Three Things You Need to Know – February 13, 2018

Susan Rice: CYA Agent

Imagine for a second, it’s the last day at your job. A new boss was hired and you decided it was time to move on to greener pastures. You and your old boss had a pretty good working relationship. The two of you collaborated on several projects together, and even saw your way through a few different scandals. Possibly the biggest potential scandal was, after learning of your boss’ imminent forced departure, the two of you gathered those most loyal and planned to undermine the next boss.

On your way out the door on the final day, a creeping feeling begins to itch at the back of your conscience. Did you do everything you could to complete the plan and cover your tracks? Just before your access to the corporate email server goes off, you compose an email to yourself that you know will be found by the incoming regime. It’s a last ditch effort at undermining the new boss, but more importantly it implies you did nothing wrong. You hit send, get up, and walk out the door for the last time.

In a nutshell, this is what appears to be what Susan Rice (Obama’s former National Security Advisor) did just before she walked out of the White House on Inauguration Day.

Yesterday, Senators Grassley and Graham sent a letter to Susan Rice asking her to explain an “unusual” email they found that was sent by her on her last day of work. The email was sent to herself, via the NSC official server, on January 20th, but it was explaining a meeting that took place on January 5th. The email describes an interaction between Obama, law enforcement and the intelligence community, and how the outgoing administration was considering withholding information regarding the Russia investigation from the incoming Trump team. Forced in, not once, but twice were comments Obama allegedly made that stressed the need to do things “by the book” and that he was ABSOLUTELY DEFINITELY not trying to insert himself into law enforcement activities.

First of all, why did Obama feel the need to tell the FBI to go “by the book” twice in such a short time? Aren’t the FBI’s investigations always done by the book? Isn’t that implied? Why did Rice write that Obama made it clear that he wasn’t trying to influence the investigation? Could it be that Obama, Rice, and the entire outgoing administration were engaging in an off the books operation to smear Donald Trump?

On March 1st the New York Times ran a story with this headline: Obama Administration Rushed to Preserve Intelligence of Russian Election Hacking. This was a damning article back in March. It implied that the Trump team was in danger of scuttling valuable information that would prove Russia interfered in the election. The article goes on to explain that the Obama administration proceeded to launch an operation of leaks to Congress, leaks to other agencies… leaks all over the place. But that was almost a full year ago. If you reread that article, the vast majority of the information that the Times claims Obama was leaking sounds like it all came from one place… the Steele Dossier.

Was the former President and his staff, engaging in a leak operation of opposition research paid for by Hillary Clinton and the DNC? Did the FBI know about this? Was this email from Susan Rice a last ditch effort at covering their tracks? If just one of these questions is YES, you can forget Watergate. This will be the biggest scandal in our nation’s history.

The Open-Ended DACA Debate

Don’t look now, but the Senate has begun an open-ended debate. I thought that’s what the Senate did all the time, but apparently, this is some special thing.

Can you imagine if the company you work for, or the business you run, operated like Congress? It would be a disaster. Our Founders designed a great form of government, but over time, it has morphed into this colossal slog where competence goes to die.

The latest example? Congress’ inability to get anything done on immigration. Specifically, what to do about DACA.

The mainstream media story you’ve been getting for months is a simple narrative that goes like this: President Trump hates immigrants, so he ended the DACA program so that he can start personally deporting every last Dreamer. What this simple narrative forgets to include is that DACA exists only because President Obama spoke the program into existence, completely outside of Congress and the Constitution.

So, DACA is the urgent problem before Congress because it’s a mess that was created by Obama, then Trump decided to end it, and the deadline when DACA permits will start expiring is now just over three weeks away. Congress has saved this issue until the very last minute. Shocker.

Their method for dealing with the issue at hand is a weird Hail Mary. Yesterday, the U.S. Senate began what they call an “open-ended debate” to figure out what to do.

“Whoever gets to 60, wins,” chirped Mitch McConnell, as if this debate thing is some fun board game they found in a Senate closet and dusted off to solve immigration.

The first DREAM Act was introduced in 2001. It never passed. It’s been seventeen years without meaningful immigration legislation. Immigration is the giant stadium beach ball that gets smacked around the stands of Congress year after year. And now all the sudden, with the clock running out, they’re going to have an “open debate”?

The point of this open debate format is to try to build a bill from scratch on the Senate floor. That sounds kind of like the way the universe was supposedly formed – utter chaos until just the right particles suddenly collided and out pops good ol’ Mother Earth. Yeah, that will work.

Regular Americans are held to a much higher standard of competence in their jobs. If only their representatives in Washington were held to the same standard.

Envelope With White Powder Mailed to Trump Jr.

Men clad in hazmat suits marched through Donald Jr and Vanessa Trump’s Manhattan apartment yesterday.

They initiated decontamination procedures while Vanessa was taken to the hospital.

Earlier in the day, she received a curious letter in the mail. She opened it and a white powder spilled out.

Vanessa instantly felt nauseous and started coughing uncontrollably.

Thankfully, the powder was found to be not hazardous and Vanessa and the other two people who were in the house with her are doing fine.

This isn’t the first time an insidious letter containing white powder was sent to the Trump’s.

In 2016, police investigated a similar letter sent to Eric Trump and two letters containing the powder was sent to Trump Tower.

As you can imagine, some people condoned the fear tactics against the Trump family.

Like the Socialist Party. They tweeted from their official Twitter account, “Disgusting people attract disgusting behavior.”

Not a surprising response from them. Socialists have always condoned violence and underhanded deeds.

Whether you hate them or love them, the Trump family doesn’t deserve these threats.

Don’t lose sight of humanity. Don’t hate people just because they have a different perspective than you. Embrace them and try to learn from them. Everyone is worthy of respect. That's something Socialists have never understood.

MORE 3 THINGS

This article provided courtesy of TheBlaze.

3 BIGGEST lies about Trump's plans for deportations

Rebecca Noble / Stringer | Getty Images

To the right, Trump's deportation plans seem like a reasonable step to secure the border. For the left, mass deportation represents an existential threat to democracy.

However, the left's main arguments against Trump's deportation plans are not only based on racially problematic lies and fabrications they are outright hypocritical.

Here are the three BIGGEST lies about Trump's deportation plans:

1. Past Deportations

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

The left acts like Donald Trump is the first president in history to oversee mass deportations, but nothing could be further from the truth. Deportations have been a crucial tool for enforcing immigration laws and securing the country from the beginning, and until recently, it was a fairly bipartisan issue.

Democrat superstar President Obama holds the record for most deportations during his tenure in office, clocking in at a whopping 3,066,457 people over his eight years in office. This compares to the 551,449 people removed during Trump's first term. Obama isn't an anomaly either, President Clinton deported 865,646 people during his eight years, still toping Trump's numbers by a considerable margin.

The left's sudden aversion to deportations is clearly reactionary propaganda aimed at villainizing Trump.

2. Exploitative Labor

John Moore / Staff | Getty Images

Commentators on the left have insinuated that President Trump's deportation plan would endanger the agricultural industry due to the large portion of agricultural workers in the U.S. who are illegal aliens. If they are deported, food prices will skyrocket.

What the left is conveniently forgetting is the reason why many businesses choose to hire illegal immigrants (here's a hint: it's not because legal Americans aren't willing to do the work). It's because it is way easier to exploit people who are here illegally. Farmowners don't have to pay taxes on illegal aliens, pay minimum wage, offer benefits, sign contracts, or do any of the other typical requirements that protect the rights of the worker.

The left has shown their hand. This was never about some high-minded ideals of "diversity" and "inclusion." It's about cheap, expendable labor and a captive voter base to bolster their party in elections.

3."Undesirable" Jobs

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Another common talking point amid the left-wing anti-Trump hysteria is that illegal aliens take "undesirable" jobs that Americans will not do. The argument is that these people fill the "bottom tier" in the U.S. economy, jobs they consider "unfit" for American citizens.

By their logic, we should allow hordes of undocumented, unvetted immigrants into the country so they can work the jobs that the out-of-touch liberal talking heads consider beneath them. It's no wonder why they lost the election.

Did the Left lay the foundations for election denial?

Chip Somodevilla / Staff | Getty Images

Did Glenn predict the future?

Just a few days after the election and President Trump's historic victory, the New York Times published a noteworthy article titled "How Russia Openly Escalated Its Election Interference Efforts," in which they made some interesting suggestions. They brought up several examples of Russian election interference (stop me if you think you've heard this one before) that favored Trump. From there, they delicately approached the "election denial zone" with the following statement:

"What impact Russia’s information campaign had on the outcome of this year’s race, if any, remains uncertain"

Is anyone else getting 2016 flashbacks?

It doesn't end there. About two weeks before the election (October 23rd), Glenn and Justin Haskins, the co-author of Glenn's new book, Propaganda Wars, discuss a frightening pattern they were observing in the news cycle at the time, and it bears a striking similarity to this New York Times piece. To gain a full appreciation of this situation, let's go back to two weeks before the election when Glenn and Justin laid out this scene:

Bad Eggs in the Intelligence Community

BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI / Contributor | Getty Images

This story begins with a top-secret military intelligence leak. Over the October 19th weekend, someone within the U.S. Government's intelligence agencies leaked classified information regarding the Israeli military and their upcoming plans to Iran. The man responsible for this leak, Asif William Rahman, a CIA official with top security clearance, was arrested on Tuesday, November 12th.

Rahman is one of the known "bad eggs" within our intelligence community. Glenn and Justin highlighted another, a man named Robert Malley. Malley is an Iranian envoy who works at the State Department under the Biden/Harris administration and is under investigation by the FBI for mishandling classified information. While Malley was quietly placed on leave in June, he has yet to be fired and still holds security clearance.

Another suspicious figure is Ariane Tabatabai, a former aide of Mr. Malley and a confirmed Iranian agent. According to a leak by Semafor, Tabatabai was revealed to be a willing participant in an Iranian covert influence campaign run by Tehran's Foreign Ministry. Despite this shocking revelation that an Iranian agent was in the Pentagon with access to top-secret information, Tabatabai has not faced any charges or inquires, nor has she been stripped of her job or clearance.

If these are the bad actors we know about, imagine how many are unknown to the public or are flying under the radar. In short, our intelligence agencies are full of people whose goals do not align with American security.

Conspicuous Russian Misinformation

Chip Somodevilla / Staff | Getty Images

The story continues with a video of a man accusing former VP candidate and Minnesota Governor, Tim Walz of sexual assault. The man alleged to be Matthew Metro, a former student of Walz claimed that he was assaulted by the Governor while in High School. The man in the video gave corroborating details that made the claim seem credible on the surface, and it quickly spread across the internet. But after some deeper investigation, it was revealed this man wasnot Matthew Metro and that the entire video was fake. This caught the attention of the Security Director of National Intelligence who claimed the video was a Russian hoax designed to wound the Harris/Walz campaign, and the rest of the intelligence community quickly agreed.

In the same vein, the State Department put out a $10 million bountyto find the identity of the head of the Russian-owned media company Rybar. According to the State Department, Rybar manages several social media channels that promote Russian governmental political interests targeted at Trump supporters. The content Rybar posts is directed into pro-Trump, and pro-Republican channels, and the content apparently has a pro-Trump spin, alongside its pro-Russia objectives.

Why Does the Intelligence Community Care?

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

So what's the deal? Yes, Russia was trying to interfere with the election, but this is a well-known issue that has unfortunately become commonplace in our recent elections.

The real concern is the intelligence community's uncharacteristically enthusiastic and fast response. Where was this response in 2016, when Hillary Clinton and the Democrats spent months lying about Donald Trump's "collusion" with Russia? It has since been proven that the FIB knew the entire story was a Clinton campaign fabrication, and they not only kept quiet about it, but they even played along. Or what about in 2020 when the Left tried to shut down the Hunter Biden laptop story for months by calling it a Russian hoax, only for it to turn out to be true?

Between all the bad actors in the intelligence community and their demonstrated repeated trustworthiness, this sudden concern with "Russian disinformation" that happened to support Trump was just too convenient.

Laying the Foundations for Election Denial

Brandon Bell / Staff | Getty Images

This is when Glenn and Justin make a startling prediction: the Left was preparing for a potential Trump victory (remember, this was two weeks before the election) so they would have something to delegitimize him with. They were painting Trump as Putin's lapdog who was receiving election assistance in the form of misinformation from the Kremlin by sounding the alarm on these cherry-picked (and in the grand scheme of things, tame) examples of Russian propaganda. They were laying the foundation of the Left's effort to resist and delegitimize a President-elect Trump.

Glenn and Justin had no idea how right they were.

Trump's POWERFUL 10-point plan to TEAR DOWN the Deep State

Brandon Bell / Staff | Getty Images

Since 2016 President Trump has promised to drain the swamp, but with Trump's new ten-point plan, do we finally have a solid roadmap to dismantle the deep state?

In March 2023, President Trump released a video detailing his plan to shatter the deep state. Now that he is the President-Elect, this plan is slated to launch in January 2025. Recently, Glenn reviewed Trump's plan and was optimistic about what he saw. In fact, he couldn't see how anyone could be against it (not that anything will stop the mainstream media from spinning it in a negative light).

But don't let Glenn tell you what to think! Check out Trump's FULL plan below:

1. Remove rouge bureaucrats

U.S. Air Force / Handout | Getty Images

Trump's first order of business will be to restore an executive order he issued in 2020 that allowed him to remove rouge bureaucrats. Trump promises to use this power aggressively eliminate corruption.

2. Clean and overhaul the intelligence apparatus

SAUL LOEB / Contributor | Getty Images

Next, Trump promises to oust corrupt individuals from the national intelligence apparatus. This includes federal bureaucracies like the CIA, NSA, and other agencies that have been weaponized against the left's political opponents.

3. Reform FISA courts 

Handout / Handout | Getty Images

Trump's next promise is to reform the FISA courts, which are courts tasked with reviewing and approving requests to gather foreign intelligence, typically through surveillance. These courts have been unaccountable to protections like the 4th Amendment that prohibits the government from unwarranted surveillance, resulting in severe government overreach on American citizens, both on US soil and abroad.

4. Expose the deep state. 

Drew Angerer / Staff | Getty Images

Trump want to establish a "Truth and Reconciliation" commission that will be tasked with unmasking the deep state. This will be accomplished by publishing and declassifying all documents on deep state spying, corruption, and censorship.

5. Crackdown on government-media collusion

Andrew Harnik / Staff | Getty Images

Next, Trump will crack down on government "leakers" who collaborate with the mainstream media to spread misinformation. These collaborators purposefully interject false narratives that derail the democratic process within the country. The plan will also prohibit government actors from pressuring social media to censor content that goes against a particular political narrative, as was done, for example, in the case of the Biden administration pressuring Facebook to crack down on Hunter Biden laptop-related content.

6. Isolate inspector generals

MANDEL NGAN / Contributor | Getty Images

Trump promises to physically separate every inspector general from the department they are tasked with overseeing. This way, they don't become entangled with the department and end up protecting them instead of scrutinizing them.

7. Create a system to monitor the intelligence agencies

SAUL LOEB / Stringer | Getty Images

To ensure that the intelligence agencies are no longer spying on American citizens, Trump proposed to create an independent auditing system. This auditing system, created by Congress, would keep the intelligence agencies in check from spying on American citizens or political campaigns as they did on Trump's campaign.

8. Relocate the federal bureaucracy

SAUL LOEB / Staff | Getty Images

Relocating the federal bureaucracy, Trump argues, will keep the internal politics of the individual bureaucracies out of the influence of DC. He says he will begin by relocating the Bureau of Land Management to Colorado.

9. Ban federal bureaucrats from taking corporate jobs

J. David Ake / Contributor | Getty Images

To keep money ties out of politics, Trump proposes that federal bureaucrats should be banned from working at the companies that they are regulating. American taxpayer dollars should not go to agencies run by bureaucrats who cut special deals for corporations, who will later offer them a cushy role and a huge paycheck.

10. Push for congressional term limits

Chip Somodevilla / Staff | Getty Images

Finally, Trump wants to make a constitutional amendment placing term limits on members of Congress. This proposal has been popular on both sides of the political aisle for a while, preventing members of Congress from becoming swamp creatures like Nancy Pelosi who was just re-elected for her 19th term.

The Democrats are turning on Biden

Mario Tama / Staff | Getty Images

The election is over, Kamala Harris has officially conceded, and now the Democrats are doing some serious soul-searching.

After reflecting long and hard (approximately 24 hours), the Democrats have discovered the real reason Harris lost the election. Was it Trump's excellent campaign that resonated with voters? Was it Harris's off-putting personality? Or was it her failure to distinguish herself from the Biden administration's failed policies?

No, it was Joe Biden. All the blame lies on President Biden's shoulders. The Left sees no need to take any real responsibility for the landslide defeat the Democrats suffered earlier this week; just pass the blame on to 'ole Joe.

Here are the leading excuses the Left is spinning up to explain Harris's crushing defeat:

"Biden should have dropped out sooner."

Kevin Dietsch / Staff | Getty Images

This is the crux of the left-wing media's argument against Biden. They claim that if Joe Biden had dropped out earlier, Harris would have had more time to campaign and would not have had to carry around the baggage of Biden's abysmal debate performance. This could make sense, but what these commentators are conveniently forgetting are the years of propaganda these very same people promoted arguing that Biden's declining mental acuity was nothing more than a right-wing conspiracy theory. If Biden had been as sharp as they had told us, why would he have dropped out?

Also, if a lack of time was Harris's biggest issue this election, she sure didn't act like it. She was practically in hiding for the first several weeks of her campaign and she took plenty of days off, including during the last few crucial weeks. More time wouldn't have helped her case.

"Harris failed to distance herself from Biden."

Kevin Dietsch / Staff | Getty Images

This is media gaslighting at its finest. Yes, Harris failed to distance herself from Biden. However, that's because she, along with the rest of the Left, publically went on record defending Biden's policies and his mental acuity. By the time Harris became the nominee, she had already said too much in favor of Biden. Don't forget Harris's infamous “There is not a thing that comes to mind,” quote after being asked on The View if she would do anything differently than Biden. In a way, Harris couldn't separate herself from Biden without drawing attention to the greatest flaw in her campaign: if she knew how to fix the country, why hasn't she?

"Harris did the best anyone could have done in that situation."

Brandon Bell / Staff | Getty Images

But did she really? As mentioned earlier, she was noticeably absent for much of the campaign. While Trump was busy jumping into interviews, events, and rallies non-stop, Harris was MIA. Whenever Harris did manage to make an appearance, it almost always did more harm than good by highlighting her lack of a robust policy platform and her inability to string together a coherent sentence. Notable examples include her aforementioned appearance on The View and her disastrous interview on Fox News with Bret Baier. The point is, even considering the limited time to campaign she had, Kamala Harris wasnot the best person for the job and there are undoubtedly many other Democrats who would have run a much more successful campaign.