Thursday, March 28, 2024
Miles from the Mainstream
D. R. ZUKERMAN, proprietor

Why American Liberties Are Not Under Attack – Not From from President Trump, That Is

July 19, 2017 --

A letter in The New York Times, July 8, began: “Jim Rutenberg, who has been savaging President Trump for a year or so, says ’the First Amendment is under near-daily assault,’ but criticizes Mr. Trump when he exercises his right to free speech.”

That this letter, and a second one July 8 on the same subject, was not hostile to the president, is noteworthy ; it is a very rare day, at The Times, when references to the president are not severe or insulting. Indeed, it has become just about a daily occurrence at The New York Times that “Russia” is the excuse for articles seeking the overthrow of the president – who is only at the six-month mark of his four-year term.

If President Trump were the threat to democracy his enemies falsely allege, the prisons would be filled with Never Trump Republicans, and the anti-democracy crowd – just as Cuban prison s are filled with opponents of the Castro dictatorship --the dictatorship that former President Obama restored diplomatic relations with.

How long, LPR wonders, would Times columnist Charles M. Blow remain at liberty, if Trump were a fascist, for his constant denunciations of the president. Consider just this ojne, November 26: “You are a fraud and a charlatan. Yes, you will be president, but you will not get any breaks just because one branch of your forked tongue is silver.” Blow continued, “I am not easily duped by dopes.” He went on: “I have not only an ethical and professional duty to call out how obscene your very existence is at the top of American government. I have a moral obligation to do so.”

The latest excuse to dredge up “Russia” as means to remove Mr. Trump from his White House tenancy is a meeting that son Donald Jr. held, June 9, 2016, “with a Russian lawyer who has connections to the Kremlin, according to confidential government records described to The New York Times.” The quoted passage is from the July 9 Times, written by Jo Becker, Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman.

LPR here calls on Ms. Becker and Mr. Apuzzo and Mr. Goldman to provide the source of the “confidential government records.” In particular, LPR wants to know if the records come from intelligence sources that have maintained surveillance over candidate Trump, his family and campaign workers. For LPR, what is significant is not the fact of the meeting, but the means by which the meeting was made public.

Will congressional Republicans never demand an investigation into the constant leaking of information, including classified information, that has the apparent aim of bringing an end to the Trump presidency? LPR believes the true enemies of our democratic institutions are the forces of the media-intelligence complex that are working to overturn the November 8 presidential election.

Wall Street Journal columnist Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., commented, in his July 12 column that it is “unlikely” that the anti-Trump “dossier” compiled by a British spy, Christopher Steele, will be investigated. “though it may well be a Russian plant, apparently was financed by U.S. political operatives and has been exploited by Trump opponents to claim a dark conspiracy.” The anti-Trump Richard Painter, in a July 12 Wall Street Journal article, “said it is illegal for a political campaign to accept ‘foreign contributions of money or services’….” Painter directed his comment to reports of the meeting of Donald Trump, Jr. with the Russian lawyer.

LPR cannot expect that Painter would be concerned about the Steele dossier, notwithstanding the fact that Steele is a foreigner as, apparently, are his sources. For the media-intelligence complex, LPR believes, rules do not apply when the aim is to end the Trump presidency. The obvious moral: liberty is indeed, under attack, by the forces who would overturn the U.S. presidential election of November 8, 2016. Never has Benjamin Franklin’s reported comment, at the conclusion of the 1787 Constitutional Convention, carried greater significance than today, LPR believes: “a Republic, if you can keep it.” Who would have thought: the survival of our democratic institutions rests on the leadership capacity of Donald J. Trump to rally the American people against the threat to U.S. liberty posed by the media-intelligence complex?