Here are my observations and opinions from my select news of the day.
WHY BENNET? – Anchor Neil Cavuto was interviewing Sen. Michael Bennet, the Democrat candidate for president nobody knows, and I ask myself – because there wasn’t anyone else around – why?
Bennet barely registers at one percent in national polling, probably due to a lack of a message, and his absence from the debate stage since July, resulting in being ranked 12th among all candidates in news coverage.
But, I digress. During the course of the near five-minute interview, Cavuto was, as usual, the grand interrupter, but he failed to challenge Bennet when he blatantly said, “The Iranians have become stronger during the three years Donald Trump has been (in office) … that his foreign policy was weak … (and that) for three years he disregarded intelligence.”
Cavuto should have reminded Bennet of the $1.7 billion dollars in cash President Obama sent to Iran on pallets the year before Trump took office, coincidentally on the same day Tehran agreed to release four Americans. Certainly, that cash made them stronger, not to mention it made America look weaker.
Of course, Obama’s urgency to complete the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – the nuclear deal – freed the Iranians of sanctions and the lifting of the US. arms embargo, further strengthening their posture.
Yet, Obama during an appearance on NPR naively said, “Ideally, we would see a situation in Iran, seeing sanctions reduced, would start focusing on its economy, on training its people, on reentering the world community, to lessening its provocative activities in the region.”
Terrorist Qasem Soleimani saw his role strengthen, too. He knew, wrote Lee Smith of the Brookings Institution, “that when Obama failed to strike Syrian president Bashar al-Assad for crossing the redline against the use of chemical weapons, there was no way the president would ever order military action against Iranian nuclear facilities.”
Is there any doubt that Soleimani assumed the same would be true with President Trump who showed restraint after several Iranian provocations?
I think other leaders, who may doubt Trump’s seriousness, like Kim Jung Un, will think twice about playing games with the U.S. president.
As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Bennet surely knows better, but when you suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome, you will say anything.
With that, Kramerontheright says he should go back to his position as Superintendent of Schools in Colorado.
SHE HAS NO SHAME – I’m referring to Susan Rice, President Obama’s UN ambassador, who appeared on all of the Sunday morning news shows following the attack on our Benghazi embassy compound that resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including our ambassador, to declare that an anti-Muslim video provoked the attack.
Questioning the drone strike that killed Qasem Soleimani, Rice said “(The Trump) administration sadly, tragically, has a record of almost-daily misrepresenting the facts – telling falsehoods about issues big and small. So it’s hard to have confidence on the face at their representation,” during an appearance on CNN’s Wolf Blitzer show Friday.
Not only does she have no shame, but where’s Blitzer’s integrity, booking a guest who he knows misrepresented the facts on Benghazi, to accuse the Trump administration of misrepresenting facts.
INCIDENTALLY, are you aware that Susan Rice was Ben Rhodes’ third choice to take the fall on those Sunday shows? During Hillary Clinton’s 2013 appearance before Congress, Rep. Joe Wilson asked her why she didn’t do those Sunday shows.
“I have to confess, here in public, going on the Sunday shows is not my favorite thing to do, “Clinton said. “There are other things I’d prefer to do on Sunday mornings. And, you know, I haven’t been on a Sunday show in way over a year. It just isn’t something that I normally jump to do. And I did feel strongly that we had a lot that we had to manage (no kidding), that I had to respond to and that should be my priority.”
THERE’S MORE – It was Susan Rice, who infamously sent a CYA e-mail to herself to record that there had been a meeting on January 5, 2017 involving President Obama, FBI Director James Comey, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and Rice, in which they discussed the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation.
“The President stressed that he not asking about, initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective,” she noted. “He reiterated that our law enforcement team needs to proceed as it normally would by the book.”
The e-mail was written at 12:15 p.m., January 20, 2017, Trump’s inauguration day, which triggered a response from Trump’s White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah:
“I can assure you five minutes before you walk out the door of the White House on January 20th, 2017, you write an e-mail doing something by the book, it is pretty clear you didn’t operate by the book. It raises a lot of serious questions.”
May God continue to bless the United States of America.
