This is what brain-addled Joe Biden and his administration are doing[2], which echoes the misdeeds and oppression by Zionists and settlers in Israel. They have seized Palestinian lands and destroyed their homes, lives and dreams, and subjugated them unmercifully. Indeed, many years ago, Benjamin Netanyahu morphed into his ancestors’ Nazi oppressors. He should be tried as a war criminal for his many crimes—which tragically reverberate globally in the form of anti-Semitism directed at innocent Jews.
Today’s Democrats conveniently neglect to mention that the father of their party, Franklin D. Roosevelt and others in his administration were anti-Semites; and this is their heritage. FDR refused to allow the MS St. Louis to dock at American ports, thereby consigning its Jewish passengers to their fate and often certain death in Europe. Others in FDR’s Administration knew of the trains and death camps, but did nothing about them.[3]
Similarly, the Democrats championed slavery in America, and perpetuated it long after our Civil War ended with the KKK and segregation. More recently, Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” programs destroyed black families and consigned them to economic servitude. Clearly, the Democrats’ hypocrisy knows no bounds; and the criminalization of free speech—and thoughts—is their logical next step.
George Orwell wrote about this in his brilliant “Animal Farm,” where all of the animals were equal until the Pigs reigned supreme and subjugated the other animals.[4]. Today’s Pigs consist of those Israelis who subjugate their non-Jewish neighbors[5]; and the American Leftist neo-Nazi counterparts who would criminalize words and thoughts.[6]
Netanyahu was hated by Ariel Sharon and the Rabins; and the “Lioness” Leah Rabin blamed him for her husband’s tragic assassination. She believed peace was impossible with Netanyahu in power; and her views were prescient. Instead of seeking to criminalize free speech and thoughts, attention should be directed at those Jews who threaten the Palestinians; and their American alter egos.
[1] Timothy D. Naegele was counsel to the United States Senate’s Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and chief of staff to Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal recipient and former U.S. Senator Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass). See, e.g.,Timothy D. Naegele Resume-21-8-6 and https://naegeleknol.wordpress.com/accomplishments/ He has an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), as well as two law degrees from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley, and from Georgetown University. He served as a Captain in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon, where he received the Joint Service Commendation Medal (see, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commendation_Medal#Joint_Service). Mr. Naegele is an Independent politically; and he is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Law, and Who’s Who in Finance and Business. He has written extensively over the years (see, e.g., https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/articles/ and https://naegeleknol.wordpress.com/articles/), and studied photography with Ansel Adams. He can be contacted directly at tdnaegele.associates@gmail.com
[5] As former Policy Adviser to the then President of the State of Israel Shimon Peres, and now Executive Director of J Street Israel, Nadav Tamir wrote on May 21, 2023:
Almost every year, on “Jerusalem Day,” far-right Israeli ethno-nationalists march through the Muslim quarter of the city. For too many of them, it’s a show of force designed to harass, taunt and intimidate Palestinian residents. Many come from the settlements just for the occasion.
This year, men once again chanted “Death to Arabs” and “a second Nakba is coming” as they banged the shutters of Palestinian shops and homes forced to close for the occasion. Boys and teenagers chanted “may your village burn.” Crowds hurled bottles at journalists and Palestinian residents.
This year, they were joined by more than half a dozen members of the Netanyahu government — including ‘Jewish Power’ leader and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
As a former Israeli diplomat and soldier who has proudly represented my homeland, this march defiles everything I would hope the Israeli flag to stand for.
This is not upholding Israel’s founding values of equality, justice and peace. This is not the image of a healthy, thriving and pluralistic democracy. This is incitement, harassment, division and state-sponsored bullying.
Those who truly care about a peaceful, just and democratic future for Israel cannot afford to ignore the growing threat that right-wing, pro-settlement, anti-democratic forces pose to both Israel’s founding ideals and the values at the heart of the US-Israel relationship.
And yes, lots of us began as Democrats but will never vote for one again.
In an article entitled “The Democrats’ Alternative Universe Impeachment,” the former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Newt Gingrich has written:
Watching recent developments in the House Democratic Party, it is clear that the effort to impeach President Trump has nothing to do with facts or a normal process of investigation and evidence-based prosecution.
We are living through a process defined by a pro-Trump universe and an anti-Trump universe. The great economy, record-low unemployment, the conservative judges, the achievements in renewing the Space program, and a host of other positive things are occurring in the pro-Trump universe.
However, the willful avoidance of facts and evidence by left-wing media and left-wing Democrats is a sign that there is an alternative anti-Trump universe.
The report by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz was devastating in its indictment of senior FBI officials – and even more in its repudiation of the lies being told by Democrat House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who is the public face of the impeachment effort. Again and again, Horowitz vindicated the former chairman, Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, and rejected Schiff’s assertions.
On Sunday, Chris Wallace made vividly clear with both former FBI Director James Comey and Chairman Schiff that they simply were not telling the truth. Every American should watch the Wallace interview.
Further, Schiff is not the only Democratic congressman with a big credibility gap. As Paul Sperry reported for RealClearInvestigations, House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler has some real explaining to do.
Sperry wrote that in February 2018, Nadler circulated a ‘Dear Democratic Colleague’ letter – later leaked to the press – that trashed a House Intelligence Committee report detailing FBI spying abuses involving former Trump campaign staffer Carter Page.
But Horowitz last week found the FBI did in fact abuse its authority.
Sperry also notes that “Nadler also insisted in his four-page letter … that a discredited Clinton campaign-funded [Christopher Steele] dossier did not play a substantial role in supporting warrants to spy on Page.”
Inspector General Horowitz found the opposite.
In his letter, Nadler implied that Nunes, was lying about what he had read in classified documents.
But the Horowitz report concurred with Nunes’s findings. In fact, one Republican committee staffer told Sperry that Nadler “has no credibility left.”
The failure of the secret Schiff kangaroo court hearings, combined with the growing repudiation by official inquiries, has convinced many Americans that the whole impeachment process is simply a scheme by Democrats, partisans, and fake news media members who hate President Trump.
In fact, the Horowitz report and other investigations make increasingly clear that The Washington Post, and The New York Times should return the Pulitzers their reporters received for the fake news they were being fed by the deep state opponents of President Trump.
As Lee Smith makes clear in his book The Plot Against the President, the systemic dishonesty of the deep state-fake media-Democratic Party system is deeper and more dishonest than anyone could have imagined a decade ago.
The Democrats’ problems aren’t just with their chairmen. Consider this new report by Chrissy Clark [] in The Federalist:
“Robert Powell, the husband of Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, D-Fla., reportedly took $700,000 from a Ukrainian oligarch named Igor Kolomoisky. Mucarsel-Powell sits on the House Judiciary Committee, the committee that drafted two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump for his alleged abuse of power with regards to Ukraine.”
Of course, in the Democrats’ alternative universe, having Hunter Biden accept millions from a Ukrainian company, or a Judiciary Committee member’s husband accepting $700,000 in Ukrainian oligarch funding, or an FBI senior manager’s wife getting nearly $700,000 in campaign funds from Clinton-aligned Democrats are simply business as usual. In the Democrats’ left-wing world, all bad things are Republican and conservative and no wrongdoing can be alleged against the deep state-fake news-Democrat alliance against President Trump.
The growing understanding of how sick the system is has turned more and more Americans against the Democratic Party’s impeachment campaign. In a remarkable turn of events people actually believe the process may strengthen President Trump. This is literally making fake news analysts’ heads hurt.
Steve Krakauer in the Fourth Watch media newsletter wrote that a recent CNN poll found that only 25 percent Americans think the impeachment circus will hurt President Trump’s re-election campaign. Meanwhile 37 percent think it will have no effect and 32 percent believe it will help him get re-elected.
According to Krakauer: “When David Chalian reported this to Anderson Cooper tonight on AC360, Cooper was stunned. ‘This poll hurts my head,’ said Cooper. ‘I mean, David, do you believe these polls?’
With the current impeachment process having lost ground with the American people – and with the Republican Senate certain to sustain the President and reject the dishonest hypocrisy of the House Democrats – what can we expect in this world of an alternative, anti-Trump universe?
The answer is apparently a permanent impeachment process – no matter what the American people want or what the evidence or lack of evidence indicates.
Consider this report from Politico:
“In a filing to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, House General Counsel Douglas Letter argued that the House’s demands for grand jury materials connected to former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation were still urgent because such evidence might become relevant to the Senate’s expected impeachment trial next month.
“But Letter went further to note that even apart from the Senate trial, the House Judiciary Committee intends to continue its impeachment investigation arising from the Mueller probe on its own merit.
“‘The committee has continued and will continue [its impeachment] investigations consistent with its own prior statements respecting their importance and purposes,’ Letter wrote in a filing Monday as part of the House’s bid to obtain Mueller’s grand jury evidence.”
In other words, the Democrats are already laying the ground for yet another impeachment effort once this one fails.
The 2020 campaign is going to be a tale of two vividly different universes.
Which one the American people decide is better for themselves and their country will do a great deal to define the next century of American progress – or decay.[2]
Again, Congressional Democrats must not only be defeated but crushed, in elections across this great nation. The despicable Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler must become the Joe McCarthys of this era: pariahs who are ridiculed and driven to shame and obscurity.
Next, Americans must turn their attention to imprisoning the racist anti-Semite Barack Obama and his fellow treasonous co-conspirators for the rest of their lives, at the very least.[3]
[1] Timothy D. Naegele was counsel to the United States Senate’s Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and chief of staff to Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal recipient and former U.S. Senator Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass). He and his firm, Timothy D. Naegele & Associates, specialize in Banking and Financial Institutions Law, Internet Law, Litigation and other matters (seewww.naegele.com and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/timothy-d.-naegele-resume-20-1-1.pdf). He has an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), as well as two law degrees from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley, and from Georgetown University. He served as a Captain in the U.S. Army, assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon, where he received the Joint Service Commendation Medal (see, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commendation_Medal#Joint_Service). Mr. Naegele is an Independent politically; and he is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Law, and Who’s Who in Finance and Business. He has written extensively over the years (see, e.g., www.naegele.com/whats_new.html#articles), and can be contacted directly at tdnaegele.associates@gmail.com
And yes, lots of us began as Democrats but will never vote for one again.
In an article entitled “Hidden by impeachment: One of Trump’s ‘best weeks yet,'” Paul Bedard has written:
While the media and his critics focused on the bitterly divided House impeachment hearings, President Trump this week collected the most agenda wins yet, policy victories, including some backed by Democrats, that bolster arguments he’s making for reelection, according to advisers and analysts.
From adding judges to foreign policy, trade, immigration, defense spending, and China, Trump added several more achievements he will tout when he hosts his next campaign rally, standing in front of a 2020 “Promises Kept” sign.
“It was one of his best weeks yet,” said a key White House adviser.
One of his pollsters, John McLaughlin, joked that if public anger at impeachment continues to grow, worried Democrats might get in line to pass more of his agenda to give them protection in their reelections next year.
“Democrats in states and districts the president won are at serious risk if they vote for impeachment. So they are rushing to vote for the president’s popular positions,” he said, adding, “If [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and [Senate Minority Leader Chuck] Schumer keep pressing impeachment, it’s likely the president will get his entire agenda passed and reelected in a landslide.”
Added to the list of accomplishments this week:
• An agreement on a new U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal. • A new budget including more than $1.3 billion for a border wall and blocks a government shutdown. • House approval of the U.S. Space Force, a brand-new branch of the military. • Government family leave that will be a model for a proposal for the public. • Tentative agreement on trade with China. • Approval of Trump’s 50th federal appeals judge. • Confirmation of a new Food and Drug Administration chief. • The signing of a pro-Israel anti-Semitism executive order.
Plus, advisers noted, Wall Street hit another record, and Pelosi conceded that on impeachment, “It’s been going on 22 months — two and a half years, actually.”
And, the advisers added, with impeachment likely, the president was assured by McConnell that the Senate would move fast on a trial that will end in acquittal and might include the support of two Senate Democrats, according to Sen. Rand Paul.
“There is one world where the mainstream media is covering impeachment, but there is another world where Trump is racking up a myriad of accomplishments, many of which have the support of the same Democrats who want to remove him from office,” said political communications strategist Ron Bonjean.
A GOP adviser said, “President Trump and the Republicans are an irresistible force surging over, around, and through the gelatinous Democrats — a growing number of whom are realizing daily that what they’re doing is seen by the public as trivial and senseless. Just think of what could be accomplished for our country if the loony Left wasn’t so obsessed with destroying Trump.”
Trump biographer Doug Wead also took note of the president’s actions in the shadow of impeachment.
“Perhaps, for now, what he accomplished this week will be overshadowed by the impeachment, but by next summer, the impeachment may be seen as mean-spirited and partisan, and the string of victories will add to his incredible list of victories going into reelection season,” he said.
Wead, who spent months inside the White House interviewing the president and top aides, said that he hadn’t been surprised by Trump’s aggressive fight on impeachment and his campaign to rack up wins.
“During impeachment, any other president would retreat into the bunker and be consumed with defense. Endlessly gaming various scenarios. Instead, Trump, the businessman, is looking for a way to use it to his advantage,” he said.
“He is the master magician, waving one hand to distract, while with the other hand, he makes the trick work. In this case, the Democrats provided this unwanted distraction, but he clearly seized on the moment,” Wead added.[2]
Democrats must not only be defeated but crushed, in elections across this great nation. The despicable Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler must become the Joe McCarthys of this era: ridiculed and driven to obscurity.
Next, Americans must turn their attention to imprisoning the racist anti-Semite Barack Obama and his fellow treasonous co-conspirators for the rest of their lives, at the very least.[3]
[1] Timothy D. Naegele was counsel to the United States Senate’s Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and chief of staff to Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal recipient and former U.S. Senator Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass). He and his firm, Timothy D. Naegele & Associates, specialize in Banking and Financial Institutions Law, Internet Law, Litigation and other matters (seewww.naegele.com and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/timothy-d.-naegele-resume-20-1-1.pdf). He has an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), as well as two law degrees from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley, and from Georgetown University. He served as a Captain in the U.S. Army, assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon, where he received the Joint Service Commendation Medal (see, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commendation_Medal#Joint_Service). Mr. Naegele is an Independent politically; and he is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Law, and Who’s Who in Finance and Business. He has written extensively over the years (see, e.g., www.naegele.com/whats_new.html#articles), and can be contacted directly at tdnaegele.associates@gmail.com
Perhaps an even more important and obvious question is when will Barack Obama go to prison—at the very least—for his many crimes including treason, which is punishable by death?[2]
He is an un-American racist and anti-Semite, who has done more damage to our great nation than any other president.[3] Most egregious is that he is responsible for the efforts to destroy the candidacy and then the presidency of Donald Trump, which continue to this day in the form of farcical impeachment proceedings on Capitol Hill.
Until Obama is brought to justice, no American should believe in our system of justice again. It is a joke, and nonexistent.[4] The Clintons—Bill and Hillary—proved that in spades as they scoffed at the system, and effectively ignored it.[5] And yes, lots of us began as Democrats but will never vote for one again.
Having brought down Richard Nixon’s presidency, America’s Left—in the form of the Democratic Party and their so-called “mainstream media” cohorts—tried desperately to destroy the presidency of Ronald Reagan as a result of Iran Contra hearings and investigations. Now they have moved on to their third GOP president, Trump.
Having produced nothing as a result of Robert Mueller’s extensive investigations[6], they have shifted their avenues of attack to one issue after another, hoping desperately to destroy the Trump presidency—or at least wound it fatally before next year’s elections.
They are the “Pigs” that George Orwell wrote about in his prescient Animal Farm, where all of the animals were equal until the “Pigs” accreted power and control, and reigned supreme, and were masters over—and subjugated—the other animals.[7] They must be stopped in their tracks and destroyed, like Abraham Lincoln ended the lives and efforts of those who would have torn asunder our great nation and left it in ruins.
We are in a battle for the “soul” of America, which will determine whether it will survive or not. The stakes are every bit as high as those facing Lincoln, and his two key generals Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman. Lincoln went through lots of military commanders until he found the right two; and the three of them saved our nation from certain destruction.[8]
[1] Timothy D. Naegele was counsel to the United States Senate’s Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and chief of staff to Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal recipient and former U.S. Senator Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass). He and his firm, Timothy D. Naegele & Associates, specialize in Banking and Financial Institutions Law, Internet Law, Litigation and other matters (seewww.naegele.com and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/timothy-d.-naegele-resume-19-9-27.pdf). He has an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), as well as two law degrees from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley, and from Georgetown University. He served as a Captain in the U.S. Army, assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon, where he received the Joint Service Commendation Medal (see, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commendation_Medal#Joint_Service). Mr. Naegele is an Independent politically; and he is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Law, and Who’s Who in Finance and Business. He has written extensively over the years (see, e.g., www.naegele.com/whats_new.html#articles), and can be contacted directly at tdnaegele.associates@gmail.com
Some of us have lived through this period of time before. Only the faces change.
We were in Berkeley for the “Free Speech” and anti-Vietnam War riots. We were in Washington, D.C. when the city was set ablaze after Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed in Memphis. We were there when Watergate broke, and we lived through that too. We lived with 9/11, and watched Iraq turn into a graveyard for so many Americans and their dreams, while still others were maimed for life, and trillions of dollars were wasted . . . for nothing.[2]
The title of this article is the rallying cry of Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—who has written:
Sunday morning, President Trump announced that the world’s worst terrorist, the head of the ISIS caliphate who had raped an American woman, had received justice.
About to be captured and carried off in a helicopter by U.S. special forces, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi blew himself up with an explosive vest in a compound in northwest Syria. The long search for the sadist and fanatic had ended in triumph. No U.S. troops were lost.
That evening, Trump went out to the fifth game of the World Series between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros. As his face was flashed on the big screen, the stadium erupted with people booing and chanting, “Impeach Trump!” and “Lock him up!”
That Trump is not cheered at a D.C. baseball game is not odd, for the spectators are not working-class Trumpians. Series tickets cost hundreds, even thousands, of dollars, and the spectators are drawn from a town that gave Donald Trump 4% of its votes in 2016.
The mutual distrust in this city was on display when Trump told the press yesterday morning that he had not alerted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the impending U.S. raid, because he was afraid of leaks.
“I wanted to make sure this kept secret,” said Trump. “I don’t want to have people lost. … We were going to notify them last night, but we decided not to do that because Washington leaks like nothing I’ve ever seen before. … A leak could have cost the death of all of them.”
The Russians, however, were alerted we were coming, as they control the airspace over the compound we were targeting. And Trump thanked the Russians for their cooperation.
Also left out of the loop was the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, one of the “Gang of Eight” that is almost always given a heads-up about major military operations. Schiff is conducting secret hearings to drum up support for Trump’s impeachment and removal for “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
It is imprecise to say this city is divided over Trump. It is rather almost solidly united behind what millions of Middle Americans believe to be a deep state-media conspiracy to overturn the 2016 election and effect a coup d’etat against a president whom this city detests but fears it cannot defeat in 2020.
A week ago, this writer noted the astonishing number of foreign capitals that were on fire with protests that go beyond marching and demonstrating — to riot, rebellion and even revolution. As with the “yellow vest” protests that shut down Paris on many weekends this past year, and the disorders in Hong Kong, the epidemic had spread to Beirut, Barcelona and Santiago, Chile.
In Iraq, over 200 have been killed and thousands injured in protests this month against the Baghdad regime. In Algeria, now six months after President Abdelaziz Bouteflika was forced to step down, rioters still battle the army.
The thread common to these uncivil, often-violent disruptions?
A conviction that the cause the protesters are advancing is so critical, noble and necessary that democratic rules may be dispensed with and law and order suspended in pursuit of the cause.
Saturday’s Washington Post describes the mindset that is taking hold in D.C. among militants, using as an example the Extinction Rebellion group’s dragging of a boat into the street at 16th & K to block traffic for hours to call attention to rising sea levels.
“Blocking traffic may only be the beginning,” wrote Marissa Lang. “As protests in the District continue at a rate of about two a day, activists looking to stand out from crowds that march near the White House or the Mall have resorted to more disruptive measures in recent weeks — a tactic that experts said will probably escalate.”
She cites sociology professor Dana Fisher: “There has been a lot of discussion among people on the left who use protests as a tactic that peaceful, traditional protests may not be enough. … That could mean … more people blocking traffic. … I think we’re going to see a lot more people coming into D.C. to get arrested.”
Fisher continues: “When activists don’t feel like their grievances are being heard or responded to … the natural progression is to get more confrontational and, sometimes, to get more violent. … I’m … surprised it’s taken so long.”
Who wins when leftists go lawless — in liberal citadels like D.C.?
This thinking echoes the famous “bodies upon the gears” speech of Mario Savio at the famous 1964 University of California, Berkeley campus riot: “There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that … you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop!”
After Berkeley came civil disobedience; the burning of ROTC buildings; and urban riots marked by looting, shooting and arson. Out of that came Richard Nixon’s 49-state landslide, Ronald Reagan, and Republican triumphs in five of six presidential elections starting in 1968.
Bring it on.[3]
To those at the stadium in our nation’s capital who booed the President—and chanted, “Impeach Trump!” and “Lock him up!”—they are the dregs of society, without a purpose in life. Pat Buchanan is right: they are not working-class Americans, but the privileged elite; and they occupy a town that gave Donald Trump only four percent of its votes in 2016. They do not relate to you and me. They are like the Hollywood-do-nothings who prance around spouting meaningless platitudes, and feeling entitled.
Trump is right not to trust any Democrats, or those on the far-Left, or their media lackeys—or the RINOs in the Republican Party such as the despicable Mitt Romney. Yes, lots of us are ashamed that we voted for him and the equally-despicable Paul Ryan and others.[4] And yes too, Russia’s killer and dictator-for-life Vladimir Putin whom I despise is more trustworthy than the un-American racist anti-Semite Barack Obama and his co-conspirators who have engaged in sedition, such as Adam Schiff, Maxine Waters and Jerry Nadler.[5]
A rising number of Americans are understanding, finally, that we are in the midst of this great nation’s second Civil War: a fight for the soul of America, which will determine its destiny for years and generations to come. Abraham Lincoln stood at a similar precipice, and stared into the abyss, and he destroyed the enemy. While it took generations to heal, he saved our great Republic. Had he failed, we might not be one nation today.[6] Donald Trump is his worthy successor.
[1] Timothy D. Naegele was counsel to the United States Senate’s Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and chief of staff to Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal recipient and former U.S. Senator Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass). He and his firm, Timothy D. Naegele & Associates, specialize in Banking and Financial Institutions Law, Internet Law, Litigation and other matters (seewww.naegele.com and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/timothy-d.-naegele-resume-19-9-27.pdf). He has an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), as well as two law degrees from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley, and from Georgetown University. He served as a Captain in the U.S. Army, assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon, where he received the Joint Service Commendation Medal (see, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commendation_Medal#Joint_Service). Mr. Naegele is an Independent politically; and he is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Law, and Who’s Who in Finance and Business. He has written extensively over the years (see, e.g., www.naegele.com/whats_new.html#articles), and can be contacted directly at tdnaegele.associates@gmail.com
The United States has the purest form of democracy in the world. Does this mean that it is perfect, and without flaws? Certainly not. But we are blessed by our Founders’ inherent wisdom, which has stood the tests of time. Years ago, I wrote:
I believe in this country, and I believe in Americans of all colors, faiths and backgrounds. The United States is the only true melting pot in the world, with its populace representing a United Nations of the world’s peoples. Yes, we fight and we even discriminate, but when times are tough—like after 9/11—we come together as one nation, which makes this country so great and special. Also, all of us or our ancestors came here from somewhere else. Even the American Indians are descended from those who crossed the Bering Strait—or the “Bering land bridge”—according to anthropologists.[2]
Pat Buchanan—an adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, and a former GOP presidential aspirant himself—has asked the question that is the title of this article:
What happens when democracy fails to deliver? What happens when people give up on democracy?
What happens when a majority or militant minority decide that the constitutional rights of free speech, free elections, peaceful assembly and petition are inadequate and take to the streets to force democracy to submit to their demands?
Our world may be about to find out.
Chile is the most stable and prosperous country in Latin America.
Yet when its capital, Santiago, recently raised subway fares by 5%, thousands poured into the streets. Rioting, looting, arson followed. The Metro system was utterly trashed. Police were assaulted. People died. The rioting spread to six other cities. Troops were called out.
President a Sebastian Pinera repealed the fare hike and declared a national emergency, stating, “Chile is at war against a powerful, implacable enemy who does not respect anything or anyone and is willing to use violence and crime without any limits.”
How does a democracy that has spawned within itself a powerful and implacable enemy deal with it?
Last week, tens of thousands of Lebanese of all faiths and political associations rioted in Beirut and Tripoli to demand the overthrow of the regime and the ouster of its president, speaker of parliament and Prime Minister Saad Hariri. All must go, the masses demand.
In Barcelona, Friday, half a million people surged into the streets in protest after the sentencing in Madrid of the secessionists who sought to bring about the independence of Catalonia from Spain in 2017.
In all of China, few enjoy the freedoms of the 7 million in Hong Kong. Yet, for five months, these fortunate and free Chinese, to protest a proposal that would have allowed Hong Kong residents to be extradited to China, stormed into the streets to defy the regime and denounce the conditions under which they live.
These protests have been marked by riots, vandalism, arson and clashes with police. “Hong Kong streets descended into chaos following an unauthorized pro-democracy rally Sunday,” writes the Associated Press. Protesters “set up roadblocks and torched businesses, and police responded with tear gas and a water cannon. Protesters tossed firebombs and took their anger out on shops with mainland Chinese ties.”
What are the Hong Kong residents denouncing and demanding?
They are protesting both present and future limitations on their freedom. The appearance of American flags in the protests suggests that what they seek is what the agitators behind the Boston Tea Party and the boys and men at Concord Bridge sought — independence, liberty and a severing of the ties to the mother country.
Yet, because the Communist regime of Xi Jinping could not survive such an amputation, the liberation of Hong Kong is not in the cards. The end to these months of protest will likely be frustration, futility and failure.
Perhaps it is that realization that explains the vehemence and violence. But the rage is also what kills the support they initially received.
In 1960s America, the first civil rights demonstrations attracted widespread sympathy. But the outburst of urban riots that followed in Harlem, Watts, Newark, Detroit and 100 cities after Martin Luther King’s assassination sent millions streaming to the banners of Gov. George Wallace in the campaigns of 1968 and 1972.
When the “yellow vest” protests broke out in 2018 in Paris, over a fuel tax, the demonstrators had the support of millions of Frenchmen.
But that support dissipated when protesters began smashing windows of boutique shops on the Champs-Elysee, assaulting police and desecrating monuments and memorials.
This reversion to violence, ransacking of stores and showering of police with bricks, bottles and debris, is costing the protesters much of the backing they enjoyed. In the trade-off between freedom and order, people will ultimately opt for order.
Yet, one wonders: Why are these outbursts of violent protests and rioting taking place in stable, free and prosperous societies?
Chile is the most stable and wealthy country in South America. Catalonia is the most prosperous part of Spain. Paris is hardly a hellhole of repression. And Hong Kong is the freest city of China.
If the beneficiaries of freedoms and democratic rights come to regard them as insufficient to produce the political, economic and social results they demand, what does that portend for democracy’s future?
For, despite the looting, arson and attacks on cops in Hong Kong, Xi Jinping is not going to order his satraps to yield to popular demands for autonomy or independence. Nor is Madrid going to accept the loss of Barcelona and secession of Catalonia. Nor is the conservative Chilean government going to yield to the street rebels and revolutionaries. Nor is Paris going to back down to the “yellow vests.”
Yet, one wonders: If the “end of history” and worldwide triumph of democratic capitalism thesis has, as most agree, been disproven, is it possible that the Age of Democracy is itself a passing phase in the history of the West and the world?[3]
Americans have not given up on democracy at all. While many are at odds with their fellow citizens about the direction that our great nation should take, they are exercising their rights of free speech dramatically, for an often-troubled world to see. Is it a pretty sight? Is democracy in action an edifying experience? Not always, but it is a sign that our great democracy is functioning.
The rifts in our body politic cut across lots of fracture lines: Donald Trump or no Trump[4]; abortions or no abortions[5]; foreign wars or no foreign wars[6]; the admission of illegal immigrants or none[7]; man-made “global warming,” or one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated on Mankind by the “eco-Nazis”[8]; — . . . and the list goes on and on.
If one person could be said to have been at the very heart of the cleavages in our society today it is the racist and anti-Semite Barack Obama, who did more than any other president to resew the seeds of racism in America today, and to divide this country along fault lines that are “fragile” in the best of times.[9] By leading the treasonous efforts to destroy the candidacy and then the presidency of Donald Trump, there is no doubt that Obama engaged in sedition, which is consistent with his character.[10]
Pat Buchanan was correct when he observed that “the rage is . . . what kills the support they initially received”—and we have seen all of this before (e.g., during the Vietnam War era), and survived. George Orwell warned about it in his prescient Animal Farm, where all of the animals were considered equal until the Pigs accreted power and control, and subjugated the other animals (or “disbelievers”) until they reigned supreme.[11]
Abraham Lincoln and his trusted generals, Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman, dealt with the harsh realities of divisions within our great nation that might have torn it asunder—and they prevailed.[12] At times, the forces of division (and of evil and darkness) must be destroyed, not simply defeated. Nothing less will suffice. This was certainly true of Adolph Hitler and his “Thousand-Year Reich.”
Lastly, Pat Buchanan was mistaken in the conclusion of his article above. In the United States, the Left is being given enough rope to hang itself, like its alter egos did before. And most Americans are myopic: they are focused on their own lives, and do not really care what goes on in the world outside—as long as it does not affect them—which is understandable.
[1] Timothy D. Naegele was counsel to the United States Senate’s Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and chief of staff to Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal recipient and former U.S. Senator Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass). He and his firm, Timothy D. Naegele & Associates, specialize in Banking and Financial Institutions Law, Internet Law, Litigation and other matters (seewww.naegele.com and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/timothy-d.-naegele-resume-19-9-27.pdf). He has an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), as well as two law degrees from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley, and from Georgetown University. He served as a Captain in the U.S. Army, assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon, where he received the Joint Service Commendation Medal (see, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commendation_Medal#Joint_Service). Mr. Naegele is an Independent politically; and he is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Law, and Who’s Who in Finance and Business. He has written extensively over the years (see, e.g., www.naegele.com/whats_new.html#articles), and can be contacted directly at tdnaegele.associates@gmail.com
God love him, Ronald Reagan destroyed the Soviet Union’s Evil Empire, and brought down Communism, and made the world safer for democracy—and the United States into the world’s preeminent and only superpower that it is today, with no peers. Yet, he was maligned and hated from Day One; and the same forces that are seeking to destroy Donald Trump tried desperately to destroy Reagan’s presidency too. Their appetites, and perpetual and insatiable thirst for blood, were whetted by having destroyed one conservative president, Richard Nixon. Reagan was their next target; and Iran Contra was their preferred means of taking him down. However, they failed. Much to their everlasting contempt, disgust and dismay, Reagan is lionized today.
The script is repeating itself with Trump. And there are RINOs in the GOP (or Republicans In Name Only), such as the despicable Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan—two losers, with respect to whom lots of us are ashamed of having voted for them—who are aligned with the Democrats’ efforts, and with those of other radical far-Leftists and their “fellow travelers” in the media.[2] Clearly, this is a war, every bit as sinister as the prospects for war that Abraham Lincoln faced. Yet he stood tall and faced down our enemies, foreign[3] and domestic[4], and it changed the course of America forever.[5]
There are reasons to believe that Donald Trump will follow Lincoln’s path, and prevail. The “Pigs” of George Orwell’s Animal Farm are trying to take over, and subjugate all of the others animals—which are us—and they must be stopped . . . and yes, destroyed.[6] They are a threat to our great Republic, and to our way of life. Gregg Re and John Roberts have written at Fox News:
The White House outlined in a defiant eight-page letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and top Democrats on Tuesday why it will not participate in their “illegitimate and unconstitutional” impeachment inquiry, charging that the proceedings have run roughshod over congressional norms and the president’s due-process rights.
Trump administration officials called the letter, which was written by White House counsel Pat Cipollone and obtained by Fox News, perhaps the most historic letter the White House has sent. The document tees up a head-on collision with Democrats in Congress, who have fired off a slew of subpoenas in recent days concerning the president’s alleged effort to get Ukraine to investigate political foe Joe Biden during a July phone call with Ukraine’s leader.
“President Trump and his administration reject your baseless, unconstitutional efforts to overturn the democratic process,” the letter stated. “Your unprecedented actions have left the president with no choice. In order to fulfill his duties to the American people, the Constitution, the Executive Branch, and all future occupants of the Office of the Presidency, President Trump and his administration cannot participate in your partisan and unconstitutional inquiry under these circumstances.”
The document concluded: “The president has a country to lead. The American people elected him to do this job, and he remains focused on fulfilling his promises to the American people.”
Responding to the letter, Pelosi accused Trump of “trying to make lawlessness a virtue” and added, “The American people have already heard the President’s own words – ‘do us a favor, though.’” (That line, from a transcript of Trump’s call with Ukraine’s leader, in reality referred to Trump’s request for Ukraine to assist in an investigation into 2016 election interference, and did not relate to Biden.)
Pelosi continued: “This letter is manifestly wrong, and is simply another unlawful attempt to hide the facts of the Trump Administration’s brazen efforts to pressure foreign powers to intervene in the 2020 elections. … The White House should be warned that continued efforts to hide the truth of the President’s abuse of power from the American people will be regarded as further evidence of obstruction. Mr. President, you are not above the law. You will be held accountable.”
Substantively, the White House first noted in its letter that there has not been a formal vote in the House to open an impeachment inquiry — and that the news conference held by Pelosi last month was insufficient to commence the proceedings.
“In the history of our nation, the House of Representatives has never attempted to launch an impeachment inquiry against the president without a majority of the House taking political accountability for that decision by voting to authorize such a dramatic constitutional step,” the letter stated.
It continued: “Without waiting to see what was actually said on the call, a press conference was held announcing an ‘impeachment inquiry’ based on falsehoods and misinformation about the call.”
Despite Pelosi’s claim that there was no “House precedent that the whole House vote before proceeding with an impeachment inquiry,” several previous impeachment inquiries have been launched only by a full vote of the House — including the impeachment proceedings concerning former Presidents Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.
White House officials told Fox News the vote opening the proceedings was a small ask, considering the implications of potentially overturning a national election.
The letter went on to note that “information has recently come to light that the whistleblower” who first flagged Trump’s call with Ukraine’s president “had contact with [House Intelligence Committee] Chairman [Adam] Schiff’s office before filing the complaint.”
And Schiff’s “initial denial of such contact caused The Washington Post to conclude that Chairman Schiff “clearly made a statement that was false,” the letter observed.
Multiple reports surfaced this week that the whistleblower had a prior “professional relationship” with one of the 2020 Democratic candidates for president. On Friday, lawyers for the whistleblower did not respond to questions from Fox News about the whistleblower’s possible previous relationship with any currently prominent Democrat.
The letter added: “In any event, the American people understand that Chairman Schiff cannot covertly assist with the submission of a complaint, mislead the public about his involvement, read a counterfeit version of the call to the American people, and then pretend to sit in judgment as a neutral ‘investigator.'”
The White House was dinging Schiff for reciting a fictional version of Trump’s call with Ukraine’s leader during a congressional hearing. Schiff later called his statements a “parody.”
“Perhaps the best evidence that there was no wrongdoing on the call is the fact that, after the actual record of the call was released, Chairman Schiff chose to concoct a false version of the call and to read his made-up transcript to the American people at a public hearing,” the letter stated. “The chairman’s action only further undermines the public’s confidence in the fairness of any inquiry before his committee.”
Ukraine’s president has said he felt Trump did nothing improper in their July call, and DOJ lawyers who reviewed the call said they found no laws had been broken. The White House released a transcript of the conversation last month, as well as the whistleblower’s complaint, which seemingly relied entirely on second-hand information.
Separately, the letter asserted multiple alleged violations of the president’s due-process rights. It noted that under current impeachment inquiry proceedings, Democrats were not allowing presidential or State Department counsel to be present.
Democrats’ procedures did not provide for the “disclosure of all evidence favorable to the president and all evidence bearing on the credibility of witnesses called to testify in the inquiry,” the letter noted, nor did the procedures afford the president “the right to see all evidence, to present evidence, to call witnesses, to have counsel present at all hearings, to cross-examine all witnesses, to make objections relating to the examination of witnesses or the admissibility of testimony and evidence, and to respond to evidence and testimony.”
Democrats also have not permitted Republicans in the minority to issue subpoenas, contradicting the “standard, bipartisan practice in all recent resolutions authorizing presidential impeachment inquiries.”
The letter claimed that House committees have “resorted to threats and intimidation against potential Executive Branch witnesses,” by raising the specter of obstruction of justice when administration employees seek to assert “long-established Executive Branch confidentiality interests and privileges in response to a request for a deposition.”
“Current and former State Department officials are duty bound to protect the confidentiality interests of the Executive Branch, and the Office of Legal Counsel has also recognized that it is unconstitutional to exclude agency counsel from participating in congressional depositions,” the letter stated.
Additionally, the letter noted that Democrats reportedly were planning to interview the whistleblower at the center of the impeachment inquiry at an undisclosed location — contrary, the White House said, to the constitutional notion of being able to confront one’s accuser.
According to a White House official, the bottom line was: “We are not participating in your illegitimate exercise. … If you are legitimately conducting oversight, let us know. But all indications are this is about impeachment.”
The document came as the White House aggressively has parried Democrats’ inquiry efforts. One of the administration’s first moves: the State Department on Tuesday barred Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, from appearing before a House panel conducting the probe into Trump.
“I would love to send Ambassador Sondland, a really good man and great American, to testify, but unfortunately he would be testifying before a totally compromised kangaroo court, where Republican’s rights have been taken away, and true facts are not allowed out for the public to see,” Trump tweeted.
The strategy risked further provoking Democrats in the impeachment probe, setting up court challenges and the potential for lawmakers to draw up an article of impeachment accusing Trump of obstructing their investigations. Schiff said Sondland’s no-show would be grounds for obstruction of justice and could give a preview of what some of the articles of impeachment against Trump would entail.
But, as lawmakers sought to amass ammunition to be used in an impeachment trial, the White House increasingly has signaled that all-out warfare was its best course of action.
“What they did to this country is unthinkable. It’s lucky that I’m the president. A lot of people said very few people could handle it. I sort of thrive on it,” Trump said Monday at the White House. “You can’t impeach a president for doing a great job. This is a scam.”
House Democrats, for their part, issued a new round of subpoenas on Monday, this time to Defense Secretary Mark Esper and acting White House budget director Russell Vought. Pelosi’s office also released an open letter signed by 90 former national security officials who served in administrations from both parties, voicing support for the whistleblower who raised concerns about Trump’s efforts to get Ukraine to look into Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine.
“A responsible whistleblower makes all Americans safer by ensuring that serious wrongdoing can be investigated and addressed, thus advancing the cause of national security to which we have devoted our careers,” they wrote. “Whatever one’s view of the matters discussed in the whistleblower’s complaint, all Americans should be united in demanding that all branches of our government and all outlets of our media protect this whistleblower and his or her identity. Simply put, he or she has done what our law demands; now he or she deserves our protection.”
The House Intelligence, Oversight and Foreign Affairs Committees were investigating Trump’s actions alleging he pressured Ukraine to investigate Biden and his son, potentially interfering in the 2020 election. The former vice president, for his part, has accused Trump of “frantically pushing flat-out lies, debunked conspiracy theories and smears against me.” And, Biden’s campaign has sought to have Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, who has accused Biden of possible corruption, removed from the airwaves.
Biden has acknowledged on camera that in spring 2016, when he was vice president and spearheading the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy, he successfully pressured Ukraine to fire top prosecutor Viktor Shokin. At the time, Shokin was investigating Burisma Holdings — where Hunter had a lucrative role on the board despite limited relevant expertise. Critics have suggested Hunter Biden’s salary bought access to Biden.
The vice president threatened to withhold $1 billion in critical U.S. aid if Shokin, who was widely accused of corruption, was not fired.
“Well, son of a b—h, he got fired,” Biden joked at a panel two years after leaving office.[7]
Bravo. Never has an American president stood taller, to fight off the efforts of barbarians and to protect our great Republic, for future generations of Americans. Lincoln did this. Reagan did too. And now Trump. All were besieged from almost every quarter; and ultimately the great Lincoln paid with his life. But the United States survived; and it will this time too. The barbarians at our gates must be spurned and, yes, destroyed. They have not left any other choices.
And the instigator of all of this—the un-American traitor, racist and anti-Semite, Barack Obama—should pay with his life for his sedition.[8]
[1] Timothy D. Naegele was counsel to the United States Senate’s Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and chief of staff to Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal recipient and former U.S. Senator Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass). He and his firm, Timothy D. Naegele & Associates, specialize in Banking and Financial Institutions Law, Internet Law, Litigation and other matters (seewww.naegele.com and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/timothy-d.-naegele-resume-19-9-27.pdf). He has an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), as well as two law degrees from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley, and from Georgetown University. He served as a Captain in the U.S. Army, assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon, where he received the Joint Service Commendation Medal (see, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commendation_Medal#Joint_Service). Mr. Naegele is an Independent politically; and he is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Law, and Who’s Who in Finance and Business. He has written extensively over the years (see, e.g., www.naegele.com/whats_new.html#articles), and can be contacted directly at tdnaegele.associates@gmail.com
Like it or not, this is what the far-Left Democrats and their kindred spirits in America’s so-called “mainstream media” have wrought. They are the party that gave us the senseless and tragic Vietnam War during which more than 55,000 Americans died—and many more were maimed, and to this day are “walking wounded”—and the party that gave us Watergate. And yes, lots of us began as Democrats, but will never vote for one again.
Today, they have a blood thirst for destroying the presidency of Donald Trump; and the father and progenitor of this is the un-American traitor, racist and anti-Semite, Barack Obama. Instead of healing racial divisions in this great nation, he exacerbated them and fed them. Few Americans took time to read his book before his election as our president in 2008, “Dreams from My Father.”[2] If they had, they would have realized fully his un-American and racist views.
Having grown up in Hawaii and Indonesia, he never lived on the U.S. mainland until he attended Occidental College in Los Angeles, and later Columbia University in New York City, during which time he admitted to being a “druggie.” A direct quote:
Junkie. Pothead. That’s where I’d been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man.[3]
He attended the church of the racist Jeremiah Wright for many years[4]; and he openly embraced the notorious anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan.[5] Because Obama smiled, and seemingly supported American values, many in the United States were fooled by who he was and really is. Deceit may be the hallmark of his life.
Perhaps the once-respected New York Times has put these issues in their starkest form, in the following article by Alexander Burns and Nick Corasaniti, albeit not intending to do so:
After the 2016 election, Democratic leaders reached an all but unanimous conclusion: To defeat President Trump in 2020, they would have to do more than condemn his offensive behavior and far-right ideology, as Hillary Clinton had done. They would need, above all, to promote a clear and exciting agenda of their own.
They took that lesson to heart in the midterm elections and afterward, capturing the House of Representatives with a focus on health care and then attempting to impress the electorate by passing legislation on matters like campaign finance reform and the minimum wage. As Democratic presidential contenders pushed campaigns built on big ideas, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi resisted a chorus of calls for impeachment, even from some of her party’s leading 2020 candidates.
Yet 13 months before the next election, Democratic leaders are now steering into a protracted, head-on clash with Mr. Trump. By seeking the Ukrainian government’s help in tarring former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Mr. Trump left them no choice, they say, but to pursue an impeachment inquiry that could consume the country’s attention for months.
Ms. Pelosi has indicated she aims to move the process along with haste, in part to avoid an election-year conflagration, but the exact course of the inquiry is impossible to foresee.
All 19 Democratic presidential candidates now support the impeachment inquiry, and many Democrats are optimistic that voters will as well, because Mr. Trump is so unpopular and the allegations against him are grave and easily grasped. For now, Republicans are the party on the defensive, flummoxed by the cascading disclosures about Mr. Trump that have threatened to upend his re-election campaign.
But there is also a general recognition, at every level of the Democratic Party, that impeachment could complicate their candidates’ efforts to explain their policy ideas to the country and persuade voters they have a vision beyond ousting Mr. Trump. The party has been disappointed too many times, its leaders say, by betting that Mr. Trump’s violations of political and cultural norms would bring about his downfall.
On Friday evening, Ms. Pelosi declared at a conference of New Jersey Democrats in Atlantic City that she would not allow the 2020 election to become a campaign about impeachment. Insisting the inquiry “has nothing to do with the election,” she said the campaign would be fought on other terms.
“That’s about facts and the Constitution,” Ms. Pelosi said of the impeachment process. “The election is about all of the issues and policies that we have a difference of opinion with the Republicans on, and they are very drastic — and they have nothing to do with impeachment.”
Ms. Pelosi has already advised the newest members of her caucus — the ones who secured the majority last year — that they will have to execute a careful balancing act in the coming weeks, to show voters in their districts that they can continue to pass important legislation. She is said to be particularly focused on a proposal to lower prescription drug prices that she unveiled last week, before the Ukraine saga began.
But even before impeachment, House Democrats were gaining little traction with policy bills that withered in the Republican-controlled Senate. Polls have shown their proposals to be popular, but they have been routinely overshadowed in the news by Mr. Trump.
There is little doubt that impeachment will become a singular obsession in the political world and dominate news coverage for as long as the inquiry is underway. A few early polls on impeachment suggest that public support for the inquiry is somewhat stronger than opposition to it, but those numbers could easily change in either direction as the process unfolds.
Diane Feldman, a Democratic pollster, said it would be difficult for the party to communicate with voters on issues besides impeachment for the duration of the process. But candidates up and down the ballot had to try to drive a message about policy all the same, she said.
“I think it’s worth the effort, but it’s a long shot,” Ms. Feldman said. “That we not put all of our eggs in the impeachment basket seems to me extremely wise.”
However, Ms. Feldman said, the impeachment process could also “add some clarity to risks that Trump presents to our national security and foreign policy” and sharpen the overall Democratic case against his re-election.
The task of balancing impeachment against policy priorities will be especially delicate for lawmakers elected last year, including dozens who won narrow victories in historically Republican districts. Democrats are defending a sizable number of seats that Mr. Trump carried in 2016, in parts of the country like upstate New York, Oklahoma City and northern Maine, where the impeachment issue is likely to stir backlash.
Congressional Republicans are likely to struggle in a different way, as they face pressure from their party’s conservative base to defend Mr. Trump even as he behaves in erratic or legally questionable ways.
Democratic presidential candidates are attempting their own juggling act, mixing denunciations of Mr. Trump’s actions on Ukraine with detailed policy promises. Mr. Biden, the candidate most directly connected to the impeachment uproar, has repeatedly denounced Mr. Trump but has declined to reorient his activities around responding to the president. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Mr. Biden’s leading competitor in the primary, has reminded voters this week that she was the first major Democratic candidate to demand Mr. Trump’s impeachment. But she, too, has not dwelled on the subject in her speeches, and she has indicated she would prefer to avoid a sprawling, open-ended process.
And at the same Democratic gathering in New Jersey where Ms. Pelosi spoke on Friday, Senator Cory Booker urged his party to avoid “partisan glee” about the prospect of impeaching Mr. Trump. Talking to reporters outside the event, he said Democrats should keep campaign considerations separate from impeachment: “It’s just something that I need to deal with in a very sober way,” he said, “away from politics.”
But Mr. Biden and Ms. Warren may be among the only Democratic candidates who can count on breaking through the din of impeachment with regularity, along with Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and perhaps Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind. For the rest of the Democratic field, strategists say, the next stage of the primary race may have less to do with delivering high-minded policy arguments on the national level than courting voters in the early primary and caucus states with personal appeals — as an impeachment battle rages in the foreground.
Meredith Kelly, a Democratic strategist, said the experience of the last presidential race had not faded in the party’s thinking. A veteran of the 2018 campaign to seize the House, Ms. Kelly said Democratic candidates would have to both build a “methodical” case against Mr. Trump during the impeachment inquiry and also keep detailing “a proactive vision of what you stand for.”
“It was a lesson from 2016: You couldn’t only call out Donald Trump without your own positive vision for the country,” said Ms. Kelly, who advised Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s presidential campaign. “You cannot stop talking about kitchen-table issues and your vision for the country.”
Democratic voters this week expressed a combination of enthusiasm for impeachment and anxiety about potential political complications — and, at times, a desire to stay focused on policy.
At Mr. Biden’s campaign stop in Las Vegas on Friday, Rick Carter, 74, a voter from Henderson, Nev., said he had been highly skeptical of impeaching Mr. Trump until the recent revelations about Ukraine. The newest allegations, he said, were “pretty clear, to the point.”
Still, Mr. Carter said he hoped candidates would continue training their attention on subjects like the cost of prescription drugs.
“I want to start focusing on what the American people need,” he said.
Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster, said that even in the tumult of impeachment there were opportunities for Democrats to emphasize policy. He pointed to Ms. Warren’s campaign as one that was plainly “breaking through on policy” even amid Mr. Trump’s constant provocations.
“The House has passed a lot of bills that have gotten very little news coverage,” he noted. “But when members go home and have interactions with their constituents, they’re going to spend a lot of time talking about their legislation to have Medicare negotiate for lower prices and give all people the benefit of lower drug prices.”
And while the impeachment process unfolds, Mr. Garin added, Democrats could likely count on Mr. Trump not to deliver a broad, policy-based message of his own.
“Trump’s not really making any effort to do anything but rally his base on this,” Mr. Garin said. “And in doing that, I think he’s probably aggravating his situation with voters in the center.”[6]
If anyone is dazzled by or believes the current crop of far-Left Democrats, one need only hark back to the words and tragic deeds of Germany’s Adolf Hitler, the Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin and China’s Mao Tse-tung, who killed millions.[7] Or read (or reread) the words of George Orwell in his prescient “Animal Farm,” where all of the animals were equal until the “Pigs” reigned supreme and were masters over—and subjugated—the other animals.[8]
The Pigs of today have taken over and reside in the Democratic Party; and to mask their evil intentions, they coined the title “progressives,” which is the farthest thing from who and what they really are. The Times‘ article is correct: “[T]he exact course of the [impeachment] inquiry is impossible to foresee.” Having lived through the Watergate saga and tragedy, which was unfolding just as I was leaving the U.S. Senate, I know that impeachment assumes a life of its own, and consumes and sucks out the air from everything else.
The Times‘ writers add:
All 19 Democratic presidential candidates now support the impeachment inquiry, and many Democrats are optimistic that voters will as well, because Mr. Trump is so unpopular and the allegations against him are grave and easily grasped.
President Trump is loved by vast numbers of dedicated American supporters; and his poll numbers exceed those of Obama at this point in their respective presidencies. And the allegations against the President with respect to Ukraine do not remotely compare with the corruption of Joe Biden and his son Hunter vis-à-vis that country.[9]
For Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to assert that “she would not allow the 2020 election to become a campaign about impeachment”—and “[i]nsisting the inquiry ‘has nothing to do with the election,'” and that “the campaign would be fought on other terms”—is laughable, absurd and pathetic. She was first elected to Congress in 1987, while Watergate was breaking wide-open fifteen years before, in late 1972 and early 1973, just as I was leaving the Senate. At best, she is naïve or duplicitous, but more likely she is engaged in outright lying.[10] All other issues are buried and consumed by impeachment, period . . . unless, God forbid, there is a direct attack on the United States or some other national tragedy.
The Times’ writers are correct:
There is little doubt that impeachment will become a singular obsession in the political world and dominate news coverage for as long as the inquiry is underway.
And the Democratic pollster, Diane Feldman, was correct when she said it would be difficult for the party to communicate with voters on issues besides impeachment for the duration of the process. Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster, was mistaken when he said that Democrats could likely count on President Trump not to deliver a broad, policy-based message of his own. The President will tout his accomplishments far and wide, to the long-neglected—and taken for granted by the Democratic Party—African-Americans, and others who have benefited.
Again, my sense today is that what we will witness in the months to come may be very similar to the Vietnam War and Watergate eras. The fabric of our great nation will be ripped wide-open, pitting friends and loved ones against each other. I love this country, and no other. I want to see it flourish, and all Americans benefit. However, I am very concerned about the months to come, and the effects they will have on America—and how our enemies abroad view us and our vulnerabilities, which they may seek to exploit.
Political pundit Dick Morris believes that many Democrats in Congress are fearful of attacks from their Left, and losing in their primaries; and hence, Nancy Pelosi has embarked on impeachment to give them cover. He may be correct. However, the larger issue—which they seem blind to see—is that the country may be ripped apart to a much greater extent than even during the Vietnam War and Watergate. The Democrats and their captive far-Left media and the “Deep State” are determined to end the presidency of Donald Trump.
However, they do not realize, much less fully, how strongly other Americans feel about him and his presidency. Abraham Lincoln was hated by a large segment of America, yet he persevered and saved the nation. The United States today may be approaching a similar juncture, pitting brothers against brothers and sisters against sisters. The Trump faithful have watched Obama and his fellow co-conspirators attempt to destroy the candidacy and then the presidency of Donald Trump—which is an attempted coup, and treasonous and seditious. Yet, no one has been indicted, convicted and gone to prison.
The rule of law in America has been turned on its head; and vast numbers of Americans are very angry. Some are angry that Trump was ever elected in the first place, while others—in vast numbers—are angry that the Left has tried to destroy the Trump presidency and nullify their votes. I am deeply concerned that the United States is heading toward its second Civil War. Also, I do not see anything on the horizon that will bring us together again as one nation. If we are moving toward a new Civil War, will it become a shooting war? Quite possibly. I do not discount that outcome at all.
Lastly, this is not like a football game or other sporting event, where if our favored team loses we are disappointed or even “heartbroken,” but we move on to another day. This is about the future and survival of our great nation, and of the American people. Get it wrong, and our offspring’s future may be dark beyond comprehension. We have enemies who would like to destroy us, in an instant.[11] Perhaps all of this is what Obama meant when he envisioned a “fundamental transformation” of America[12]—to be completed in 2020—because the Trump presidency is a repudiation of the un-American traitor, racist and anti-Semite, and his presidency.[13]
[1] Timothy D. Naegele was counsel to the United States Senate’s Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and chief of staff to Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal recipient and former U.S. Senator Edward W. Brooke (R-Mass). He and his firm, Timothy D. Naegele & Associates, specialize in Banking and Financial Institutions Law, Internet Law, Litigation and other matters (seewww.naegele.com and https://naegeleblog.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/timothy-d.-naegele-resume-19-9-27.pdf). He has an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), as well as two law degrees from the School of Law (Boalt Hall), University of California, Berkeley, and from Georgetown University. He served as a Captain in the U.S. Army, assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency at the Pentagon, where he received the Joint Service Commendation Medal (see, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commendation_Medal#Joint_Service). Mr. Naegele is an Independent politically; and he is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Law, and Who’s Who in Finance and Business. He has written extensively over the years (see, e.g., www.naegele.com/whats_new.html#articles), and can be contacted directly at tdnaegele.associates@gmail.com
By Timothy D. Naegele[1]
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