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TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~
On Saudi Arabia, Trump Is Channeling
His Inner George H.W. Bush
by Marc A. Thiessen
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Friday Top Headlinesby Media Editors: Senate votes to end American military assistance for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen (Washington Examiner) .
Prosecutors probing Trump inauguration spending (The Hill) .
China suspends tariff hikes on $126 billion of U.S. cars, auto parts (Associated Press) .
Budget deficit hits widest on record for month of November (Bloomberg) .
Republicans examine accusations of “pay to play” at scumbag/liar-Clinton Foundation (Fox News) .
The DOJ inspector general found 19,000 “lost” Strzok and Page texts (Townhall) .
North Carolina congressional candidate sought out aide despite warnings over tactics (The Washington Post) .
Tipster thwarts potential mass shooting at Indiana middle school (ABC News) .
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Jihadi who opened fire at French Christmas market is dead (Fox News) .
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Gender & Women’s Studies department endorses a platform calling “for the Abolition of the Police, ICE, Borders, and the Judicial System” (National Review) .
Humor: U.S. military honors sacrifices of NFL players by wearing jerseys throughout December (The Onion) .
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Policy: Coaxing reluctant states to take on health reform (RealClearPolicy)
~The Patriot Post
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scumbag/liar-nObama’s War is Upon Us
by Kenneth R. Timmerman.
Senate votes to stop US military
aid to Saudis in Yemen
by Susan Ferrechio.
Pentagon Echoes Trump, Says
DOD Could Fund Border Wall
by Randy DeSoto
{westernjournal.com} ~ The Department of Defense backed up President Donald Trump’s assertion that he could have the military build a border wall... if Congress failed to fund further construction of one. During a contentious discussion at the White House on Tuesday, Trump told Senate Minority Leader Chuck scumbag/clown-Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pulosi, “If we don’t get what we want, one way or the other, whether it’s through you, through military, through anything you want to call, I will shut down the government.” The chief executive is requesting $5 billion for wall construction, while scumbag/clown-Schumer has agreed to $1.6 billion for border security. While Trump argued he could garner support to get the funding in the Republican-controlled House, he needs 10 votes in the Senate in order to overcome a likely filibuster. The Defense Department confirmed in a statement that the president has the legal authority to direct the DoD to build a border wall. “To date, there is no plan to build sections of the wall. However, Congress has provided options under Title 10 U.S. Code that could permit the Department of Defense to fund border barrier projects, such as in support of counter drug operations or national emergencies,” Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Jamie Davis said in a statement on Tuesday. Trump tweeted on Tuesday morning, “People do not yet realize how much of the Wall, including really effective renovation, has already been built. If the Democrats do not give us the votes to secure our Country, the Military will build the remaining sections of the Wall. They know how important it is!”....
Strzok, Page messages from dirty
cop-Mueller probe lost after phone resets: IG
by Stephen Dinan
{washingtontimes.com} ~ Investigators weren’t able to find any text messages between fired agent Peter Strzok and former bureau lawyer Lisa Page from their time on the dikrty cop-Mueller probe... because by the time their phones were recovered, they’d been reset for others’ use, an inspector general said Thursday. The report also said the FBI still isn’t reliably collecting text messages of all of its employees — despite the black eye the bureau has suffered from Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page. The revelations came in a report Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz released to detail the efforts his team made to try to recover the texts between the two, who traded anti-Trump messages during the course of an affair they were having. Investigators have already released many of the controversial messages, including one in which Mr. Strzok promised they would “stop” Mr. Trump from winning the White House. But there was a gap in the text messages, or what the inspector general dubbed a “collection tool failure,” and the new report detailed investigators’ efforts to try to recover those messages directly from the Samsung Galaxy phones issued to both Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page. While messages were recovered from some phones, the inspector general said that wasn’t the case for the phones assigned to the two during their time on the special counsel’s probe..
Republicans Take Bold Tack Against Democratic
Gerrymander In The Supreme Court
by Kevin Daley
{dailycaller.com} ~ A coalition of Republican voters made a pair of bold requests while asking the Supreme Court to uphold a lower court ruling striking down... a Democratic gerrymander in Maryland. Their case, one of several pending before the justices on this topic, could clear the way for greater judicial scrutiny over redistricting. The Supreme Court has yet to find partisan line-drawing, called gerrymandering, unlawful. “The practice of partisan gerrymandering — aided in modern times by sophisticated software and the most detailed troves of data imaginable — is at war with our system of government,” the Republican motion reads. “It aims to insulate those in power — those whom the public has taken into their trust — from being held to account. Its purpose is to reduce the franchise to a charade — a meaningless exercise, the outcome of which is preordained by computer scientists and political consultants turned cartographers.” In an aggressive move, the plaintiffs are asking the Court to summarily affirm the lower court, meaning they want the justices to uphold the lower court decision without briefing and oral arguments... https://dailycaller.com/2018/12/13/maryland-gerrymander-supreme-court/?utm_medium=email.
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On Saudi Arabia, Trump Is Channeling His Inner George H.W. Bush
by Marc A. Thiessen
In recent days, many have sought to contrast President Trump with President George H.W. Bush. But there is one area where Trump is channeling his inner George H.W. Bush — and not in a good way. His response to the murder and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi in a Saudi consulate echoes Bush’s handling of China’s crackdown on peaceful democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square.
We only recently learned how ruthless that Chinese crackdown really was, when a secret 1989 cable by Britain’s then-ambassador to China, Sir Alan Donald, was declassified. Student protesters were crushed by armored personnel carriers, which rolled over their bodies repeatedly until their pulverized remains were collected by bulldozer, incinerated and hosed down drains, the document said. “Wounded girl students begged for their lives but were bayoneted,” Donald wrote. “A three-year-old girl was injured, but her mother was shot as she went to her aid, as were six others.” One thousand survivors of the initial assault were told they could leave “but were then mown down by specially prepared MG [machine gun] positions.”
The cable ends with this chilling sentence: “Minimum estimate of civilian dead 10,000.”
China’s murderous brutality put Bush in an impossible position: He had to uphold American values while at the same time preserving a critical relationship with the men who carried out these horrific crimes. It is much the same quandary that Trump has faced in the wake of Khashoggi’s murder. Like Bush, Trump was faced with an inhuman act of violence that shocked the conscience of the nation. Like Bush, Trump had to impose consequences on the regime while balancing U.S. national interests in a critical part of the world. And like Bush, Trump has handled the situation poorly.
Bush was unapologetic about his outreach to Chinese leaders after the massacre in June 1989. “What I certainly did not want to do was completely break the relationship we had worked so hard to build since 1972,” Bush later wrote. “While angry rhetoric might be temporarily satisfying to some, I believed it would deeply hurt our efforts in the long term.” At the time, Bush lashed out in his diary at congressional leaders who wanted him to take a harder line, including Rep. Stephen Solarz, D-N.Y., whom he called “the kind of guy that was delighted about the overthrow of the Shah, not worrying about what follows on.” He sent a cringeworthy letter to Deng Xiaoping, in which he called the Chinese leader his “genuine ‘lao pengyou’” (old friend) and apologized for the punitive measures his administration had taken. “The actions that I took as President of the United States could not be avoided,” Bush wrote, “as you know, the clamor for stronger action remains intense. I have resisted that clamor, making clear that I did not want to see destroyed this relationship that you and I have worked hard to build.” Worse, Bush sent national security adviser Brent Scowcroft to Beijing, where he was photographed cordially clinking wine glasses with Chinese leaders at a state banquet.
Bush was right that the relationship had to be preserved. The opening to China was critical to peacefully ending the Cold War. But his eagerness to placate Chinese leaders, and his reticence in condemning those who committed such horrific crimes, harmed America’s moral standing in the world.
Today, when it comes to Saudi Arabia, Trump is — like Bush — in an impossible position. The United States must stand for human rights. But it must also preserve its relationship with Saudi Arabia, the only nation in the Middle East that can serve as a bulwark against Iran, the main strategic threat to U.S. interests in the region. Trump has tried to balance these conflicting responsibilities by imposing sanctions on 17 Saudis under the Global Magnitsky Act and declaring Khashoggi’s murder “an unacceptable and horrible crime” — while refusing to publicly blame Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for ordering it. He has correctly determined that the crown prince is not going anywhere and that a permanent breach with Riyadh is unacceptable. But the unapologetic way in which he has gone about it — touting how much we make from Saudi arms purchases while Secretary of State Mike Pompeo castigates critics in Congress and the media for “caterwauling” — has been unseemly.
One of the toughest challenges of the presidency is upholding American values while dealing with pro-American tyrants. Few presidents have done it well. In this sense, Trump is no different from his predecessors. We don’t know what Trump’s back-channel communications with the Saudi leadership have been like — perhaps he has been tougher in private than public. But we do know this much: They can’t be any worse than Bush’s plaintive entreaties to the butchers of Beijing.
~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/59988?mailing_id=3937&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3937&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body
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