Why the Blind Hatred of Trump?

The given reason for the raid on Trump’s home has evolved over the last two weeks. Eventually, media seemed to settle on claims that he has the nuclear codes tucked away inside his pillow and that he is being investigated under the Espionage Act.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/trump-classified-documents-mar-a-lago-fbi-search/671124/

The warrant also cites three federal laws: the Espionage Act, which involves information about national defense; a second that involves obstruction of investigations by destroying or hiding documents; and a third related to unlawful removal of records.

The Washington Post reports that FBI agents were seeking “classified documents relating to nuclear weapons” when they executed their warrant. The New York Times says simply that documents involved “related to some of the most highly classified programs run by the United States.” The Wall Street Journal adds that agents seized 11 sets of classified documents, “including some marked as top secret and meant to be only available in special government facilities.”

The Washington Post, New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal, three of the leading newspapers in America have lied or been misled by sources too often to count. Anonymous is the most frequent and unchallenged contributor to news regarding Trump; anonymous is often mistaken.

The Atlantic article above also discusses security lapses from Trump, all of which have been disputed. These days, people believe the sources they like best. Let’s focus instead on current claims concerning the raid. Speculation is, of course, rampant. Why would Trump have nuclear secrets at his home? If you don’t like him to start with, it is a very small step to assign malicious intent. But let’s ask what might actually be happening here:

• Trump is going to sell nuclear secrets to foreign adversaries? He doesn’t need the money, and if he really were a foreign agent, he would have sold us out long ago. Why wait until he is out of power? He is the most investigated man in America, so if there was something of note along this line, it would have been revealed long ago and not raised just now, six years after his election. This does not pass the smell test.
• He is going to execute some unauthorized launch from his home? This seems ludicrous, but some media act as if this is possible (they will believe anything with regard to Trump). The codes he had 19 months ago while in office, cannot possibly be valid any longer. Plus, it takes multiple individuals to perform a launch, and he no longer has any authority.
• He is careless with such information? Perhaps, this is possible, but the president has people to look out for him on this score. He doesn’t get down into the weeds himself. Also, wouldn’t the agency whose secrets were potentially compromised know who has them and take steps to retrieve them?
• It massages his ego to retain such information? Go there if you like. Most of our politicians, including Trump, certainly have big egos. Trump says he is running for president again. Why would he risk his reputation and his comeback to temporarily massage his ego in this way? From all appearances, his ego is just fine. It doesn’t need this boost.

AG Garland said he struggled with this decision for weeks. This further discounts the theory there was some critical national security information at Mar-al-Lago. If there were an imminent threat, why hesitate to act? Grab it immediately once you realized the breach. If Trump had so carelessly or maliciously put the US at a grave threat through such negligent actions, the current administration would be eager to expose him and finally reveal the man behind the mask to all of Trump’s loyal supporters. In other words, if they finally had the smoking gun, the one that they could clearly pin on him, they would acted as soon as they had a chance.

Given the lack of an imminent threat, why take the extraordinary and unprecedented step of a search warrant? There are just three months until the next election; the DOJ tries to avoid unduly influencing elections, but missed that mark this time. The search warrant itself has been released, but AG Garland has not himself commented on the purpose, nor has the affidavit explaining the reasoning been released. I won’t go into the legal struggle, but for a skeptic like me there appears to be three potential reasons for the raid:

• to influence the next election and boost flailing Democrat prospects (Senator Schumer gave this game away with his comments right after the raid: https://republicandaily.com/2022/08/watch-chuck-schumer-sorta-gives-the-game-away-on-fbis-mar-a-lago-raid-during-maddow-interview/)
• to find something, anything, to pin on President Trump. Stalin’s KGB Chief (Beria) said: Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime”. The Biden administration (and a couple other state AGs) is using these same tactics. How distressing, no matter what you think of Trump in any case.
• Kash Patel and Devin Nunes talked with Maria Bartiromo last Sunday and explained that Trump declassified many documents regarding the dubious behavior of the Clinton campaign and Obama administration during the 2016 election. The Biden administration wants all 2016 election related (Russia-gate) information to remain under wraps. Forward this link to minute 2:00 and listen to how this devious trick works: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/obstructing-justice-on-what-you-jerks-devin-nunes-rages-day-after-report-says-trump-lawyer-told-doj-no-more-docs-were-at-maralago/ar-AA10EuaA

Next, we have MSNBC’s Tiffany Cross taking the next logical step and building on the rhetoric from the major periodicals.

https://video.foxnews.com/v/6311177124112#sp=show-clips

During MSNBC’s “The Cross Connection” Saturday morning, host Tiffany Cross expressed her fear that “the civil war is here” because of alleged pro-Trump extremist’s evolving distrust for the U.S. government prompted by the FBI raid on the former president’s Mar-a-Lago home earlier this month.

Ms. Cross says her words “are not hyperbolic”, but I am afraid they are. She wants us to believe not just Trump, but all of his loyal voters, would stop at nothing to wrest control away from the current administration. Anything goes for these awful Republicans, in other words. I am more than offended. I am alarmed that many will believe this incendiary and untrue rhetoric.

For four years, the Trump Administration was compared to Nazis and Trump to Hitler. Such rhetoric is useful to his opposition; it gives freedom to do whatever is necessary to stop the next Hitler; you will be forgiven for taking steps that might otherwise be frowned upon in other instances. Now, they have Trump as a target once again. They need him as their target because they have little else to motivate their side.

Most of us on the conservative side of the aisle see President Trump as a patriot, not as the second coming of Hitler. Most of us also acknowledge his faults and excesses; he did some good things and some not-so-good things, but we prefer him to the feckless figurehead currently occupying the presidency. When Democrats justify such steps to attack someone who we believe has good intent, we begin to doubt their intentions instead.

Liberal commentator and author Sam Harris built upon Ms. Cross’s statement. He condones the censoring of the Hunter Biden laptop news in the last two weeks of the election. Harris says it is acceptable to suppress this information to ensure a Biden victory.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2022/08/18/sam_harris_the_worst_thing_you_can_imagine_about_hunter_bidens_laptop_means_nothing_compared_to_the_danger_posed_by_trump.html

My argument is that it was appropriate for Twitter and the heads of big tech and the head of journalistic organizations to feel like they were in the presence of something like a once-in-a-lifetime moral emergency, right?

This was a highly analogous situation, we’re going to open up this “Laptop From Hell” and the news cycle for who knows how long is going to be just conceivably just a nuclear bomb of an October Surprise, and we’re going to get four more years of Trump if we give this a fair hearing.

KISIN: You’re content with a conspiracy to prevent somebody from being democratically elected?

HARRIS: It’s not a conspiracy. There’s nothing conspiracy — it’s not — it was a conspiracy out in the open. But it doesn’t matter if it was– It doesn’t matter what part is a conspiracy, what part is out in the open. If people get together and talk about what we should do about this phenomenon. If there was an asteroid hurdling towards Earth, and we got in a room together with all our friends about what we could do to deflect the course — is that a conspiracy?

“It was a conspiracy out in the open” per Mr. Harris. President Trump was perceived as an asteroid heading towards the White House and anything goes to stop him from colliding with the White House again is acceptable. This is a new level of acknowledgment from Democrats. They warn us that Trump and his supporters will do anything to win, but then Harris admits “anything goes” is an actual Democrat strategy. Harris does not deny the open conspiracy: the cover-up of Hunter Biden’s laptop, the censoring of the NY post who reported on it, President Biden’s phony claim it was all a Russian plot, and all the rest https://seek-the-truth.com/2022/03/19/because-more-than-50-intelligence-officials-said-so-really/

Mr. Harris informs us this level of deception is necessary in order to save us from ourselves. Yet, many of us see the Biden Administration as the disaster. Why do our concerns not matter to Mr. Harris and his allies? He is so sure we are wrong and he is right. That over-confidence provides justification for such disreputable tactics. How can such tactics actually improve the situation? Where will you stop? What will be the excuse to justify cheating in the future? Where will the line be drawn, if it is drawn at all?

Discussion:

All these questionable actions are justified by many who believe President Trump is so evil anything goes to stop him. But many of us don’t see him as evil; we see the efforts to unfairly malign him as the problem. After two years of a Mueller investigation, two impeachments, a January 6 committee, and plethora of accusations against Trump the last six years, why can’t they find something criminal to pin on him? I asked my friends and this is a response I received in email.

Soviet style tactics….you are, of course, referring to Trump’s tactics…. the person who praised Putin and believed him over our own security agencies.

Yes. We hear this same charges continually: Nazi, Hitler, Soviet-like, evil, etc. I followed-up with this challenge: what Soviet style tactics were used by President Trump? 

The facts matter.   What exactly did he do?  It needs to be more than: he said something not nice about an opponent.  What terrible legacy did he leave behind?  How did his actions mimic the Soviet’s? I was certain the response would not be anything close the charge itself. Trump is no angel, for sure, but the talking points just can’t be backed up, and the talking points are all they have.

In this response, I highlight ten criticisms of President Trump provided by my friend and then analyze how well these charges confirm that Trump uses Soviet style tactics (I don’t have time to cover the comments on others, so my analysis focuses on Trump’s actions)

If the definition of Soviet style tactics is to go after your political adversaries by using intimidation, then Trump “primaries” his Republican naysayers.  He goes after opponents, which is fair game, but he also goes after Republicans who don’t agree with him.  These aren’t his political opponents running against him, but candidates for other offices that he likely wouldn’t directly encounter.  Looking at actions versus words in a child-like way, Trump may have said peacefully go to the Capitol, but once violence occurred, he did nothing to stop it.  Even after being told, they would likely stop if he asked.  His action at that point was to stay silent and watch the ransacking of the Complex.  Since then, he has gone after all Republicans that voted for his impeachment.  DeSantis has used this same intimidation strategy against “woke” Disney.  Although I think Disney will have the last laugh on that one if they follow through, which they won’t.  It would cost the state about $1 Billion to follow through since the counties would be responsible for taking on the Disney debt.  There is a lot of bluster and intimidation, but once out of the news the Republicans basically say just kidding and move on to the next big thing to rile the masses. 

Republicans have threatened to follow up next term with investigating the Democrats is all about revenge rather than justice.  Investigations into Republicans have amounted to many prosecutions versus investigations into Democrats where there have been some but not high-level actors.  Most recently the CFO of Trump Organization pled guilty to Tax evasion.  Do you think Trump wasn’t aware of the scheme?  Trump pardoned Roger Stone who had been found guilty of several offenses.  How long has Hillary been investigated?  Based on what?  I still hear “lock her up”.  Speaking of “show me a person and I’ll find a crime”.  There hasn’t been anything found yet and Republicans oversaw investigations for four years and Trump is a “lock her up” type of guy.  If he couldn’t find anything and you still believe when they say something is there, then it seems you would believe them if they said Santa Claus was real.

Putin with the strongest peace force?  That sounds Orwellian.  A peace force can only be justified for defensive purposes, and I can’t imagine you are saying, or believe, that Russia was justified invading Ukraine only for keeping the peace.  If you do, then you must think the Ukrainians are leveling their own cities and doing it for propaganda.  As far as a master tactician he is failing in Ukraine.  As the war started, even the Ukrainians thought they would lose quickly, but Putin was able to snatch defeat out the jaws of victory.  Whether the Russians win or lose the fighting, they lost the war.  Trump says the Russians would never have invaded had he still been president – going back to the child – aren’t those words and not action?  He of course can use history and show evidence they didn’t attack while he was president, but its easy to write history after the fact.  Other words Trump has said is he would have joined the military but if only they didn’t turn him down.  He said something like “only mobsters and guilty people plead the 5^th”.  In the NY civil case he spent several hours pleading the 5^th.  At a campaign event in Philadelphia in 2016, Trump said, “One of the first things we must do is to enforce all classification rules and to enforce all laws relating to the handling of classified information.”  Yet after asking nicely, then through a subpoena, and finally through an executed search warrant they still found top secret documents at his house. 

By the way, I admit I liked Trump as an entertainer – just not a politician.  He is different than typical politicians, but not in a way that I like. 

Trump’s top ten Soviet-style tactics per this answer to my challenge:

1. Trump supports candidates he likes in primaries over candidates he doesn’t like. For the very first charge, can’t there be something better than he participated in a democratic process? How many legitimate elections did the Soviets have?  Were any of the candidates they supported ever defeated? This is hardly Soviet-like.
2. He did nothing to stop violence on January 6. This is not exactly true; he waited 3 hours and 7 minutes to ask his supporters to stop with the protests at the Capitol. Is this a long time?  I agree he could have said something more definitive a bit sooner, but how long would a Soviet style leader have waited?  A true Soviet style leader would have blamed his opponents. In addition, how long did it take Democrats to tell folks to stop rioting the summer of 2020? More than 25 people died in those riots and there was more than $2 billion in property damage; nobody died during the January 6 riot. https://nypost.com/2021/09/08/bail-fund-backed-by-kamala-harris-freed-man-charged-with-murder/
3. One of his employees pled guilty to tax evasion.   If you use this standard, it will boomerang quickly. Flight logs show Bill Clinton flew on Jeffrey Epstein’s Lolita Express 26 times. Obama was buddies with Bill Ayers, who was convicted for bombing the pentagon in the 1960s; they became buddies AFTER Ayers was convicted and jailed.  Michelle Obama feted and praised Harvey Weinstein when apparently everyone knew of his sleazy associations.  https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2012/07/13/top-ten-felons-in-obamas%20life/. 
4. He pardoned Roger Stone.   What president hasn’t issued numerous pardons, many of them questionable but still legal? Trump is actually second from the bottom for the number of pardons issued by a president. https://www.thoughtco.com/number-of-pardons-by-president-3367600
5. He said to “lock up Hillary”, but still he never raided her home and never launched a criminal investigation of her in his four years.  She was criminally investigated by the prior administration–the Obama administration.  Does that make President Obama a practitioner of “Soviet style tactics”?  What about the Biden administration which raided Trump’s home?
6. He had an opinion about Putin, one that sounds odd.  A politician has an odd opinion?  This is as close to Soviet as we have come yet.
7. He said Putin would not have succeeded if he himself was president.  I rate this one mostly true.  Putin is not very efficient, but he is succeeding in Ukraine.  It is a war of attrition and it will likely come to a head this winter. 
8. Trump never joined the military, but neither did Obama, Clinton, Gore, Cheney, Quayle, and others.  Bill Clinton admitted to dodging the draft, not something voters ever held against him.
9. He pleaded the 5^th amendment.  It was hypocritical, but not illegal or even unprecedented. This is also one of our key Constitutional protections, in fact. Did the Soviets even have anything like the 5th amendment?
10. There were top secret documents at his home.  This does not seem surprising given his prior job. Do you also know a president can declassify any document he likes?   He said he declassified all these before he left office (note also the Maria Bartiromo interview mentioned earlier).  
    
    How many secret documents did Hillary Clinton take home and put on a private server (you know, the documents FBI director James Comey said were highly likely to have been revealed to hostile foreign actors? Secretaries of state also do not have the authority to declassify. https://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/transcript-james-comey-clinton-email-225103). 
    
    How many classified documents do you believe Obama, Bush, and others brought home?  Should we raid their homes to find out?

I rate this very low on the Soviet style tactic scale. In fact,  I rate the current and some past presidents higher.

Asked Nicely

My friend also noted the government “asked nicely” and then issued a subpoena before finally executing a warrant, implying they were methodical, patient, and reasonable. They may have asked nicely, but the fact is Trump was cooperating with the DOJ subpoena and FBI agents visited his home this past June to review documents. Trump himself was very nice himself per reports:

https://nypost.com/2022/08/11/feds-seized-documents-from-trumps-mar-a-lago-in-june-report/

CNN and the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump greeted the agents at the start of the meeting, with the Journal quoting him as saying: “I appreciate the job you’re doing” and adding: “Anything you need, let us know.” 

Perhaps the June visit was just reconnaissance for the planned raid in August? That would be sneaky.

The problem with the August raid is that it was a very broad search. You can’t legitimately claim the government was being stonewalled regarding certain documents and then issue an extremely broad search warrant, one that mentions any document created between January 2017 and January 2021 is fair game. Did you want certain documents or did you want them all?

My friend believes this has been a gradual and fair progression, but he hasn’t studied the facts. In fact, President Trump’s attorney in this matter, Jim Trusty, calls the search, a violation of Trump’s fourth amendment rights and possibly a violation of attorney-client privileges’.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-legal-counsel-vows-fourth-amendment-based-challenge-mar-a-lago-raid-very-soon

Mark Levin interviewed Mr. Trusty on his show last Friday. These two lawyers break down the problems with this raid in a quite interesting discussion. Advance to the 1 hour 29 minute mark for the interview.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-levin-audio-rewind-8-19-22/id209377688?i=1000576658244

Another Response

I received a shorter response mentioning the Trump conversation with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Below is the transcript of the conversation. 

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/03/politics/trump-brad-raffensperger-phone-call-transcript/index.html

Your opinion depends on how you read Trump’s intent.  The former president believes he was cheated. You don’t have to agree with him on that accord, but you should recognize it is what he believes, so he is allowed to pursue legal avenues. Even if legal avenues fail, he should not be persecuted for pursuing such avenues. THAT would be a Soviet style tactic.

A meeting with the Georgia officials is not unreasonable. The Georgia AG is investigating this call still. Let’s wait and hear him when the investigation is complete. Still, this call has been parsed by the media repeatedly. They read intent into portions, ignore the full context, and affirm views they already hold (that Trump is guilty of something).

Double Standard

President Biden killed a major terrorist leader (al-Zawahiri) last month and took a victory lap; when President Trump killed General Soleimani, then candidate Biden said:

President Trump just tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox, and he owes the American people an explanation of the strategy and plan to keep safe our troops and embassy personnel, our people and our interests, both here at home and abroad, and our partners throughout the region and beyond,” Biden tweeted.

President Trump pushed the COVID vaccines in 2020, and candidate Biden questioned their efficacy, but then became their biggest advocate a few months later. Did the media notice the change?

Why are the things President Trump does criticized, yet when President Biden does the exact same thing, they are praised? Is the double standard not apparent to our media or do they just make excuses and ignore their own problem?

Two things can be true at once: President Trump did some problematic things, said some problematic things, but he has also he has been accused of many things he hasn’t done. I still say he is the most investigated man ever and the one politician who has been held beyond the standard allowed the rest of us. You may not like him; you may think he is guilty, but give him a fair shake please. All of us deserve that. Once the standards are trampled for him, they will be trampled for the rest of us.

There will be dancing in the streets as if they won the Super Bowl if President Trump is convicted of anything. The Left wants it so badly. This obsession is unhealthy and is hurting the country as a whole.