CNN’s Inside Politics panel called Hillary Clinton a hypocrite for saying that Donald Trump isn’t being completely transparent for refusing to release his tax returns, while she ignored Freedom of Information requests as secretary of state.
The panel, on Sunday, said the latest round of allegations against the Clinton Foundation are her own fault because she ignored those FOIA requests as secretary of state.
The panel was responding to a clip of Bill Clinton angrily denouncing the idea that Hillary had lied about her emails, and whether or not she sent classified emails on her home brew server as the “biggest load of bull” he’s ever heard. They were also responding to the release of nearly 300 pages of emails that show a very cozy relationship between the Clinton Foundation and Clinton’s State Department.
New York Times political correspondent Maggie Haberman said that Bill Clinton gets very defensive when Hillary is attacked, and that the Clinton Foundation is his baby and he is very proud and defensive of it:
“The problem is there is a tremendous amount of defensiveness by the Clintons about this. The campaign, their officials sort of walked into this problem that existed before they got there. But if you look at the emails that were released, these were part of FOIA lawsuits. The State Department under Hillary Clinton did not respond to Freedom of Information requests over several years, so the timing of this is really almost entirely at their own hand, in the sense that if they had just released them at the time, this wouldn’t be a big deal.”
“You can get into equivalent weights of the two campaigns on transparency, and lack of equivalency, but these are legitimate questions to ask of a future president, especially one who is talking about her opponents lack of transparency.”
CNN national politics reporter MJ Lee, who was at the Bill Clinton event, said that his response showed not only his frustration—but the campaign’s as well—with the trust issue and their desire to move away from it.
Lee went on to say that Hillary Clinton hasn’t always “helped her own cause,” referring to the claim that FBI Director James Comey called her statements “truthful”—which he did not—and said that if she really wants to move away from this issue she has to stop saying things that generate more questions about her emails:
“Her pivoting away from this issue hasn’t just been, look, I’m sorry, I made mistake and let’s move on,” Lee said. “She has said, at best, misleading things about Comey’s testimony, and at worst, inaccurate things about Comey’s testimony … When she talks about these issues, she has to make sure that the way in which she cherry-picks her answers don’t actually cause fresh questions of their own.”
Clinton could put an end to the questions about her emails if she would just come clean and tell the truth. But doing so would more than likely end her presidential campaign, and that’s not an outcome the Clintons are willing to face.
So the lies go on.
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CBS This Morning host Charlie Rose said Tuesday that health insurance giant Aetna’s decision to scale back its involvement in Obamacare is a ‘big setback” for the health care law:
“One of America’s largest insurance companies is scaling back its involvement in Obamacare. Aetna’s decision is a big setback for the president’s health care law. Aetna says it will only sell 2,017 health insurance plans through the Affordable Care Act in four states.”
Rose then turned to CBS national correspondent Jan Crawford for a report on why Aetna is reducing its participation in a program they eagerly embraced when it was first enacted.
Crawford said that Aetna is currently covering 911,000 Americans in 15 states. That will be reduced to just four states—Delaware, Iowa, Nebraska and Virginia—and “is effectively pulling out of nearly 70 percent of the counties where it offers health plans through Affordable Care Act exchanges.”
She added that Aetna said it just simply “did the math” and that it was too much of a financial hit for the company. Aetna has lost $430 million since the exchanges opened in January 2014.
United Healthcare and Humana have already indicated that they plan to scale back their participation, so Aetna’s decision shouldn’t have come as a surprise.
Aetna Chairman and CEO Mark Bertolini said the company “may expand their coverage again, should there be policy improvements to Obamacare.”
The insurance industry enthusiastically backed Obamacare, thinking that they would add more than enough healthy young customers to offset the previously uninsured and sicker groups that Obamacare was designed to help. But companies in that industry have seen their projections blow up in their face, as far fewer healthy people enrolled in Obamacare, leaving the industry with a costly pool of sick people.
For the liberal media the withdrawal of the major insurance companies from Obamacare has been a bitter pill to swallow, as they had been spreading the lies that Obama and the Democrats were spinning on how this would solve America’s health care crisis. Instead Obamacare has made things worse for millions of Americans.
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Morning Joe co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, who have been linked romantically, got into an on-air spat Wednesday after Brzezinski criticized the GOP leadership for not denouncing Donald Trump over his Second Amendment comments this week.
Brzezinski commented that Trump’s campaign was a “train wreck,” when Scarborough interrupted her.
“You’re a Democrat… Let me say this,” Scarborough said. “It means nothing coming from you to these Republicans, you’re a Democrat.”
That didn’t go over well with Brzezinski, who shot back at Scarborough: “Excuse me… Actually, the Democrats are going to win the election.”
Scarborough actually agreed with Brzezinski that Trump is bad for the GOP, but Mika was still fuming, adding, “I’m sorry that I’m a Democrat and it means nothing coming from me, but I’m telling you, that’s how this story ends and someone’s going to get hurt.”
Morning Joe has become the Never Trump show as they have paraded one moderate or liberal Republican after another each morning to criticize Trump and build a case for supporting Hillary Clinton, despite her damning email scandal that should have ended her campaign long ago.
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Dan Rather, the disgraced former CBS Evening News anchor, took to Facebook in an epic rant after Donald Trump remarked at a campaign rally in North Carolina yesterday that maybe “the Second Amendment People” could stop Hillary Clinton from appointing anti-gun judges if she becomes president:
“No trying-to-be objective and fair journalist, no citizen who cares about the country and its future can ignore what Donald Trump said today. When he suggested that ‘The Second Amendment People’ can stop Hillary Clinton he crossed a line with dangerous potential. By any objective analysis, this is a new low and unprecedented in the history of American presidential politics. This is no longer about policy, civility, decency or even temperament. This is a direct threat of violence against a political rival. It is not just against the norms of American politics, it raises a serious question of whether it is against the law. If any other citizen had said this about a Presidential candidate, would the Secret Service be investigating?
Candidate Trump will undoubtably (sic) issue an explanation; some of his surrogates are already engaged in trying to gloss it over, but once the words are out there they cannot be taken back. That is what inciting violence means.
To anyone who still pretends this is a normal election of Republican against Democrat, history is watching. And I suspect its verdict will be harsh. Many have tried to do a side-shuffle and issue statements saying they strongly disagree with his rhetoric but still support the candidate. That is becoming woefully insufficient. The rhetoric is the candidate.
This cannot be treated as just another outrageous moment in the campaign. We will see whether major newscasts explain how grave and unprecedented this is and whether the headlines in tomorrow’s newspapers do it justice. We will soon know whether anyone who has publicly supported Trump explains how they can continue to do.”
The Clinton campaign also condemned Trump’s remarks, and like Rather, accused him of suggesting violence against Clinton.
“This is simple—what Trump is saying is dangerous,” Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said in a statement. “A person seeking to be president of the United States should not suggest violence in any way.”
The Trump campaign disputed the Clinton campaign and the liberal media’s assertion that Trump wanted any harm to come to Clinton.
“It’s called the power of unification—2nd Amendment people have amazing spirit and are tremendously unified, which gives them great political power. And this year, they will be voting in record numbers, and it won’t be for Hillary Clinton, it will be for Donald Trump,” said senior communications adviser Jason Miller.
But the Democrats seem to suffer from selective memory loss as Hillary Clinton made the following comments in 2008 when she was urged to drop out of the race against Obama:
“My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don’t understand it.”
And then there is none other than Obama’s running mate in 2008, Joe Biden who spoke about guns at a campaign rally:
“I guarantee ya’ Barack Obama ain’t takin’ my shotgun, so don’t buy that malarkey. Don’t buy that malarkey. They’re gonna start peddling that to you. I’ve got two. If he tries to fool with my Beretta he’s got a problem. I like that little over and under. I’m not bad with it. So give me a break. Give me a break.”
These comments are certainly more ominous than what Trump said.
Nevertheless, the reaction from Democrats, Never Trumpers and the liberal media has been swift and severe, and only adds to the woes plaguing the Trump campaign, which are largely self-inflicted.
Trump has accused the media of being dishonest. To the extent that the liberal media are favoring Clinton by not being as hard on her as they are on him, he is right and nothing he does will change that inherent bias. But if he stays focused and makes the campaign a referendum on Obama, Clinton and her scandals, he can blunt some of the negative media coverage against him and make the election competitive again.
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The FBI’s revelations about what they discovered during their investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server has caused The Washington Post Fact Checker to revisit its previous column on her claims, leading to the increase from two Pinocchios to four.
In August 2015 The Fact Checker wrote:
“Clinton’s very careful and legalistic phrasing raises suspicions. She refers to ‘classified material,’ which could be code for documents, leaving open the possibility of ‘classified information’ having been received. She also says she ‘did not receive any material that was marked or designated classified,’ which of course leaves open the possibility of receiving classified information that was not correctly marked.
The Miliband e-mail is now labeled by the State Department to contain classified information, unfit for public disclosure. That holds true for other information that Clinton and her aides routinely exchanged over an unsecure network. The question thus turns on whether Clinton should have at the time recognized that this information could be deemed as classified and should have taken better steps to protect it.
At The Fact Checker, we judge statements through the perspective of an ordinary citizen. The classification rules are complex but, legal technicalities aside, the question is whether classified information was exchanged over her private e-mail system. Never mind the IG’s concerns. According to the State Department redactions of the released e-mails, the answer is yes.”
After FBI Director James Comey’s press conference about the agency’s findings, The Fact Checker revised its previous conclusion:
“[Update, July 5, 2016: FBI Director James Comey announced on July 5 his agency will not recommend criminal charges against Clinton for her use of private email server. However, he said out of 30,000 emails that Clinton returned to the State Department, 110 emails in 52 email chains were found ‘to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received’ — a contradiction to Clinton’s original, technical wording about whether or not classified materials were in her emails. Eight of the chains contained information that was ‘top secret’ at the time they were sent. Thirty-six chains contained ‘secret’ information. Eight contained ‘confidential’ information, the lowest classification.
Another 2,000 emails were ‘up-classified’ (emails that have reason to be classified now, even if they were not classified at the time they were sent), Comey said.
Moreover, Comey directly contradicted Clinton’s claim that she did not send or receive materials ‘marked’ classified:
‘Separately, it is important to say something about the marking of classified information. Only a very small number of the e-mails containing classified information bore markings indicating the presence of classified information. But even if information is not marked ‘classified’ in an e-mail, participants who know or should know that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it.’
In light of this information, we update the original Two Pinocchio rating to Four Pinocchios.”
The FBI may have let Clinton off the hook legally, but at the same time they confirmed the suspicions of many people that she lied about her use of a private email server. They also branded her as ‘extremely careless.’ Neither of those are qualities that voters look for in a president.
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Episode 12. This week Brian and I discuss the bombing at the Istanbul airport, Benghazi reports issued by the Democratic and Republican congressional committees, the Brexit reality, U.S. Supreme Court rulings on immigration and abortion and the death of legendary University of Tennessee women’s basketball coach Pat Summitt.
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The speaker biography of Hillary Clinton distributed to audience members at the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition convention this week included some details that were less than flattering to the presumptive Democratic nominee.
After listing some facts about her personal life and political career, the bio then delved into the less successful aspects of her life:
“As First Lady of the United States, Clinton led the failed effort to enact the Clinton health plan of 1993.”
“The only first lady to have been subpoenaed.”
“She faced a federal grand jury in 1996 regarding the Whitewater controversy. No charges were brought against her related to this or any other controversies in her life.”
“Her marriage endured the Lewinsky scandal of 1998, and overall her role as first lady drew a polarized response from the public.”
Oops!
Rainbow/PUSH spokesman Don Terry told the Chicago Tribune that “a volunteer had a real brain freeze” when he or she lifted the biography from Wikipedia. “It was unintentional,” he said. “It was not intentional to hurt her…we are sincere, not snarky.”
The gaffe apparently didn’t faze the attendees who are solidly in the Clinton camp, but it should serve as a reminder that Clinton is a deeply flawed candidate who is unqualified to be president of the United States.
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The National Rifle Association’s political arm launched its first TV ad of the presidential election cycle, featuring a hero of the Benghazi terrorist attack in Libya, in a direct poke at Democratic presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton.
The $2 million ad buy, paid for by the NRA’s Political Victory Fund, will run nationally on cable and local broadcast stations in key battleground states including Colorado, Ohio, Nevada, Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Maine.
“We cannot trust Hillary Clinton with our gun rights or our national security. The stakes in this election for law-abiding gun owners have never been higher, and the NRA will use all available resources to ensure that voters understand the consequences of a Hillary Clinton presidency on their fundamental right of self-defense,” said Chris W. Cox, chairperson of the NRA-PVF.
“By saying that the Supreme Court got it wrong in the historic Heller decision,” Cox said, “Hillary made it clear that she does not believe Americans have the right to keep a gun in their home to protect themselves.”
The 30-second ad features retired United States Marine Corps veteran and CIA security contractor Mark “Oz” Geist, who led the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012 that saved the lives of 25 people. It shows Geist walking through Arlington National Cemetery urging people to not vote for Hillary Clinton based on what happened in Benghazi, where terrorists attacked the U.S. Special Mission Compound and CIA Annex, killing four Americans including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, while Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state.
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On Monday the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a 2013 Texas law that required all clinics performing abortions in the state to operate as certified “ambulatory surgical centers,” which would be regulated under the same standards as hospitals and that doctors who performed abortions would need to obtain admitting privileges at nearby hospitals.
American Journalism Center intern Amanda Florian spoke with several of the protesters to gauge their reaction to the decision.
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Hillary Clinton, who has consistently scored low in polls on honesty and trustworthiness during her campaign for president, pinned the blame squarely on “political opponents and conspiracy theorists” who have made wild accusations against her for 25 years. She was speaking to the International Women’s Luncheon in Chicago on Monday.
Clinton admitted that she didn’t like hearing that people don’t trust her, but said that she has nothing to hide and is just “careful” with her words:
“A lot of people tell pollsters they don’t trust me. Now, I don’t like hearing that. And I’ve thought a lot about what’s behind it. And you know, you hear 25 years’ worth of wild accusations, anyone would start to wonder. And it certainly is true — I’ve made mistakes. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t. So I understand people having questions.
Now maybe we can persuade people to change their minds by marshaling facts and making arguments to rebut negative attacks. But that doesn’t work for everyone. You can’t just talk someone into trusting you. You’ve got to earn it.
So, yes, I could say that the reason I sometimes sound careful with my words is not that I’m hiding something, it’s just that I’m careful with my words. I believe what you actually say matters. I think that’s true in life and it’s especially true if you’re president.
So, I do think before I speak, and could say that political opponents and conspiracy theorists have accused me of every crime in the book over the years.”
Among the “wild accusations” that Clinton conveniently omitted from her speech is her failure in Benghazi, which cost four Americans their lives. In addition, donations to the Clinton Foundation in exchange for favors and the never-ending email scandal have shown that she is anything but honest and trustworthy.
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The Democratic members of the Select Committee on Benghazi, Elijah Cummings (MD), Adam Smith (WA), Adam Schiff (CA), Linda Sanchez (CA) and Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), issued their own report on their findings in investigating the terrorist attacks at the Benghazi, Libya consulate on September 11, 2012 and the deaths of four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya. Their findings are similar to Democratic Party talking points:
“The Defense Department could not have done anything differently on the night of the attacks that would have saved the lives of the four brave Americans killed in Benghazi, and although the military’s global posture prevented it from responding more quickly that night, improvements were made years ago.
“The State Department’s security measures in Benghazi were woefully inadequate as a result of decisions made by officials in the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, but Secretary Clinton never personally denied any requests for additional security in Benghazi.
“Administration officials did not make intentionally misleading statements about the attacks, but instead relied on information they were provided at the time under fast-moving circumstances.”
The Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi disagrees with these findings and believes the Democratic members’ rebuttal is anything but a rebuttal, but it is a political ploy. The Commission points out the following:
A U.S. Air Force source told Fox News that the military (i.e. Department of Defense) could have sent forces from their base in Italy to Libya and would have made it to Benghazi during the siege of the consulate compound, contradicting the Democrats’ point of how the Department “could not have done anything differently on the night of the attacks.”
Contrary to the Democrats’ report, we have found that there were at least 20 security incidents between international organizations and al-Qaeda-type groups in Libya before the Benghazi attacks on September 11, 2012, which involved the United Nations, International Committee of the Red Cross, and other countries’ diplomatic missions. Of 234 security incidents compiled by then-Regional Security Officer Eric Nordstrom, 50 of these incidents occurred in Benghazi before the attack. Here are examples of these security incidents:
The Red Cross was hit by RPGs in May 2012
In June, a car bomb hit the hotel where Ambassador Chris Stevens was staying, an IED blew open a hole in the consulate’s wall, and the convoy of the British ambassador was hit by RPGs. Both the Red Cross and British mission left Libya soon after.
Blaming the administration’s statements on the reliance of information provided “under fast-moving circumstances” detracts from the reality that in Hillary Clinton’s private, secret and illegal e-mails, she e-mailed her daughter Chelsea about how the attack was terrorist in origin:
“Two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an Al Queda-like group: The Ambassador, whom I handpicked and a young communications officer on temporary duty w a wife and two young children. Very hard day and I fear more of the same tomorrow. Let’s try again later.”
This e-mail contradicts her statements, and the statements of the Obama administration, that a video caused these “spontaneous” protests and the resulting attack on the consulate.
Also, Hillary Clinton furthered this video-causing-the-attack narrative and told the father of one of the murdered Americans, Charles Woods, that “we are going to have the filmmaker arrested who was responsible for the death of your son.”
The Democratic members’ report on Benghazi is another list of Democratic Party talking points meant to shield Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration.
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Accuracy in Media’s Citizens Commission on Benghazi will be releasing new findings on Wednesday June 29 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
The press release on this event is below:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CITIZENS’ COMMISSION ON BENGHAZI TO RELEASE NEW FINDINGS
Bethesda, MD, June 27, 2016 – Hillary Clinton’s and the Obama administration’s failure of leadership in the Benghazi terrorist attack have been conclusively documented in a new report by the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi (CCB). The CCB will release its latest analysis of the U.S. government’s failures in the attack on our Special Mission Compound and CIA Annex on September 11, 2012. This Obama/Clinton leadership fiasco left four Americans dead, including the first U.S. Ambassador killed since 1979.
You are cordially invited to an exclusive media event where these new findings will be released.
WHERE: The National Press Club – Murrow Room 529 14th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20045
WHEN: Wednesday, June 29, 2016 from 2:00 – 4:00 pm ET
CCB REPRESENTATIVES: Roger Aronoff, Editor, Accuracy In Media Clare Lopez, Vice President, Center for Security Policy General Thomas McInerney (Ret.) Admiral James Lyons (Ret.)
Among the relevant findings validated through months of extensive research, interviews, FOIA requests and confirmed sources, the CCB will highlight:
* How the Obama Administration and State Department turned against Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi and materially aided known al-Qaeda-linked militias that would soon coalesce into ISIS;
* Advance warnings about an impending attack were ignored by Obama and Clinton;
* The fact that U.S. military assets were readily available for immediate deployment shortly after the Benghazi attack began but were held back from attempting a rescue effort.
Hard copies of the new CCB report will be available by request.
The 16-member Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi panel was commissioned by Accuracy In Media to investigate and submit relevant findings surrounding the Benghazi terrorist attack. The CCB’s Interim Report was released on April 22, 2014.
Accuracy in Media is a citizens’ media watchdog whose mission is to promote accuracy, fairness and balance in news reporting.
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Appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation, USA Today Washington bureau chief Susan Page said that a newly discovered email shows that Hillary Clinton wasn’t being truthful about why she wanted a private email server.
Face the Nation host John Dickerson quizzed Page about the email in question:
Dickerson: Didn’t turn over an email that showed there were problems with her server. That’s not good.
Page: An important disclosure for two reasons. She gave a different explanation for why she had a private email server. She was concerned about the personal being accessible. It wasn’t a matter of convenience, which is what she told the world. Secondly, she didn’t turn it over. She deleted this email apparently, and it came up because it came through the aide that she had sent it to, so it goes right to those questions about honesty, trustworthiness, transparency.
Dickerson: And that email was about the problems that having a home-brewed server would cause.
The email in question was an exchange between Clinton and her Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin on November 13, 2010. Abedin had suggested that Clinton should consider getting a state.gov email address since the emails from her private clintonemail.com server were being blocked by the State Department’s spam filter.
Clinton rejected that suggestion out of hand:
“Let’s get separate address or device but I don’t want any risk of the personal being accessible.”
Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon tried to explain away the discovery of this email by saying that she provided “all potentially work-related emails” that were still in her possession when the State Department requested them in 2014.
“Secretary Clinton had some emails with Huma that Huma did not have, and Huma had some emails with Secretary Clinton that Secretary Clinton did not have,” Fallon said.
It’s not just Republicans who don’t trust Hillary—but also a large swath of Democrats and Independents who have a hard time believing what she says—which could prove costly in November.
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Episode 11. In this episode we discuss the DOJ’s attempted censorship of Omar Mateen’s 911 call, Donald Trump fires campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, Hillary Clinton’s cash advantage over Trump, the Brexit vote and more.
You can now subscribe to the podcast on Soundcloud
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Social media juggernaut Facebook, which came under fire last month after a report in the tech blog Gizmodo said that curators of the company’s “trending topics” feature “routinely suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readers,” announced that it will train employees to identify and check their political bias.
The announcement was made by Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg on Wednesday during an appearance at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.
“We think a lot about diversity at Facebook,” Sandberg said. “And we have a managing-bias class that all of our leaders and a lot of our employees have taken that I was part of helping to create, and we’ve focused on racial bias, age bias, gender bias, national bias, and we’re going to add in a scenario now on political bias.”
“So that, as part of [how] we think about helping people understand different points of view and being open to different points of view, we’re dealing with political bias as well going forward.”
The move follows a meeting in May at Facebook headquarters of conservative leaders with Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg to address the political bias charges. Many of those conservative leaders left that meeting doubtful that the company would take any meaningful action.
“It is a political time and we’re proud of the role we play in elections, not just here but around the world,” Sandberg said. “We don’t have a point of view, we’re not trying to make you have a point of view.”
The reality is that the new class is not mandatory for Facebook employees, thus it will probably have a minimal effect, if any, on what political bias does exist at Facebook.
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Appearing on CBS This Morning, DNC Chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) said that the Democrats’ sit-in strategy was essentially to remain on the House floor until they get to vote on gun control legislation, despite the fact that Congress is in recess.
Congressional Democrats, led by Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), decided on Wednesday morning to relive the 1960s by staging an unprecedented sit-in on the House floor in an effort to convince the GOP leadership to hold a vote on a gun control bill that had already been defeated in the Senate.
Wasserman Schultz spoke with CBS This Morning hosts Charlie Rose and Norah O’Donnell as the protest dragged on into its second day:
“Rose: Tell me what the strategy is right now.
Wasserman Schultz: You know, the strategy is that we’re at a point in the year where we’ve had more than 100 mass shootings in this country and countless numbers of times that members of Congress, from the cities across this country in which those shootings have taken place, have stood on the House floor in the well and asked for a moment of silence, and the thoughts and prayers of our colleagues. Well, thoughts and prayers aren’t good enough anymore. We have to act. We have an obligation to make sure that the legacy of those children who were killed—
Rose: So help us understand what the strategy is. How long will you be there? What’s the strategy? How will you measure what you can accomplish?
Wasserman Schultz: Well, we are going to hold the floor of the House of Representatives. We are in our 19th hour, until we can get the majority to do their jobs and give us a vote. It is a cowardly act that they haven’t allowed a vote.
O’Donnell: But Congresswoman, hasn’t Congress adjourned? Hasn’t the Speaker adjourned Congress and said you can go home until after the July 4th holiday?
Wasserman Schultz: He has, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t continue and we will continue to shine a spotlight on this issue. The fact that the Republicans in the majority will not allow a vote on bills that would simply say ‘if you are suspected of terrorism, if you are on the terrorist watch list, if you are on the no-fly list in this country, then you should not be able to buy a gun.’”
One of the reasons the “No fly, no buy” bill failed was because the watch list is very arbitrary and contains names of people who are not threats—like The Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes, who was added to the list apparently because he took a trip to Turkey with his wife a few years ago. Another reason is that preventing people from buying a gun simply because they were placed on this list denies them “due process,” which is guaranteed under the Constitution.
That is of little consequence to Democrats like Wasserman Schultz and Rep. Lewis, who are determined to restrict gun rights of all Americans.
To politicize this event even further, the DCCC sent out an email fundraiser on the sit-in telling supporters that “We’re fighting to prevent gun violence,” and that “The Republicans refuse to lift a finger. It’s shameful. I need your help to defeat them once and for all.”
What is shameful are the Democrats who have behaved childishly by staging the sit-in, which wound up being a complete failure since they didn’t win any of the concessions they demanded from the GOP leadership before ending the whole charade this afternoon.
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MSNBC political correspondent Kasie Hunt said that the slow economic recovery under President Obama could be problematic for Hillary Clinton as she seeks the White House.
Hunt was reporting on Clinton’s speech on Tuesday in which she hammered GOP presumptive nominee Donald Trump’s economic policy, saying that he would “rig the economy for Wall Street again,” if elected president.
But Hunt noted that Clinton faces some hurdles when it comes to the economy:
“The challenge, of course, that the economy under President Obama has been, for many Americans, slow to recover. Wages, of course, have not kept pace. Many people are working more than one job, and so she has to make a speech that essentially says I understand your frustration, but here’s how this is all going to play out. I think for a lot of voters, Donald Trump is actually an embodiment of their frustration, and I think that’s the difficult piece for her.
“We definitely saw the same Hillary Clinton who was in a groove attacking Donald Trump on national security today, but the ground was a little bit less solid.”
It wasn’t just a little bit less solid, as Hunt noted, but downright shaky since her economic policies would be a continuation and expansion of Obama’s. And we know how well they have worked.
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The terrorist attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando on June 12 has sparked the usual knee-jerk reactions from politicians and the liberal media for more gun control legislation, in the mistaken belief that such laws might have prevented the attack as well as future attacks.
One of the biggest lies with regard to the Orlando attack is the type of weapon that was used. The media are pushing the narrative that Omar Mateen had an assault weapon—originally identified as an AR-15 before being correctly identified as a Sig Sauer MCX—and that it is a “military” weapon.
MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts tried to perpetuate that lie in an interview on Monday with Larry Pratt, executive director emeritus of Gun Owners of America:
Roberts: So do you think that all Americans should have access to consume and purchase the same style of weapons as our American military?
Pratt: Well, actually, we make a distinction. The American military uses fully automatic firearms. The firearm that was used in Orlando was a semiautomatic that has been available for probably fifty years on the American market. So we’ve got to be careful that we don’t conflate things that are not the same at all.
The American military uses a firearm that can be purchased in the United States, but it’s very difficult, it’s highly restricted. Some states ban them altogether and we’re not talking about those kinds of guns. We’re talking about what’s been on the market since the 1950s.
Roberts: The AR-15, those style assault rifles, yes. The Sig Sauer MCX was only introduced in January of 2015. So, it’s pretty fresh to the marketplace.
Pratt: But it’s not substantially different from the AR-15. It’s a semiautomatic. It accepts a large box magazine. Nothing revolutionary about that.
Roberts: I just want to make sure that we’re getting all the details out there correctly about the type of weapon that was used so that there’s nothing conflated between the type of weapon that was used in Orlando.
Pratt: The type of weapon is substantially irrelevant. What is relevant is it was another murder magnet. Another gun-free zone. That’s what we’ve got to put a stop to.
Roberts: I would dare you to say that to the families who lost a loved one that the weapon used is irrelevant to why their loved one is dead.
Pratt: I would be very happy to have a chance to explain to them that it was the politicians that set their families up for this.
Since the attack, gun sales in the LGBT community have surged and membership in the Pink Pistols, a national gun club for homosexuals, has doubled, proving that owning a firearm is the best protection they can have. That is a fact that has eluded Roberts in his anti-gun zeal.
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GOP presumptive nominee Donald Trump ripped the media for being so hostile to his campaign, in a recent interview with Fox News media critic Howie Kurtz:
“The media are very negative toward a Republican, toward a conservative Republican, and certainly very negative toward me.
They don’t report my statements properly, they’ll use the first quarter of it…There’s tremendous hostility from the media.
When I was running against 16 Republicans, it was somewhat unfair, but at least you could see it. Now it’s beyond belief. They are protecting Hillary Clinton like you wouldn’t believe. I don’t think it helps, but I think I’m going to end up winning. I’m going to end up winning big league.”
Trump has had a love/hate relationship with the media—loving them when their reports about him are positive and hating them when the coverage is negative, as it has been more so lately.
There is no doubt that the media have a liberal bias and favor the Democratic Party candidates like Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders over Trump. But he has received over $2 billion in earned, or free, media, which should give him a huge advantage over his rivals. He hasn’t always fully capitalized on that amount of free coverage—in part thanks to his blunt talk—which has been off the mark on more than one occasion.
As for his claim that he will win “big league,” that will depend on how much the voters focus on Hillary Clinton’s scandals—which seems to concern some Democrats—and Trump’s ability to convince Republicans that he is a real, not a fake, conservative.
The National Rifle Association announced yesterday that conservative talk-show host and author Dana Loesch has been hired to serve as a Special Advisor on Women’s Policy for National Rifle Association Executive Vice President and CEO Wayne LaPierre, and to be a national spokesperson for the NRA.
“Dana is a talented and influential leader and communicator,” LaPierre said in a press release. “In her role as an NRA Commentator, as well as leading the fight for freedom for more than a decade, she has become a leading voice for Second Amendment freedom and a tremendous advocate for the rights of American women. Expanding her role as an advisor on women’s issues, and particularly as a national spokesperson for the 5 million men and women of the NRA, strengthens our organization and our voice.”
Loesch, who wrote a book in 2014 titled Hands Off My Gun: Defeating the Plot to Disarm America, is an experienced shooter. She said that she is ready and eager to defend gun rights. “I applaud Wayne LaPierre for his vision to bring greater advocacy to bear for the Second Amendment freedom of all Americans, especially women,” Loesch said, adding, “and I look forward to facing the national news media and defending our freedom with great enthusiasm.”
LaPierre said that the move was made to address the fact that “more women than ever before are joining the NRA,” and that Loesch provides a strong voice to defend the rights of these women and all of America’s gun owners.
Loesch is a staunch supporter of gun rights, as anyone who has seen her on TV or heard her on the radio can attest to. She will bring a much-needed female perspective to the NRA going forward.
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