Trump Addresses The U.N.
President Donald Trump addressed the United Nations General Assembly this morning. In his first address to the world body, the president boldly defended the idea of national sovereignty and vowed to defend America's interests in the world. He also challenged tyrants in Iran, North Korea and Venezuela.
President Trump told world leaders, "As president of the United States, I will always put America first. Just like you, as the leaders of your countries, will always and should always put your countries first."
He issued a strong condemnation of North Korea's human rights abuses, including the death of Otto Warmbier. Then he warned that if Kim Jong-un forces a confrontation with the U.S. or our allies, "we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea. Rocket man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime."
Next, President Trump turned his attention to Iran, a regime that "speaks openly of mass murder, vowing death to America, destruction to Israel, and ruin for many leaders and nations in this room." Trump declared that the Islamic Republic was a "an economically depleted rogue state whose chief exports are violence, bloodshed, and chaos." Trump also vowed to crush the "vile and sinister ideology" of "radical Islamic terrorism."
President Trump demanded reforms and accountability from the United Nations. He blasted the U.N. Human Rights Council, with its anti-Israel obsession, as a "massive source of embarrassment."
Addressing the chaos in Venezuela, Trump denounced socialism, saying:
"The problem in Venezuela is not that socialism has been poorly implemented, but that socialism has been faithfully implemented. From the Soviet Union to Cuba to Venezuela, wherever true socialism or communism has been adopted, it has delivered anguish and devastation and failure."
Reacting to Trump's address, the foreign minister of Venezuela said, "For a moment, we didn't know if we were listening to President Reagan in 1982 or President Trump in 2017." I assume the Venezuelan foreign minister was trying to insult Trump, but I know he will take the comparison to Reagan as a compliment.
Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton had high praise for the president's address, saying it was exactly the kind of no nonsense, tough talk world leaders needed to hear. I agree completely!
You can watch the president's address here.
Trump Was Right
As President Trump was preparing for his U.N. address, news was breaking this morning that his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was indeed "wiretapped" by the Obama FBI "before and after the election."
While the exact timeline is not clear, CNN reports that the FBI initially obtained a warrant from the secret FISA court in 2014, but stopped the surveillance "for lack of evidence." A second warrant was issued in 2016 with the approval of top officials at the Justice Department and the FBI.
Remember when President Trump first suggested that there was evidence that the Obama Administration wiretapped Trump Towers? The media mocked him relentlessly. Fired FBI Director James Comey told Congress that there was "no information that supports" Trump's claim. Apparently there was, but Comey lied.
This gets us back to the fundamental question I posed last week after we learned that former Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice had unmasked the identities of Trump campaign officials. Are we going to tolerate the administration of one party using our vast national security apparatus to monitor the presidential campaign of the opposing party?
If the roles were reversed, if the Bush/Cheney team had wiretapped Barack Obama's campaign manager, the left and its media allies would be screaming "WATERGATE!"
Hillary's Threat
Hillary Clinton is continuing her "What Happened" book tour and sounds more like a sore loser every day. During an interview with NPR yesterday, Clinton was asked if she would "rule out questioning the legitimacy of the election." She responded, "No, I would not rule it out."
The implication of her answer is clear: Clinton may challenge the legality of the 2016 election.
Let's rewind the tape to the third presidential debate in October 2016. (Ancient history, I know.) Moderator Chris Wallace asked then-candidate Trump, "Will you absolutely accept the results of this election?"
Of course, no one expected Trump to win. The question really was, "Will you pledge now to accept defeat and go away quitely?" Trump refused to preemptively surrender his right to challenge any Election Day irregularities, and the media pilloried him for days.
The notion that Trump was refusing to abide by the results reinforced the left's "Trump is a Nazi" narrative. But as we later learned, it took a 2:00 am phone call from the president of the United States to get Hillary to abide by the results.
Now, months later, based on whatever she can piece together from the Obama Administration's monitoring of Trump and the Mueller investigation, Hillary is evidently entertaining some kind of challenge herself to the election results.
Many in the progressive movement are still fantasizing about impeaching Donald Trump and Mike Pence at the same time. The left is refusing to accept the results of the elections, and it hates anything that "normalizes" Donald Trump. They don't even like Nancy Pelosi discussing amnesty with Trump!
It would not surprise me at all if somewhere in New York City, Los Angeles or Chicago, there is an office of left-wing legal eagles scheming to use the courts to overturn the election.