An Open Letter to Trump Voters from His Top Strategist-Turned-Defector I respect Trump’s fans. That’s why I can no longer support the man himself.Stephanie Cegielski ****

Thanks to e-pal J.Poller
Even Trump’s most trusted advisors didn’t expect him to fare this well.

Almost a year ago, recruited for my public relations and public policy expertise, I sat in Trump Tower being told that the goal was to get The Donald to poll in double digits and come in second in delegate count. That was it.

The Trump camp would have been satisfied to see him polling at 12% and taking second place to a candidate who might hold 50%. His candidacy was a protest candidacy.

It pains me to say, but he is the presidential equivalent of Sanjaya on American Idol. President Trump would be President Sanjaya in terms of legitimacy and authority.

And I am now taking full responsibility for helping create this monster — and reaching out directly to those voters who, like me, wanted Trump to be the real deal.

My support for Trump began probably like yours did. Similar to so many other Americans, I was tired of the rhetoric in Washington. Negativity and stubbornness were at an all-time high, and the presidential prospects didn’t look promising.

In 2015, I fell in love with the idea of the protest candidate who was not bought by corporations. A man who sat in a Manhattan high-rise he had built, making waves as a straight talker with a business background, full of successes and failures, who wanted America to return to greatness.

I was sold.

Last summer, I signed on as the Communications Director of the Make America Great Again Super PAC.

It was still early in the Trump campaign, and we hit the ground running. His biggest competitor had more than $100 million in a Super PAC. The Jeb Bush deep pockets looked to be the biggest obstacle we faced. We seemed to be up against a steep challenge, especially since a big part of the appeal of a Trump candidacy was not being influenced by PAC money.

[READ: Donald Trump’s Hate Speech Is Breeding Violence and There Is More to Come]

After the first debate, I was more anxious than ever to support Trump. The exchange with Megyn Kelly was like manna from heaven for a communications director. She appeared like yet another reporter trying to kick out the guest who wasn’t invited to the party. At the time, I felt excited for the change to the debate he could bring. I began realizing the man really resonates with the masses and would bring people to the process who had never participated before.

That was inspiring to me.

It wasn’t long before every day I awoke to a buzzing phone and a shaking head because Trump had said something politically incorrect the night before. I have been around politics long enough to know that the other side will pounce on any and every opportunity to smear a candidate.

But something surprising and absolutely unexpected happened. Every other candidate misestimated the anger and outrage of the “silent majority” of Americans who are not a part of the liberal elite. So with each statement came a jump in the polls. Just when I thought we were finished, The Donald gained more popularity.

I don’t think even Trump thought he would get this far. And I don’t even know that he wanted to, which is perhaps the scariest prospect of all.

He certainly was never prepared or equipped to go all the way to the White House, but his ego has now taken over the driver’s seat, and nothing else matters. The Donald does not fail. The Donald does not have any weakness. The Donald is his own biggest enemy.

A devastating terrorist attack in Pakistan targeting Christians occurred on Easter Sunday, and Trump’s response was to tweet, “Another radical Islamic attack, this time in Pakistan, targeting Christian women & children. At least 67 dead, 400 injured. I alone can solve.”

The Terror Threat To Europe Is America’s, Too by Abigail Esman

Some weeks after the attacks of 9/11, a Dutch journalist spoke at a panel discussion in Amsterdam, describing his experience of the events. Faced with the task of writing up what had occurred in New York that day – the devastation, the terror, the unanswered questions that remained – he said he found himself completely overwhelmed. And then at a certain point, he recalled, clarity came. “I realized it was just about America,” he said. “It had nothing to do with me.”

I’ve told this story before, and likely will many times again, but it came to me as I read an op-ed by Daniel Benjamin in response to Tuesday’s terrorist attacks in Brussels. Benjamin served as the State Department’s counterterrorism coordinator from 2009-12. What happened in Brussels, he essentially declares, is really just about Europe. It has nothing to do with us. And it can’t happen here.

I respectfully, but emphatically, disagree.

To be sure, Benjamin makes some important points. The background and immigration history of most European Muslims is not the same as that of Americans. Europe’s Muslims largely arrived as guest workers in the 1960s and 70s from rural areas of the Middle East and North Africa (mostly Turkey, Algeria and Morocco). They were not educated; many were even illiterate. Because they were not expected to stay, their host countries did little to help them integrate, including teaching them the language.

But they did stay, and they brought family members from back home to live with them. They had children – many of them. And their children often suffered in school, where they were confronted with different values than their parents had, and with homework with which their parents could not help them. Many failed. Some had trouble getting jobs, and still do; Muslim unemployment all across Europe is significantly higher than the rate for non-Muslims.

Obama: ‘Our Most Important Partners Are American Muslims’ Susan Jones

“ISIL poses a threat to the entire civilized world,” President Obama said in his Saturday radio address, as he explained what he’s doing to counter the threat posed by radical Islamic extremism — a phrase he refuses to use.

In addition to waging war and diplomacy, Obama said Americans, for their own good, must welcome Muslims into their midst:

“As we move forward in this fight, we have to wield another weapon alongside our airstrikes, our military, our counterterrorism work, and our diplomacy. And that’s the power of our example. Our openness to refugees fleeing ISIL’s violence. Our determination to win the battle against ISIL’s hateful and violent propaganda — a distorted view of Islam that aims to radicalize young Muslims to their cause.

“In that effort, our most important partners are American Muslims. That’s why we have to reject any attempt to stigmatize Muslim-Americans, and their enormous contributions to our country and our way of life.

“Such attempts are contrary to our character, to our values, and to our history as a nation built around the idea of religious freedom. It’s also counterproductive. It plays right into the hands of terrorists who want to turn us against one another; who need a reason to recruit more people to their hateful cause.

“I am a father. And just like any other parent, the awful images from Brussels draw my thoughts to my own children’s safety. That’s also why you should be confident that defeating ISIL remains our top military, intelligence, and national security priority.”

Obama said the terrorists will fail, because “we will defeat them” with our values, our way of life, and our vision of the future.

Secretary of State John Kerry, interviewed on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” was asked if he is worried about another terror attack in Europe.

“Well, I think everybody is concerned, because for several years now, foreign fighters have been returning from Syria or from other locations and implanting themselves in the communities,” Kerry responded.

Regarding Terrorism, It’s Time to Take Off the PC Gloves and Fight By Michael Walsh

“As long as Washington considers Islamic terrorism to be a law-enforcement matter — rather than the global guerrilla war it has morphed into — we will continue to lose. The Islamic side has openly proclaimed that it is at war against the West (and has been for more than a thousand years) and desires our destruction. How many more innocents must die at the hands of the Incredible Exploding Muslim before the U.S. and Europe get serious about taking the fight to the enemy; that is, to the heart of the Islamic poison itself? As the Winter Soldier himself famously said, “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”

The always-astute Jed Babbin calls out the pusillanimous PC poseurs who determine our “war-fighting” strategy, and explains why we’re losing a battle against a stone-age army of suicidal savages. If you’ve had it with teddy bears and candles, and are culturally predisposed to agree with the late Air Force general Curtis LeMay when he said, “If you kill enough of them, they stop fighting,” read this:

Je suis fed up with the politically correct methods and means of counterterrorism pursued by America and its Western allies. There’s so much of that stupidity controlling what we do, with so many bad policies imposed by President Obama and others of his ilk, it’s no wonder the terrorists are winning.

Every time another mass murder occurs, the media’s coverage focuses on the memorials — piles of flowers, rows of candles and hand-drawn signs — and the calls for “unity” and pledges of resolve by national leaders. But all the memorials are totally meaningless. They are merely a stage for politicians to act on, professing emotion, proclaiming unity, and calling for everyone to just keep calm and carry on. Nothing else results from them.

President Obama began military action against ISIS in June 2014. Since then ISIS has grown despite the occasional killing of some ISIS leader accomplished by good intelligence work and a drone strike. Not only does ISIS control big chunks of Iraq and Syria, it now controls key portions of Libya as well. ISIS-trained terrorists — and those radicals who don’t bother to travel to ISIS-held lands for training — are a growing menace to us all.

Another Day, Another Jihad Attack By Amil Imani

Wherever Islam goes, so goes its ethos. The barbarity and variety of actions of Islamic extremists are seen daily around the globe, committed under the banner of Islam, and have become so commonplace that the world has come to view them as part and parcel of a troubled humanity. And from time to time, the world is shocked into a passing and momentary realization of the evil deeds these Islamist robots commit…and quickly gets over it and does nothing to seriously address this affliction of humanity.

Humankind is confronting a deeply troubling quandary. On the one hand is the aspiration of tolerant people whose objective is to forge a world of diverse people into one human society ruled by peace and respect for the inherent dignity and well-being of each member of that family. On the other, Islamic extremists are hell-bent on imposing their stone-age dogma on everyone else.

Savagery and viciousness carried out by the devotees of Muhammad in Belgium’s capital city of Brussels was another reminder that every now and then (and much more often these days), the adherents of the “Religion of Peace” are willing to massacre innocent people in cold blood in a most dastardly act of cowardice. Returning Islam to its pure and glorious roots is precisely what the “jihadists” are fighting for.

Atrocities of this magnitude not only break our hearts, but make us wonder. What compels a seemingly ordinary person to even contemplate, much less carry out, such a slaughter? How did these creatures end up carrying out all these heart-wrenching murders?

An easy answer is Islam. The life manual of Islam, the Quran, is a document of exclusion, hatred, and violence that shapes Muslims’ thinking and behavior. Sadly, Muslims themselves are the ones who are most victimized by Islamic doctrine. They have inherited this viral psychological disease of hate and violence; they live by it, and they transmit it to their children as well as to receptive others.

Qur’an 9:5 “Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, harass them, lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war.”
Islamic doctrine, like a mental retrovirus, has mutated into numerous varieties and degrees of severity over the past 1,400 years. Everyone born in a Muslim family, as well as those who convert to Islam, contract a particular mutation of the Islamic virus. As is the case with all retroviruses, the Islamic virus burrows deeply into the person and erupts from time to time, with potentially devastating consequences.

A puzzle to non-Muslims: why would any intelligent and reasonably sane person live his life by the dogma of Islam? It is particularly disconcerting when this Muslim lives in a secular non-Islamic society. The befuddlement becomes mind-boggling when seemingly educated women in free societies voluntarily submit to the yoke of Islamic misogyny.

Beware Obama, the Benevolent By Eileen F. Toplansky

When President Obama stages a photo op to publicize signing a measure he claims will “help” American workers, you can be almost certain that “unintended consequences” will outweigh ay intended benefits. Lacking even an elementary understanding of how a market economy works, he only makes things worse.

In an effort to avoid the Obamacare mandate, many companies reduced workers to fewer than 30 hours per week. This reduction of employees to part-time status continues to cause endless difficulties. Employees have fewer hours and less income than they want, and employers have a harder time staffing their companies. But the Obama administration continues to expand its grip on all aspects of American life.

In 2014, the Labor Department proposed that under the Fair Labor Standards Act, about five million U.S. workers [would be] newly eligible for overtime pay by more than doubling the salary threshold. This change is already being felt by many companies and now it will extend to colleges and universities.

How do businesses react? In some cases, “employers may attempt to convert these workers to an hourly wage, lowering their pay in the process so that their total weekly compensation, including overtime, remains constant. Other workers, whose salaries are just under the exemption threshold (expected to be $970/week in 2016), might see a small bump in their weekly pay to raise them above the new threshold.”

Some employers are apt to restrict workers to 40 hours per week in order to reduce overtime costs. Since the cost of compensation for regular (non-overtime) work should not change significantly as a result of these rules, employers would have an incentive to hire more part-time or full-time employees to make up for the lost overtime hours. Furthermore, because of the “duties test” managers may “be robbed of their flexibility” to assist with non-managerial parts of a job, thus impacting business operations.

John Zmirak Faith, Reason and Open Borders

“When we inflict such radical changes on our society, we should ask ourselves whether we are being faithful stewards of the prosperous, free societies for which our ancestors struggled, fought and sometimes died. Perhaps instead we are squandering our inheritance, for the sake of that happy frisson we experience when we do or say something supporting “openness”, “tolerance”, and “social justice”. We are purchasing approval from our fellow upper-middle-class citizens, with social capital stolen from our children and grandchildren. We are feathering our own cosy nests, while making life even more wretched for our own nations’ native poor—whose ancestors did fight and die, alongside ours, for their descendants’ stakes in the nation. We are stealing the precious gifts of freedom and order from our least-advantaged fellow citizens—the blue-collar workers, the unemployed, the troubled war veterans—in order to salve our confused consciences, and feed our self-esteem.”

Inflict mass migration’s radical changes on a society and we are no longer faithful stewards of the prosperous, free societies for which our ancestors struggled — a legacy betrayed for the pottage of self-satisfaction in deeming ourselves caring, compassion and tolerant to a fault.
As people who are blessed to be citizens of highly developed countries—such as Australia or the United States, my own homeland—we have a long list of privileges we did little or nothing to earn. Some of them, such as natural resources, are the gifts only of God. But most of the others came from our fellow man. They are less like a landscape than a legacy, a trust passed down from father to son, mother to daughter, across the centuries. These gifts came from our ancestors, either personal or political, who painstakingly built up the peaceful and orderly, free and dynamic countries in which we live.

We are moved by a sense of compassion, and even of justice, to wish that we could share these blessings with people in other countries—if only by letting them come and live in ours. That’s a laudable sentiment, but it must be counter-balanced by a realistic understanding of where these privileges come from, how they are maintained from one generation to the next, and how fragile they really are. In fact we can overstrain our societies and destroy the very institutions that we so treasure, if we are reckless and overconfident in our acceptance of large numbers of new citizens from societies with hostile or alien values and incompatible civic habits. We can choke the goose that lays all these golden eggs.

If we follow the carefully documented arguments of Daniel Hannan in Inventing Freedom (2014), we will see that some of the greatest blessings which we residents of the “Anglosphere” (from Canada to India, from Australia to the Falkland Islands) enjoy are the fruit of the political principles, personal sacrifices and prudent decisions of particular people—the rebels and preachers, barons and burghers, who resisted the arbitrary power of kings, and fought for religious, political and economic freedom. These distinct people, at distinct times and places, undertook political actions with enormous moral consequences, which generations of schoolchildren used to be dutifully drilled to remember: Runnymede, the Glorious Revolution, the abolition of the slave trade. All these political events were the fruit of certain stubborn beliefs, which we can boil down to one: that the dignity of each human being affirmed by Christian theology has political implications, which philosophers such as John Locke presented in secular form as “life, liberty and property”.

As we study less history with each generation, it is all too easy for us to take these privileges for granted, to assume that because (as our theology teaches us) every person deserves them, that it is only natural that they enjoy them. But in fact, as we read the chronicles of the centuries, and survey not just non-Western civilisations, but most Western nations for most of their history, we will learn something quite different: that it is highly unusual for human life to be treated with unconditional respect; for citizens to be protected from arbitrary arrest and to be free to speak their minds; for the work of our hands and our brains to belong to us and our families, exempt from unfair confiscation. If life, liberty and property rights are what God intends for us—as we Westerners grow up believing—in cold fact, murder, bullying and theft are too frequently the norm.

Politically Correct Counterterrorism So long as an oxymoron is the best we can do, the terrorists will continue to win : Jed Babbin

Nous sommes Americans. End the politically correct stupidity. Let’s get on with it.

Je suis fed up with the politically correct methods and means of counterterrorism pursued by America and its Western allies. There’s so much of that stupidity controlling what we do, with so many bad policies imposed by President Obama and others of his ilk, it’s no wonder the terrorists are winning.

Every time another mass murder occurs, the media’s coverage focuses on the memorials — piles of flowers, rows of candles and hand-drawn signs — and the calls for “unity” and pledges of resolve by national leaders. But all the memorials are totally meaningless. They are merely a stage for politicians to act on, professing emotion, proclaiming unity, and calling for everyone to just keep calm and carry on. Nothing else results from them.

President Obama began military action against ISIS in June 2014. Since then ISIS has grown despite the occasional killing of some ISIS leader accomplished by good intelligence work and a drone strike. Not only does ISIS control big chunks of Iraq and Syria, it now controls key portions of Libya as well. ISIS-trained terrorists — and those radicals who don’t bother to travel to ISIS-held lands for training — are a growing menace to us all.

Obama’s strategy and tactics were intended, as he said, to degrade and eventually destroy ISIS. They have failed. Obama said last Wednesday that defeating ISIS remained his number one priority. But, he added, there will be no change in strategy. Amazingly stupid.

The Schism Between Saudi Arabia and Egypt and The Disappearance of U.S. Diplomacy By Herbert London

If ever there was a need for U.S. diplomatic intervention in Middle East, this is the moment. Instead of sitting on the sidelines as a disinterested observer, Kerry and Company should be on a plane to Cairo to discuss an emerging schism in Saudi – Egyptian relations. In February, the Saudi kingdom announced that it was prepared to send ground troops to Syria to fight alongside the international coalition. Cairo objected.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said the Saudi decision to send ground troops into Syria does not fall within the scope of the Islamic Military Alliance to Fight Terrorism, the 34 member coalition Saudi Arabia launched in December. Shoukry confirmed Egypt’s endorsement of a political, not a military, solution in Syria.

As one might expect, spokesmen in both nations said the disagreement would not affect the strong ties between them. But the facts present a different version of the story.

Saudi Arabia under King Salman bin Abdul Aziz is extremely sensitive to any political position that challenges the Saudi vision of regional issues. This sensitivity was manifest when the kingdom rejected its $4 billion aid to the Lebanese army because Lebanon disagreed with Saudi Arabia’s stance on Hezbollah.

In addition to its military alliance with Saudi Arabia, Egypt is reliant on Saudi financial assistance including petroleum needs for five years and $8 billion in capital projects. Obviously Egypt has a stake in the maintenance of good relations. But in politics it is axiomatic to contend there aren’t permanent or perpetual friends or enemies.

Methodists Scramble for Peace and Justice – at Israel’s Expense by Susan Warner

The Palestinian Authority has no intention of recognizing Israel’s right to exist. Despite all evidence to the contrary, the Methodists are laboring under the false hope that “peace and justice” is possible if only Israel would be more accommodating.

The United Methodist Kairos Response Committee has adopted “apartheid” and boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) strategies, without considering how this may instead actually increase friction, strife and division.

The Methodists and other Christian groups with “peace and justice” interests such as the Presbyterian Church USA, United Church of Christ, Scottish Presbyterian Church and the members of the World Council of Churches need to accept some responsibility for aggravating the anti-Semitism energizing the popular imagination today.

The Methodist Church could instead consider actions of a kind designed to help rather than undermine peace — projects envisioned by a variety of goodhearted and resourceful people, who see opportunities where others clearly appear to be more interested in hurting Israel and the Jews than in actually helping the Palestinians.

Roughly 850 delegates from every corner of the world are currently preparing for the upcoming United Methodist General Conference (May 10-20, 2016). The quadrennial policy conference brings together representatives of 12.5 million members worldwide, including 7 million in the USA. During this ten-day event, delegates will consider a variety of church governance issues and a broad spectrum of social action proposals presented by member committees.

The United Methodist Kairos Response (UMKR) is one such committee. This group’s alleged mission, to promote “peace and justice” in Israel and Palestine, is sadly based on promoting the Palestinian cause — at Israel’s expense. Israel, according to the UMKR, appears to be the sole cause of Palestinian suffering.

Although the group accuses Israel of expanding “illegal settlements” in Arab territory, according to Elliott Abrams and Uri Sadot, writing in Foreign Policy, the accusation is totally untrue:

“To the question, ‘Is Israel vastly increasing the pace of settlement activity, making the establishment of a future Palestinian state less and less likely?’ the short answer, and the right answer, is no.

“Just as Israel was denounced far and wide for ‘settlement expansion,’ regular reports released by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics on settlement activity reveals is that Israel’s actual settlement construction pace has reached a historical low. Only 507 housing units were approved for construction by Netanyahu’s government in the first six months of 2014, a 71.9% decrease from the same period in 2013. About one-third of those is being built inside the major blocks it is understood Israel will keep in any final status agreement.

“For a population of more than 300,000 Israelis living in the West Bank, that pace of construction does not even allow for natural population growth, much less rapid expansion.

“It’s a lose-lose situation for Bibi, as nasty attacks from settler leaders coincide with those from prime ministers, foreign ministers, and presidents across the globe. The Israeli prime minister deserves credit, under these circumstances, for sticking to what he has said and appears to believe: Israel must build where it will stay, in Jerusalem and the major blocks, and it is foolish to waste resources in West Bank areas it will someday leave.