Journalists Surprised D-Day Veterans Support President Donald Trump

Trump D-Day veterans (Sean Gallup / Getty)

By Joel B. Pollak

Journalists were surprised to learn Thursday, on the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, that many of the American veterans of that historic battle support President Donald Trump.

The common theme in the media was that Trump is challenging the transatlantic alliances that were forged during the march to victory in the Second World War.

USA Today, for example, published a story on the eve of the commemoration that declared: “[W]hile the ceremony will honor the sacrifices made on June 6, 1944, some fear Trump’s ‘America First’ presidency and the international drama he has carried with him as he begins his third trip to France will complicate the hallowed observance.”

Whatever “some fear[ed]” was not shared widely among veterans of D-Day, as France24 discovered. In a story titled, “Trump the transatlantic nightmare? Not for these D-Day vets,” the news agency documented the reasons many of the veterans who traveled to Normandy for the commemoration support President Trump, including his commitment to American strength, his policies for veterans, and his no-nonsense problem-solving approach.

France24 reported:

Trump was given a warm welcome by the veterans as he arrived for the 75th anniversary ceremony with French President Emmanuel Macron.

[T]hey praise a president who they seeing as doing what it takes to get results on the home front.

But perhaps most importantly, they cite the Trump administration’s push to let millions of vets facing long waits at state-run facilities seek private care instead — paid for by the government.

Trump’s uncompromising stances get traction in particular with the generation for whom duty to country meant braving a hail of Nazi bullets on the Normandy coast.

Read the full France24 article here.

Trump’s speech at the D-Day commemoration also received unusually high marks from American Journalists present. CNN’s Jim Acosta, among others, said: “No matter what I think about the current President of the United States, he said the right thing at Normandy.”

House Democrats plan mental health panel to diagnose Trump in absentia

Screen Shot 2019-06-06 at 10.22.10 AM

House Democrats are planning a meeting to showcase “concerns” about President Donald Trump‘s sanity from psychiatrists who’ve never examined him, doubling down on years of insistence that he is too crazy for the office.

Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY) is bringing a panel of psychiatrists to Washington in July for a “town hall” to weigh in on the president’s mental health. While psychiatric associations strongly discourage their members from speculating on the sanity of patients they haven’t personally examined, the event’s leader, Yale School of Medicine’s Dr. Bandy Lee, insists she’s not actually diagnosing the president because anyone can tell he’s crazy.

Trump says impeachment-obsessed Dems are ‘getting NOTHING done’

Screen Shot 2019-06-06 at 10.25.07 AM

“The president’s condition has been visibly deteriorating to the point where there’s a lot of talk right now about his mental state beyond mental health professionals,” Lee told the Washington Examiner. “It no longer takes a mental health professional to recognize the seriousness of the current presidency.”

The town hall will tentatively include a highlight reel from a March event that featured 13 “experts” from the mental health, philosophy, journalism, and history fields opining on Trump’s unfitness for command, Lee said. Every member of the House will be invited, and Congress, the media, and the public will have the opportunity to question her and other experts – though she hastened to add that they’d leave the question of whether to invoke the 25th Amendment or merely impeach Trump up to the Congress.

The anti-Trump #Resistance has fixated on his health from the beginning of his presidency, clinging to the 25th Amendment, which allows for the removal of a president whose cabinet has deemed him unfit to serve, as a possible silver bullet in case the dozens of probes and investigations underway don’t succeed in dislodging him from the White House. Democrats have scrutinized his medical exams, obsessed over the slightest expansion of his waistline, and picked apart his tweets and public statements, seeing dementia behind every “covfefe” and “big red button” tweet. No doctor’s clean bill of health is ever enough; a verdict of “insane,” on the other hand, is accepted even in absentia.

Yarmuth defended Lee and her colleagues’ long-distance diagnosis, insisting that “when they see patterns of behavior that are endangering people, that they have a professional obligation to go public and alert the people who are threatened, and in this case it’s the American people.”

Lee hopes to set up a “medical panel” that would evaluate not only Trump’s mental capacity but that of the numerous Democratic presidential candidates. She co-authored a report urging the president to undergo a psychiatric evaluation after the conclusion of Special Counsel Robert Mueller‘s investigation absolved Trump of charges he had conspired with the Russian government to steal the office; when he chose to ignore the psychiatrists, they declared him unfit for command, claiming he “lacks basic mental capacity for duties of office” and suggesting he be cut off from access to nuclear weapons and war-making capabilities. “This is really a national emergency,” Lee declared.

Lee has been predicting the president’s mental collapse for the better part of two years. “He’s going to unravel, and we’re seeing the signs,” she warned Yarmuth and 12 other members of Congress in December 2017, two months after publishing ‘The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump’ in collaboration with 27 other psychiatrists. Lee has stopped just short of calling for Trump to be involuntarily committed, acknowledging that restraining him against his will for the “urgent evaluation” he needs would “really look like a coup.”

The American Psychiatric Association adopted the so-called “Goldwater Rule,” forbidding members to give diagnostic opinions on public figures they had not actually examined, in 1964 after Senator and Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater sued the publishers of a magazine piece polling psychiatrists over their opinion of his fitness to be president.

Lee said she would reconsider holding the town hall if no Republicans expressed interest in attending.

PLOT TWIST: Christopher Steele Will Meet With U.S. Officials, Report Says

By Hank Berrien

According to The Sunday Times, former British Intelligence officer Christopher Steele, who was responsible for the infamous Trump “golden showers” dossier, will meet with U.S. investigators in London to speak of his relationship with the FBI.

Steele has been adamantly refusing to meet with U.S. intelligence officials; the House Intelligence Committee, which was examining the origins of the dossier when it was under Republican control last year, requested for him to meet with them, but he would not. In the Senate, Senate Intelligence Chairman, Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) has been trying for two years to interview Steele; that has not eventuated.

The Hill reported:

Republicans have long alleged it was Steele’s dossier that improperly led to an FBI inquiry, which ultimately morphed into special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election. The Justice Department’s internal watchdog is investigating aspects of the Mueller probe, including whether officials abused their power when they ordered surveillance of a former campaign aide partially based on information from Steele’s dossier.

CBS News reported in February that the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation was a three-pronged effort: to review the intelligence buttressing an estimate of Russia’s actions during the 2016 election; to examine the “active measures,” including cyber activities, Russia used, and to look into possible links between Moscow and the campaigns.

CBS News continued:

One key witness whom the committee had been unsuccessful in engaging, Burr said, was Christopher Steele … Last February, the former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley, sent a letter to a Washington-based lawyer acting as an intermediary for Steele asking whether Steele may have been indirectly on the payroll of Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch with close ties to Putin. The implicit suggestion of Grassley’s inquiry was that the dossier contained purposeful misinformation intended to help Russia. It is not a view, or a suspicion, that Democrats share. Burr would only say that Steele remained of interest, but out of reach.

Burr added, “We’ve made multiple attempts,” to get an answer from Steele.

The New York Times explained, “Fusion GPS was hired on behalf of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign and the D.N.C. by their law firm, Perkins Coie, to compile research about Mr. Trump, his businesses and associates — including possible connections with Russia. It was at that point that Fusion GPS hired Mr. Steele, who has deep sourcing in Russia, to gather information.”

The Daily Mail reported that the investigation headed by special counsel Robert Mueller included references to the Steele dossier:

“Comey’s briefing included the Steele reporting’s unverified allegation that the Russians had compromising tapes of the President involving conduct when he was a private citizen during a 2013 trip to Moscow for the Miss Universe Pageant,” according to the report. “During the 2016 presidential campaign, a similar claim may have reached candidate Trump. On October 30, 2016, Michael Cohen received a text from Russian businessman Giorgi Rtskhiladze that said, ‘Stopped flow of tapes from Russia but not sure if there’s anything else. Just so you know… .’ … Rtskhiladze said ‘tapes’ referred to compromising tapes of Trump rumored to be held by persons associated with the Russian real estate conglomerate Crocus Group, which had helped host the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant in Russia. … Cohen said he spoke to Trump about the issue after receiving the texts from Rtskhiladze. … Rtskhiladze said he was told the tapes were fake, but he did not communicate that to Cohen,” according to the report.

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑