Commentary
NOTE: Okay … I concede that Vice President Harris did better than expected in the debate and former President Trump was a bit of a disappointment.
Aside from the obvious bias on the part of the ABC moderators, I believe Trump failed in several instances in which he could have effectively responded to Harris’s statements.
For instance, by mentioning his relationship with the families of victims of migrant crime and the families of the 13 servicemen and women killed during the withdrawal of Afghanistan, he could have poked a hole in Harris’s charge that his campaign was all about him
While he did challenge Harris on not having done, what she now proposes, in her three and a half years as vice president, he failed to drive home the question – are you better off today than you were four years ago?
Although he was responding to a moderator’s question regarding his failure to accept the results of the 2020 election, he should have merely said, ‘that’s all in the past, I’m looking to the future.’
There’s more, but it’s a dead horse. Although I’m concerned that Harris will have impressed gullible voters, unable to recognize that there was no policy discussion in her platitude-laden remarks, resulting in a possible post-debate poll pick up, Trump is far from finished.
Kramerontheright will continue to provide commentary in an effort to provide readers with objective coverage of the presidential and Congressional campaigns and matters of importance to our nation’s survival.
The Deep State
Regular readers will understand why the headline, “Intelligence Officials View A New Trump Term Warily,” in the Wall Street Journal brought a smile to my face.
While I’ve been writing for years about those unelected bureaucrats in the Deep State, who have sought to undermine Donald Trump’s presidency, recently my attention has been drawn to their concern for their positions should Trump be reelected.
Those in the government’s intelligence community should be wary after what they have done in their effort to interfere with his election in 2016 and again in 2020.
Certainly, you will recall those agents in the FBI who were working to keep Trump from being elected, while the FBI director insisted that Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified documents was not intentional.
In perhaps a more egregious action, just two weeks before the 2020 election, 51 former intelligence officers signed a letter insisting that material released about the content of Hunter Biden’s laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
Former deputy director of the CIA, Michael Morell, disclosed in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee that there were two goals in the letter: to help then Vice President Biden in the debate and to assist him in winning the election.
We know that Biden did use the letter effectively in the debate and went on to win the election, as the American public was unaware of it being a fabrication.
Let’s not forget those FBI meetings with social media representatives to caution them about Russian disinformation. And just last week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed that the Biden administration pressured him to censor Covid 19 material.
In the Journal piece, former CIA director Michael Hayden, who also signed the letter, says “Senior people are really worried,” predicting that Trump, in a second administration, “would gut civil service protections and weed out perceived enemies.”
I remember the story of a staffer to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo telling him “There are about 25 people here that are with you but 80,000 just waiting for the next election.” That’s the bureaucracy.
While Hayden should be wary, as I noted, former President Trump has publicly stated there would be no retribution, and that the success of his policies would be his response, his “in your face.” That isn’t to say Trump won’t put his people in positions important to his future success.
Incidentally, in the debate, Harris would have you believe that Trump’s former cabinet members and military and domestic policy advisors were no longer fans of him. Yes, a disgruntled few, who left under Trump’s terms.
Personally, I could name at least a dozen former Trump advisors ready to return to help Make America Great Again.
From Election Interference to Rule-Making
In addition to those in intelligence who use their positions in one of 18 (yes, 18) agencies within our spy apparatus, there are tens of thousands of unelected bureaucrats throughout government that affect our daily lives from offices in the EPA, FDA, IRS, and other alphabet agencies.
“President Trump is committed to returning the intelligence community to its proper constitutional and statutory limits,” says Brian Hughes, a senior Trump campaign advisor adding, “he is committed to break the hold entrenched interests have over decision making and exercising the will of the American people.”
Too many Americans are unaware of the power wielded by unelected bureaucrats. They don’t realize that the laws affecting individuals and businesses are seldom written by Congress. They are created by administrative bureaucrats.
“How did a system designed to provide government of, by, and for the people devolve into a system in which bureaucrats unaccountable to voters (though exquisitely accountable to political players and special interests) produce masses of law that was never voted on by an elected official?” asks Glenn Harlan Reynolds, law professor at the University of Tennessee College of Law.
Further, he asked, “Why did we give this bunch of clowns so very much power over our nation and our lives?”
Imagine this … Congress, with an open-ended directive like “ensure the rule is in the public interest,” leaves it up to agency experts to write rules on such things as toxic smog limits, plans to cover basic medical services, cosmetics and corporate financial behavior. It just gave too much power to unelected officials.
This is about to change, but bureaucrats aren’t happy. By a 6-3 vote in June, the Supreme Court ended a legal precedent known as “Chevron deference,” a 1984 Court ruling.
The decision limits the broad regulatory authority of federal agencies, thanks to a decades-long campaign by conservatives to shrink the power of the federal government, limiting the reach and authority of the so-called “administrative state.”
PONDER THIS … to my knowledge, not one of those 51 former intelligence officers apologized for his or her blatant interference in our 2020 presidential election process. And the media still regularly calls upon them to comment on intelligence matters. Disgraceful.
May God continue to bless the United States of America.
