Author Topic: Patrick J. Buchanans weekly columns (Read 59971 times)

RomanCatholic1953 · « **Reply #15 on:** October 27, 2016, 10:15:39 PM »

http://buchanan.org/blog/a-presidency-from-hell-125889

A Presidency from Hell

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Posted 10-27-2016

Should Donald Trump surge from behind to win, he would likely bring in with him both houses of Congress.

Much of his agenda — tax cuts, deregulation, border security, deportation of criminals here illegally, repeal of Obamacare, appointing justices like Scalia, unleashing the energy industry — could be readily enacted.

On new trade treaties with China and Mexico, Trump might need economic nationalists in Bernie Sanders’ party to stand with him, as free-trade Republicans stood by their K-Street contributors.

Still, compatible agendas and GOP self-interest could transcend personal animosities and make for a successful four years.

But consider what a Hillary Clinton presidency would be like.

She would enter office as the least-admired president in history, without a vision or a mandate. She would take office with two-thirds of the nation believing she is untruthful and untrustworthy.

Reports of poor health and lack of stamina may be exaggerated. Yet she moves like a woman her age. Unlike Ronald Reagan, her husband, Bill, and President Obama, she is not a natural political athlete and lacks the personal and rhetorical skills to move people to action.

She makes few mistakes as a debater, but she is often shrill — when she is not boring. Trump is right: Hillary Clinton is tough as a $2 steak. But save for those close to her, she appears not to be a terribly likable person.

Still, such attributes, or the lack of them, do not assure a failed presidency. James Polk, no charmer, was a one-term president, but a great one, victorious in the Mexican War, annexing California and the Southwest, negotiating a fair division of the Oregon territory with the British.

Yet the hostility Clinton would face the day she takes office would almost seem to ensure four years of pure hell.

The reason: her credibility, or rather her transparent lack of it.

Consider. Because the tapes revealed he did not tell the full truth about when he learned about Watergate, Richard Nixon was forced to resign.

In the Iran-Contra affair, Reagan faced potential impeachment charges, until ex-security adviser John Poindexter testified that Reagan told the truth when he said he had not known of the secret transfer of funds to the Nicaraguan Contras.

Bill Clinton was impeached — for lying.

White House scandals, as Nixon said in Watergate, are almost always rooted in mendacity — not the misdeed, but the cover-up, the lies, the perjury, the obstruction of justice that follow.

And here Hillary Clinton seems to have an almost insoluble problem.

She has testified for hours to FBI agents investigating why and how her server was set up and whether secret information passed through it.

Forty times during her FBI interrogation, Clinton said she could not or did not recall. This writer has friends who went to prison for telling a grand jury, “I can’t recall.”

After studying her testimony and the contents of her emails, FBI Director James Comey virtually accused Clinton of lying.

Moreover, thousands of emails were erased from her server, even after she had reportedly been sent a subpoena from Congress to retain them.

During her first two years as secretary of state, half of her outside visitors were contributors to the Clinton Foundation.

Yet there was not a single quid pro quo, Clinton tells us.

Yesterday’s newspapers exploded with reports of how Bill Clinton aide Doug Band raised money for the Clinton Foundation, and then hit up the same corporate contributors to pay huge fees for Bill’s speeches.

What were the corporations buying if not influence? What were the foreign contributors buying, if not influence with an ex-president, and a secretary of state and possible future president?

Did none of the big donors receive any official favors?

“There’s a lot of smoke and there’s no fire,” says Hillary Clinton.

Perhaps, but there seems to be more smoke every day.

If once or twice in her hours of testimony to the FBI, grand jury or before Congress, Clinton were proven to have lied, her Justice Department would be obligated to name a special prosecutor, as was Nixon’s.

And, with the election over, the investigative reporters of the adversary press, Pulitzers beckoning, would be cut loose to go after her.

The Republican House is already gearing up for investigations that could last deep into Clinton’s first term.

There is a vast trove of public and sworn testimony from Hillary, about the server, the emails, the erasures, the Clinton Foundation. Now, thanks to WikiLeaks, there are tens of thousands of emails to sift through, and perhaps tens of thousands more to come.

What are the odds that not one contains information that contradicts her sworn testimony? Cong. Jim Jordan contends that Clinton may already have perjured herself.

And as the full-court press would begin with her inauguration, Clinton would have to deal with the Syrians, Russians, Taliban, North Koreans and Xi Jinping in the South China Sea — and with Bill Clinton wandering around the White House with nothing to do.

This election is not over. But if Hillary Clinton wins, a truly hellish presidency could await her, and us.

Share Pat's Columns!

RomanCatholic1953 · « **Reply #16 on:** November 01, 2016, 03:01:36 PM »

Hillary's Watergate?

Patrick J. Buchanan

Posted: 10/31/2016

http://buchanan.org/blog/hillarys-watergate-125935

After posting Friday’s column, “A Presidency from Hell,” about the investigations a President Hillary Clinton would face, by afternoon it was clear I had understated the gravity of the situation.

Networks exploded with news that FBI Director James Comey had informed Congress he was reopening the investigation into Clinton’s email scandal, which he had said in July had been concluded.

“Bombshell” declared Carl Bernstein. The stock market tumbled. “October surprise!” came the cry.

The only explanation, it seemed, was that the FBI had uncovered new information that could lead to a possible indictment of the former secretary of state, who by then could be the president of the United States.

By Sunday, we knew the source of the eruption.

Huma Abedin, Clinton’s top aide, sent thousands of emails to the private laptop she shared with husband Anthony Weiner, a.k.a. Carlos Danger, who is under FBI investigation for allegedly sexting with a 15-year-old girl.

The Weiner-Abedin laptop contains 650,000 emails.

The FBI has not yet reviewed Abedin’s emails, and they could turn out to be duplicates of those the FBI has already seen, benign, or not relevant to the investigation of Clinton.

But it does appear that Abedin misled the FBI when she told them all communications devices containing State Department work product were turned over to State when she departed in 2013.

Clinton, understandably, was stunned and outraged by Comey’s letter. For it casts a cloud of suspicion over her candidacy by raising the possibility that the FBI director could reverse his decision of July, and recommend her prosecution.

By Monday, Oct. 31, new problems had arisen, some potentially crippling or possibly lethal to a Clinton presidency.

Reporters have unearthed a near-mutiny inside the FBI over the decision to shut down the investigation of the Clinton email scandal and Comey’s recommendation of no prosecution.

Andrew McCabe, No. 2 at the FBI, has come under anonymous fire from inside the bureau as one of those most reluctant to pursue aggressively any investigations of the Clintons.

McCabe’s wife, in a 2015 state senate race in Virginia, received $475,000 in PAC contributions from Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a longtime friend and major fundraiser for Bill and Hillary Clinton.

After the Senate race that McCabe’s wife lost, he was promoted from No. 3 at the FBI to No. 2, where he has far more influence over decisions to investigate and recommend prosecution.

Justice Department higher-ups under Attorney General Loretta Lynch apparently disagreed with Comey notifying Congress, and the nation, to new developments in the email scandal. Yet Comey had given his word to Congress that he would do so.

In the Southern District of New York, which has jurisdiction over the Weiner sexting investigation, FBI agents have reportedly been blocked from opening an investigation into charges of corruption in the Clinton Foundation.

This follows revelations that corporate chiefs and foreign rulers and regimes, hit up for contributions to the Clinton Foundation, were then urged by an ex-Clinton aide to provide six-figure speaking fees for Bill Clinton.

This follows reports the Clinton Foundation took contributions for victims of natural disasters, and awarded multimillion-dollar contracts to contributors to do the work.

Still unanswered is what Bill Clinton and Attorney General Lynch discussed during that 30-minute meeting on the Phoenix tarmac, prior to the FBI and Justice Department decision not to indict Hillary Clinton.

The stench of corruption is reaching Bhopal dimensions.

What appears about to happen seems inevitable and predictable.

If Hillary Clinton is elected, the email scandal, the pay-for-play scandal involving the Clinton Foundation, “Bill Clinton, Inc.,” the truthfulness of her testimony, and reports of Clinton-paid dirty tricksters engaging in brownshirt tactics at Trump rallies, are all going to be investigated more thoroughly by the FBI.

And if Clinton is president, there is no way her Justice Department can investigate the Clinton scandals, any more than this city in the early 1970s would entrust an investigation into Watergate to the Nixon Justice Department.

Clinton, understandably, was stunned and outraged by Comey’s letter. For it casts a cloud of suspicion over her candidacy by raising the possibility that the FBI director could reverse his decision of July, and recommend her prosecution.

By Monday, Oct. 31, new problems had arisen, some potentially crippling or possibly lethal to a Clinton presidency.

Reporters have unearthed a near-mutiny inside the FBI over the decision to shut down the investigation of the Clinton email scandal and Comey’s recommendation of no prosecution.

Andrew McCabe, No. 2 at the FBI, has come under anonymous fire from inside the bureau as one of those most reluctant to pursue aggressively any investigations of the Clintons.

McCabe’s wife, in a 2015 state senate race in Virginia, received $475,000 in PAC contributions from Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a longtime friend and major fundraiser for Bill and Hillary Clinton.

After the Senate race that McCabe’s wife lost, he was promoted from No. 3 at the FBI to No. 2, where he has far more influence over decisions to investigate and recommend prosecution.

Justice Department higher-ups under Attorney General Loretta Lynch apparently disagreed with Comey notifying Congress, and the nation, to new developments in the email scandal. Yet Comey had given his word to Congress that he would do so.

In the Southern District of New York, which has jurisdiction over the Weiner sexting investigation, FBI agents have reportedly been blocked from opening an investigation into charges of corruption in the Clinton Foundation.

This follows revelations that corporate chiefs and foreign rulers and regimes, hit up for contributions to the Clinton Foundation, were then urged by an ex-Clinton aide to provide six-figure speaking fees for Bill Clinton.

This follows reports the Clinton Foundation took contributions for victims of natural disasters, and awarded multimillion-dollar contracts to contributors to do the work.

Still unanswered is what Bill Clinton and Attorney General Lynch discussed during that 30-minute meeting on the Phoenix tarmac, prior to the FBI and Justice Department decision not to indict Hillary Clinton.

The stench of corruption is reaching Bhopal dimensions.

What appears about to happen seems inevitable and predictable.

If Hillary Clinton is elected, the email scandal, the pay-for-play scandal involving the Clinton Foundation, “Bill Clinton, Inc.,” the truthfulness of her testimony, and reports of Clinton-paid dirty tricksters engaging in brownshirt tactics at Trump rallies, are all going to be investigated more thoroughly by the FBI.

And if Clinton is president, there is no way her Justice Department can investigate the Clinton scandals, any more than this city in the early 1970s would entrust an investigation into Watergate to the Nixon Justice Department.

If Clinton wins this election, and Republicans hold onto one or both houses of Congress, investigations of the Clinton scandals will start soon after her inaugural and will go on for years. And the clamor for a special prosecutor, who will, as Archibald Cox did with Nixon, build a huge staff and spend years investigating, will become irresistible.

Realizing that this is the near-certain fate and future of any Hillary Clinton presidency, and would be disastrous for the country, Sunday night, Doug Schoen, who worked for President Clinton for six years, said he has changed his mind and will not be voting for Hillary.

Donald Trump says this is worse than Watergate. As of now, it is only potentially so.

But if Hillary Clinton, this distrusted and disbelieved woman, does take the oath of office on Jan. 20, there is a real possibility that, like Nixon, down the road a year or two, she could be forced from office.

Do we really want to go through this again?

Share Pat's Columns!

RomanCatholic1953 · « **Reply #17 on:** November 04, 2016, 12:12:36 AM »

Hillary's High Crimes & Misdemeanors

Patrick J. Buchanan

Posted 11-3-16

http://buchanan.org/blog/hillarys-high-crimes-misdemeanors-125951

If Hillary Clinton is elected president on Tuesday, and if what Bret Baier is reporting from FBI sources on Fox News is true, America is headed for a constitutional crisis.

Indeed, it would seem imperative that FBI Director James Comey, even if it violates protocol and costs him his job, should state publicly whether what Baier’s FBI sources are telling him is false or true.

The people have a right to know — before Tuesday.

For, if true, Clinton could face charges in 2017 and impeachment and removal from office in 2018.

According to Baier, FBI agents have found new emails, believed to have originated on Clinton’s server, on the computer jointly used by close aide Huma Abedin and her disgraced husband, Anthony Weiner.

Abedin’s failure to turn this computer over to the State Department on leaving State appears to be a violation of U.S. law.

Moreover, the laptops of close Clinton aides Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson, thought destroyed by the FBI, were apparently retained and are “being exploited” by the National Security division.

And here is the salient point. His FBI sources told Baier, “with 99 percent” certitude, that Clinton’s Chappaqua server “had been hacked by at least five foreign intelligence services…”

If this is so, Hillary Clinton as security risk ranks right up there with Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White, though they acted out of treasonous ideology and she out of Clintonian hubris. What do these foreign intelligence agencies know about Clinton that the voters do not?

The second revelation from Baier is that the Clinton Foundation has been under active investigation by the white-collar crime division of the FBI for a year and is a “very high priority.”

Specifically, the FBI is looking into published allegations of “pay-to-play.” This is the charge that the Clinton State Department traded access, influence and policy decisions to foreign regimes and to big donors who gave hundreds of millions to the Clinton Foundation, along with 15 years of six-figure speaking fees for Bill and Hillary.

According to Baier’s sources, FBI agents are “actively and aggressively” pursuing this case, have interviewed and re-interviewed multiple persons, and are now being inundated in an “avalanche of new information” from WikiLeaks docuмents and new emails.

The FBI told Baier that they anticipate indictments.

Indeed, with the sums involved, and the intimate ties between high officials of Bill’s foundation, and Hillary and her close aides at State, it strains credulity to believe that deals were not discussed and cut.

Books have been written alleging and detailing them.

Also, not only Fox News but also The Wall Street Journal and other news sources are reporting on what appears a rebellion inside the FBI against strictures on their investigations imposed by higher ups in the Department of Justice of Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

Director Comey has come under fire from left and right — first for refusing to recommend the prosecution of Clinton, then for last week’s statement about the discovery of new and “pertinent” emails on the Abedin-Weiner computer — but retains a reputation for integrity.

And he knows better than any other high official the answer to a critical question that needs answering before Tuesday: Has Baier been fed exaggerated or false information by FBI agents hostile to Clinton?

Or has Baier been told the truth?

In the latter case, we are facing a constitutional crisis if Clinton is elected. And the American people surely have a right to know that before they go to the polls on Tuesday.

What is predictable ahead?

Attorney General Lynch, whether she stays or goes, will be hauled before Congress to explain whether she or top aides impeded the FBI investigations of the Clinton scandals. And witnesses from within her Justice department and FBI will also be called to testify.

Moreover, Senate Republicans would block confirmation of any new attorney general who did not first promise to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the email and pay-to-play scandals, and any pressure from Lynch’s Justice Department on the FBI.

Even Democrats would concede that a Department of Justice, staffed by Hillary Clinton appointees, could not credibly be entrusted with investigating alleged high crimes and misdemeanors by former Secretary of State Clinton and confidants like Abedin and Mills.

An independent counsel, a special prosecutor, appears inevitable.

And such individuals usually mark their success or failure by how many and how high are the indictments and convictions they rack up.

However, these processes proceed at a torpid pace.

First comes the setting up of the office and the hirings, then the investigations, then the grand jury appearances, then the indictments, then the prosecutions, then the horse-trading for the testimony of the accused and the convicted in return for immunity or leniency.

Steadily, it moves up the food chain. And when a head of state is involved, it is a process deeply debilitating to the nation.

We have gone through this before, twice.

Do we really want to go through it again?

Share Pat's Columns!

RomanCatholic1953 · « **Reply #18 on:** November 10, 2016, 03:52:07 PM »

http://buchanan.org/blog/hath-trump-wrought-125976

What Hath Trump Wrought

Patrick J. Buchanan

“If I don’t win, this will be the greatest waste of time, money and energy in my lifetime,” says Donald Trump.

Herewith, a dissent. Whatever happens Tuesday, Trump has made history and has forever changed American politics.

Though a novice in politics, he captured the Party of Lincoln with the largest turnout of primary voters ever, and he has inflicted wounds on the nation’s ruling class from which it may not soon recover.

Bush I and II, Mitt Romney, the neocons and the GOP commentariat all denounced Trump as morally and temperamentally unfit. Yet, seven of eight Republicans are voting for Trump, and he drew the largest and most enthusiastic crowds of any GOP nominee.

Not only did he rout the Republican elites, he ash-canned their agenda and repudiated the wars into which they plunged the country.

Trump did not create the forces that propelled his candidacy. But he recognized them, tapped into them, and unleashed a gusher of nationalism and populism that will not soon dissipate.

Whatever happens Tuesday, there is no going back now.

How could the Republican establishment advance anew the trade and immigration policies that their base has so thunderously rejected?

How can the GOP establishment credibly claim to speak for a party that spent the last year cheering a candidate who repudiated the last two Republican presidents and the last two Republican nominees?

Do mainstream Republicans think that should Trump lose a Bush Restoration lies ahead? The dynasty is as dead as the Romanovs.

The media, whose reputation has sunk to Congressional depths, has also suffered a blow to its credibility.

Its hatred of Trump has been almost manic, and WikiLeaks revelations of the collusion between major media and Clintonites have convinced skeptics that the system is rigged and the referees of democracy are in the tank.

But it is the national establishment that has suffered most.

The Trump candidacy exposed what seems an unbridgeable gulf between this political class and the nation in whose name it purports to speak.

Consider the litany of horrors it has charged Trump with.

He said John McCain was no hero, that some Mexican illegals are “rapists.” He mocked a handicapped reporter. He called some women “pigs.” He wants a temporary ban to Muslim immigration. He fought with a Gold Star mother and father. He once engaged in “fat-shaming” a Miss Universe, calling her “Miss Piggy,” and telling her to stay out of Burger King. He allegedly made crude advances on a dozen women and starred in the “Access Hollywood” tape with Billy Bush.

While such “gaffes” are normally fatal for candidates, Trump’s followers stood by him through them all.

Why? asks an alarmed establishment. Why, in spite of all this, did Trump’s support endure? Why did the American people not react as they once would have? Why do these accusations not have the bite they once did?

Answer. We are another country now, an us-or-them country.

Middle America believes the establishment is not looking out for the nation but for retention of its power. And in attacking Trump it is not upholding some objective moral standard but seeking to destroy a leader who represents a grave threat to that power.

Trump’s followers see an American Spring as crucial, and they are not going to let past boorish behavior cause them to abandon the last best chance to preserve the country they grew up in.

These are the Middle American Radicals, the MARs of whom my late friend Sam Francis wrote.

They recoil from the future the elites have mapped out for them and, realizing the stakes, will overlook the faults and failings of a candidate who holds out the real promise of avoiding that future.

They believe Trump alone will secure the borders and rid us of a trade regime that has led to the loss of 70,000 factories and 5 million manufacturing jobs since NAFTA. They believe Trump is the best hope for keeping us out of the wars the Beltway think tanks are already planning for the sons of the “deplorables” to fight.

Moreover, they see the establishment as the quintessence of hypocrisy. Trump is instructed to stop using such toxic phrases as “America First” and “Make America Great Again” by elites who think 55 million abortions since Roe is a milestone of moral progress.

And what do they have in common with a woman who thinks partial-birth abortion, which her predecessor in the Senate, Pat Moynihan, called “infanticide,” is among the cherished “reproductive rights” of women?

While a Trump victory would create the possibility of a coalition of conservatives, populists, patriots and nationalists governing America, should he lose, America’s future appears disunited and grim.

But, would the followers of Donald Trump, whom Hillary Clinton has called “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic … bigots,” to the cheers of her media retainers, unite behind her should she win?

No. Win or lose, as Sen. Edward Kennedy said at the Democratic Convention of 1980, “The work goes on, the cause endures.”

Share Pat's Columns!

RomanCatholic1953 · « **Reply #19 on:** November 11, 2016, 08:08:07 AM »

Memo to Trump: 'Action this Day!'

Patrick J. Buchanan

11-10-16

http://buchanan.org/blog/memo-trump-action-day-125997

“In victory, magnanimity!” said Winston Churchill.

Donald Trump should be magnanimous and gracious toward those whom he defeated this week, but his first duty is to keep faith with those who put their faith in him.

The protests, riots and violence that have attended his triumph in city after city should only serve to steel his resolve.

As for promptings that he “reach out” and “reassure” those upset by his victory, and trim or temper his agenda to pacify them, Trump should reject the poisoned chalice. This is the same old con.

Trump should take as models the Democrats FDR and LBJ.

Franklin Roosevelt, who had savaged Herbert Hoover as a big spender, launched his own New Deal in his first 100 days.

History now hails his initiative and resolve.

Lyndon Johnson exploited his landslide over Barry Goldwater in 1964 to erect his Great Society in 1965: the Voting Rights Act, Medicare and Medicaid. He compromised on nothing, and got it all.

Even those who turned on him for Vietnam still celebrate his domestic achievements.

President Nixon’s great regret was that he did not bomb Hanoi and mine Haiphong in 1969 — instead of waiting until 1972 — and bring the Vietnam War to an earlier end and with fewer U.S. casualties.

Nixon’s decision not to inflame the social and political crisis of the ’60s by rolling back the Great Society bought him nothing. He was rewarded with media-backed mass demonstrations in 1969 to break his presidency and bring about an American defeat in Vietnam.

“Action this day!” was the scribbled command of Prime Minister Churchill on his notepads in World War II. This should be the motto of the first months of a Trump presidency.

For the historic opportunity he and the Republican Party have been given by his stunning and unanticipated victory of Nov. 8 will not last long. His adversaries and enemies in politics and press are only temporarily dazed and reeling.

This great opening should be exploited now.

Few anticipated Tuesday morning what we would have today: a decapitated Democratic Party, with the Obamas and Clintons gone or going, Joe Biden with them, no national leader rising, and only the power of obstruction, of which the nation has had enough.

The GOP, however, on Jan. 20, will control both Houses of Congress and the White House, with the real possibility of remaking the Supreme Court in the image of the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan have indicated they are willing to work with President Trump.

There is nothing to prevent the new GOP from writing history.

In his first months, Trump could put a seal on American politics as indelible as that left by Ronald Reagan.

A partial agenda: First, he should ignore any importuning by President Obama to permit passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership in a lame-duck session — and let the trade deal sink by year’s end.

On Jan. 20, he should have vetted and ready to nominate to the high court a brilliant constitutionalist and strict constructionist.

He should act to end interference with the Dakota Access pipeline and call on Congress to re-enact legislation, vetoed by Obama, to finish the Keystone XL pipeline. Then he should repeal all Obama regulations that unnecessarily restrict the production of the oil, gas and clean coal necessary to make America energy independent again.

Folks in Pennsylvania, southeast Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia should be shown, by executive action, that Trump is a man of his word. And when the mines open again, he should be there.

He should order new actions to seal the Southern border, start the wall and begin visible deportations of felons who are in the country illegally.

With a new education secretary, he should announce White House intent to work for repeal of Common Core and announce the introduction of legislation to put federal resources behind the charter schools that have proven to be a godsend to inner-city black children.

He should propose an immediate tax cut for U.S. corporations, with $2 to $3 trillion in unrepatriated profits abroad, who will bring the money home and invest it in America, to the benefit of our economy and our Treasury.

He should take the president’s phone and pen and begin the rewriting or repeal of every Obama executive order that does not comport with the national interest or political philosophy of the GOP.

Trump should announce a date soon for repeal and replacement of Obamacare and introduction of his new tax-and-trade legislation to bring back manufacturing and create American jobs.

Donald Trump said in his campaign that that this is America’s last chance. If we lose this one, he said, we lose the country.

The president-elect should ignore his more cautious counselors, and act with the urgency of his declared beliefs.

Share Pat's Columns!