Good Morning to you!

1 The contrived anti-Trump controversy over his conversation with a Gold Star widow is so disgusting and cynical that I hesitate to comment on it. This was so obviously a set-up: an anti-Trump woman, angry and grieving over the death of her husband, allowed a virulently anti-Trump Democratic Congresswoman to listen in on the call, then collaborated to make the accusation that Trump’s words that her husband “knew what he was signing up for” were a calculated insult. The New York Times somehow found this worthy of an above the fold article. No other President would ever be subjected to this kind of despicable “gotcha!” attack. No matter how clumsy Trump’s words might have been, and we can only take the word of two women who were predisposed to interpret them in the worst light imaginable, a President must be accorded a presumption of good will in such a situation. This, however, has been withheld from him in all situations by major segments of the Left from the beginning. Representative Fredricka Wilson (D-Fla) boycotted the President’s inauguration, and has made her motives and character explicit by laughing about how this latest controversy has made her a “rock star.” Well, maybe in “the resistance”–I have a somewhat different description for her. Now she’s race-baiting too, calling John Kelly a racist for referring to her, in his defense of the President, as an “empty barrel” who “makes noise.” Yup, I remember hearing stories about Klansmen calling blacks “Empty barrels.”

What did the wife of La David Johnson expect such a partisan, vicious hack like Wilson to do when she chose her to listen to the conversation with the President? It was another episode in the fake “the President is a white supremicist” pageant, and to anyone with a scintilla of objectivity, a blatant one. The Washington Post’s resident race-baiter, affirmative action Pulitzer Prize winner Eugene Robinson, wrote an unforgivable column calling Trump’s comment “mindless cruelty”he never never made a genuine case that there is anything wrong with what Trump said…because, you see, there isn’t. If the wife of a soldier doesn’t understand that when he enlisted in the armed services he was putting his life on the line for his country and knew it, then that’s her misconception. My father, who had his foot blown up in World War II, made this point more than once: if you enlist to fight, you can’t say you didn’t know that the possibility of being killed or sounded wasn’t part of the decision. It it wasn’t, there would be no innate courage in volunteering for service. This, like so much else that the President does and says, is only wrong because it is hi saying it. This is the plan. This is how “the resistance,’ Democrats and their core seeks to cripple the government and undermine the President of the United States. They don’t even hesitate to politicize a simple condolence call and the death of a soldier toward that un-American end.

I think my favorite part of the negative spin put on Trump’s conversation with Mrs. Johnson was that “he appeared not to know the name” of the fallen soldier. Any parent who can’t resist excessive creativity and who names a boy “La David” has condemned him to having everyone hesitate to say his name for the rest of his life, as “Wait, this can’t be right…” locks their brains. This is Naming Ethics. Similarly, don’t name your girl “Mister Nancy.”

Accolades are due to another Gold Star widow, Natasha De Alencar, who has released the audio of a call the President made to her in April after her husband, a  member of the 1st Battalion, 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne) became the first American killed in combat in Afghanistan this year. That conversation shows the President as compassionate and willing to spend all the time necessary to express his respect—and she and her were Hispanic, and we all know that Trump just hates Hispanics. That call alone should ensure the President the benefit of any doubt regarding whether he would “insult” a military widow, but it won’t; not for those who want to assume the worst, and want to  make as many people as possible believe that the President of the United States is a monster.

This was an unconscionable hit job. The Democrats and the news media seem incapable of comprehending that the more ruthless, unjust and vicious they behave in their opposition to Trump, the more those who are not already incurable Trump-haters will conclude that their cure is worse than the disease.

2. Similarly, the more the news media makes it screamingly obvious that it is incapable of consistent, honest, non-partisan reporting and will routinely spin for Democrats and spin against the President and Republicans, the more they minimize their ability to influence elections or public opinion. Shouldn’t this be obvious? Indeed, the Left’s media may have already reached the point of no return.

The Hill—not a pro-Republican publication to say the least—re-launched a Clinton scandal by reporting that the FBI has evidence of Russian energy officials giving money to the Clinton Foundation while Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in a position to reject a deal giving Russians control of Uranium One, an energy company with mines in the United States.

Newsweek—the news magazine that sent out an issue with President Hillary on the cover before the election— then announced on Twitter that “the Clintons were not paid millions by Russia,” with a link to the publication’s “fact-check.”

The article linked concludes,

Bill Clinton did receive $500,000 to deliver a speech at a Russian bank that was promoting Uranium One stock, according to The New York Times, and the company’s chairman donated $2.35 million to the foundation in four installments as Uranium One was being acquired by Rosatum between 2009 and 2013.

All told, $145 million went to the Clinton Foundation from those linked to Uranium One and UrAsia, but it went to the charity organization and not the Clinton family. Furthermore, most of those donations occurred before and during Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign, according to The Post.

Assessment: Yes, the foundation received money and Bill Clinton was paid to give a speech, but there’s no evidence the Clintons were paid by Russians to push through the uranium deal.

Amazing.

• There is no longer serious controversy over what the Clinton Foundation is: a loophole-exploiting family foundation that provides the Clintons with travel, perks, access, tax avoiding  options, and cover for influence peddling.

To say that that the payments didn’t go to “the family” is pure deceit.

• The Clinton Foundation had been forbidden from soliciting or receiving donations from foreign interests while Clinton was at State, and Hillary allowed these anyway, keeping them secret.

She had pledged to Congress as a condition of her confirmation that such donations would halt

• In quid pro quo arrangements, whether pay-offs come before or after the desired and bargained for actions is irrelevant. They are suspicious and create the appearance of impropriety either way.

$500,000 was more than twice Bill usual speaking fee. Do you really think he was being paid for the just the speech Does Newsweek? Really?

• This is false: “but there’s no evidence the Clintons were paid by Russians to push through the uranium deal.” There is no smoking gun; there is no proof.

The contributions are, however, evidence.

3. Two Harvey Weinstein Ethics Train Wreck notes:

A. Miramax superstar director Quentin Tarentino  admitted in an interview that he had heard accounts of abuse by Weinstein and now regrets not acting on it:

“I knew enough to do more than I did. There was more to it than just the normal rumors, the normal gossip. It wasn’t secondhand. I knew he did a couple of these things. I wish I had taken responsibility for what I heard. If I had done the work I should have done then, I would have had to not work with him….What I did was marginalize the incidents, saying he wrote them off as mild misbehavior. Anything I say now will sound like a crappy excuse.”