[American Thinker] It's a shocking claim made by a political insider: the Deep State is so opposed to draining the swamp that it will, if necessary, kill President Trump to prevent it.
Roger Stone, a longtime Trump adviser and confidant, certainly knows his way around Washington, having worked as a senior campaign aide to Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Senator Bob Dole as well as held many other political positions. This proximity to the Deep State is what makes his claim, expressed in a recent wide-ranging interview with The New American magazine's Alex Newman, that much more eyebrow-raising. Stone outlined three plans the Deep State has for eliminating the president, as Newman relates:
The Deep State's "Plan A," Stone said, is the imploding "investigation" into alleged "Russian collusion" by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. If and when that fails, which Stone suggested was likely, the establishment would move to "Plan B." In essence, that plot would involve trying to get a majority of Trump's [C]abinet to declare him unfit for office. This would allow Trump to be removed under the U.S. Constitution's 25th Amendment ‐ another scheme Stone said would probably flop. Last but not least, though, if all else fails, Stone warned of "Plan C": [k]illing the president.
Interesting here is that Newman's piece was published January 1, just before talk of President Trump's alleged mental instability became the month's big news story. In fact, released just four days later was journalist Michael Wolff's book Fire and Fury, which makes the case that Trump is psychologically unfit to hold office. Note, too, that Wolff has boasted that his book will bring down the president.
This bold claim will more likely just bring up book sales. It's not only that Wolff has said he can't be sure everything in his book is true; that it contains factual errors; and that he is, as ex-Trump strategist Sebastian Gorka put it, "a partisan self-promoter with credibility issues[.]" It's that removing a president for inability to discharge his duties isn't easy.
Per the 25th Amendment's Section IV, Vice President Mike Pence would have to declare Trump unfit, 13 of the 24 Cabinet members would have to agree, and then two thirds of both houses of Congress would ultimately have to vote to uphold the decision. Unless Trump starts fainting right and left and throwing behind-the-scenes temper fits like Hillary Clinton, Stone is correct in saying this is unlikely.
This leaves the alleged "Plan C." But is such a Deep State course of action really in the cards? Calling Trump "a shock to the system," Stone explained his thinking to The New American: "It's easy to forget that the shocking upset that Donald Trump pulled off has never been forgotten or acknowledged by the globalist cabal that has really infected both of our major parties." And with the economy flourishing and public confidence up, "it's easy to misread the deep enmity and hatred that the globalists and the [i]nsiders have for this president, and to underestimate their resolve to remove him."
"If all else fails," writes Newman, "Stone believes [that] the Deep State would, in fact, attempt to murder the president."
Stone emphasized that if "Mueller should fail in his illegitimate coup d'état to take down the president," he thinks "you will see an uptick in the 'Trump-is-crazy' talk," reported Newman. Again, we've already witnessed this.
#5
Guarantee if they try, it will be a very short but bloody civil war that they will lose. Any taking out of the President would have to hit his VP and cabinet too and that means a coup. The military is very funny about people trying that and the vast majority would roll over the plotters very quickly.
#7
Plan B2: obstruction of justice.
Plan B3: go after Trump’s financial dealing
Plan B4: crash the market hard around August with a second leg down in October
[American Thinker] At first glance, it would seem that things at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency are going swimmingly. ICE just raided ninety-eight 7-11 stores around the country and arrested a bunch of illegal aliens. ICE's arrests for the 2017 fiscal year are nearly 37% higher than the year before.
So what is there to complain about?
The actual number of yearly removals ICE is making in the interior of the country, not counting the border, is still a tiny figure: about 81,000 illegal aliens in the most recent fiscal year. Given that there are more than ten million illegal aliens in the country, removing even a fraction of them will take a long time.
The problem is that ICE doesn't have the manpower to deport millions of aliens. Donald Trump wants to expand their manpower, but so far Congress has not cooperated.
This is not ICE's fault.
What is ICE's fault, however, is how it uses the existing manpower it has. The raid on the ninety-eight 7-11 stores must have involved hundreds of ICE agents, but it netted only 21 illegal aliens. It's great that businesses like 7-11 are given notice that employing illegals is no longer acceptable, but raids like this show that ICE is using its limited manpower terribly inefficiently.
Part of the problem is the leadership. ICE is led by an Obama-era holdover named Thomas Homan. Incredibly, nearly a year after taking office, President Trump still had not appointed his own nominee to run the most important agency related to his most important campaign issue. He finally relented in November...deciding to nominate Homan, the acting director, to take the job on an official basis.
#3
The problem is that ICE doesn't have the manpower to deport millions of aliens.
So? They can deputize other branches of the national and local government. They only need the will to do it.
[RS] Rep. Jim Jordan spoke with Martha McCallum last night about the newly released Fusion GPS testimony and suggested that it, paired with the recent news about the text messages between Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, gives credence to the idea that FBI was planning to systematically plant stories to further their insurance policy, which was to keep Trump from getting elected.
Here’s a few excerpts from the article he’s referring to by John Solomon regarding the text messages:
A large portion of the evidence presented in the salacious 35-page dossier put together by former British spy Christopher Steele, has either been proven wrong or remains unsubstantiated. However, the FBI gained approval nevertheless to surveil members of Trump’s campaign and "it’s outrageous and clearly should be thoroughly investigated," said a senior law enforcement source, with knowledge of the process.
Multiple sources told this reporter that the dossier was used along with other evidence to obtain the warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as FISC. The sources also stressed that there will be more information in the coming week regarding systemic "FISA abuse."
"(The dossier) certainly played a role in obtaining the warrant," added another senior U.S. official, with knowledge of the dossier. "Congress needs to look at the FBI officials who were handling this case and see what, if anything, was verified in the dossier. I think an important question is whether the FBI payed anything to the source for the dossier."
Fox News’ Sean Hannity also reported that three separate sources confirmed to him the Russia dossier was used to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on Trump’s camp.
h/t Instapundit
[WashingtonPost] You wouldn’t know it from the media coverage, but President Trump is emerging from the furor over Michael Wolff’s "Fire and Fury" as the winner. For all the seemingly damaging headlines coming out of Stephen K. Bannon’s disclosures to Wolff, the book represents a political victory for Trump, one that could improve his party’s prospects heading into the midterm elections. Because the accusations made in the book are so ridiculous that nobody but hard core libtards believe them?
...Despite the media circus surrounding the salacious but questionable allegations in Wolff’s book, most Trump supporters don’t care. Nor do they care much about the very public row between the president and Bannon. They care about what the president and his administration can do for them.They support Trump because he articulated and, increasingly, is enacting an agenda they believe will improve their lives and secure the future peace and prosperity of the country. It’s that simple.
[Aim4Truth] Most people know that a new president gets to name over 4,000 political appointees when they are elected. This political cronyism is partisan politics and fills our bloated government with unqualified employees.
Some think that these are the people that comprise the Deep State.
But the Deep State is much deeper than that.
There is a much more sinister system in place that controls Washington D. C.’s bureaucracies through an actual, organized shadow government called the Deep State.
It is the heart of the swamp.
And in this American Intelligence Media citizen intelligence report, we are going to show you exactly who they are and how we can remove them.
The Washington D. C. Deep State is a group of 8,156 appointed mangers in 75 federal agencies that control the executive bureaucracy and tell new political appointees what they can and cannot do. Yes, that’s right, the Deep State is an official government program, well-organized, comprehensive, and "in charge."
OUT OF THE 8,156 MEMBERS WHO MAKE UP THIS DEEP STATE OF ENSCONCED BUREAUCRATS, OVER 7,000 WERE APPOINTED BY OBAMA. Continues.
h/t Instapundit
..."So here is a fact that is going to sound reasonably controversial but it is not and that is that capitalist societies are better than communist ones," Pinker states before an audience of Harvard students. He continues, "If you doubt it well then just ask yourself the question ’Would I rather live in South Korea or North Korea?’, ’Would I rather live in West Germany in the 1970s or East Germany...I submit that this is actually not a controversial statement but on university campuses, it is considered flamingly radical."
Pinker goes on to offer several more statements: That men and women differ in their tastes and interest. That different ethnic groups commit violent crime at different rates. Finally, that the majority of suicide-terror acts worldwide are committed by Muslim extremists. And this brings Pinker to his central point.
"Now if you’ve never heard these facts before and you stumble across them or someone mentions them, it is possible to come to some extreme conclusions," he says, adding, "That women are inferior, that African-Americans are naturally violent, that we all ought to be anarcho-capitalists and do away with all regulation and social safety nets."
...argument that efforts to make certain topics verboten wind up creating a kind of intellectual black market where the potential for reaching more extreme conclusions is heightened unnecessarily. Instead, Pinker suggests it would be better to be able to acknowledge these facts and then discuss them openly. I still keep "The Language Instinct"
#1
"Now if you’ve never heard these facts before and you stumble across them or someone mentions them, it is possible to come to some extreme conclusions," he says
Alternatively, once the socialized metaphor is cataloged there is little reason for reasoning.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.