We’re back for a special episode with one of our favorite guests Katie Pavlich, who was traveling with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last week, as he conducted diplomatic affairs in the Arctic Circle. It took a twist when the trip to Germany was canceled and Pompeo dropped into Iraq for a surprise visit amidst growing tensions with Iran. Katie details all the issues facing the region, especially when it comes to the Iraqi government trying to rein in the various Shiite militias who are creating problems for us and our allies in the right to curtail Iran’s influence in the region. Tehran’s menacing tentacles run far in the region, as the state-sponsor of terror supports the Houthi rebels in Yemen, runs the Syrian civil war, and supports Hezbollah in Lebanon, who reportedly have some 130,000 rockets stockpiled to attack Israel. Katie was one of four reporters traveling with Secretary Pompeo. The Associated Press, Breitbart, and NBC News were the other parties invited for this trip. As we speak, our own Guy Benson is with Secretary Pompeo as he travels to Sochi to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Bringing it back stateside, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) has decided to join her colleague Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) in poking the anti-Semitic bear, describing the Holocaust as an event that gave her a “calming feeling” (via Fox News):
Tlaib, the first Palestinian-American woman to be elected to Congress, made the comments while discussing the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians during an appearance on the Yahoo News podcast "Skullduggery."
"There’s always kind of a calming feeling, I tell folks, when I think of the Holocaust, and the tragedy of the Holocaust, and the fact that it was my ancestors — Palestinians — who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity, their existence in many ways, have been wiped out, and some people's passports," Tlaib said on the podcast's most recent episode, published Friday. "And, just all of it was in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews, post-the Holocaust, post-the tragedy and the horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time. And, I love the fact that it was my ancestors that provided that, right, in many ways, but they did it in a way that took their human dignity away and it was forced on them."
Yeah, talk about a historically illiterate interpretation and a horrible exercise in false equivalency. Even CNN’s John King noted that Palestinian leaders had sided with Hitler and that they reacted with the same notions of wiping out the Jewish people that drove Nazi Germany during World War II. So, how will Democrats respond to this? From the tweets of House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), they’re going to circle the wagons around her. There will be no push for a resolution. If there is anything of that sort, it’ll be diluted to the extreme. Speaker Pelosi has let the inmates run the asylum. She caved before when Ilhan Omar accused supporters of Israel of exhibiting dual loyalty. She’d rather just sit on this and ride out the storm.
If you read Rep. @RashidaTlaib’s comments, it is clear that President Trump and Congressional Republicans are taking them out of context. They must stop, and they owe her an apology.
— Steny Hoyer (@LeaderHoyer) May 13, 2019
On the issue of alleged FISA abuse, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is trying to declassify that the FBI and others seem to have known that the Trump dossier compiled by ex-MI6 spook Christopher Steele for the Clinton campaign was not verified prior to a FISA spy warrant being issued against Carter Page, who had served as a foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign. Now, it seems the State Department is about to be roped into it, with the FBI knowing that its confidential informant had absconded to State, urging it to leak the document publicly in order to impact the 2016 election. There were definitely leftover Clintonites at State. Here’s what The Hill’s John Solomon reported last week.
Also, I misstated the department. I said the FBI/DOJ on the podcast. It was State.
Donald Trump’s campaign, it sat buried for more than 2 1/2 years in the files of a high-ranking State Department official.
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec’s written account of her Oct. 11, 2016, meeting with FBI informant Christopher Steele shows the Hillary Clinton campaign-funded British intelligence operative admitted that his research was political and facing an Election Day deadline.
And that confession occurred 10 days before the FBI used Steele’s now-discredited dossier to justify securing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA warrant to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and the campaign’s ties to Russia.
Steele’s client “is keen to see this information come to light prior to November 8,” the date of the 2016 election, Kavalec wrote in a typed summary of her meeting with Steele and Tatyana Duran, a colleague from Steele’s Orbis Security firm. The memos were unearthed a few days ago through open-records litigation by the conservative group Citizens United.
Kavalec’s notes do not appear to have been provided to the House Intelligence Committee during its Russia probe, according to former Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.). "They tried to hide a lot of documents from us during our investigation, and it usually turns out there’s a reason for it," Nunes told me. Senate and House Judiciary investigators told me they did not know about them, even though they investigated Steele’s behavior in 2017-18.
The inspector general report on these alleged FISA abuses drops in June, but it could be as late as August.
We’ll close it up with Joe Biden sounding very Trump-like in 2006, advocating for 700 miles worth of border obstacles to stem the tide of illegals. There was division among Republicans, as there always is on this issue in 2006-07. Democrats were just trying to sew more chaos, but in doing so—screwed themselves for the authoritarian ethos of political correctness that would soon consume their party like cancer. This will certainly be weaponized against Biden. The only question is who will do it, are they a big enough heavyweight, and will it be effective?
Also, for Democrats touting themselves for being the party of women, well—women accounted for more donations for Trump’s re-election campaign in the first quarter of 2019 than any of the Democrats running for president. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Women’s March.