Trump Proves the Most Philo-Semitic President—To America’s Benefit Ben Weingarten

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-proves-most-philo-semitic-president-americas-b

Amid great uncertainty, the Trump administration is dedicating critical time and resources to bolstering America’s strategic position with respect to the tip of the spear of the global jihadist movement, Iran, by seeking to strengthen Iran’s greatest rival and America’s greatest friend in the Middle East, Israel.

In so doing, it is putting the finishing touches on the most philo-Semitic term in American history—to the benefit of our national interest.

The proof is in the pudding of an Iran that has found itself checked in its pursuit of regional hegemony, and reduced jihadist violence against America and its interests from Iran and its Islamist partners and proxies alike—all while America has been able to avoid new military entanglements and reduce the size and scope of existing ones.

What presidents do at the end of their terms speaks volumes about their true nature. And when it comes to matters of foreign policy, actions concerning Israel—the West’s frontline in a region marked by Islamist tyranny—serve as a vital litmus test on war and peace, and our civilization and its enemies.

In this regard, the contrast between the policies and proclamations of President Trump in the waning days of his first term, and those of President Obama at the end of his second term—both of which involved Israel—could not be more stark. Nor could it be more salient in the event the latter’s vice president—poised to reprise much of his boss’s agenda, with alumni in tow—soon assumes the Oval Office.

Consider some of the Trump administration’s moves in recent weeks.

Fakhrizadeh’s welcome death enrages American ‘doves’ By Ruthie Blum

https://www.jns.org/opinion/fakhrizadehs-welcome-death-enrages-american-doves/

Tehran’s hysterical response to the assassination on Friday afternoon of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh is understandable. Fakhrizadeh was not only the latest Iranian scientist to be eliminated; he was the head of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear-weapons program that the mullah-led regime continues to deny. Furthermore, the inability of the regime to prevent the infiltration of foreign operatives and protect the lives of prominent figures such as Fakhrizadeh is a sign of weakness and thus a source of humiliation.

In addition, the targeted killing that everyone assumes was carried out by Israel—with the tacit approval of or hands-on help from the United States—came two days after U.S. Special Envoy for Iran Elliott Abrams announced Trump administration plans to tighten sanctions on Iran.

“We will have next week, and the week after, and the week after—all through December and January, there will be sanctions that deal with arms, that deal with weapons of mass destruction, that deal with human rights,” Abrams said at a virtual Beirut Institute event. “So, this will continue on for another couple of months, right until the end.”
In other words, up to Jan. 20 when Joe Biden is slated to assume the Oval Office, U.S. President Donald Trump doesn’t intend to succumb to lame-duck laziness and let Iran conduct business as usual.
Caught in a vise grip of economic pressure on one side and strategic surgical strikes on the other, while contending internally with a highly disgruntled populace, Iranian officials are in a panic. This explains the rise in pitch of their characteristically violent rhetoric against Israel, the “small Satan,” and America, the “great Satan.”

Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) commander Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami, for example, directed one of his customary threats at both, without naming them specifically.

Biden Gets Ready To Sell Out U.S. Interests To China Francis Menton

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-11-30-biden-gets-ready-to-sell-out

The most important job of the President is to conduct the foreign policy of the United States, so as to protect the safety and security of the American people. That means dealing with a variety of geopolitical rivals and adversaries. There are quite a number of serious adversaries out there these days (Russia, Iran, and North Korea come to mind), but without doubt the most significant is China.

In recent years, China has become increasingly assertive on the world stage, as evidenced by a rapidly growing military, massive international intelligence and espionage efforts, and the forging of financial ties with many developing nations (e.g., the “Belt and Road Initiative”). Meanwhile, China’s population, at about 1.4 billion, is more than four times that of the U.S.; and its annual GDP, at about $13.5 trillion, is about two-thirds ours (which is around $21 trillion), while almost triple that of third-place Japan (~$5 trillion), and more than triple that of fourth-place Germany (~$4 trillion). It is possible that China’s gross economy could overtake ours within a decade or so (although remaining much lower on a per capita basis).

It would not be an exaggeration to say that figuring out how to deal with China should be the number one priority of the incoming President. Good luck with that if Joe Biden succeeds to the job. It’s not just that he’s not physically or mentally capable of engaging with such a clever and relentless adversary. Even more significant is that Biden has been completely willing to accept influence payments from China for his family. Could he really have thought that nothing was expected in return? At Newsweek today, Nigel Farage has a column with the headline “China Is Licking Its Chops at the Thought of President Joe Biden.” Indeed, that’s a great understatement.

In prior posts on Biden corruption (for example here and here) I have focused more on the dealings of Joe and his son Hunter with Ukraine, rather than China. That’s because the dealings with Ukraine were more definitively and obviously criminal in nature, given that they involved an immediate and admitted quid pro quo (the firing of a prosecutor who was investigating a company where Hunter was on the board). The dealings with China were more in the nature of general influence peddling. That doesn’t make these dealings any less corrupt.

Sidney Powell: Witness in Hospital After Beating By Kristinn Taylor

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/11/sidney-powell-witness-hospital-beating/

Attorney Sidney Powell said on the Sean Hannity show on Fox News Monday night that a witness to election irregularities was beaten up and is in the hospital. Powell spoke about the attack while speaking about witnesses needing protection as a reason some are not going public and signing affidavits. Powell said some are in the government, others are in roles that require confidentiality, and that they need protection by the government.

Powell: “They’re gonna lose their job. Their lives have been threatened. Uh, one witness we know of got beaten up and is in the hospital. There have been all kinds of repercussions against people who have come forward to tell the truth. And no, Democrats don’t like whistleblowers, they only like liars who claim they’re whistleblowers.”

‘Last Stands’ Explores Valor in the Face of Almost Certain Defeat Michael Walsh

http://www.theepochtimes.com/last-stands-explores-valor-in-the-face-of-almost-certain-defeat_3599954.html?utm_source=partner

“These are the times that try men’s souls,” wrote Thomas Paine December of 1776. “The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

For American revolutionaries facing the extremely uncertain prospect of defeating the most powerful military machine on earth at that time, the situation must have already looked hopeless. The Continental Army under George Washington had lost New York City and was perched uneasily on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River. Desertion was rife. The weather was ghastly. It looked like a last stand would soon be in the offing.

And yet, against all the odds, the Americans won. Why? What possessed them to carry on, in the face of almost certain defeat? What, exactly, were they fighting for? God? Country? Their women and children? Or something more elemental, masculine, primal?

Times that try men’s souls, indeed. Paine’s words, which inspired the colonists to revolution and shamed the shrinking violets who would not fight, are just as applicable today—as the nation has been plunged into crisis by an overbearing government, a manufactured health “crisis,” open attacks on life, property, and the Constitution, and a contested, possibly fraudulent election, are just as pertinent today as they ever were.

Hawley Refuses to Rule Out ‘Rigged’ Election: ‘We’ll See’ By Brittany Bernstein

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/hawley-refuses-to-rule-out-rigged-election-well-see/

Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) on Monday would not rule out the possibility that the 2020 election had been rigged, saying “we’ll see.”

“I mean we’ll see,” Hawley told CNN when asked if he thought the election was rigged. “We’ll see at the end when all of the legal challenges are resolved and see when all the evidence has been produced.”

Asked if Republican Senators should speak up against the president’s claims of widespread election fraud that overturned the results, Hawley said: “Well I mean I think that, if your question is should we be criticizing him, then I think what you’re getting at in my view is that the President has every right to present his case in every court that he wants to go to and has every right to be heard. And I think we are going to have to look at the effect of mail-in balloting.”

Trump has refused to concede to President-elect Joe Biden, who won the electoral college with 306 votes to Trump’s 232, according to projections by the Associated Press. Though six battleground states have certified their election results in favor of Biden, Trump has continued to make claims that the election was rigged against him and plagued by widespread voter fraud — claims widely contested by election officials .

Georgia Secretary of State Investigating Voter Registration Group Run by Warnock By Brittany Bernstein

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/georgia-secretary-of-state-investigating-voter-registration-group-run-by-warnock/

The New Georgia Project, a voter registration group formerly led by Georgia Democratic Senate candidate Raphael Warnock, is under investigation for allegedly sending ballot applications to non-residents, the Georgia secretary of state said Monday.

Warnock was CEO of the group, which was originally founded by failed gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, until February. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced the group, and three others, are under investigation for improper registration activities.

While Raffensperger, a Republican who has been vocal in debunking President Trump’s claims of election fraud, said that he has not seen signs of widespread, systemic fraud, there is evidence of “third-party groups working to register people in other states to vote here in Georgia.”

Raffensperger said the New Georgia Project “sent voter registration applications to New York City,” in a potential violation of state law.

“Voting in Georgia when you are not a resident of Georgia is a felony,” Raffensperger said. “These third-party groups have a responsibility to not encourage illegal voting. If they do so, they will be held responsible.”

Is America to Be First, Second — or What? By Victor Davis Hanson

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/12/is-america-to-be-first-second-or-what/

A wise foreign policy over the next four years would build on Trump’s strategic gains for the U.S. and the West.

 D uring this strange “transition,” it has been common now to assert that “multilateralism” is back — and with a vengeance. Joe Biden’s envisioned team allegedly will jettison the unilateralist idea of “America alone” and supposed soft neo-isolationism.

Instead, the U.S. will resume its historic but neglected role as the leader of the enlightened world. It will supposedly recultivate allies estranged by Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo. It will now fix broken international organizations. It will eagerly reassume burdens that were neglected or repudiated during the Neanderthal Trump administration.

The result, supposedly, will be a safer, more secure world. The administration will be staffed again by returning international experts from the Obama years. Their excellence is vouched for by their past government, corporate, military, and academic service and their branded education.

I think all that is a fair summation of the lengthy published critiques, the preliminary giddy statements from designated Biden-administration officials, and the foreign-policy daily op-ed commentariat.

But how accurate are these rosy assessments and stock diagnoses?

A Strange Sort of Isolationism

Pennsylvania Bombshell: Biden 99.4% v. Trump 0.6% Stunning testimony that the media has dutifully ignored.

https://spectator.org/pennsylvania-bombshell-biden-99-4-vs-trump-0-6/

There are landslides and then there are landslides. There are lopsided votes and then there are lopsided votes. There are egregious examples of vote manipulation and then there are really egregious examples of vote manipulation. What surfaced during hearings in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on November 25, 2020, may set the standard for electoral outrageousness. An expert testifying to the Pennsylvania Senate flagged a batch of ballots that recorded some 570,000 votes for Joe Biden and only 3,200 for Donald Trump.

Yes, you read that correctly. That would equate to Joe Biden bagging 99.4 percent of that enormous chunk of votes. That one batch alone would have flipped the state to Biden.

This bombshell was dropped last Wednesday at the Wyndham Hotel in Gettysburg. The November 25 hearings, which began at 12:30 p.m. and ran for nearly four hours, were convened at the request of Sen. Doug Mastriano (R-Adams, Cumberland, Franklin, and York counties). It was sponsored by the Senate Majority Policy Committee, chaired by Sen. David Argall (R-Berks/Schuylkill). Mastriano has called what happened “unacceptable,” and has called for the resignation of Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar.

This particular gem was provided by Ret. Col. Phil Waldren, a former combat officer with a background in Army information and electronic warfare. Waldren, who testified along with Rudy Giuliani’s team, brought to the hearing his considerable expertise in analysis of election-data fraud. After Waldren presented his material, the chair opened the floor for questions. Rudy Giuliani went first, asking Waldren to clarify what his analytics team means when they talk about “spike anomalies” in voting patterns. These, as Waldren defines them, are “events where a numerical amount of votes are processed in a time period that is not feasible or mechanically possible under normal circumstances.” Waldren showed a chart with a shocking example of an apparent massive dump of votes for Joe Biden. Giuliani pressed Waldren for clarification regarding this unbelievable “Biden injection of votes.” Here’s the exchange:

Warring Tribes and Fake Virtue: The 2020 US Election Daryl McCann

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2020/12/warring-tribes-and-fake-virtue-the-2020-us-election/

Has the Democratic Party perpetrated an electoral fraud? As with any crime—or alleged crime—we have to consider the means and the motive. The first part of that is easy enough to answer. Electoral fraud is an established part of American political life. In November 1960, for instance, incumbent Vice-President Richard Nixon conceded the presidential race to John Kennedy despite believing Mayor Daley’s Democratic machine had intervened to deprive him of victory in Illinois and his place in the White House. Electoral fraud was doable then and, with the exponential rise in mailed-in ballots and manipulatable electronic computations, even more doable now. This brings us to the matter of motive. Why would a municipal employee or a party apparatchik, often the same person, flout the law by subverting the electoral process? Easy. If I believed Donald Trump was a latter-day Benito Mussolini or even Adolf Hitler, it would be incumbent upon me to do everything—even “interrupting” democracy—in order to save democracy. There is, after all, no point playing by the rules when faced with the Prince of Darkness.

The American republic, as we have known it, is in crisis. The nation has largely divided into two warring tribes who view the other as a mortal—and civilisational—enemy. Extremism is not exactly new in the US, although in the past the demarcation line between normal and nutty ran through the parties and not between them. In 1960, for instance, the Democrats were an unlikely alliance of liberals, Dixiecrats and pragmatic opportunists like the Kennedys. JFK had been a family friend of Joe McCarthy and throughout the 1960 presidential race outflanked Nixon, one of the original Cold Warriors, by insisting that the Eisenhower–Nixon administration had allowed a “missile gap” to open up between the Soviets and the US. Long before he decided to run for the White House, Kennedy had believed Nixon was better suited than any other politician of their generation to succeed Eisenhower as President. So, when Nixon placed the standing or reputation of the democratic process before his own personal ambition, he was yielding to a man who fundamentally shared his worldview. He was not handing the White House to somebody he feared would destroy the American republic.