Most readers here know I pretty much can’t stand Jeb Bush. I don’t mean personally; no doubt he’s a nice man who loves his wife and all that. I can’t stand him as a candidate and know no one who can, and I have long said that despite the money he gets he will not be the nominee.
Jeb Bush’s recent response to Trump’s assertions about his brother shows just how tepid and flatfooted Jeb is.
How should he have responded instead? It was a golden opportunity to slam the Democrats, and one he missed; he should have pointed out that all the planning and many of the activities connected with 9/11 (such as the terrorists’ pilot training in the US) happened under Bill Clinton’s watch, which makes Clinton largely responsible if anyone. So far as I can tell in quite a bit of Googling, Jeb hasn’t said that in response to Trump (and if he has, I’d appreciate a link).
Jeb should have pointed out that generalized warnings that al Qaeda would attack were and are meaningless without the details of who, what, and where, and that a big part of the reason intelligence could not put these details together in a coherent manner was due to Democratic policies (FISA and the firewall) that were put in place quite some time ago. An excellent article explaining how it happened and what it meant for the sharing of intelligence about the 9/11 attackers was written by Andrew McCarthy, and appeared in Commentary in 2004. Here’s a relevant excerpt:
…[P]rosecutors developed] grave apprehension about “the appearance of impropriety”””a hidebound concept governing lawyer ethics that is perfectly nonsensical in the life-and-death context of national security. Even as militant Islam began its terrorist war against the United States with the 1993 WTC bombing and the 1994-95 “Bojenka” plot to blow a dozen American airliners out of the sky over the Pacific, the Justice Department was worrying that agents and prosecutors might be perceived to be using intelligence-gathering authority to build criminal prosecutions. Often, the result was weeks or more of delay, during which identified terrorists who happened also to be committing quotidian crimes went unmonitored while the government dithered over whether to employ FISA or the criminal wiretap law. The insanity reached its apex in 1995 with the “primary purpose” guidelines drafted by the Clinton administration: henceforth, a firewall would be placed between criminal and national-security agents, generally barring them even from communicating with one another.
The damage from the firewall and the impediments to FISA has been incalculable. It took ten years to make the racketeering case against Sami al-Arian, the professor accused of helping run the murderous Palestinian Islamic Jihad from the campus of South Florida University, because the wealth of information collected by intelligence agents was withheld from their criminal counterparts. And that was a pittance compared with what happened in the waning weeks before the September 11 attacks. Zacarias Moussaoui, who had paid cash for pilot training (and was reported to authorities when his bizarre behavior””including intense interest in how cabin and cockpit doors worked””could no longer be ignored), was detained by the immigration service. Worried FBI intelligence agents were desperate to search his computer, but were turned down by supervisors who decided there was insufficient evidence to go to the FISA court. His al-Qaeda membership and numerous connections to the hijackers were not uncovered until after the attacks.
And the Moussaoui travesty itself pales in comparison to the story of Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, excruciatingly recounted in Slate by Stewart Baker, general counsel of the National Security Agency during the early Clinton administration. The pair, who had trained to pilot planes, lived in California. In August 2001, an astute FBI intelligence agent was trying to find them, and asked the criminal division for help. But FBI headquarters stepped in and insisted that the firewall not be breached: criminal agents were to stay out of the intelligence effort. A few weeks later, al-Midhar and al-Hazmi plunged Flight 77 into the Pentagon, their manifold ties to Mohammed Atta and the other hijackers kept safely under wraps.
All of this was the result of Democratic sponsored and Democratic orchestrated policies.
I don’t expect Trump to know a thing about it; he’d rather blame President Bush, whom he’s hated and considered “evil” for a long time. And he knows accusing GW will get brother Jeb Bush all riled up, and that Jeb will be ineffectual in his response.
And you know what? I doubt Jeb has a clue about any of this, either.
This Yahoo story about two siblings who came here illegally attempts to play the heartstrings:
When Vladimir Gongora arrived in New York City three years ago, he didn’t know his own name.
Vladimir was born deaf in the small village of Cuyantepeque in the northwest corner of El Salvador. He wasn’t allowed to go to school and never learned to read or write.
“He used to cry and cry because he couldn’t ask for anything,” his mother, Dolores remembers. Then, when Vladimir was about 7 years old, he began gesturing to his little sister, Patricia, who was just 5. Bit they bit, they formed their own sign language, which became increasingly complex. Patricia translated her brother’s signs into Spanish for her parents, and all of a sudden, Vladimir was no longer so alone…
They’ve been inseparable ever since. But a U.S. immigration court could soon force them apart.
Vladimir and Patricia both crossed the border on their own to join their parents in New York City ”” Vladimir in 2012, Patricia two years later. The two were part of a surge of unaccompanied minors from Central America who arrived at the southern border of the United States. Last year, Vladimir was granted asylum by the federal government because of the persecution he faced in El Salvador for his disability. (He was, among other things, denied access to schooling.) His sister also claimed asylum but was denied by the asylum office in April, despite her key role in helping her brother communicate. Now the government is pushing for her deportation, an action her attorney is appealing.
The title of the piece is “Is a callous immigration system tearing siblings apart?” I wonder what would satisfy liberals who ascribe to that philosophy: turning no one away? Giving everyone services forever? Why have an immigration system at all?
Speaking of services, the public is already footing the bill for their legal defense:
This short timeline can make it challenging for the young immigrants ”” some are just toddlers ”” or their relatives to find an attorney; the court does not provide defendants with a public defender as in the criminal system. Patricia and Vladimir are lucky ”” they have attorneys and live in New York City, where the city council has allocated funding for nonprofits to represent unaccompanied minors.
I wrote that the public is already paying for their attorneys, which must be a pretty penny, but I very much doubt that’s the only thing for which the public is paying. It’s also quite interesting to me that in the entire article (which is fairly long) there is very little said about the children’s parents: how did they get here? How do they support themselves (or do they in fact support themselves)? One would think such details would be relevant, but apparently not to the reporter who wrote the piece or the editors who approved it. That would distract from the propaganda message.
It’s edifying to look at the comments there. When I clicked on them, there was a grand total of 1,680. I only read the first twenty or so, but not one of them was sympathetic to the story’s premise. Some made excellent points, including this:
What loving parents, they leave their children (minors at the time) to fend for themselves, while they come to America illegally as well. I guess there was no problem splitting up the family then. Also, it seems that Vladdy was perfectly OK to be without his sister for 2 years, was that also the US Immigration court’s fault? They were both 17 or 18 when they crossed the border illegally; at that age, you should be responsible for your actions. So far it seems to me that the parents as well as their adult children are responsible for their actions.
Good point; these two siblings were already voluntarily separated for two years, and Vladimir (who supposedly was unable to communicate with anyone but his sister at the time) made the journey first, alone. It’s not hard to see why that would happen: he was the one who was more likely to be granted asylum, and they knew it; and then she could come in and plead that her presence was necessary for him.
Not only that, but the article noted that since his arrival in NY, Vladimir has been in school learning American Sign Language at the Lexington School for the Deaf in Queens. So by my calculations, he’s been there since some time in 2012, and therefore he should be able to communicate with the rest of the world and not be so dependent on his sister.
If you’ve got the patience to look through more of the comments there, I’d be curious if any of them agree with the propaganda points the story is pushing.
The other day I came across an interesting fact about Jerry Parr, the Secret Service agent credited for having saved Reagan’s life by pushing him into the car when Hinkley tried to assassinate him, and making the decision to go to the hospital when no one had yet realized that Reagan had been shot (they thought he’d merely broken a rib from the shove):
Parr’s interest in joining the Secret Service originated as a boy after watching Code of the Secret Service (1939) starring Ronald Reagan as agent “Brass” Bancroft.
That’s quite a coincidence.
Another interesting fact:
Parr came to believe that God had directed his life to save Reagan, and became a pastor after leaving the Secret Service.
Here’s the famous photo of the moment:
The assassination attempt changed the way presidents are ushered in and out of buildings.
The seventh Star Wars film is due to be released in two months, and I’m starting to see a lot of hype about it.
Seven is an awful lot of Star Wars. Way too much for me. I’ve never been a fan, which apparently makes me un-American or something. But I put in my time like everyone else when my son was little. I think I saw the first three, and then got my Get Out of Star Wars Free card. It stuns me to think how much time has passed since then.
Speaking of time, it must be hard to be Carrie Fisher. Or at least, a little bit hard. After all, there’s nothing like being in a huge blockbuster film when young, which is probably the most well-known thing you ever did, and then to get older in the public eye with your youthful countenance and body emblazoned on so many posters and other memorabilia to remind you and everybody else of what once was. Your aging face can’t quite compare—despite having had some “work” done, and despite the fact that you were never known as a great great beauty in the first place.
I know, the money and fame is probably compensation enough or more than enough. But still, those constant reminders could be tough. However, Fisher apparently finally figured “whatever; I’ll do a sequel and cash in on the power of the Star Wars franchise.”
A year or so ago Fisher was speaking of her reunion with Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford to make the new movie. She was pretty funny about it, too:
While talking at the Hay Festival in Wales, she admitted that, 31 years after they all worked together on Return Of The Jedi : “We all look a little melted. It’s good to see other melted people.”
When I was young, I thought that wrinkles were the main facial effect of getting older. And they certainly are part of it, for some people the most noticeable part of it. But another part of it is that “melting” of which Fisher speaks, the loss of contour at the edges of the face. Young people usually have sharp definition, particularly of chin and what are later known as “jowls.” Older people start getting blurry, and either puffed or haggard.
But really, these three all look pretty darn good. I don’t see a whole lot of melting. Particularly Ford, IMHO, who’s 73, whereas Fisher is a relative child of 58 and Hamill squeezes in between them at 64:
In the past couple of days I’ve taken some time to drive around New England photographing the fall.
I had thought this would be a less colorful fall than usual because of the dry weather we’ve had. But when it got going there was a sudden intense burst, and the sunny days made me want to take off in my car with my camera—which is mostly my android phone, plus a little point-and-shoot.
On Thursday I went up to the far north, the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Yesterday I stayed close to home. I got some good photos considering that my camera doesn’t have the ability to faithfully represent the detail of what I see with my eyes, especially the mountains with their distant vistas.
To paraphrase the Sound of Music, the hills were alive with a blaze of color. Extraordinary every time you see it, but impossible to photograph properly without all the mega-equipment I see some people wielding. So with some of these you’ll need to use your imagination to fill in the details.
I’ll be posting a couple today, and some more in days to come.
The distant:
I stopped at one spot on the Kancamagus Highway called Lower Falls, where the water reflections of the trees were as astounding as the trees themselves:
I’d heard about how well the Cubs are doing this year. I used to follow baseball assiduously (see this), but since I’ve been in baseball recovery I hardly pay attention. But in addition to my history as a Red Sox fan who used to be steeped in the Red Sox lore of The Curse, I’m well aware of the sad and sorrowful history of the Cubs.
The two curses were/are of different types. For the Sox, it was an “always a bridesmaid” curse, in which they typically had good teams and came close, year after year, only to lose in some newly creative and increasingly heartbreaking way. The Cubs, on the other hand, have pretty much been uniformly bad.
But this year, there’s hope. The Cubs are about to play in the National League Championships for the first time in twelve years. They haven’t played in a World Series since 1945, and haven’t won one since 1908. That’s a while.
What I didn’t know until yesterday was that Theo Epstein, the man who at a very young age was instrumental in building the Red Sox team that finally ended the Curse, has been President of Baseball Operations for the Cubs since 2011.
Guy’s a baseball genius, obviously. But we already knew that.
This post isn’t about Trump. It’s about his supporters.
Not all of his supporters, either. But a certain very vocal percentage. I’m not sure what that percentage is. More than half? Less than half? Much less than half? What I do know is that the group I’m referring to doesn’t just support Trump in the ordinary fashion of people supporting their favored candidate. They appear to support him in the very same way that a great many of Obama’s supporters looked at him: as The One, the only person who could magically save us by—fill in the blanks.
It’s different for right and left, of course, in terms of exactly what these groups want from the savior, and what they see that savior accomplishing. Often, very very different. But the phenomenon is similar, an irrational appeal to emotion and magic—an appeal which, by the way, each candidate (Obama and Trump) has carefully fostered and encouraged.
Now, all candidates are fairly egocentric. And they must brag; it goes with the territory. Did any candidate ever get elected by saying “Oh, I’m not so great, and maybe I won’t accomplish as much as the other guy would?” Of course not. But Obama and now Trump take it to new levels.
Trump was criticized yesterday for his Bush and 9/11 remarks, which happened to fit into the anti-GWB pattern I had already noticed in the post I wrote yesterday before I ever saw those newer remarks of Trump’s. But in all the furor about Bush and Trump and 9/11, few seem to have commented on something else that Trump said in the same interview [emphasis mine]:
While speaking about national emergencies, Trump said that he would be a better president than his rival candidates or earlier presidents.
“I think I’m much more competent than all of them.”
Does that not remind you of someone? Our current president, perhaps? It is an excellent example of what I’m talking about—that appeal to the idea that he is obviously more wonderful than all the other candidates, in ways that don’t have to be proven or demonstrated, but merely asserted.
And many of his supporters seem to believe it. One form this takes is the oft-repeated claim that Trump is the only person who can beat Hillary Clinton. It’s curious to me, because this is a version of the old “he’s most electable” song, one that many of the same people supporting Trump have been so critical of when offered on behalf of other candidates in recent years. But is it even true?
I see no evidence for it; see these polls, for example. Polls are flawed and variable, of course. But they give an indication—the only real indication we have, especially if you look at a great many of them. So far the indications from polls are that Trump does not do better than many of the other Republican candidates against Hillary Clinton.
But perhaps evidence is not necessary when one is acting on faith. And more than anything, what I see fueling the Trump supporters is a combination of faith in Trump plus anger at the GOP. I’ve wondered from the start why more of that energy isn’t being directed to support for Cruz, because Cruz would seem to me to be the natural preference of those who are angry with “establishment” Republicans and want a conservative to be elected.
But for some reason, that’s not the way it’s gone so far. I maintain that the reason is that Trump taps into a drive on the right, similar to the drive on the left that helped give us Obama—that is, the desire for a leader who will magically fix everything by sheer force of his personality, his promises, and his own tremendous and towering faith in his own untested and unproven abilities.
Jeffrey Goldberg takes a long time to say it, but he gets most of it said. It’s not a “cycle of violence” where both sides are similar. One side is lying and inciting its people to violence, and this has been going on at least since the 1920s in similar fashion. The current dispute concerns the history of the Temple Mount and the Dome of the Rock, and access to the sites.
The NY Post says it more succinctly, and adds a few more things, such as the latest incident of what one might call the Muhammed al Durah phenomenon, complete with the cooperation of our State Department in the lies being told:
…Wednesday…Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said in a speech that Israeli security forces “executed” an innocent 13-year-old boy, Ahmad Mansara, “in cold blood.”
The story has fueled Palestinian anger for days. A photo of a bleeding Mansara, lying on the ground, filled social networks and gave birth to endless angry tweets. It also, apparently, informed official statements, including at the State Department, denouncing “excessive use of force” by Israel.
What’s wrong with this picture? This:
Far from innocent, Mansara, along with his 19-year-old brother, was on a knifing rampage. Video footage from closed-circuit security cameras shows them stabbing an Orthodox Jew and then a Jewish child who left a store on his bicycle. Only later, when Mansara tried to attack two policemen, was he shot down.
Oh, and Mansara was far from “executed.” On Thursday, the government issued a photo of him being treated in an Israeli hospital.
But as Churchill said, the lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. Nowadays, a lie gets all the way around the world, aided by the speed and scope of modern media.
Lies are very effective, and Big Lies often most effective of all.
Let’s clear up what’s really happening. From Goldberg’s article:
The current “stabbing Intifada” now taking place in Israel””a quasi-uprising in which young Palestinians have been trying, and occasionally succeeding, to kill Jews with knives””is prompted in good part by the same set of manipulated emotions that sparked the anti-Jewish riots of the 1920s: a deeply felt desire on the part of Palestinians to “protect” the Temple Mount from Jews.
From the NY Post:
Arabs are convinced that Israel is set on destroying, desecrating or “Judaizing” Haram al-Sharif, the Jerusalem compound that includes al-Aqsa, Islam’s third-holiest site. As Abbas indelicately put it in a mid-September speech, the Jews are trying to “defile al-Aqsa with their filthy feet,” and must be stopped.
Israel points out that the arrangements that have existed since 1967, when it seized control of the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site, are intact, and will remain so: A Jordanian trust, the Waqf, maintains the Mount.
Jews can visit, but not pray there…
Once Abbas presented his al-Aqsa “narrative” in September, Palestinian youths heeded his call to spill blood for Jerusalem. They drove cars into pedestrians at bus stops, cut down passers-by with knives, meat cleavers and screwdrivers and otherwise attempted to kill Jews.
Here’s how the State Department has been complicit in furthering the Palestinian narrative:
Enter State Department spokesman John Kirby, who said Wednesday, “certainly, the status quo has not been observed, which has led to a lot of the violence.”
Come again? That factually challenged statement followed Secretary of State John Kerry, who has his own “narrative”: Israeli settlement expansion is responsible for the violence. (State later walked back Kerry’s statement.)
And after pressure from Israeli and Jordanian officials, Kirby also retracted, tweeting, “Clarification from today’s briefing: I did not intend to suggest that status quo at Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif has been broken.
Oh, really? Because what else did your words mean?
[BUMPED UP: I will be bumping this up today and tomorrow, and then this pledge drive will be over. Today’s posts can be found below this one. ]
It’s that time again.
I’m asking you to click on my Paypal “donate” button (hint hint: it’s on the right sidebar, above the Amazon widget, which is also a handy and helpful gadget to use). I’ve noticed that a couple of readers have set up a system for themselves whereby they automatically contribute a certain amount through Paypal each month. Don’t feel at all pressured to do that, but it’s a mighty fine system.
I give a very special thanks in advance to all of you who so kindly donate money to help keep this blog going. Even small amounts add up, if enough people contribute. But whether you choose to donate money or not (and I certainly hope you do!), I thank all the readers here, be they lurkers or commenters, sporadic or regular. We have some good times, don’t we, despite the often-troubling state of the world?
As a former sufferer from fairly severe chronic pain, news such as this interests me:
Joe Grewal, the first human to be fitted with a permanent implant, said he has suffered chronic back pain for more than 30 years and now “feels amazing”.
The 60-year-old said his pain level had dropped from eight of ten before the treatment to “two or three” immediately afterwards. The device, developed by Saluda, was fitted at the Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney on Tuesday.
“It’s a significant decrease in pain,” he told Fairfax Media. “I’m so excited about it.”
My injury and chronic pain story can be found here, here, here, and here. By the way, somewhere along the line, I tried a non-implanted TENS unit (a more old-fashioned device somewhat similar to spinal cord stimulators) for a little while, but it didn’t seem to do much at all. That doesn’t mean they don’t help a lot of people, particularly the implanted units.
This new one is different from the other type of implanted spinal cord stimulator that has been in use for many decades:
“Spinal cord stimulators [send] signals into the spinal cord and so the person with pain feels tingling in the pain area and that confuses the brain and they don’t feel the pain, they just feel a pleasant tingling sensation,” Dr Brooker told ABC News.
“[The new] machine can adjust itself to produce whatever set level the patient wants, and that’s a big advance because previously, whenever people moved or their heart was pulsating, various things would make the electrical signal waver up and down quite significantly and they would get shock sensations and not be able to live their lives effectively in many cases.”
Doctors believe the implants could have wider uses beyond chronic pain treatment and potentially help patients with Parkinson’s disease.
Joe Grewal’s happiness at having his pain reduced from an 8 to a 2 or 3 is something that it may be hard to appreciate if you haven’t had significant chronic pain. For many, it’s unrealistic to expect their pain to go away completely, but a reduction of that magnitude is huge. It allows a person to go from being consumed by pain to having it be a relatively mild annoyance. Fortunately (knock wood), my surgery had that effect, and I’m extremely and deeply grateful.
Molly NH: “Bush derangement syndrome is a *chronic illness*”
It’s a fundamental cornerstone of [the leftist] Narrative.
That’s why for Republicans, it’s vital to vigorously rehabilitate [George W.] Bush’s image ”“ even now ”“ by at least setting the record straight, even by those Republicans who don’t agree with all his positions. Because it’s about more than Bush and his positions. It’s about competing the Narrative contest for the zeitgeist.
Conceding a piece of the Left’s narrative on Bush in a misguided individual attempt to move past an issue, differentiate, or seek common ground merely reinforces the Left narrative that is a cornerstone of their social cultural/political advantage.
I’m not sure it’s possible at this point, but I agree that it’s desirable and might even be necessary.
I also wonder what Trump supporters have to say about Trump’s attitude on the subject, which I consider one of Trump’s most reprehensible qualities. Nor has he given any indication of taking it back or even revising it, much less apologizing for it.
Now, knowing Trump supporters as I’ve come to know them, my guess is that they either share his attitude towards Bush, or excuse it in the ways that they excuse everything wrong with him, which is that (a) he’s the only one who’s right on immigration, and immigration is all that’s important (b) he’s the only person who can win. But as I’ve written before, I don’t think he’s the only one who’s right on immigration, because several other candidates have espoused views I think are quite acceptable. And I certainly don’t think Trump is the only “electable” (or even the most electable) of the Republican candidates. But for now, let’s just take what Trump has said about Bush and discuss it, because I think it’s important.
To refresh your memory, from back in 2011 when Mark Levin was fervently against Trump rather than for him:
…Mark Levin excoriated Trump in this clip from 2011, but now doesn’t sing the same tune although the facts he sets out here have not changed in the least (it’s the topmost clip on the page, the one that’s 12:01 minutes long; I can’t figure out a way to embed it).
You can hear lots of fascinating stuff there. Trump likes Nancy Pelosi (5:14). He wanted her to impeach George W. Bush (5:25), because he says Bush lied about WMDs. At 6:27 he speculates that it would be hard to even imagine a worse president than Bush. At 7:26 you hear Trump saying President Bush is evil. He then contrasts Obama (who at the time he was speaking had been elected but not inaugurated), saying that Obama has:
“…a chance to go down as a great president…I think he’s going to lead through consensus. It’s not just going to be just a bull run like Bush did—he just did whatever the hell he wanted—go into a country and attack Iraq, which had nothing to do with the World Trade Center, and just do it because he wanted to do it.”
Now, there are many ways to criticize George W. Bush. Some of them are even valid. But what Trump is saying here: that Bush lied about WMDs, that he’s evil, that it’s hard to imagine a worse president, and that he attacked Iraq “because he wanted to do it” is—well, it’s not only straight out of the leftist playbook, it borders on evil in and of itself. What’s more, Trump shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the reasons Bush actually did attack Iraq.
You might say, who cares anymore? You might disagree with “Eric” that what a candidate says about Bush matters. But I see it as an issue of character—Trump’s character—as well as politics and judgment. Trump could have criticized Bush in any number of ways, including criticism of the Iraq war, without reflecting poorly on Trump’s own character and judgment. But the way he chose to do it was to spout the most vile boilerplate criticisms advanced by the left. He calls Bush “evil”—who but the most doctrinaire leftist did that? He accuses Bush not just of making an error about WMDs but of lying, and attacking Iraq from personal caprice. And then he follows it up with praise for Obama, including one of the most wrongheaded analyses of Obama’s character I’ve ever heard.
I was searching for a more complete transcript of the interviews with Trump found in those Levin clips from 2011. It took me a while, but I finally located one of them, which was an interview on CNN with Wolf Blitzer that occurred in 2007 that was quoted in this Anderson Cooper segment. If you read it, you can see that it’s one of the milder interviews that are quoted, although it does contain some pearls such as praise for Hillary Clinton and Obama.
Then there’s this one with Blitzer from the 2008 campaign. It contained the “impeach Bush” remark:
BLITZER: [What do you think of] Nancy Pelosi, the speaker?
TRUMP: Well, you know, when she first got in and was named speaker, I met her. And I’m very impressed by her. I think she’s a very impressive person. I like her a lot.
But I was surprised that she didn’t do more in terms of Bush and going after Bush. It was almost — it just seemed like she was going to really look to impeach Bush and get him out of office, which, personally, I think would have been a wonderful thing.
BLITZER: Impeaching him?
TRUMP: Absolutely, for the war, for the war.
BLITZER: Because of the conduct of the war.
TRUMP: Well, he lied. He got us into the war with lies.
And, I mean, look at the trouble Bill Clinton got into with something that was totally unimportant. And they tried to impeach him, which was nonsense. And, yet, Bush got us into this horrible war with lies, by lying, by saying they had weapons of mass destruction, by saying all sorts of things that turned out not to be true.
(CROSSTALK)
BLITZER: Their argument is, they weren’t lying, that that was the intelligence that he was presented, and it was not as if he was just lying about it.
TRUMP: I don’t believe that.
BLITZER: You believe that it was a deliberate lie?
TRUMP: I don’t believe it. And I don’t think you believe it either, Wolf. You are a very, very intelligent young man. I don’t think you believe it either.The fact is that he lied. And he got us into a war that was a horrendous mistake. And, any way you take it, that war was a mistake.
Trump then goes on to say that Iraq is a breeding ground for terrorists, and implies that once we leave, terrorists will flourish there and cause a bigger mess. That turns out to have been true, but was a non-controversial opinion (which I shared, which is why I always considered it imperative that we keep a residual force there), and certainly could have been aired without the “Bush lied” defamation.
More of the interview:
BLITZER: [What do you think of} John Edwards? [This question was asked before the Edwards scandal had completely unfolded, but after the Enquirer stories had been published and after Edwards had admitted to having an affair.]
TRUMP: I don’t know him. People like him. I know people that like him very much, but I really don’t know him.
BLITZER: Even though [he] was the vice-presidential nominee last time around?
TRUMP: Well, I think that’s a huge negative, because that was a shame that that race was lost. Because look what we have right now. It’s a disaster.
So you know, I would probably be inclined not to like him on the basis that he lost an election that should have been won. That election should have been won.
I think Bush is probably the worst president in the history of the United States, and I just don’t understand how they could have lost that election.
Later in the interview, Trump advocates that we “just leave” Iraq. This was in October 2008, by the way, when the surge had been over for months and was generally considered to have been successful, and it was after he himself had implied in that same interview that if we leave, terrorists will take over there and it will become an even bigger mess.
Here’s the interview from September of 2007 where Trump says that if the 2008 election features Giuliani vs. Hillary Clinton he’s not sure who he’ll support because “They’re both terrific people, and I hope they both get the nomination.” In the same interview he engaged in the familiar boilerplate obligatory Bush-bashing:
TRUMP: Oh, [Bush has] been a terrible president.
BLITZER: You think he’s the worst in the history of the United States?
TRUMP: I don’t think you can get much worse. Why? I mean, who is worse? Give me a couple of names. Who could be worse?
BLITZER: Well, because, in the last interview we did in March, you said he was the worst.
TRUMP: Well, at least I’m consistent.
BLITZER: But — and the reason you think he’s the worst is?
TRUMP: Well, just look at this country.
We have gone from this tremendous power that was respected all over the world to somewhat of a laughingstock.
Is this really someone you want to support? Again, you can dislike Bush and disagree with the Iraq war, but these sort of statements reveal a criticism of Bush that is of the leftist sort, not the conservative sort. It is indicative of a lack of judgment and basic decency on Trump’s part.
Oh, and although most of Trump’s quotes on Obama are prior to Obama’s presidency, here’s one from shortly after Obama’s election:
The good news is that Obama seems to be well aware of the [economic] situation. His comments have led me to believe that he understands how the economy works on a comprehensive level. He has also surrounded himself with very competent people, and that’s the mark of a strong leader. I have confidence he will do his best, and we have someone who is serious about resolving the problems we have and will be facing in the future. To me that is very good news.
And finally—FINALLY!—I struck pay dirt, a 2008 video showing Trump saying quite a few of the things that Levin quoted back in in 2011, including that Bush is “evil.” Watch and listen:
As I said before, indicative of a lack of judgment and basic decency on Trump’s part, and most definitely not a conservative position. Particularly in the way Trump states it, it’s (as commenter “Eric” has said) a “fundamental cornerstone of the Leftist narrative.”
