In subsequent hearings, I’d be criticized for attacking Hunter Biden’s crack use. Let me be clear. I have nothing against drug addicts or drug users, so long as they don’t hurt others. I’ve known and partied with plenty of both in my wilder days. Hunter admits to wandering around homeless encampments looking for crack, and that doesn’t make him a bad guy—though it does make him unlikely to be a legit Eastern European energy savant. Hunter Biden couldn’t even resolve a dispute with Hertz Car Rental after leaving his crack pipe, ID, and Secret Service detail’s business card in a wrecked vehicle.
That doesn’t make him an unsympathetic human. But he probably wasn’t leading dispute resolution for Burisma in any competent, non-corrupt way.
July 24, 2019: Conclusion of Mueller Testimony.
Longworth House Office Building. White House operator connects.
“You were amazing. Everyone in the White House was glued to the TV when you took apart Mueller. Nobody said a word. You kicked his ass!” Trump said.
“Thank you, Mr. President. This bullshit is finally over. Let’s get back to making America great again.”
“I never stopped,” he replied, not knowing what was coming.
The perfect call with the president of Ukraine occurred the next day. And so the coup attempt against Trump revived the day after that. Beria’s cynical attitude, as I mentioned above, was “show me the man and I’ll show you the crime”—a Soviet mindset that resulted in the prosecutions (over non-Russian matters) of Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, and Rick Gates. Ukraine would then become the more narrowly focused “show me the president and I’ll show you the impeachment,” no matter how scanty the evidence.
If an investigation requires made-up evidence to proceed, it is a corrupt investigation. With Russia, an FBI lawyer altered emails presented to a secret court in order to spy on Dr. Carter Page. With Ukraine, Rep. Adam Schiff—who once moonlighted as a screenwriter—made up a fake call transcript and theatrically performed it before God and everyone. It was a disgrace to the House—for which Schiff should face ethical sanctions, if Pelosi’s House really cares about ethics at all.
The Ukraine controversy teaches us that the establishment is the establishment for a reason. It didn’t happen by accident. It happened because they don’t take days off, even after a stinging defeat. Their Russia failure didn’t deter them from taking the bait on Ukraine. They grind away relentlessly, like the brain-dead zombies they are. It’s why it has taken someone with the stamina and magic of Donald J. Trump to beat them over and over again.
Russia and Ukraine were different fights. And we’ll have evolving battles ahead to maintain our populist movement. But there is one enemy we always see on the battlefield of ideas: the corrupt media.
They will never stop coming for us, so we must come for them first.
CHAPTER FIVE
Enemy of the People
“Let’s just stay very focused on impeachment…[and faced with multiple possible interpretations of current events] we shouldn’t just pretend, oh, this is going one way [or another]. And so all of these moves are toward impeachment.”
—Jeff Zucker, president of CNN, during a daily 8:00 AM news conference call in 2019 (obtained by guerrilla journalist group Project Veritas)
The commander in chief knows that to troll the press is to control the narrative. Flood the zone and the press will drown. He tweets to set the schedule and program the media. This ultimately is why they are so angry at his tweets. He doesn’t need the press to get the message out, and everyone knows it. It is also why they’ll do everything in their power to see that President Trump is muzzled and that never again will another conservative be able to use the latest tech to end-run the press. “This must never happen again,” they tell themselves.
For it isn’t only politicians or self-important bureaucrats who are threatened by the Trump movement and thus determined to derail it but the professional bloggers-for-billionaires, aka the #AmericaLast press. Indeed, for all the claims that the media is unfair to the forty-fifth president—they are, and it’s worse than you think—it is also undeniable that Trump turns the media into one of his best weapons by feasting on all of the attention he gets, starving his rivals of coverage. Brilliant! To make news, you must break rules and above all be interesting. President Trump is nothing if not interesting. He makes the news because he breaks the news. He doesn’t worry the public will be offended by him because he knows that the American people are already mad as hell and aren’t going to take it anymore.
As the media get played, while Trump throws the stick and they chase it, their resentment builds. Most media work hand in hand with the most devious #NeverTrump operatives. They share a common objective: destroy, defame, and de-platform powerful “America First” messages and messengers. Their misguided ends justify any means. There are no rules in love, war, or the media. The media companies are rival intelligence networks, paid for by oligarchs who lack even the pretense of due process.
If politics is “Hollywood for ugly people,” media is Hollywood for annoying people. The zealot won’t change his mind and won’t change the topic. CNN’s Jeff Zucker knew their mission wasn’t just to record events, not anymore. It was to end the Trump presidency. Impeachment or bust!
America deserves leaders bold enough to make history and journalists disciplined enough to report it. Instead, we get the perverted reverse. Politicians witness the events before them as they empower special interests to run government. Media tycoons don’t want to make a
