Politicized Intelligence
Reacting to President Trump's Helsinki Summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, former CIA Director John Brennan tweeted this:
"Why did Trump meet 1 on 1 with Putin? What might he be hiding from Bolton, Pompeo, Kelly, & the American public? How will Putin use whatever Trump could be hiding to advantage Russia & hurt America? Trump's total lack of credibility renders spurious whatever explanation he gives."
He followed that up with this attack on the Helsinki press conference:
"Donald Trump's press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of 'high crimes & misdemeanors.' It was nothing short of treasonous."
Fired FBI Director James Comey chimed in with this partisan exhortation:
"This Republican Congress has proven incapable of fulfilling the Founders' design. . . All who believe in this country's values must vote for Democrats this fall. Policy differences don't matter right now. History has its eyes on us."
In the history of the United States, it is unprecedented for former directors of the FBI and the CIA to engage in this kind of raw partisanship.
Brennan's hysteria is beyond the pale. George W. Bush met privately, one-on-one, numerous times with Vladimir Putin. So did Barack Obama. That's what presidents do when discussing affairs of state with other world leaders.
And John Brennan is the last person who should be lecturing the public about truth and honesty. Even liberals wanted Obama to fire Brennan for his dishonesty.
By the way, what exactly did Brennan and Comey do about the Russian meddling in our election?
They knew in 2014 that the Russians were interfering in our elections. But the Obama White House ordered our cybersecurity experts to "stand down."
Last week, we witnessed hours of snarling and unrepentant testimony by disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok, who seemingly believed that he had the power to decide who should be president of the United States.
There is a growing list of deep state operatives who have jumped ship or have been fired after their misdeeds were uncovered, but we still don't know the full extent of what happened during the 2016 campaign.
And perhaps that explains the desperation in Brennan's and Comey's tweets. They sound like men trying to hide something, and fearful that continued investigations in 2019, led by conservatives like Representatives Devin Nunes, Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows, may uncover the truth.
Liberals Take A Hard-Left Turn
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the newest star on the political left. She rose to fame last month after defeating a member of the House Democrat leadership team. The New York Times editorial board declared, "Ms. Ocasio-Cortez's victory is a vivid sign of the changing of the guard."
But what does this avant-garde candidate believe? We learned more about her views on foreign policy and economics after she sat down for a recent interview with PBS.
When discussing the Middle East, Ocasio-Cortez referred to the "occupation of Palestine." Asked to clarify her remarks, she said that "Palestinians are experiencing difficulty in access to their housing and homes. . ."
Then she admitted that she's not "an expert on geopolitics on the issue." Yet she graduated from Boston University with a degree in economics and international relations.
Speaking of economics, when asked about the low unemployment rate, Ocasio-Cortez responded by saying, "Well, unemployment is low because everyone has two jobs."
But the unemployment rate has nothing to do with how many jobs a person has.
Ocasio-Cortez, who proudly describes herself as a socialist, also declared that, "Capitalism has not always existed in the world and it will not always exist in the world."
Perhaps. But no other economic system in the history of the world has created more wealth and lifted more people out of poverty than capitalism.
The Soviet Union, that grand experiment with communism, collapsed. Cuba and Venezuela are hardly examples we want to emulate.
Ocasio-Cortez also supports open borders and wants to abolish the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE). In another interview this week, she discussed immigration policy and why she joined protests at the southern border. Here's what she had to say:
"I believe the moral character of the United States is at stake. . . We have to occupy all of it. We need to occupy every airport, we need to occupy every border, we need to occupy every ICE office. . ."
And this is what many in the media are hailing as the "future of the Democratic Party."
It seems there may be some truth to those claims. Views once considered well outside the mainstream of U.S. politics are taking root. But contrary to the media myth, it's not because conservatives are moving right. It's because liberals are moving so far left.
Anti-Semitic and anti-Israel attitudes are growing on the left.
Socialism is increasingly popular on the left.
And the left has shifted dramatically on immigration and open borders.
As I have noted before, Bill Clinton probably could not win his party's nomination today.