Foreign Policy
On Wednesday, Americans learned that, during the Obama years, U.S. intelligence officer Monica Witt was recruited to be a spy by Iran and fed them sensitive information, including the identities of intelligence sources. Despite Iran’s clear effort to harm America, NBC Nightly News ran a report fretting a U.S.-led conference aimed at further squeezing the radical regime. And here’s the kicker: This report came immediately after the story about the Iran spy.
Crying “hate” is a lazy way to debate. But in the Beltway, where honest discussion and vigorous deliberation are desperately needed, the rhetorical sloth is so thick you need a Big Foot circular saw to cut it. Take Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, who thrust a Liberian immigrant, Linda Clark, into the limelight as her State of the Union special guest and poster child. “She has lived here over 18 years,” Rep. Omar lamented, “and there's no reason she should be taken from her family.” Ahead of the annual address to Congress on Tuesday, Rep. Omar blasted President Donald Trump for “threatening to deport” Clark and “thousands of Liberians for no reason other than hate.”
MSNBC's Joe Scarborough is not a foreign policy genius, but he attempts to play one on TV. Less than one week after saying that Trump was turning over Syria to the Russians and the Iranians, the Morning Joe co-host flipped 180 degrees and said that Donald Trump and National Security Advisor John Bolton want to invade Iran.
On two consecutive editions of Hardball, MSNBC host Chris Matthews offered concerns Tuesday and Wednesday night about the Trump administration’s decision to recognize Venezuela opposition leader Juan Guaido as the interim president and level sanctions against the murderous Nicolas Maduro regime, applying further pressure to the failed socialist utopia.
The Morning Joe panel devotes a segment to looking/hoping for signs of a break from President Trump by congressional Republicans. New York Times Washington bureau chief Elisabeth Bumiller encapsulates the sentiment: "We're always looking for signs of a break with Republicans on the Hill—a public break—from Trump."
Monday’s edition of CNN Right Now with Brianna Keilar featured an undercover report from CNN Senior International Correspondent Nick Paton Walsh detailing the horrors of socialism in Venezuela, even as many Democratic candidates for President romanticize socialist ideas here at home. Host Brianna Keilar prefaced the report by describing the people of Venezuela as “desperate for food and other essentials.” This report aired as the South American nation falls further into turmoil, with Opposition Leader Juan Guaido declaring himself Interim President while socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro refuses to step aside.
Trump’s approval rating among Latinos has hit 50%, as I wrote it would nearly three years ago, in March of 2016. His approval rating could go on to surpass even this marker by addressing the border crisis at its source. This would be a disruptive, transformational development for all of Latin America.
On Joy Reid's show, MSNBC legal analyst Maya Wiley says that although the Buzzfeed allegation that President Trump ordered Michael Cohen to lie about Russian collusion has been debunked by the Mueller investigation: "what we are hearing in this does not mean that we know that there won't in the future be corroborated evidence of Donald Trump having knowledge of and in some way being part of what could be, could be -- and I'm speculating -- could be a conspiracy to suborn perjury. That is a possibility. We don't know."
Though not as hyperbolic or inconsolable as CNN and MSNBC were earlier in the day, Thursday’s Hardball still featured host Chris Matthews revolting over the President’s last-minute decision to cancel Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s overseas trip, dubbing it a “cheap shot” letter that “doesn’t look good for the country.” Beyond that, Matthews speculated without evidence about what would happen “if something goes wrong” with government workers furloughed and stressed.
File this one as yet another instance in which the liberal media took President Trump’s bait, hook, line, and sinker, launching into apocalyptic meltdowns and illustrating for the American public how, for those on the right not in The Resistance, they’re the opposition party. On Thursday afternoon, CNN suffered a network-wide meltdown over Trump’s letter canceling Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s overseas trip less than an hour before take-off, calling the President a “childish” and “cranky” schoolboy who’s only concerned about “pure politics.”
As we noted before, for over two years now Morning Joe has been broadly hinting that Rudy Giuliani has a drinking problem. The show was back at it today, with Willie Geist, Mika Brzezinski, Joe Scarborough and Katty Kay all unsubtly suggesting that Rudy had been drinking before his CNN interview with Chris Cuomo last night.
The liberal media accused President Trump of "dodging" and "evading" Jeannine Pirro's question as to whether he'd ever worked for Russia. Yesterday, Trump made a flat denial, saying, "I never worked for Russia." But that didn't stop MSNBC's John Heilemann on Morning Joe from ripping Trump, saying: "The fact that he said yesterday, I've never worked for Russia, just made you think of [unintelligble] our two previous Presidents embroiled in potential impeachments: Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon saying, Bill Clinton: I never had sexual relations with that woman. And Richard Nixon: I am not a crook. Turned out they were lying. Maybe Donald Trump is, too."