RUTHFULLY YOURS

Those of us following the news were unfortunately subjected to an unhealthy dose of Linda Sarsour this week. The self-promoting, egomaniacal, anti-Semite managed to deliberately stir a hornet’s nest with use of inflammatory rhetoric at a Muslim conference. In an address before the Islamic Society of North America, she called for a “Jihad” in the name of “Allah” against the Trump administration and encouraged her Muslim Brotherhood audience members (ISNA was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land-Hamas terror financing case) “not to assimilate and…not to please any other people and authority.”

Sasour, the crafty manipulator, then used the subsequent firestorm to insert herself into the news and the Washington Post provided her with a platform to spew her venomous propaganda. She penned an article where she claimed to have been “taken out of context,” feigned victimhood (victimizers are good at doing that) and termed those who criticized her, “Islamophobes.”

In Linda Sarsour’s world, those critical of her rancid views and actions – her support for BDS, her embrace of a convicted murderer, her tribalism and outright anti-Semitism and her desire to remove the vaginas of women with whom she finds disagreement – are branded “Islamophobes.” Sarsour then went on to give herself a gold star for being “their worst nightmare.” By “their” she meant “Islamophobes,” and by Islamophobes, she means everyone who disagrees with her, including those in the center-left camp (yes, they still exist).

The late Christopher Hitchens perceptively noted that the term “Islamophobic” is one that “was created by fascists and used by cowards to manipulate morons.” Sarsour’s banal employment of this dangerous and disingenuous term proves Hitchens’ point beyond any shadow of a doubt.

But Sarsour is a fraud. She claims to be a civil rights activist but is an anti-Semite. She preaches non-violence but encourages violence against Israelis. She claims to represent the feminist movement but advocates for Sharia which oppresses women, and bizarrely touts Saudi Arabia – a nation that forbids women drivers and punishes rape victims – as a nation that protects women’s rights. She claims to be an advocate for the LGBTQIA (she’s always careful to insert the “QIA” part) community but has yet to condemn the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, Iran, Saudi Arabia or any Muslim country for their abysmal treatment of their respective LGBT communities.

Yet amazingly, Sarsour manages to find the time to relentlessly criticize Israel, the Mideast’s only democracy, and a nation that empowers women and provides statutory protections for its LGBT citizenry.

When I was a kid, an outfit called Big Time Wrestling would come to town. The favorite rivalry was between stage gringo Ray Stevens and the chivalric Pepper Gomez. Fierce disputes over which champion was better would break out on the playground after a bout. Then one day an older Mexican kid shattered our illusions by informing us that he had seen Stevens and Gomez laughing together over dinner in Chinatown.

Welcome to American politics, where the educational and economic elites, especially in the bicoastal politico-media complex, are bound together by a privilege that transcends the lurid dramas of conflicting ideologies.

Two recent columns talk about this divide between mass and elite in American society. David Brooks, house-conservative at the New York Times, wrote a much-ridiculed, but still perceptive column about what defines the American elite, and how they ensure that their children will inherit their privilege, and the less-privileged will be kept out. By using their wealth to “invest” in their kids’ success––the best schools, public or private; the means to pay for tutors, SAT prep courses, internships, and foreign travel; and the social connections to help them matriculate at Ivy League and other top-notch schools, 70% of whose admissions come from the top 25% of income distribution.

The gate-keeping comes in the form restrictive building codes that in deep-blue redoubts of privilege like San Francisco and Manhattan keep housing prices high, and schools demographically homogenous. The result is a shared social and cultural capital that is second-nature to insiders, but alien to those who have not been exposed to the knowledge, mores, manners, and taste that comprise it.

A specific example of elite solidarity across partisan lines appeared in a New York Post column by Maureen Callahan. She peruses the guest-list for an annual soiree hosted by Washington Post heiress Lally Weymouth in the Hamptons:

It was full of politicians and power brokers — the ones who pantomime outrage daily, accusing the other side of crushing the little guy, sure that the same voter will never guess that behind closed doors, they all get along.

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner partied with billionaire Democratic donor George Soros, who rubbed shoulders with billionaire GOP donor David Koch.

Chuck Schumer and Kellyanne Conway were there. So were Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney, Ronald Lauder, Carl Icahn, Joel Klein, Cathie Black, reporters Steve Clemons and Maria Bartiromo, columnists Richard Cohen and Margaret Carlson, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross and Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao, Ray Kelly, Bill Bratton and Steven Spielberg.

Like Pepper Gomez and Ray Stevens, these denizens of the 1% are fierce partisans in front of the cameras, but old pals at a tony party or a chic restaurant or a high-end golf resort. They share the same zip codes, the same tastes, the same amenities of celebrity and wealth, and ultimately the same interest: keeping themselves on top, and hoi polloi at a distance.

This social reality can help solve the mystery of Republican NeverTrumpers and their obsessive anger––Trump is a 1% traitor who has turned against his own in a bid for political power. From ancient Athens on, populist demagogues have usually been aristocrats who betray their class by enlisting the support of the grubby masses and legitimizing their grievances. They buy loyalty by promising to redistribute the property of the wealthy, and by sneering at their mores and taste, their education and proper pronunciation, and especially their reflexive sense of superiority.

In antiquity it was land and lineage that defined privilege. In our day, prep schools, top-ten university degrees, formal speech, correct diction, proper manners, and high-cult allusions all mark off the elite, and hide the fact that their position comes from money and connections as much as merit. Someone like Trump, who violates every one of these canons and enjoys the support of the “bitter clingers” and “deplorable” masses, infuriates the elite by challenging their right to rule by virtue of their presumed intellectual and cultural superiority.

It turns out the Moscow-based lawyer whose brief meeting with Trump campaign officials last year was obtained under false pretenses has significant ties to Democrat opposition researchers in the United States and was extended special privileges by the Obama administration.

Could this mean attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya came, or perhaps was sent, to America to hurt Donald Trump’s campaign for president? And if Veselnitskaya had less-than-honorable intentions, what role, if any, did Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee play in this unfolding drama?

The Hill newspaper reports that the Obama administration went to extraordinary lengths to allow Veselnitskaya to enter the U.S. and remain here to complete her business in this country. After Veselnitskaya, who reportedly has several pro-Hillary Clinton and anti-Donald Trump items on her Facebook page, was denied a U.S. visa, then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch personally intervened and cleared the way for her to come to this country.

British music publicist Rob Goldstone helped to set up the storied June 9, 2016, meeting at Trump Tower in Manhattan between Veselnitskaya, Donald Trump Jr., then-campaign manager Paul Manafort, and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner, claiming boastfully in an email exchange with Donald Jr. that the Russians wanted to share incriminating information about Democrat Hillary Clinton.

We now know Veselnitskaya had no earth-shattering revelations to impart about the Russia-friendly former secretary of state who was then running against Donald Trump. Instead of offering “Political Opposition Research” at the roughly 20-minute-long get-together, the Russian woman “had no information to provide and wanted to talk about adoption policy and the Magnitsky Act,” Donald Trump Jr. said earlier this week in a statement on Twitter.

The Magnitsky Act, which Russian President Vladimir Putin despises, allows the U.S. government to refuse visas to Russians considered guilty of human rights violations. After it was enacted at the end of 2012, Russia retaliated by halting American adoptions of Russian orphans and banning entry to Russia by specific U.S. officials.

Veselnitskaya, who was a prosecutor in Russia 16 years ago, told NBC News she “never had any damaging or sensitive information about Hillary Clinton,” adding she wanted to let people know about “the real circumstances behind the Magnitsky Act,” and was hoping to testify about the sanctions statute before Congress.

There is some evidence that Democrats were working with Russia against the Trump campaign, radio talk show host Erick Erickson suggests.

“There is a remarkably small degree of separation between Natalia Veselnitskaya and Fusion GPS, the Democrat opposition research firm that came up with the Trump dossier,” Erickson writes, and this “raise[s] the issue of whether Democrats and Russians were as collaborative as the Democrats claim the Trump team was.”

The “piss-gate” dossier is the unvetted 35-page report written by former British spy Christopher Steele and published by cat-video website BuzzFeed. The FBI had been considering paying Steele “for his Trump dossier work,” Erickson notes.

“Fusion GPS was paid by a Democratic ally of Hillary Clinton’s to conduct the research,” the Daily Caller reported. The dubious document claimed, among other things, that Trump hired prostitutes to urinate on a hotel room bed in Moscow.

WASHINGTON—Peter W. Smith, a Republican political activist and financier from Chicago who mounted an effort to obtain former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails from Russian hackers, died on May 14 after asphyxiating himself in a hotel room in Rochester, Minn., according to local authorities. He was 81 years old.

Mr. Smith’s body was found in the Aspen Suites hotel, located across the street from the Mayo Clinic, according to a medical examiner’s report. An associate of Mr. Smith said that he had recently visited the clinic. A representative for the facility wouldn’t confirm if Mr. Smith was a patient.

It wasn’t clear who found Mr. Smith’s body.

Mr. Smith died about 10 days after an interview with The Wall Street Journal in which he recounted his attempts to acquire what he believed were thousands of emails stolen from Mrs. Clinton’s private email server. He implied that Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, then serving as the senior national security adviser to presidential candidate Donald Trump, was aware of his efforts.
Peter W. Smith Photo: –

Mr. Smith’s attempts to obtain what he believed would be politically damaging emails marked the first potential evidence of coordination between members of the Trump campaign and Russian hackers, a central issue in probes by Congress and the Federal Bureau of Investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

When the Journal reported on Mr. Smith’s efforts last month, it wasn’t clear how he died. His obituary listed no cause of death, officials in the town where he lived didn’t release information, and messages left at Mr. Smith’s home went unanswered.

The Chicago Tribune , which first reported Mr. Smith’s cause of death on Thursday, said a pile of documents and a statement that police called a suicide note were found with his body. The note said that Mr. Smith had been ill and that he held a life-insurance policy that was due to expire, the Tribune reported.

Mr. Smith apologized in the note and said that “no foul play whatsoever” had occurred with his death, according to the Tribune.

In emails and documents meant to recruit others to his efforts to find Mrs. Clinton’s deleted emails, Mr. Smith and an associate identified Mr. Flynn’s company, Flynn Intel Group, and Michael G. Flynn, the general’s son, as allies in the operation.
Peter W. Smith’s body was found in the Aspen Suites hotel, across the street from the Mayo Clinic. Here, the clinic’s campus in Rochester, Minn. Photo: Elizabeth Nida Obert/Associated Press

Neither Mr. Flynn nor his son responded to requests for comment at the time of the original article.

The group Mr. Smith assembled included technical experts, lawyers and a private investigator in Europe who spoke Russian, he said. The group made contacts with five groups of hackers, including two that were Russian, who claimed to have obtained Mrs. Clinton’s emails, Mr. Smith said. He ultimately didn’t acquire the messages because he said he couldn’t verify their authenticity. Instead, he urged the hackers to give the emails to WikiLeaks.