Maybe Trump is actually trying to drive his opponents batshit crazy.

Some thoughts from Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds

Perhaps the domestic political class was Trump’s intended audience, and he intended them to go batshit crazy. In that case, A+.

Meanwhile, Roger Kimball writes: What Critics Missed About the Trump-Putin Summit.

As becomes more and more clear as the first Trump Administration evolves, this president is someone who is willing, nay eager, to challenge the bureaucratic status quo, on domestic issues as well as in foreign policy.

Trump inherited a world order on the international front that was constructed in the immediate aftermath of World War II and has subsequently amassed a thick, barnacle-like carapace of bureaucratic procedures. Perhaps those procedures and the institutions that deploy them continue to serve American interests. But what if they don’t?

As I’ve said, the best way to understand the Trump presidency is as the renegotiation of the post-World War II institutional structure. Naturally, the barnacles don’t like that. Maybe they’re right, maybe they’re wrong, but the intensity of their screaming indicates their emotional (and livelihood) investment, not who’s right.

Meanwhile, if the argument is that Trump is a Putin stooge, the arguers have to deal with the fact that Trump is clearly harder on Russia than Obama was, or than Hillary, by all appearances, would have been. Even NeverTrumper Eric Erickson writes: Remember, Trump’s Policies Against Russia Have Been Tougher Than Obama’s.

We’ve been killing Russian mercenaries in Syria. We have expanded and enhanced NATO’s footprint in Eastern Europe over Russian objections. We have sold military weaponry to Ukraine. We have been indicting Russians for interfering in our elections. We have imposed sanctions on Russian oligarchs. We have imposed sanctions on Russia itself. We have actively been aiding Britain and other governments that have seen a Russian presence with targeted assassinations. “We” being the United States under Donald Trump. (See also this thread by James Kirchick)

The media and left would have you believe Donald Trump is captive to Russia. Lately, they’ve been pushing the idea that he may be some sort of sleeper cell Manchurian candidate who Putin owns and controls.

A fellow law prof (of the lefty variety) was even speculating the other day on social media that Melania was Trump’s KGB control agent.

As Walter Russell Mead wrote last year:

If Trump were the Manchurian candidate that people keep wanting to believe that he is, here are some of the things he’d be doing:

Limiting fracking as much as he possibly could

Blocking oil and gas pipelines

Opening negotiations for major nuclear arms reductions

Cutting U.S. military spending

Trying to tamp down tensions with Russia’s ally Iran

That Trump is planning to do precisely the opposite of these things may or may not be good policy for the United States, but anybody who thinks this is a Russia appeasement policy has been drinking way too much joy juice.

Obama actually did all of these things, and none of the liberal media now up in arms about Trump ever called Obama a Russian puppet; instead, they preferred to see a brave, farsighted and courageous statesman.

So I don’t know if Trump knows what he’s doing. (As proof that his remarks were dumb, he’s already walked them back) American presidents have historically done badly in their first meetings with Russian leaders, from Kennedy at Vienna to George W. staring into Putin’s soul. And as a general rule, Presidents don’t criticize their own intelligence agencies while at meetings with foreign adversaries. But then, as a general rule, U.S. intelligence agencies aren’t supposed to be involved in domestic politics up to their elbows, as has clearly been the case here. And don’t get me started on John Brennan’s disgraceful comments, which Rand Paul correctly calls “completely unhinged.” Brennan, like his colleagues Comey and Clapper, has made clear the rot at the top of important intelligence agencies, and people like Peter Strzok suggest that the rot extends some ways down from the head. So maybe the general rules don’t apply any more, and Trump is more a symptom than a cause of that.

Diplomacy 101 Versus Politics Writ Small

Angelo Codevilla

The high professional quality of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin’s performance at their Monday press conference in Helsinki contrasts sharply with the obloquy by which the bipartisan U.S. ruling class showcases its willful incompetence.

Though I voted for Trump, I’ve never been a fan of his and I am not one now. But, having taught diplomacy for many years, I would choose the Trump-Putin press conference as an exemplar of how these things should be done. Both spoke with the frankness and specificity of serious business. This performance rates an A+.
Both presidents started with the basic truth.

Putin: The Cold War is ancient history. Nobody in Russia (putting himself in this category) wants that kind of enmity again. It is best for Russia, for America, and for everybody else if the two find areas of agreement or forbearance.

Trump: Relations between the globe’s major nuclear powers have never been this bad—especially since some Americans are exacerbating existing international differences for domestic partisan gain. For the sake of peace and adjustment of differences where those exist and adjustment is possible, Trump is willing to pay a political cost to improve those relations (if, indeed further enraging his enemies is a cost rather than a benefit).


In short, this was a classic statement of diplomatic positions and a drawing of spheres of influence.

And this:

This led to the final flourish. The Associated Press reporter demanded that Trump state whether he believes the opinions of U.S. intelligence leaders or those of Putin. It would be healthy for America were it to digest Trump’s answer: The truth about the charge that Russia stole the contents of the Democratic National Committee’s computer server is not to be found in the opinions of any persons whatever. The truth can be discovered only by examining the server in question—assuming it has not been tampered with since the alleged event. But, said Trump emphatically, those making the accusations against Russia have refused to let the server be examined by U.S. intelligence or by any independent experts. What is the point of accusations coupled with refusal of access to the facts of the matter?

The classic texts of diplomatic practice teach that diplomacy advances the cause of peace and order only to the extent that its practitioners avoid contentious opinions and stick to demonstrable facts.

The AP reporter, who should be ashamed, is beyond shame. Then again, so are the ruling class representatives who have redoubled their animus against Trump. Cheap partisanship is not all that harmful. It is the transfer of domestic partisan animus to international affairs, however, that has the potential to start wars.

Not so long ago, American school kids had to read George Washington’s farewell address, which warned in the most emphatic terms at his command to avoid that sort of thing for the sake of peace with other nations as well as among ourselves.

What that ignorant “journalist” was demanding of Trump—precisely what the credentialed experts should know better than to have demanded—was that the president of the United States scream at the president of Russia for all his evils. Competitive “virtue signaling” has become the way of political life in America. To the extent that it bleeds into America’s foreign policy, we are all in big trouble.

SLEEPING GIANTS’ ANONYMOUS FOUNDER UNMASKED; TOP AD WRITER BEHIND BOYCOTT CAMPAIGN TARGETING BREITBART, INGRAHAM

The founder of Sleeping Giants, a left-wing activist group that has targeted right-wing voices with boycott campaigns, has managed to keep his identity a secret, even as his own group has become a major political player among liberals. Until now.

Sleeping Giants was founded by Matt Rivitz.

Steve Bannon on Nationalism

Once Again, President Trump Is Magnificently Right—This Time About Russia

Something you will not see anywhere in the MSM for a while.

President Trump offended the entire political spectrum with a tweet this morning blaming the U.S. for poor relations with Russia. “Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity,” the president said, and he is entirely correct. By this I do not mean to say that Russia is a beneficent actor in world affairs or that President Putin is an admirable world leader. Nonetheless, the president displayed both perspicacity and political courage when he pointed the finger at the United States for mismanaging the relationship with Russia....

The United States supported the 2014 Maidan uprising in Ukraine and the overthrow of the Yanukovych government in the hope of repeating the exercise in Moscow sometime later. Then-Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland pulled whatever strings America had to replace the feckless and corrupt Victor Yanukovych with a government hostile to the Kremlin. She didn’t say it in so many words, but she hoped the Ukraine coup would lead to the overthrow of Vladimir Putin. Evidently Nuland and her boss, Hillary Clinton, thought that the Ukraine coup would deprive Russia of its Black Sea naval base in Crimea, and did not anticipate that Russia simply would annex an old Russian province that belonged to Ukraine by historical accident.

At the time, liberal opinion evanesced with the notion that Moscow would follow Maidan. The Christian Science Monitor reported in February 2014:

Some in Russia's liberal community see in the Maidan a hope that the Kremlin, no matter how solid it looks, could one day crack under similar popular pressure. "What we are seeing in Ukraine is the realization of the Ukrainian people's aspiration for democracy, of the right to revolt," says Sergei Davidis, a board member of Solidarnost, a liberal opposition coalition. "It doesn't mean we're ready to follow that example. Russian conditions are different. But in the long run, as the contradictions pile up, we may well come to the same pass and find ourselves with no alternatives but the Ukrainian one."

Of course, no such thing occurred.

The Maidan coup was the second American attempt to install a Ukrainian government hostile to Moscow; the first occurred in 2004, when Condoleezza Rice was secretary of State rather than Hillary Clinton. As I wrote in Asia Times a decade ago, “On the night of November 22, 2004, then-Russian president - now premier - Vladimir Putin watched the television news in his dacha near Moscow. People who were with Putin that night report his anger and disbelief at the unfolding 'Orange' revolution in Ukraine. ‘They lied to me,’ Putin said bitterly of the United States. ‘I'll never trust them again.’ The Russians still can't fathom why the West threw over a potential strategic alliance for Ukraine. They underestimate the stupidity of the West."

Glenn America has a nobility problem, and it means our leaders don't pay for their failures

Politicians and bureaucrats are America's ruling class and they should start paying a price for failure. Accountability isn't just for little guys....

...in practice, America absolutely does have a ruling class, and a permanent political class, and they seem to be increasingly one and the same. (As Angelo Codevilla writes: “Never has there been so little diversity within America’s upper crust.”) And like any ruling class, they claim, and possess, privileges and immunities not available to ordinary citizens.

The continued use of titles that in fact were briefly loaned by the people — “Governor,” “Madame Secretary” — is the least of this. The single biggest characteristic of today’s nobility is impunity, and — just as with the privileges associated with titles of nobility in the England our Framers rejected — this privilege extends not only to the titled, but to their retainers, in this case police and other government bureaucrats.

In America, if you misunderstand the law, or simply are ignorant of it, you will nonetheless be liable to go to jail or be sued — if you are an ordinary citizen. If you are a government official, you can generally avoid liability in a lawsuit by pleading “qualified immunity,” meaning, in essence, that you misunderstood the law or were ignorant of it, but acted in good faith, a defense that is not available to ordinary citizens. As a judge or prosecutor it’s even better: you enjoy “absolute immunity,” meaning that in almost every circumstance you can’t be sued at all.

These governmental immunities aren’t in the Constitution, and they’re not the product of statutes passed by Congress. They were invented by judges (themselves government employees) who thought immunity for government employees was a good idea. And government officials almost never face criminal prosecution for their official acts, and on the rare occasions that they do, they are almost never convicted.

When the EPA poisoned the Animas River in Colorado, it rejected claims for damages, and nobody from the EPA went to jail. A private company under similar circumstances would have faced ruinous losses, and the executives would have risked criminal prosecution. Then-EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy skated....

Freedom from consequences: It’s the defining consequence of our modern titles of nobility. And as ordinary citizens get cut less and less slack, it becomes more and more noticeable that the people at the top pay little or no price for failure or worse. Either that will change, or we will see more populist anger in our politics.

"An assault revolver with high-capacity magazines and a revolver were recovered at the scene."

This is what the press hires as reporters these days.  Sad.

SF Mayor: 'There's More Feces ... Than I've Ever Seen'

It's what you get when Left-Wing Democrats are in control,

San Francisco Mayor London Breed, in her first one-on-one interview since taking office, said homeless advocacy groups that receive funding from the city need to better educate the homeless to "clean up after themselves."

"I work hard to make sure your programs are funded for the purposes of trying to get these individuals help, and what I am asking you to do is work with your clients and ask them to at least have respect for the community — at least, clean up after themselves and show respect to one another and people in the neighborhood," Breed told the Investigative Unit, referencing her conversations with nonprofit groups aimed at serving the homeless.

You have to be an idiot if you thing this is going to work.

Picture of an idiot.

In rebuke of Dianne Feinstein, Kevin de León wins endorsement of California Democrats in Senate race

Californians have he option of voting for the Left wing Democrat or a Left Wing Democrat for Senate.

Peter Strzok’s arrogance is the product of a corrupt FBI

I could not agree more.

Watching FBI agent Peter Strzok battle with Congress, my initial reaction was pure anger. His repeated, arrogant insistence that he had done nothing wrong despite tons of evidence to the contrary convinced me he deserved immediate firing — if not the firing squad.

Gradually, though, anger gave way to amazement as Strzok grew increasingly combative and condescending. Given his predicament, the sneering and smirking were stupid, and yet he persisted.

Who is this jerk, I wondered, and how in the hell did he get to be a big shot at the FBI? And why are taxpayers still paying for the privilege of his malignant presence on the FBI payroll?

My answers can be summarized in four names: James Comey, Jeff Sessions, Rod Rosenstein and Christopher Wray. They are chief culprits in the death of public trust in the Department of Justice.

The cause of death was murder, and it was an inside job.

Read the whole thing.

Strzok and the Otter Defense

Peter Strzok at yesterday’s hearing:


Otter in “Animal House”:

Reciprocity Is the Method to Trump’s Madness - victor Davis Hanson

what had become abnormal was branded the new normal of the post-war world.

Again, a rich and powerful U.S. was supposed to subsidize world trade, take in more immigrants than all the nations of the world combined, protect the West, and ensure safe global communications, travel, and commerce.

After 70 years, the effort had hollowed out the interior of America, creating two separate nations of coastal winners and heartland losers.


Trump’s entire foreign policy can be summed up as a demand for symmetry from all partners and allies, and tit-for-tat replies to would-be enemies.

Rod Rosenstein Found It Necessary to Interrupt Trump’s Foreign Trip with Info That WAS ALL RELEASED in Previous April House Intel Report

And, oh, by the way, I want to see the evidence after all the crap the FBI and DOJ has been feeding us.

The Truth Factory - Russian and why Hillary Lost the Election

Media’s Obsession With ‘Collusion’ Continues To Destroy Its Credibility

200 indictments from the Mueller team tasked with proving that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election.  Indectiments that prove this: 0

One of the things we learned from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is that we still have no evidence of “collusion” between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia. Special counsel Robert Mueller has brought in almost 200 indictments — and that’s great — but not one of them has shown a Russian-Trump conspiracy. Like you, I have no clue what future prosecutions will look like, but on this day Rosenstein explicitly noted that nothing in the Justice Department’s indictment featured an allegation that any American citizen had committed a crime.

Fusion GPS Targets Jim Jordan

Congress is slowly closing in on exposing the media’s shameful role in perpetuating the Trump-Russia collusion myth on the American people. Prominent news organizations are the accomplices—if not coconspirators—in the biggest political scandal in U.S. history. Now, two years later, there is no sign of surrender: A ludicrous article in New York magazine on July 8 suggested Donald Trump has been a Russian intelligence asset for 30 years.

Fully invested in pushing the phony Trump-Russia plotline in a malicious attempt to destroy Trump’s presidency, the media are intensifying this narrative and creating new villains in the process.

Enter Rep. James Jordan (R-Ohio).

Stacy McCain: New MuellerGate Developments Prove ‘Deep State’ Conspiracy Against Trump

OK, as of today, the “Russia collusion” story is MuellerGate.

For months, I’ve been saying the Mueller “investigation” is not an investigation, it’s a cover-up, the objective of which is to conceal the Obama administration’s illegal surveillance of the Trump campaign, while also manufacturing an appearance of wrongdoing by Trump.

Muller has not yet produced any evidence of the “collusion” that he was expected to find, and why? Because this was a phony conspiracy theory created by Clinton operatives, using Fusion GPS in an attempt to fabricate an illusion of “collusion” that did not actually exist.

The Border Crisis

Richard Fernandez on the global border crisis

On both sides of the Atlantic, borders have become a big issue in the guise of the equivalent question of whether a country can restrict the entry of migrants to numbers the electorate regards as sustainable....


The rapidity with which the status quo of "open borders" has been overtaken by the "populist crisis" suggests that, like the financial crisis of 2008, a bubble has burst. It went broke gradually then all of a sudden. The globalization and multiculturalism that were supposed to have delivered prosperity and security have not paid off. This failure has started a run on political capital of elites which has yet to stop.

Trump and the European populists are picking up political assets at a bargain. Glenn Reynolds observed:

[T]he press has three main kinds of power. One is to motivate the left. Another is to swing the middle. And the third is to demoralize the right. It’s pretty much lost the last of these, and I suspect the second one is fading too.

The Liberals leaders read their own press releases too long.

Read the whole thing.

Democrats as the New Nazis

14 Times Republican Officials Were Viciously Harassed, Threatened With Death

In the past couple of months, Republicans and government officials who work for President Trump have received death threats, been run out of restaurants and stores, and followed to their cars.

1. Protestors to Mitch McConnell: ‘We Know Where You Live!’
2. Protestors Follow Elaine Chao To Her Car
3. Liberals Wish Rep. Steve Scalise Was Dead
4. Liberal PAC Fundraises For Billboard Encouraging Passersby to ‘Take Out’ Scalise
5. Man Arrested For Threatening To Kill Republican Supporters
6. Cynthia Nixon Calls ICE a ‘Terrorist Organization’
7. Woman Screams Out Steve Bannon at a Bookstore
8. Woman Confronts Scott Pruitt At DC Restaurant With 2-Year-Old Son On Her Hip
9. Mob of Protestors Swarm DHS Secretary at DC Restaurant, Yell ‘Shame! Shame!’
10. Restaurant Owner Kicks Out Sarah Huckabee Sanders
11. Net Neutrality Supporter Threatened to Murder FCC Chairman’s Family
12. Protestors Left A Burnt, Decapitated Animal Body On DHS Employee’s Front Porch
13. Idaho State Rep. Threatened With Death, Rape
14. Protestors Hand ‘Wanted’ Posters With Stephen Miller’s Face On Them To His Neighbors

Democrats are the REAL brownshirts.

Rap Sheet: ***203*** Acts of Media-Approved Violence and Harassment Against Trump Supporters

It is open season on Trump supporters, and the media is only fomenting, encouraging, excusing, and hoping for more… The media are now openly calling Trump supporters “Nazis” and are blaming Trump for a mass murder he had nothing to do with. This, of course, is a form of harassment because it incites and justifies mob violence.

Here is the list, so far, and remember that if any one of these things happened to a Democrat, the media would use the story to blot out the sun for weeks. But what we have when it comes to Trump supporters is a media eager to normalize harassment and violence.

July 8, 2018: Former longtime Hillary Clinton aide publishes contact information about bookstore owner who stopped the harassment of Steve Bannon, Reines’s obvious goal is to see the bookstore owner harassed.

And there's at least 202 more ...