Donald Trump was back in fighting trim when he appeared on a CNN Town Hall special: funny, disciplined and prepared, he ate CNN for lunch to the degree that PROGRESSIVES are calling to boycott CNN. Can he maintain this winning brand of optimistic playfulness? And could Ronald Reagan — who was the all-time master of it — be able to pull it off in todays much more toxic environment?
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35 replies on “Fighting Back”
Always decode the premise of the question, and if it is erroneous, challenge that premise. Don’t answer–it’s nota question, it’s an accusation.
“Have you stopped beating your wife?”
Democrat men have always oppressed women. It took 144 years to pass the 19th Amendment. Title IX didn’t pass until ’72. Now democrat men are pretending to be women so they can continue to oppress women.
Yup, well said. That’s pretty much the situation in a very clear nutshell.
“Defund” every “woke” corporation. Support people who support the constitution
of course, I’m not as old or educated as you, so my ideas don’t mater. Good luck with the neo-con world order
Someone responding to every pro maga post with a neocon response,
ACTS
Explain your definition of neocon, please. From what I know of it, and the definition found on search, ACTS ain’t one from what I can see.
You are most certainly correct, Harry. I do not fit the definition of a neocon in any way. Thank you for pointing that out.
If you’ve read my recent posts I’ve covered the idea of “branding” a couple times lately. “MAGA” is now a brand, for good or for ill.
The Trumpians blindly loyal to that brand are greatly offended when I point out weaknesses, faults and failures in their Brand Hero. Many, like our friend here, don’t know a neocon from a Q-Anon from an actual Conservative from a hole in the ground. If he did know the differences in those things it would never have occurred to him to try to paint me as a neocon. Obviously he hasn’t read my profile …
So anyone who doesn’t fall down and worship Donald Trump as The One and Only Savior of our Nation and All Around Peerless Hero must be bad in some way. “Neocon” is as good as any other label for someone who can think for himself. This is just Chad Forster’s shallow and obvious attempt at cancelling speech that doesn’t support his brand.
Going by the disjointed, grammatic ineptitude and lack of supporting arguments in his 3 posts above — if I had to guess I’d say our friend Chad has had a tiny little bit more alcohol than is wise to consume while posting in public venues.
Which is something I’ve been guilty of a time or two myself. So even though he hates me, I forgive him. Eventually he’ll either learn or not.
I know you can defend yourself, but darnit, if you are a neocon, so am i! And I aint!
Its a bit scary how closely similarly we think.
A Marine and a geeky engineer who never served (but almost enlisted In the Navy when I didn’t have to-long story)
Both wish Trump wouldn’t run ,but would vote for him vs any Democrat. Both know he has flaws, and not the savior so many think he is.
And both have beloved medieval weaponry😏 And know how to use them.
This just irritated me, and that doesn’t happen often.
From someone who likes you without having met you physically:
Semper Fi, and thank you for your sacrifices, both great and small.
We’re neither of us anything close to neocons. That wasn’t a valid description, it was an attack on my free speech by someone who doesn’t like what I have to say. It was nothing more than right wing cancel culture.
THIS is what a modern neocon is by definition —
“Neoconservatism … originated in the 1970s as a movement of anti-Soviet liberals and social democrats in the tradition of Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Humphrey and Henry (‘Scoop’) Jackson, many of whom preferred to call themselves ‘paleoliberals.’ [After the end of the Cold War] … many ‘paleoliberals’ drifted back to the Democratic center … Today’s neocons are a shrunken remnant of the original broad neocon coalition. Nevertheless, the origins of their ideology on the left are still apparent. The fact that most of the younger neocons were never on the left is irrelevant; they are the intellectual (and, in the case of William Kristol and John Podhoretz, the literal) heirs of older ex-leftists.” -Michael LInd
You and I are neither younger nor older neocons. We do not fit that definition at all.
While it’s true that some neocons share some opinions with Conservatism the core, driving philosophy of Neoconservatism isn’t conservative at all. It bears no more resemblance to Conservatism than do things like disastrous anarchistic Libertarianism and other such stinkers.
While the definition of neoconservatism has vacillated in the last decade or so it has recently settled on meaning anyone who does not worship Donald J. Trump as their deity, who does not pin all their political hopes on the little tin god Trump, and who dares to see that Donald Trump is not perfection incarnate.
What’s really funny about that nonsense is that Trump isn’t really even a conservative. If he were, he’d be a piss poor one. To this viewpoint being a conservative means mindlessly supporting everything the not-conservative Trump did and making lame excuses for his failures.
Any real conservative must then be castigated, demonized and marginalized because God forbid there be any solver of our problems who is not Donald Trump.
Yet somehow these people cannot see that they’re doing the very same thing the Left did with Big Ears Barry. They’ve made a demigod of Trump exactly the same way the Left did with Obama.
Notice our little friend flung an ad hominem with no arguments supporting it at all. He couldn’t even come up with an applicable ad hominem because it’s clear he doesn’t even know what a neocon is. He thinks that calling a person who looks with clarity and cruciality on Trump is a neocon. He might as well have called me a river or a rock. The definitions are equally inapplicable. Bugs Bunny would call him a “maroon”.
His was no more than a fit of petulant, puerile pique.
(Yes, I like alliteration, it’s another fault of mine.)
It’s good to know I strike a nerve with people like that. It would be better if such people discussed our differences like adults but … Like so many on the Left, this sort of “conservative” doesn’t want to do that because he might have to change his mind about a few things.
This is the very same mentality on our side as people who when discussing gun control and faced with facts fall back to “I don’t care what you say, I just know we need gun control.” In this case it’s “I don’t know what a neocon is, I just know you are one.”
Plus the fact that he’s probably posting from a pad, tablet or phone where banging out an argument that takes more than 256 characters is damn near impossible … It’s appalling how many people on our side have a Twitter mentality.
I have to wonder what someone like that is doing in here because you and I agree far, far more with our hosts than that sort does. In this video Zo and Bill say the same things you, I and many others have said here on the site. I’m just more emphatic and aggressive about it but then I don’t have an enterprise to run.
We think alike because though we’ve taken different roads we’ve ended up at the same philosophical place. People like us; you, Ron SAE, Road Rider, myself and many others. tend to end up here. We do not all agree on every single issue but we can grasp the other’s viewpoint. Birds of a feather and all that GMTA stuff.
I appreciate greatly that you chimed in and called a strike on our buddy’s comment. I’m sure he’s not the only one that thinks the way he does. If we’re going to get this country back on track someday we need to let those people know where they’re mistaken … Or just plain ignorant. Better to deal with them now than have to shoot our way out of whatever mess they get us into with their well meaning but mistaken loyalties.
I’m an American, not a Trumpian and Trump is NOT America.
Like Bill said in this video … Donald Trump is not the savior of America. We are the saviors of America. By that I think he means that Donald Trump is not worthy of the worship some people bestow upon him. It’s us, our neighbors and our friends who will save this nation if it can be saved at all.
I don’t know what God’s plan is for our beloved Republic. I don’t worship the Republic but I love it dearly. I don’t worship Donald Trump either, nor any mortal man. I know that if this country continues on the path it’s on God will turn His face from us and rescind His blessings. Either way it goes, I’m comfortable with the fact that He is ultimately in charge and all things work together for His good purposes.
As for owning medieval weapons and knowing how to use them, that just happens to be a quirk we happily share. 🙂
Every self described neo-con is lock step supporting endless money and arms for Ukraine with no resolution. They also refuse to admit the color revolution in Ukraine. ACTS is in agreement with neocons.
But ACTS is not a self described neo-con. And I can’t think of where he supports endless money and arms to Ukraine. ( and neither do i, but Russian aggression must be apposed)
And since I have no idea, even after looking it up, what specifically “color Revolution” is, I can’t comment on it.
Ukraine has issues. Serious ones. But the Russians cannot be allowed to win.
I am not attacking you, or ACTS. I’m not using neocon as a pejorative. I’ve been where you are. Putin isn’t marching across Europe to the Atlantic. NATO (U.S.A.) is trying to trans Russia.
“Neocon” IS a pejorative whether you’re using it that way or not. If you are not aware of that then that word “neocon” you’re using doesn’t mean what you think it does.
Look at the definitions I supplied above to Harry and then think about what calling someone a ‘neocon’ means. There’s no way a real Conservative would not consider that a pejorative label. No matter how you ‘mean’ it.
You don’t get to redefine words to suit your own whim. Unless you’re a closet Leftist. Leftists do that all the time.
You’ve never been where I am, I can’t speak for Harry. That’s absurd going by the things you’ve wrongfully accused me of.
If you would like to correct your faulty opinion then read my response to Harry above.
You’re right, I’m NOT a “self-described neocon” and I certainly do not support endless money and arms to Ukraine. In fact, I barely support Ukraine at all. The only reason I’m even a little bit on the side of Ukraine is that Ukrainian soldiers are fighting Russians and killing them. I’m on the side of anyone who does that.
We have two major rival powers that challenge Western Society and individual liberty: Russia and China. We are now faced with a situation where we could nullify one of those enemies for a generation or more into the future. They’ll still have nukes but they will be too weak to use them to any advantage. Which means their nukes do them no good.
We have learned a great deal about modern Russian warfighting and it sucks. Our guys would mop the floor with them if it came to a head-to-head shooting war. This becomes clearer by the day.
As it turns out, we could also defeat Ukraine quite easily if that became an issue. I hope it does not.
If Russia manages to prevail against Ukraine, and I hope it does not because Ukraine then becomes a puppet state of Russia. Which is a worse outcome than any other conceivable scenario.*
That Russian Bear needs to be put back behind his fence. However that is accomplished is more favorable than failing to accomplish it at all.
The Biden Administration is doing a terrible job in this arena just as they are doing a terrible job in so many other venues. If we had a good, strong Conservative (NOT a dumbass neocon) in the White House this conflict would never have gotten started in the first place. It could be ended fairly rapidly even now if we had that sort of leadership. It SHOULD be ended as rapidly as possible.
As long as that ending, whatever form it takes, puts Russians back on Russian soil without Ukraine ceeding any territory. Russia agreed to the territory demarcated and designated as the nation of Ukraine. If Russia thinks it can change its mind and do as it pleases it is mistaken. Because if Russia can do that arbitrarily and unilaterally with Ukraine then Russia will be encouraged to do that anywhere else that suits the Russian leadership.
As far as I’m concerned, this isn’t about Ukraine at all. It’s about Russia. Ukraine, to borrow from Donald Trump, is not what Putin is after, it’s just in the way.
It amazes me to complete befuddlement how some people who call themselves Conservative can see this any other way. It’s short-sighted and small-minded to support any sort of Russian expansion in any manor for any reason whatsoever.
Many pretend wannabe Conservatives look at this as because Joe Biden supports Ukraine (badly and ineffectively) then they have to take the side of Russia to oppose Biden.
That’s called being ‘reactionary’ and it’s a stupid idea. Biden isn’t right, he supports Ukraine but he’s not seeing the big picture. A picture drawn in high detail and stark relief by history. We’ve already seen this movie and we know how it ends.
Neocons among other things are anti-Soviet. Guess what? There is no Soviet Union anymore. Russia, true to its nature, has replaced that with something different BUT JUST AS BAD AND LIKELY WORSE. Even the Soviet Union didn’t dare invade another sovereign nation like Putin has done.
Neocons, the very few that remain like The Lincoln Project, a misnomer if ever there was one, are FOR the Russian Federation.
Pseudo-Conservatives that support Russian expansionism either directly or indirectly are on the same side of this issue as the Neocons are.
Russian expansionism didn’t automatically and magically become a good thing just because we have a senile dotard in the White House. In fact, Russian expansionism would not be occurring if we were not saddled with a Potato for a President.
*(Ukraine FEEDS EUROPE. If the Russians take Ukraine then the Russians control the European food supply. Most of which will then go to hungry Russians and the market be damned. Russia won’t pay for food it can steal. If Russia doesn’t have to modernize and develop economically in order to buy food, Russia remains a tyranny for the foreseeable future. That alone is enough reason to want Russia put back in its box.)
I support the Ukraine because of what we both say: Russia must be stopped. Period.
And I kind of smile when I see the Russian bear get wounded over and over. Their best weapons get bested by ours. And in the hands of people that aren’t trained like ours. That’s one good thing that came out of this mess: the Russian bear is not as tough as we thought it was.
The Ukrainian people have the will. And wars are won in the will.
And our superior weapons make it easier.
Si vis pacem, para bellam.: If you want peace, prepare for war.
I’ll just go to the two last responses. Whow!! That’s a lot of words! First, the U.S.A. cannot “win” Ukraine”. Second,the U.S, congress is slow dripping our military into defeat.
The other advantage of going for the small fry is it will send a message to future small fry. If your boss tells you do something, make sure you are as untouchable as they are before you break the the law on their behalf.
In the America of today it matters little how well Trump fights back, nor what he says. The only thing that will matter is what leftist media tells Americans, because as we all know, at least 81 million are too lazy/indolent/stupid to do their own research.
There’s a word for that kind of thinking. It’s called —
“Defeatism”
The vast majority of people don’t pay a lot of attention to politics. They have other things to do with their time. Like going to work, raising families and unimportant stuff like that that they waste their time on.
The problem is not those people. The problem in this case is the messenger. The messenger lies to them. It’s not them, it’s the media that’s lying to them that is the problem.
You’re the exception if you ‘do your own research’. It’s up to you to get the message across to those people that they’re being lied to. You’re not special or smarter than them, you just happen to have an interest in politics that they don’t have.
Those lazy/indolent/stupid people are your neighbors and friends. If you’re not talking to them about the lies they’re being told then you’re lazy/indolent/stupid too.
To whom much is given much is expected. Try to stop looking down your nose for a while. Get off your high horse and do something.
Tried for YEARS to talk to them. They don’t want to hear anything they’ve not been indoctrinated to believe. Have a 69 year old sister, one of her daughters married a black man, a great fellow and good golfer. She found it necessary to ask me what I thought of Obama. I simply replied that I didn’t care for his policies. She hasn’t spoken to me since, and her whole family, right down to great grand children believe I’m racist because I don’t like Obama.
I would have been better off saying something like, “I’ve never met the man, I’m sure he’s a nice person, but I don’t like his politics,” and let it drop like that.
I, like you, ACTS, base my commentary on what I know, on MY life experience.
People who throw racism in your face because you don’t like a half black President’s politics are trying to punish you for not seeing politics the way they want you to. If a family member won’t speak to you for years after the circumstances you describe then they are trying to HURT you.
Apparently they’ve succeeded at both punishment and hurt.
Someone who tries to hurt you by not speaking to you for years does not love you. That is not an act of familial kindness nor of respect for kith and kin. You’re better off realizing that sooner than later.
If you asked me, and I stipulate that you did not, the people doing this are not much of a family if that’s how they act. Especially if you didn’t give them any reason to think you were a racist before Obama was elected and did not magically become one after he took office.
My life experience appears to be different from yours. I’m blessed with a good family. Some of them are liberal hereditary Democrats, some of them are married to other than white people (I’m white and all my blood kin are the same as me). We don’t treat each other any differently because of politics. Or race. Or wealth or lack thereof. We’re still family above and beyond all that.
My family thinks I’m eccentric and quirky. They’re right. No one shuns me for that. No one shuns anyone for anything except maybe deceit or embezzlement against another family member. If you don’t harm anyone in my family then you have nothing to dread from any other member of the family.
I’ve seen families like you describe yours to be and all I can do in that regard is offer my condolences. I’m sorry to hear about your family issues but if they cared about you before asking that question they’d care about you just the same after you answered it. That’s how families work, or they’re supposed to. Good families anyway, I can’t say if yours is one of those or not.
That’s no reason to spout defeatism. If that defeatism is just your anger speaking then you need to do something about your anger issues. If it’s actual defeatism based on your experience then you need to do something about having a defeatist worldview because …
Apparently it does matter how well Trump (or any other on our side) fights back or what they say. Trump got himself elected in spite of that 81 million deluded people you mentioned.
According to a Gallup poll, in 2021 political preference shifted from a nine-point Democrat advantage to a 5 point Republican advantage. The Democrats have not recovered their lead since.
There was a huge and sudden shift in the political orientation of this country during the last half of 2021 and unless people like you alienate an awful lot of other people that shows no sign of reversing itself.
Independents are still the largest political group in the United States.
You’d know and see these things if you did your own research. Start here …
https://news.gallup.com/poll/388781/political-party-preferences-shifted-greatly-during-2021.aspx
Those and more are hardly things to be defeatist over.
Be careful what news YOU are consuming. The Left does not have a monopoly on misinformation or information real but biased in delivery. The Right does that too. To listen to some on the Right we might as well all stick a pistol barrel in our mouths and eat a hot lead sandwich. It just ain’t so.
Some people said the things they are still saying before Trump got elected and if he gets elected again they’ll still keep on saying them. They’re like the family members you describe but that doesn’t mean certain defeat. Most of those people are just a noisy minority. The majority is still the Independents and they are amenable to reason for the large part. Look at things like the utter collapse of Bud Light if you don’t think there are people paying attention and know for themselves what’s going on.
Which means you have no cause to look down your nose at anyone and think you’re better than they are. That might be the case in specific instances but it’s not nearly the “it doesn’t matter if …” situation you say is predominate.
That’s why what you said is pure defeatism. The evidence does not support your position. Your unfortunate family situation notwithstanding.
If I seem a bit piqued, that’s because I am. I get pretty honked off at the “Get those damn kids off my lawn” belligerence and bile spewed by old cranks who claim to be on the conservative side of the philosophical divide. No one is impressed by angry old people but other angry old people. Even then you just end up with a contest to see who can express greater anger.
That kind ticks me off even more than the dolts who don’t know or care that the media is lying to them. Because that kind should know better. Whereas one expects dolts to act doltish. So they’re either being assholes on purpose or they’re being assholes due to hardening of the arteries. Neither is an excuse for that sort of behavior in public.
I just want to point out what Zo said early on about PDT not always knowing who the enemy is. This is spot on. PDT needs to stop attacking DeSantis and focus on the destruction that Biden’s puppet masters have done.
He could actually ignore DeSantis almost completely and still win the R primary by a large margin. Imagine if the only thing PDT said about DeSantis was this: “Ron’s done a nice job in Florida, but honestly he needs a little more seasoning before he is ready to take on this national Cerberus that is the Dems / Intractable bureaucracy / Media+Google+FB+YT. Hopefully we can clean it up a little more, fix the damage done in the past two years and hand him over a ship that has had most of its bilge pumps restored and sailing higher in the water.” (my choice of metaphor, he should use his own!)
If he could do this, I think he could win 40 states.
A couple thoughts – Bill, going after the lower end of the echelon, as you reference it, must NOT omit cleaning out the turds that infest the upper end of the echelon. One of DJT’s biggest failures – perhaps his biggest – is failing to HIRE TO BEGIN WITH those who support his policies. Instead, he brought on McMaster, Kelly, Mattis, and many others who presumably professed their support of Trump but then decided to work against him. IOW, his candidate selection process sucks and as far as I can tell right now, that may not have improved.
I was encouraged by his performance on the CNN town hall with Kaitlin Collins, but the bigger question I have is why in the hell did he do it to begin with? Practice fielding those gotcha questions that he knows he’ll be facing? Probably. Since CNN is not a rock-’em, sock-’em cable news network any more, why do that? Makes no sense to me, except that Christiane Amanpour decided to weigh in on the decision to hold the town hall and tore Chris Licht a new butthole for it. Does it matter to Licht? Did he set up to pay for Amanpour’s flight from London to NYC to rake him over the coals? (Bad press is much better than no press.)
Most of the time, Republican candidates wind up looking very poorly when being “interviewed” by leftist media outlets. They pick and choose and edit and otherwise do their best to present their adversary as a bumbling fool. With SharterJoe, we have no issue with that — he does that all by himself.
First thing I would do at this point would be to eliminate any group within an executive agency that carries firearms and is a de facto law enforcement group.
e.g.: The IRS does not need badged, armed agents. There are other groups, federal, state and local that can assist should that need arise.
There are several others.
Very few federal agencies are Law Enforcement and need their own gestapo units. That should be able to be done by EO.
The other day I saw something claiming that Trump did not in fact offer to order up 10,000 National Guards for 1/6/21, supposedly citing the acting Sec Def. Miller supporting that negative assertion. And others had reported that Trump did make that offer. So which report do we believe?
We and the R’s in Congress and other public conservative figures need to slam those kinds of things down, loudly and often, when the evidence is available to do so, and to counter with great ridicule false counter claims.
Following a DDG search for “trump did not order national guard for Jan 6th” I got quite a few denial links (from CBS, NPR, WaPo, USA Today, etc.) and a single prominent positive link to the American Military News: https://americanmilitarynews.com/2022/08/gen-kellogg-trump-did-request-natl-guard-troops-on-jan-6th-asks-congress-to-release-his-testimony/ This article provided other links that eventually gave me the “official” USPC timeline as they captured it: https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2022-06/USCPJan.6Timeline.pdf
This highlights the role of the flawed and biased Jan 6th Committee in filling the media with their version of events since they controlled the narrative. Kevin McCarthy needs to authorize release of all relevant testimony to that Committee, supporting or denying events as they want to portray them.
And subtle distinctions need to be highlighted when relevant: Trump made the offer for NG support prior to 1/6 but only made the final order (for fewer troops supporting the USCP) during the afternoon of the 6th since prior attempts to be prepared for large crowds were rejected (by Pelosi, etc.)
These kinds of things still need to be brought forth by the R’s often enough and forcefully enough that even the low information voter might eventually hear about it and start to question the prior narrative.
And undoubtedly there are other examples were Trump failed to perform as well as we would have hoped. He should be held accountable for those cases, too. [I.e., what’s really going on with the classified docs in FL, etc.?]
You guys are treading on awfully thin ice. You’re getting mighty close to hinting that Donald John Trump is not the only begotten Son of God and that’s going to get you in trouble in here. Members like JA and BH are very likely to have a stroke and start passing kittens if you keep that up. I know this because I have denied the deity of Donald John Trump and they’ve spat kittens all over the place. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
I’ve long said that if Trump could channel Ronald Reagan he’d be unstoppable. Reagan was a Statesman that found his true calling when he quit acting and took up politics. Reagan could disarm and defeat the opposition by laughing at them. In making them look like the stupid side he motivated our political adversaries to move in the right direction. Most people don’t care if their adversaries call them stupid, it’s when you prove they’re stupid that it really bothers them.
Trump doesn’t have that capacity, or if he does he has never demonstrated it. He doesn’t laugh at Leftist stupidity, he gets down in the mud with the pigs and pig-wrestles. Pig-wrestling is not statesmanship, it’s pig-wrestling. I enjoy a good pig-wrestling match as much as the next guy. It’s not that Trump and his pig-wrestling offends me, it’s that it doesn’t work and it’s a very stupid thing for a ‘genius’ political leader to do.
When it comes to deal-making, Trump is superb. Many of his policies were very, very good. Some not so much but there was certainly a net gain for our side and our side is America. He accomplished a lot.
Right up until he found himself out of his depth and blew the whole show over COVID-19. Had he not lost his way over that crisis no amount of cheating the Left had at its fingertips could have prevented him from a second term.
Has he learned his lesson? Maybe. Observing Donald Trump all these years I’m not all that impressed or confident that he excels in the lesson-learning department.
If all you care about in a President is someone who talks smack to the people you don’t like — Trump is your guy.
If he gets the nomination I’ll hold my nose and vote for him again. I’m not going to vote for him in the primaries. I don’t think he’s the best choice but the nature of politics is that you seldom are presented with a best choice.
While Trump is very popular with some people that call themselves Republicans it’s been said many times from many different sources that he is probably the only Republican that CAN lose to Biden. Because Biden has done such a terrible job that the only thing that would hand him a second term is all the baggage that comes with Trump. I think there’s something to that view.
There is one thing at the root of all of the problems that were discussed in today’s video but was not discussed. It goes way back to Bill Clinton’s first term, when he fired all of the federal prosecutors and replaced them with his own people.
Prosecutors not only have the power to chose whether or not to prosecute, but also to chose whether or not to investigate. Prosecutors are what give Democrats the power to flagrantly violate ANY law while at the same time, holding Republicans to an impossibly high standard.
As long as the prosecutors are controlled by the Democrats, even the “little fish” are invulnerable. We can’t achieve any of Bill’s suggestions until we clean up the Justice system and we can’t clean up Justice until we get some prosecutors.
So that should be Trump’s first order of business.
Good point, I wasn’t aware that Clinton had done that, the firing of prosecutors. I was out of the country a lot during the Clinton years and there are holes created thereby in my awareness.
What I was referring to below is the procedure used to take down a criminal organization. That won’t work, nor will anything else, if there’s no will to apprehend and punish the bad guys.
It was, of course, a long time ago that I heard this story about Clinton and the prosecutors. I *think* it’s true, but I may just be repeating an urban legend. I wonder if anyone on the forum here can confirm it.
Paul, a quick google search landed me at CBSNews.com and their 2007 story. Here’s a link, and here’s the two key paragraphs:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/so-is-this-us-attorney-purge-unprecedented-or-not/
“The Washington Post laid it out like this: “Although Bush and President Bill Clinton each dismissed nearly all U.S. attorneys upon taking office, legal experts and former prosecutors say the firing of a large number of prosecutors in the middle of a term appears to be unprecedented and threatens the independence of prosecutors.” ((regarding Bush’s action)
Former acting attorney general Stuart Gerson, meanwhile, wrote that it “is customary for a President to replace U.S. Attorneys at the beginning of a term. Ronald Reagan replaced every sitting U.S. Attorney when he appointed his first Attorney General. President Clinton, acting through me as Acting AG, did the same thing, even with few permanent candidates in mind.”
So, assuming CBS wasn’t just making stuff up … That turns the focus dial a bit, doesn’t it?
Yeah, and more people should get ahead of this sooner than after the election. As in, the candidates, our side of the boisterous media, and anyone in congress who has the courage to simply remind folks of Reagan, Clinton, Bush and Obama and NOT let the MSM get to the narrative first. I think we as a conservative team tend to put all our energy into getting folks turned out to vote, but perhaps not much thought to the how to accomplish their agenda until after they get elected. Bush’s mistake was waiting till the middle of a term to do it, while the others sent out the letters of resignation to the US Attorneys just in time for Inauguration Day. “Surprise, new Sherriff in town…you’re all fired!” Now that’s the right way.
I fully agree. The candidates need to announce their intention to fire a lot of Federal Prosecutors as per historic precedent.
It’s a killer argument when accused of stacking the deck to say …
“Yes, I said I was going to do the same thing that Reagan, Clinton, Bush and Obama (et.al.) did. I made no secret of that and that is what every one of my predecessors did in living memory. You don’t object when a Democrat does this sort of thing. So you’re biased and you’re lying to The People if you try to claim otherwise. That makes you a political hack not a journalist.”
Then we can kick back and watch the sparks fly.
When investigating crimes or gathering intelligence you ALWAYS start at the bottom. You get to the big fish by getting the little fish to ‘introduce’ you to them. The best way to get those introductions are to corner the little fish and put them in compromising positions so they rat on the bigger fish. They’re going to do this, it’s a proven strategy. If they’re facing 20-40 years in prison they’ll sing like turtle doves to get 3-5.
You never want to let the little fish off the hook entirely because that invalidates their testimony. It makes it look like you coerced them to lie AND that is exactly what they’ll say you did as soon as they’re in the clear.
They committed crimes, they have to pay for those crimes. They have to be treated like the criminals they are. No one has a problem with them singing to get a lesser sentence, everyone is going to have problems if they get off Scot Free.
That said, it’s the little fish you start with and work your way up the food chain. If you want to build a solid, irrefutable case, you start with the smallest fish you can find.