Trump’s First Solo Press Conference

In his first four weeks in office, President Trump has held three press conferences, but they were dual-press conferences with leaders of other countries. On Thursday, February 16, 2017, he held his first solo press conference, and it was epic! Trump took it to the mainstream media, which has now become the fake news media.

The New York Times

Trump First took it to the New York Times (NYT), and rightly so. I stopped paying much attention to that fake new source after their hit piece last spring (2016) about Trump and women. Trump referenced that fake news story in his press conference. I was going to write about it that back then but never got around to it. But for the sake of those who never heard about it, let me relate what it was about.

The Trump/ Women Hit Piece:

The NYT interviewed about thirty women who knew Trump. The article made it sound like Trump had sexually harassed each one of them. But after the story was published, every one of those women were furious about how their words had been taken out of context and made to sound the exact opposite of what they meant.

But you probably never heard about this, as none of the mainstream media stations interviewed any of the women. Many of them even called the various networks, wanting to appear on them to set the record straight. But only Fox News gave them a hearing, along with various talk radio shows. I heard several of the women on Sean Hannity’s show. I relate a couple of the stories so you will know what a terrible piece of bias reporting the article was.

I forget the name of the first woman. But she met Trump at a pool party being held at one of his hotels. The way the NYT reported it, as soon as Trump met the woman, he pressured her to put on a bikini. When she did, Trump made a crude comment about her body, greatly offending her.

In reality, as the woman herself told they story on Sean’s show, she met Trump at the party. They proceeded to talk and to hit it off rather well. They spent an hour walking around the grounds getting to know each other. At one point, they even began holding hands. It was then that Trump asked her if she was going to go swimming. She said she didn’t bring a bathing suit, so Trump told her he had some suits available and told her where they were. With no pressure whatsoever, she went and put on a bikini.

When she came out wearing the bikini, Trump said to her, “Wow. Now there is a beautiful Trump woman.” She was so “offended” by the comment that they proceeded to date for the next six months. Things obviously did not work out, but she said that in all their time together, Trump always treated her with respect, and she holds no ill-will towards him since they broke up.

I will leave it to the women reading this to decide if a guy you have been hitting off with saying “wow” about you is offensive or not.

The second story concerns the Miss California gay marriage controversy from 2009. If you forget the story, it went t as follows:

When asked by judge Perez Hilton, an openly gay gossip blogger, whether she believed in gay marriage, Miss California, Carrie Prejean, said “We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite. And you know what, I think in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that's how I was raised” (Fox News).

That honest answer and one held by millions of Americans, sparked a major controversy in which Carrie was vilified. She later wrote a book about the ordeal. The NYT wanted to interview her for their article, but she refused, sensing that it was going to be a hit piece. But no matter to the NYT, as they took a comment out of context from her book and made it sound like Trump was in the forefront of deriding her. But in fact, he was one of the few people that supported throughout the whole ordeal. She thus was very thankful to him, and furious about the NYT misusing the comment from her book.

The Russian Hit Piece:

That piece of fake news leads us to their most recent fake news story that set Trump off. In the article, the NYT interviewed several “anonymous sources” in the intelligence community that claim Trump and his aides were in cahoots with Russia to orchestra Trump’s election. The article contributed to the prevailing false narrative that “Russia hacked the election.”

I’ve heard that phrase many times on various news outlets and by Trump haters. It makes it sound like Russian interference altered the results of the election. I wrote about this previously, but this nonsense is still being promulgated months after the election, so it is needful to set the record straight again.

First, there is zero evidence that Russia (or anyone else) hacked any voting machine. There is zero evidence that Russia (or anyone else) changed the results of the election. No votes were changed. Everyone’s voted counted. This claim is in regard to the hacked Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails that Wikileaks released before the election.

Those emails showed that the DNC is a corrupt, bigoted organization that conspired with the media to get Hillary elected. The media even fed questions to Hillary before town hall meetings during. The emails also showed that Hillary was an even bigger liar and more corrupt than we already knew her to be.

To be clear: none of this was fake. The emails were genuine DNC emails. But the news media for the most part ignored them, so few people knew about their contents. But it is still being claimed those hacked emails altered the election results. But again, there is zero evidence that anyone changed their vote due to those emails, at least not sufficiently en masse to have brought about Trump electoral college landslide.

But the media and the NYT just cannot let this story go. As such, they probably found some disgruntled Obama staffers in the intelligence community that are still biter overt the election, and they were the “sources” for the article.

To be clear, there are still many people in the US government that are holdovers from the Obama administration. Trump simply has not had time to replace all of them. This is especially the case due to the obstructionist Democratic senators holding up the confirmations of Trump’s cabinet appointments.

It was that obstructionism that led to the following flap: “Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, a Democratic appointee, says she’s directed Justice Department attorneys not to defend President Donald Trump’s executive order on refugees.” The media then made a stink over Trump firing Yates for her comments. They made it sound like Trump was an ogre who could not handle anyone in his administration being critical of him.

But in fact, “Yates was appointed deputy attorney general by President Barack Obama. She became acting attorney general once Loretta Lynch left the position” (Conservative). In other words, she was an Obama holdover who would not have even still been in office if the Dems had not held up the confirmation of Jeff Sessions, Trump’s appointment for Attorney General.

And the President, any President, has the right to appoint people to his administration who will carry out his policies, and if they do not, he has the right to fire them. I remember a scene on The West Wing TV show in which the President gathered together his cabinet and had all of them swear, “We serve at the will of the President.”

In any case, it was clear the Yates was just looking to make political points with her public proclamation, knowing she would be out of office in a few days anyway. She will probably get a book deal out of it, or maybe run for office herself. And something similar is probably happening with these anonymous sources. It they even exist, they are probably looking for some kind of payback for their comments.

One thing is sure; the NYT did not provide any collaborating evidence for their claims. It was just one more attempt by the liberal media to discredit the Trump Presidency. But this ongoing attempt to make Trump’s Reticence seem illegitimate is why Trump repeated during the press conference about his “historic” electoral college victory, something the media has been compelling about, “The election is over. Move on already” they are crying. But they are the ones how need to move on, but they obviously have not accepted the defeat of their preferred candidate yet.

One last point on this subject; Trump pointed out that he had the RNC strengthen their email servers during the election so that they would not be hacked. Shows great foresight by our now President, but also the lack of foresight by the DNC and Hillary.

General Michael Flynn

What has revived these complaints about Russia’s supposed interference in the election was the firing of Trump’s National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. The media has put a lot of misinformation on this situation, so here’s the real story:

After the election, Trump told General Flynn he would nominate him to be Security Advisor. Flynn then rightly began making contact with his soon to be counterparts in other countries. In other words, he was preparing to do his job by getting to know those he would be dealing with when he took office. Included among those foreign advisors was the one from Russia.

His phone conversation with the Russian advisors was recorded by the FBI. Doing so was legal, for the Russian’s half of the conversation, but not Flynn’s half. In other words, it is legal to record the conversations of foreign officials, but it is illegal to record the conversations of Americans without their knowledge without a court order, which the FBI did not have. Then to make matter worse, those recording were leaked to the media, which is definitely illegal. But in all of this, Flynn did not do anything illegal.

However, in his conversations with Vice President Pence, Flynn did not reveal that in his talks with the Russian official that they had talked about then President Obama’s sanctions on Russian. Again, there was nothing illegal about them doing so, but that should have been revealed to the Vice President.

When Trump was made aware of the situation, he had the Justice Department investigate to see if any laws had been broken. After an investigation, they informed Trump that laws had not been broken. Trump then consulted with various advisors and talked with Flynn. It is not clear if Flynn did not fully reveal the content of the conversation due to purposely lying or simple oversight, but again, no laws were broken. But Trump still did feel he could trust Flynn, so he asked for Flynn’s resignation. The whole process took about three weeks.

That’s it. But the media is turning this small mole hill into a mountain. First, they are complaining about the three week delay between Trump finding out about the situation and the firing. But personally, I like the fact that we now have a President who takes the time to get all of the facts before speaking or acting.

I say that as it was Obama’s rush to judgment in several high profile situations between the police and the black community that led to the degrading relationship between them that we have today. Obama saying things like “The police acted stupidly” or “If I had a son, he would have looked like Travon Martin” before all of the facts were in was simply irresponsible.

And think about it. If you were accused of some impropriety, would you like to be judged immediately, based on emotion, before all of the facts or win, or would you prefer for a fair investigation to be taken place first?

Second, the media and Democratic congressmen are trying to turn this situation into a major conspiracy, with cries of “treason” and “espionage” and even saying it will lead to Trump being impeached. Even the Republican establishment, like Senator John McCann, are saying this situation shows the Trump administration is in “disarray.”

But they truth is, as Trump said in the press conference, his administration “is running like a fine-tuned machine. “ The situation was handled in a professional, fair, and sound manner. If it were not for the triad of Trump haters (the media, the Dems, and the Republican establishment), that would be the end of it. But they will drag this one on as long as they can still get some press out of it.

Trump’s Non-Answers

Trump was asked repeatedly what he would do about Russia, along with about Iran and other adversaries. Trump righty did not answer, saying what he did during the campaign that it is stupid to broadcast security and military plans. The media kept pushing him, but he is correct. It makes no sense to tell your adversaries what your next move will be.

CNN

CNN (Cable News Network) needs to change their name to CNTN (Cable Never Trump Network), as all the talking heads on that network do is to express their disdain for Donald Trump. They’ve been doing so ever since Trump’s ride down the escalator to announce his candidacy almost two years ago.

The network is devoted to tearing him down, and Trump rightly ignored the CNN reported at press conferences before he was inaugurated. This time, he let the CNN reporter ask a question, though he repeatedly interrupted him to point out that his station was “fake news” or even “really fake news.”

Afterwards, the reporter on his network said that Trump was “unhinged” and went into tirade about all of the suffering people in America that Trump is ignoring, saying he is concentrating instead on his own reputation. It was such a bunch of nonsense. Trump has been doing one thing after that will help the average American. CNN is just not reporting about it, instead focusing on the Russian hacking claim.

Ridiculous Headlines

Before the news conference, I saw a headline on my Google News page that said, “Trump’s Do Nothing First Four Weeks in Office.” I was flabbergasted. Do nothing? Trump has accomplished more in four weeks that Obama did in eight years, while the obstructionist Dems and media are preventing him from having accomplished even more.

President Trump must have read such a headline before the press conference as he spent several minutes overviewing all that his administration has accomplished in his first four weeks. The items he mentioned were:

·         Withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal

·         Directing the elimination of regulations that undermine U.S. manufacturing

·         Calling for expedited approval of permits needed for American infrastructure

·         Imposing a hiring freeze on nonessential federal employees

·         Imposing a temporary moratorium on new federal regulations

·         Issuing a new rule that for every new regulation, two old regulations need to be eliminated

·         Standing up for the men and women of law enforcement

·         Creating a task force for reducing violence and crime in America

·         Ordering the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice to coordinate with each other to destroy drug cartels

·         Beginning to build a “promised” wall along the country’s southern border with Mexico (Free Beacon).

Not in this list is another very important accomplishment—the restoring of American’s relationship with Israel. Obama all but destroyed the special relationship America has with the only country with a free society and a representative government in the Middle East. But Trump talked with his long-time friend, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, shortly after he was inaugurated. He told Sean Hannity then that the relationship between our two countries had been restored, and that was apparent in his dual press conference with the Prime Minister last week. I will be publishing a full article on Israel shortly, so I will leave it at that for now.

Not in the Press Conference but Worth Mentioning

Before concluding this article, I want comment on a couple of items that were not discussed at the press conference but are worth mentioning.

First is the media going nuts over Kellyanne Conway making an off-hand remark to “Buy Ivanka’s stuff” during an TV interview from the White House. The background is Nordstrom removing Ivanka Trump’s clothing and jewelry line from their stores. They say it has nothing to do with politics, but that is very doubtful.

The media cried foul and asked Sean Spicer about it at his press conference. He said she was “counseled” and that was all he would say, and that is all that needs to be said. But that is not good enough for the Trump-hating Dems and Republican establishment in Congress. They want to start a major investigation into “ethics violations.” All that will do is waste a bunch of tax-payers’ dollars, cost Kellyanne a lot of money to defend herself, all for nothing.

Second, while Congress is wasting time on such meaningless gestures, Trump is trying to forge forward on his promises to “Repeal and replace Obamacare” and to reform the tax code. But the do-nothing Congress is dragging its heels.

The Republicans in Congress have had eight years to come up with an alternative to Obamacare, even having held dozens of meaningless votes to repeal it. But now that they have a real chance to do so, they are not prepared with a replacement bill. That is unconscionable.

The same goes for the reforming of the tax code. Trump wants that done now, and the American public needs the tax relief now. But the slower than a snail Congress says they might be able to get something to Trump by the end of the year. But that is not good enough. They need to start moving at Speed of Trump and get something done now.

Conclusion

I have been recording Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s press conferences each day on Fox News, and that is how I ended up recording Trump’s conference, and I am glad I was able to see the whole thing. Spicer’s conferences are good, and he does a good job of handling the media, but Trump is the master.

I truly hope Trump holds a news conference monthly, but next time it should be during Prime Time. That way, everyone can watch the full press conference for themselves, rather than just seeing clips of it in-between disparaging comments by the Trump-hating talking heads.

The news media needs to be put in its place, as it is just as bad as the Democrats in trying to tear down Trump. To put it another way, we no longer have a free and unbiased media but one that has made it its goal to derail the Trump Presidency.

But despite the best efforts of the Dems, the media, and even the Republican establishment, Trump has already accomplished much good in this first four weeks in office, and he will accomplish much more once his full cabinet is in place, that is, if the obstructionist Dems in the Senate ever stop holding up his appointments. The Dems, the media, and the Republican establishment are reminding me of the old adage: “lead, follow, or get out of the way.” Trump is leading, and the Dems and media need to either get on board or get out of the way as Trump takes steps to Make American Great Again.

For a follow-up to this article, see Fact Checking the ABC Fact Checkers.

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The above article was posted on this website February 17, 2017.

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