Thursday, March 28, 2024
Miles from the Mainstream
D. R. ZUKERMAN, proprietor
Observations - May 2019

May 5, 2019 --

The Real President Trump ...

The first Thursday in May is National Prayer Day. At a White House Rose Garden service, May 2, the speakers included Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein of the Chabad synagogue in Poway, California. The rabbi lost a finger when he was allegedly shot by John T. Earnest in the synagogue, the last day of Passover, April 27. Referring, at the Rose Garden service, to a phone call from President Trump, Rabbi Goldstein said in part, as quoted by the Washington Examiner, "'I'd like to thank our dear honorable Mr. President for being, as they say in Yiddish, a mensch psr excellence....'" Rabbi Goldstein continued, "'Mr. President, when you called me I was at home weeping. You were the first person who began my healing. You heal people in their worst of times, and I'm so grateful for that.'" So far as LPR could tell, The New York Times did not cover the National Prayer Day Rose Garden event.

Why Democrats Oppose Attorney General William Barr ...

Kimberley Strassel wrote in her Wall Street Journal Column , May 3: "Democrats resent that Mr. Barr won't cower or apologize for doing his job." Mostly, she added, Democrats fear what Barr's probes will reveal about "the origins of the Trump-Russia probe." And so, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats smear the attorney general as a liar, and worse, because they "misused their positions" to target the Trump campaign. LPR believes the Clinton clique was convinced their foul deeds would remain covered up because Hillary Clinton would win the election and control the bureaucracy. Ms. Strassel indicates that this clique still hopes that the truth about Russiagate stays covered up "until Democrats can retake the White House in 2020." Reason enough to re-elect the president.

A Successful Smear Campaign ...

Stephen Moore wrote an op-ed piece, "My Brush With Personal Destruction," for The Wall Street Journal, May 3, on the reasons prompting him to withdraw as nominee. "What did mr in was not my economic ideas but gutter campaign tactics and personal assaults." Among the assaults was media publication of details of his divorce against the wishes of both Moore and his ex-wife, Moore pointed out. In its lead editorial on the Moore withdrawal, the editorial explained: "Mr. Moore's real sin was helping to fashion the tax reform that Mr. Trump adopted as a candidate and that passed in modified form in 2017." The editorial also pointed out that Moore's critics looked bad predicting the Mr. Trump's election would lead to a stock market crash and recessions. (The Associated Press reported on May 3 that the Labor Department showed "solid economic growth." IN April, 263,000 jobs were added to the work force, with unemployment falling to 3.6%, "a five decade low.") The Journal's editorial continued, "Mr. Moore also suffered because he doesn't bow to the conventions of the monetary policy club. The Fed is treated these days like a holy citadel that can't be challenged, yet few institutions have made more egregious mistakes in recent decades."

May 19, 2019 --

Mark Twain Explains Some of the Hostility to President Trump

While writing "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court," Mark Twain put this in his notebook: "Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its only sure defense." LPR believes that candidate Trump was irreverent when he said, July 27, 2016, that he hoped the Russians would hack Hillary Clinton's emails. Of course, the resistance took him seriously, and some even accused him of treason. Recently a poll of Democrats found that 57% thought President Trump was a traitor.

In an article in The Hill, May 1, 2019, Paul R. Gregory, discussing Ukraine President-elect Vlodomyr Zelensky's sense of humor noted, in part: "Dictators fear being ridiculed with humor..." The same might be said of anti-Trump ideologues, LPR thinks.

Random Thoughts

Trey Gowdy, as a Republican congressman from South Carolina's 4th district, suggested last year to Martha McCallum on Fox News, that Hillary Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal, was linked to the Steele dossier. Mr. Gowdy, now a Fox New contributor, and also practicing law , spoke with Ms. McCallum, May 15 and said, in part (via a transcript provided by Real Clear Politics) that he has seen the factual assertions in the Steele dossier cited by the FBI to obtain a warrant from the FISA court, "And when the name Sidney Blumenthal is included as part of your corroboration, and you're the world's leading law enforcement agency, you have a problem."

If Mr. Blumenthal, who among other things served President Clinton as a senior advisor, was indeed involved in putting forth the Steele dossier, will U.S. attorney John Durham, placed in charge of probing the origins of Russiagate, follow a trail the leads to Ms. Clinton?