Links - 25th June 2019 (1) (Trump)

Gary Abernathy: Admit it: Fox News has been right all along - The Washington Post - "Along with defending Trump, Fox News hosts such as Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and, especially, Sean Hannity have been slammed for spending nearly two years clamoring for an investigation of the investigators, aligning themselves with the president’s claim of a politically motivated witch hunt. Most of the media portrayed such accusations as preposterous, designed merely to divert attention from Trump’s alleged misdeeds... Just three weeks ago, before Mueller wrapped up his report, The Post — in a story representative of mainstream sources at the time — produced a mostly flattering profile of the new attorney general. “A Justice Department official told The Washington Post last month that Barr is viewed at the department as ‘a lawyer’s lawyer’ and is seen as less politically minded than his predecessors,” the story noted... Now, Barr is being cast by the liberal cable channels and others as an unscrupulous political hack attached to the president’s leash"
Of course, since people have already made up their minds, no matter how much the Daily Mail and Fox are right or how much liberal media get it wrong (or worse, as here), they will dismiss the former and believe the latter. It's remarkable how quickly those with Trump Derangement Syndrome pivoted from asserting Russia collusion to banging on about obstruction once the Mueller report came out. Almost as if they just wanted to bash Trump and would seize upon any angle that would work

Disappointed Fans of Mueller Rethink the Pedestal They Built for Him - "The sense of mourning started to take hold over the weekend, after Attorney General William P. Barr said that Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, had not found coordination between President Trump’s campaign and the Russian government’s election interference in 2016. Over the nearly two years of the Mueller investigation, a segment of liberals and activists built up fervent hopes that it would bring Mr. Trump down. They elevated Mr. Mueller, a former F.B.I. director, into an anti-Trump cultural icon, complete with T-shirts, scented candles and holiday-themed songs like “We Wish You a Mueller Christmas.” For some of them, the report felt like a betrayal. To many others, it was a disappointment. “I was hoping that the truth would come out,” said Shawn Foster, a 45-year-old music video and television producer in Nashville. Mr. Foster had taken to wearing a yellow pin showing the top of the special prosecutor’s head rising like a shark from the sea. Mr. Foster said he was wearing the pin on Sunday when Mr. Barr’s summary of the report came out... The Facebook page of the Robert Mueller Fan Club says on its “About” page, “All hail Robert Mueller — through his work we shall be delivered from this ignorance and evil we suffer.” Barbara Llewellyn, a retired real estate agent from Naperville, Ill., had written “Hallelujah” on the page. But by Monday, she had changed her tune... Ed Krassenstein, who runs a prominent anti-Trump social media account with his brother, Brian, announced plans for a children’s book last year depicted Mr. Mueller as a superhero — complete with a shirtless, muscular pose. After criticism, the Krassenstein brothers changed the book to a “political parody.”"
The truth has a known anti-liberal bias
This was for the one second before they pivoted to obsessing about obstruction

How Did Russiagate Begin? - "It cannot be emphasized too often: Russiagate—allegations that the American president has been compromised by the Kremlin, which may even have helped to put him in the White House—is the worst and (considering the lack of actual evidence) most fraudulent political scandal in American history. We have yet to calculate the damage Russsiagate has inflicted on America’s democratic institutions, including the presidency and the electoral process, and on domestic and foreign perceptions of American democracy, or on US-Russian relations... Rational (if politically innocent) observers may have thought that when the Mueller report found no “collusion” or other conspiracy between Trump and Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin, only possible “obstruction” by Trump—nothing Mueller said in his May 29 press statement altered that conclusion—Russiagate would fade away. If so, they were badly mistaken. Evidently infuriated that Mueller did not liberate the White House from Trump, Russiagate promoters—liberal Democrats and progressives foremost among them—have only redoubled their unverified collusion allegations, even in once-respectable media outlets... In 1988, when Senator Gary Hart was the leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, he went to Russia—still Communist Soviet Russia—to make contacts in preparation for his anticipated presidency, including meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. US media coverage of Hart’s visit was generally favorable. (I accompanied Senator Hart and do not recall much, if any, adverse US media reaction.)... US intelligence agencies undertook an operation to damage, if not destroy, first the candidacy and then the presidency of Donald Trump. More evidence of “Intelgate” has since appeared... Barr no doubt also recalls, and will likely keep in mind, the astonishing warning Senator Charles Schumer issued to President-elect Trump in January 2017: “Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”... Ideally, mainstream media—print and broadcast—would now themselves report on how and why they permitted intelligence officials, through leaks and anonymous sources, and as “opinion” commentators, to use their pages and programming to promote Russiagate for so long, and why they so excluded well-informed, nonpartisan alternative opinions. Instead, they have almost unanimously reported and broadcast negatively, even antagonistically, about Barr’s investigation, and indeed about Barr personally... what was the real reason US intelligence agencies launched a discrediting operation against Trump? Was it because, as seems likely, they intensely disliked his campaign talk of “cooperation with Russia,” which seemed to mean the prospect of a new US-Russian détente? Even fervent political and media opponents of Trump should want to know who is making foreign policy in Washington. The next intel target might be their preferred candidate or president, or a foreign policy they favor... “Spygate is the first American scandal in which the government wants the facts published transparently but the media want to cover them up.”"

Democrats are running out of stunts to pull from impeachment playbook - "Soon after the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller, legal experts and commentators on air began confidently declaring the crimes of Trump campaign “collusion” were obvious and established. As the report approached completion, commentators spoke widely of a finding of criminality as a virtual given... Democrats then proceeded to try and shift attention from collusion to obstruction, but their unwillingness to actually open an impeachment inquiry has undermined their claims that obstruction crimes were well established. Almost instantly, you could feel national attention waning and lawmaker desperation growing. There have been some cringeworthy stunts during the past few weeks. Democrats tried to make redactions in the report be the focus, in order to avoid questions over the refusal to move toward impeachment. The problem is Barr released 92 percent of the report and 98 percent of the report to select members of Congress.Barr was also willing to testify before the House Judiciary Committee, just as he did before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Democrats, however, then added a rare condition requiring Barr to agree to be questioned by the committee staff. Barr predictably refused, as most of his predecessors would have done. Democrats then held a theatrical hearing with an empty chair and a bucket of fried chicken on the table where Barr would have sat. Some ate up the fried chicken for the cameras as most of us winced. Democrats had called for Mueller to appear before them on Wednesday. Mueller did not show, despite Barr showing a willingness to have him testify. Instead, the committee called for a hearing with constitutional experts to discuss the executive privilege claims raised by the White House. I was one of those experts, and the hearing did not exactly turn out as the Democrats planned. They have insisted that President Trump had already waived privilege to undisclosed evidence shown to Mueller. The committee witnesses, however, agreed that there is no such waiver.Worse, the witnesses agreed that Barr could not release the “full and unredacted report” to Congress including any grand jury, or Rule 6(e), evidence. That is in direct contradiction to weeks of demands for the unredacted report along with a subpoena that demanded disclosure of the entire report... the subpoena, which is the very basis for the earlier contempt vote, was demanding an unlawful act from Barr, and the committee then held him in contempt for not committing that unlawful act. The key to setting up someone for contempt of Congress is to draft a subpoena that he might actually be able to legally fulfill"

Trump has made America less racist | Spectator USA - "Daniel J. Hopkins and Samantha Washington set out to measure the effect of Trump’s election on anti-black and anti-Hispanic prejudice, using a randomly-selected panel of 2,500 Americans whose changing opinions have been under study since 2008. The academics report that they had been expecting to measure a rise in racist opinions... Yet the study found exactly the opposite. Americans, claim Hopkins and Washington, have actually become less inclined to express racist opinions since Donald Trump was elected. Anti-black prejudice, they found, declined by a statistically-insignificant degree between 2012 and 2016, when Trump was elected. But then after 2016 it took a sharp dive that was statistically significant. Moreover, contrary to their expectations, the fall was as evident among Republican voters as it was among Democrats. There was also a general fall in anti-Hispanic prejudice, too, although this was more evident among Democrat voters."

Is "Trump Derangement Syndrome" a Real Mental Condition? - "a notion that the everyday activities of President Trump trigger some people into distorted opinions, extreme emotions and hysterical behaviors. Well-known writer Bernard Goldberg gives supposed behavioral examples of TDS among Trump’s political opponents, including fainting, vomiting, students retreating to ‘safe spaces’ and others demanding ‘therapy dogs.' Political commentator Justin Raimondo focuses on opinions, language and cognition, writing in the LA Times that "sufferers speak a distinctive language consisting of hyperbole [leading to] a constant state of hysteria… the afflicted lose touch with reality.""

Trump Immigration Proposal Emphasizes Immigrants’ Skills Over Family Ties - "Currently, about 12 percent of those immigrants qualify to enter based on their skills, while more than half are given permission to enter because of a family connection. Under Mr. Trump’s proposal, those numbers would be reversed, with nearly 60 percent of all visas going to immigrants with particular skills or offers of employment. That reversal would increase the overall education level of immigrants, the officials said, with nearly three-quarters of those migrating to the United States having bachelor’s degrees or an advanced degree under the new Trump plan. It would also increase the average salary for immigrants to $96,000 from $43,000, they said."

Trump immigration plan puts emphasis on skills, education over family - "the system envisions three “high skilled” categories, including those of extraordinary talent. “Right now, there’s not really a good way for someone like Nelson Mandela to come into the country,” an official said.Also included in the high-skilled category are professional and specialized vocations that are in demand inside the United States as well as “exceptional students” who would be able to apply to stay in the county midway through their educational career with the backing of their educational institutions.Ultimately, the officials said the president’s plan is to attract a changed mix of immigrants and to benefit American workers. “We would like upward pressure on wages, that’s good for Americans who are already here,” an official said. “We think this is incredibly pro immigrant.”"

Ted Cruz slams Ilhan Omar over now-deleted tweet on immigration - "Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex, called out Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn, over a now-deleted tweet that suggested having a merit-based immigration system would disadvantage Latino migrants... A "merit based" immigration policy is fueled by racism towards the Latinx community," Omar wrote. "Our immigration policies shouldn't be based on discrimination, fear, or bigotry. We should welcome immigrants to our country and offer a simple way to citizenship."... Sen. Cruz also weighed in and called out the Democratic Party for apparently believing that "Hispanic immigrants can’t qualify for skills-based legal immigration." "As the son of a Cuban immigrant whose Dad came to get a math degree & become a computer programmer, I’m troubled that Dems seem to believe Hispanic immigrants can’t qualify for skills-based legal immigration," Cruz tweeted. "Bringing in more scientists, engineers & doctors is good for US jobs.""