforts of the Democratic Party to undermine American elections so completely that the breakup of the Union is not only a real possibility but the Democrats’ likely objective.  They sabotaged the peaceful transition of power in 2016 with the Russia hoax.  In 2020, whether they can eke out victory or not, they have implemented a “cheat-by-mail” voting catastrophe that will render the 2020 election outcome unavoidably illegitimate to the losing side.  It is a strategy intended to damage the country.  It is an operation meant to unleash chaos.  

Image: GPA PHOTO ARCHIVE

Sometimes, the press in its Trump derangement, asks us to believe the fantastical.

That’s the case with the anonymously sourced story about President Trump supposedly calling fallen U.S. servicemen ‘losers.’

When President Donald Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018, he blamed rain for the last-minute decision, saying that “the helicopter couldn’t fly” and that the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him there. Neither claim was true.

Trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day. In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed.

Actually, both claims were true, it was in the news after the press previously tried to create a brouhaha about it at the time.

But for Jeffrey Goldberg, who’s reporting this “story,” or rather, this “told a story,” he’s calculating that readers won’t remember that.

Most really good lies, like most heresies, start out with a kernel of truth. Goldberg cites then-candidate Trump’s ill-considered heated personal attack on John McCain, a former POW who served honorably in Vietnam, as “not a hero” adding  ”I like people who weren’t captured.” Trump made those stupid remarks because he was fighting with McCain, who was serving as the errand boy for the now discredited Steele dossier around that time, and it was ugly.

But he’s never made disrespectful remarks about servicemen injured or killed in the line of duty. He’s always celebrated servicemen and servicewomen. He’s visited injured servicemen and made trips abroad to be with servicemen. One of the most notable things he’s done has been to call in enlisted and noncommissioned soldiers and sailors to solicit their input about how to make things better in the service for them.  He’s beefed up the military budget, and demanded military parades to celebrate events. He’s celebrated military victories. He’s also cared deeply for he welfare of soldiers and sailors –  specially calling up the family of young servicewoman Vanessa Guillen, who was murdered by a sex-harassing stalker also in the military – and talking about a plan of reform. He’s ordered Saudi “students” out of U.S. military facilities after one of them tried an al Qaida style attack. He’s put veterans first in the Veterans Administration, reducing waiting times and raising customer satisfaction. He’s been ultra respectful of the military brass, defending a naval commander who broadcast the presence of COVID on his ship to the press (and America’s enemies) instead of up the chain of command, recognizing that if he was misguided, or, ”had a bad day,” as Trump put it, he was trying to look out for the welfare of his sailors. Trump explicitly said he “didn’t want to ruin” the captain’s career with a relief of command. The captain was reinstated and the naval bureaucrat who derided him was fired. If anything, Trump’s been a little too solicitous and trusting of the Pentagon brass. He hired deep-state political animals such as H.R. McMaster, Jim Mattis, and John Kelly, all of whom turned out to be major disappointments, with at least some of them compulsive plotters and leakers on the side.

It’s not just refuted by people willing to go on the record with names attached saying it, it’s also completely out of the character to the voters who have observed President Trump’s term.

Trump is a populist who is always looking out for the little guy – he hurls lots of insults, but he never insults ordinary people. His targets are pious media poobahs, assorted pompous asses in the celebrity-American community, Democratic opponents, and crazed leftists. He never attacks the little guy, which is the chief thing that distinguishes him from Mitt “46%” Romney, Hillary “deplorables” Clinton, Joe “Hey, fat” Biden, and Barack “bitter clingers” Obama.

It’s a disgusting lie, and anyone who’s been watching things will know it. That’s it’s reported anonymously makes it doubly disgusting, who knows what these sources really said? And if they are out of power, why would they need to hide their identities anyway, except of course that they know they will be exposed as liars. Third, who knows if this whole thing hasn’t been distorted from enemies out to Get Trump and willing to say anything to do it, or else completely made up? There’s no names attached to this despicable slew of lies, so anything goes.

Which is why it ought to be treated with complete contempt. It’s pretty creepy what kinds of lies you can get out there if you find the right media vehicle and hide behind the curtain of anonymity.

Sometimes, the press in its Trump derangement, asks us to believe the fantastical.

That’s the case with the anonymously sourced story about President Trump supposedly calling fallen U.S. servicemen ‘losers.’

When President Donald Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018, he blamed rain for the last-minute decision, saying that “the helicopter couldn’t fly” and that the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him there. Neither claim was true.

Trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day. In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed.

Actually, both claims were true, it was in the news after the press previously tried to create a brouhaha about it at the time.

But for Jeffrey Goldberg, who’s reporting this “story,” or rather, this “told a story,” he’s calculating that readers won’t remember that.

Most really good lies, like most heresies, start out with a kernel of truth. Goldberg cites then-candidate Trump’s ill-considered heated personal attack on John McCain, a former POW who served honorably in Vietnam, as “not a hero” adding  ”I like people who weren’t captured.” Trump made those stupid remarks because he was fighting with McCain, who was serving as the errand boy for the now discredited Steele dossier around that time, and it was ugly.

But he’s never made disrespectful remarks about servicemen injured or killed in the line of duty. He’s always celebrated servicemen and servicewomen. He’s visited injured servicemen and made trips abroad to be with servicemen. One of the most notable things he’s done has been to call in enlisted and noncommissioned soldiers and sailors to solicit their input about how to make things better in the service for them.  He’s beefed up the military budget, and demanded military parades to celebrate events. He’s celebrated military victories. He’s also cared deeply for he welfare of soldiers and sailors –  specially calling up the family of young servicewoman Vanessa Guillen, who was murdered by a sex-harassing stalker also in the military – and talking about a plan of reform. He’s ordered Saudi “students” out of U.S. military facilities after one of them tried an al Qaida style attack. He’s put veterans first in the Veterans Administration, reducing waiting times and raising customer satisfaction. He’s been ultra respectful of the military brass, defending a naval commander who broadcast the presence of COVID on his ship to the press (and America’s enemies) instead of up the chain of command, recognizing that if he was misguided, or, ”had a bad day,” as Trump put it, he was trying to look out for the welfare of his sailors. Trump explicitly said he “didn’t want to ruin” the captain’s career with a relief of command. The captain was reinstated and the naval bureaucrat who derided him was fired. If anything, Trump’s been a little too solicitous and trusting of the Pentagon brass. He hired deep-state political animals such as H.R. McMaster, Jim Mattis, and John Kelly, all of whom turned out to be major disappointments, with at least some of them compulsive plotters and leakers on the side.

It’s not just refuted by people willing to go on the record with names attached saying it, it’s also completely out of the character to the voters who have observed President Trump’s term.

Trump is a populist who is always looking out for the little guy – he hurls lots of insults, but he never insults ordinary people. His targets are pious media poobahs, assorted pompous asses in the celebrity-American community, Democratic opponents, and crazed leftists. He never attacks the little guy, which is the chief thing that distinguishes him from Mitt “46%” Romney, Hillary “deplorables” Clinton, Joe “Hey, fat” Biden, and Barack “bitter clingers” Obama.

It’s a disgusting lie, and anyone who’s been watching things will know it. That’s it’s reported anonymously makes it doubly disgusting, who knows what these sources really said? And if they are out of power, why would they need to hide their identities anyway, except of course that they know they will be exposed as liars. Third, who knows if this whole thing hasn’t been distorted from enemies out to Get Trump and willing to say anything to do it, or else completely made up? There’s no names attached to this despicable slew of lies, so anything goes.

Which is why it ought to be treated with complete contempt. It’s pretty creepy what kinds of lies you can get out there if you find the right media vehicle and hide behind the curtain of anonymity.

Salon owner Erica Kious told a Zoom press conference on Thursday that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was lying to say she was “set up,” and that she should apologize to America and to small business owners and workers struggling to survive.

Pelosi was caught on surveillance camera attending Kious’s salon earlier this week for a private hair appointment indoors with a stylist, Jonathan DeNardo. San Francisco and Alameda counties are still not allowing salons to reopen indoors due to going coronavirus restrictions.

Pelosi was criticized for breaking rules her party created, and failing to lead by example.

A spokesperson for the Speaker said she did not know that she was breaking the rules, and blamed the salon for the violation.

On Wednesday, Pelosi doubled down, telling reporters she fell for a “setup” and that the salon owner should apologize to her.

The Pelosi camp energetically pushed the idea that Kious had acted out of political motives, circulating a letter from an attorney for DeNardo that accused Kious of operating her salon at other times during the shutdown, and of making “vitriolic and incendiary comments” about Pelosi. Pelosi’s daughter, Christine, posted the letter on Twitter with the hashtag “#Setup”.

On Thursday, Kious responded. She denied that there had been any setup, saying that Pelosi’s “assertion that she is a victim and was set up” was “totally false and outrageous.”

She said that she had lost six months’ of income due to the coronavirus shutdowns, but had allowed stylists to make appointments if they needed money.

Choking back tears, Kious added:

For the Speaker of the House of the United States to go on TV and falsely claim she was set up, and publicly defame me and send out PR firms to spin more lies … is bad enough, but for Speaker Pelosi to frame herself as a victim under a total false narrative while small businesses and workers all over California, the state she represents in Congress, suffer and struggle just to survive is beyond shameful.

I don’t owe anyone an apology; Mrs. Pelosi owes the entire country an apology.

Kious said that her motive in sharing the video of Pelosi’s appointment was to encourage her and other politicians to allow businesses to reopen.

“If a woman in a high-risk age group who spends much of her time on TV warning about the dangers of COVID-19, feels safe an comfortably in a San Francisco salon, and can be responsible for being cautious and mindful, why can’t the rest of San Francisco, and the rest of America, do that too?”

She said that Pelosi was showing by her actions that the draconian rules were unnecessary for safety.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.