In the fight between Donald Trump and John McCain (R-AZ) over the senator’s military service, the liberal media have taken McCain’s side. But since when did the media get concerned about the noble cause of fighting communism in Vietnam?
Our media, led by CBS Evening News anchorman Walter Cronkite, who was then an influential media figure, protested the Vietnam War and prompted the U.S. withdrawal and communist takeover. His FBI file demonstrated Cronkite’s contacts with Soviet officials and how he was used as a dupe by the communists.
More than 58,000 Americans sacrificed and died to save that country from communism.
The liberal media never supported the war against communism in Vietnam. Yet they are now browbeating Trump over avoiding the war through deferments. Our media are full of hypocrites. They don’t admire McCain for fighting in Vietnam. They admire him because he is a “maverick” who frequently takes the liberal line, such as on “comprehensive immigration reform.”
If the liberals in the media are so enamored of McCain’s military service in Vietnam, let them revisit the history of the Vietnam War and express some outrage over the fact that it was a Democratic Congress that cut off aid to South Vietnam, leading to the communist takeover and the genocide in neighboring Cambodia.
What about some critical coverage of Obama’s recent meeting with Nguyen Phu Trong, the head of Vietnam’s Communist Party? Vietnam is one of the beneficiaries of Obama’s proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade agreement. If passed, it would benefit Vietnam’s communist rulers.
As we have pointed out, “Interestingly, Obama is trying to sell the agreement as a counter to China’s influence throughout the world. He wants us to believe that China and Vietnam somehow differ on their common objective of achieving world communism at the expense of America’s standing as the leader of what used to be the Free World. Both countries would gladly welcome the U.S. to help pay to accelerate the growth of their socialist economies and expand their markets.”
McCain supports the TPP; Trump does not.
We have pointed out that Vietnam is “a dictatorship with the blood of those Americans on its hands,” a reference to what the communists did to McCain and our soldiers, and “which has no respect for the human rights of its own people.”
A bipartisan congressional letter about Obama’s meeting with the Vietnamese communist reaffirmed this fact. It was signed by Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA), who represents one of the largest Vietnamese populations outside of Vietnam in the world, in Orange County, California. She said, “I am disappointed that the administration has chosen to host Nguyen Phu Trong, the General Secretary of the Vietnamese Communist Party. There continues to be egregious and systemic human rights abuses in Vietnam, including religious and political persecutions. As an advocate for human rights in Vietnam I cannot ignore the dismal state of freedom of the press and freedom of speech.”
This is precisely what McCain and tens of thousands of other Americans were fighting to prevent.
Yet, McCain issued a statement, saying that he “warmly” welcomed Trong’s “historic trip” to the United States. He added, “This visit demonstrates the growing strength of the U.S.-Vietnam partnership as we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the normalization of relations between our countries.”
Why is McCain celebrating a “partnership” with a dictatorship that he and thousands of Americans fought against?
What’s more, McCain says the U.S. “must further ease the prohibition on the sale of lethal military equipment to Vietnam…” Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry had partially lifted a ban on lethal weapons sales to Vietnam in October of 2014.
If our media are so concerned about an American Vietnam veteran being the target of a perceived insult from Trump, why haven’t they put pressure on the Obama administration to clean up Vietnam’s human rights record before going ahead with another agreement to benefit that regime? After all, this is the same regime that captured and tortured Sen. McCain.
The answer is that our media are using the current McCain controversy to damage Trump, who has almost single-handedly made illegal immigration into a national issue. They don’t really care about McCain’s service in Vietnam.
When President Bill Clinton normalized relations with communist Vietnam in 1995, he thanked Senator McCain and then-Senator John Kerry (D-MA) for agreeing with the notion that America had to “move forward on Vietnam.”
What has happened in the meantime?
We pointed out 11 years ago that President Clinton’s lifting of the U.S. trade embargo on Vietnam in 1995 was followed by a bilateral trade agreement. Kerry and McCain supported that, too. The U.S. trade deficit with Vietnam has been consistently rising ever since, to the point where it was $19.6 billion in 2013.
In his statement on Trong’s visit to the United States, McCain said, “Since 1995, annual U.S.-Vietnam trade has increased from less than $500 million to $36 billion last year.” He conveniently ignored the trade deficits that have cost American jobs. For example, the communist regime has been dumping shrimp products into the United States at artificially low prices, and has become the fourth largest shrimp supplier to the U.S. market, even though several shipments have been detected with banned antibiotics.
At the time he extended diplomatic relations, Clinton said, “Whatever we may think about the political decisions of the Vietnam era, the brave Americans who fought and died there had noble motives. They fought for the freedom and the independence of the Vietnamese people. Today the Vietnamese are independent, and we believe this step will help to extend the reach of freedom in Vietnam and, in so doing, to enable these fine veterans of Vietnam to keep working for that freedom.”
False. The Vietnamese people did not become independent. They became slaves of the communists.
Obama recently met with their slave master. But our media didn’t utter any tears for the victims of communism.
You may also recall that then-Senator Kerry ran a Senate investigation that brought the search for live American POWs from the war to a close. McCain was a member of the Kerry committee.
Since McCain has been in the news for his military service, this should have been a newsworthy topic for our media.
Roger Hall, A POW/MIA researcher, went to court, having sued the CIA for documents on missing or abandoned Vietnam POWs. Hall and many others are convinced that hundreds of American POWs were left behind in Vietnam.
Former Senator Bob Smith (R) of New Hampshire wrote the legislation creating the Senate Select Committee on POWs and MIAs in the early 1990s in order to get the truth released to the public.
“Despite the release of thousands of documents and the testimony of dozens of witnesses, I could not complete the job. Senator John Kerry, the chairman of the Select Committee, and Senator John McCain were more interested in establishing diplomatic relations and putting the war behind them than they were about finding the truth about our missing,” said Smith. “I fought them constantly to the point of exhaustion. It was a very sad chapter in American history.”
A YouTube video exposed McCain’s efforts to block access to POW information and examines his alleged cooperation with the North Vietnamese while he was in captivity. Senator Smith is one of those featured in the video.
Why don’t the media remind us of that? We have the answer. They are too busy bashing Trump and trying to look patriotic about the Vietnam War.
President Obama was on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Tuesday night, pitching the Iran deal as the best way to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, and claiming once again that it came down to this deal, or war. This week he did an end-run around Congress by going to the United Nations, where the UN Security Council unanimously adopted the agreement between the P5+1 (U.S., England, France, Germany, Russia and China) and Iran. As we have pointed out, this agreement virtually guarantees Iran a path to having nuclear weapons, if they don’t already. Plus, it will release them from tough sanctions (no “snap-back” sanctions are feasible), and will soon provide them with approximately $150 billion of their frozen oil revenues to continue to expand their state sponsored terrorism and hegemonic ambitions. The U.S. held all the cards when the negotiations began, yet made concession after concession, completely abandoning numerous red lines that were previously insisted upon.
Today, Wednesday July 22nd, an important demonstration and rally will be taking place in Times Square, in the heart of New York City, to call attention to the multitude of problems with this so called agreement, and to try to prevent it from going into effect. It is called the Stop Iran Rally, and features an outstanding lineup of speakers. Six of them are members of our Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi, including Adm. James “Ace” Lyons (Ret.), former CIA Officer Clare Lopez, Gen. Paul Vallely (Ret.), Lt. Col. Allen West (Ret.), Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, former Rep. Pete Hoekstra (former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee). In addition, the list includes former CIA Director James Woolsey, Alan Dershowitz, Robert Morgenthau, Caroline Glick, Frank Gaffney, Mort Zuckerman and George Pataki. Too many to name them all. To see the full list, take a look at the poster.
The event is scheduled to begin at 5:30 p.m., and will last at least two hours. You can watch it live by clicking here. I will be in attendance, and will be reporting on the event.
Great Lakes state residents and lawmakers are reacting angrily to an undercover video shot by citizen journalists affiliated with the Center for Medical Progress. The 8-minute videotape features Dr. Deborah Nucatola seeming to affirm that Planned Parenthood (Nucatola’s employer), the reproductive rights organization, participates in the illegal trafficking of aborted fetal body parts and tissue for scientific research.
Paul Chatfield, the brother of state representative Lee Chatfield, R-Levering, took to the streets of Petoskey, Michigan in protest this past weekend. About sixty people joined his demonstation, which was held outside the offices of Planned Parenthood of Northern Michigan. Most protestors bore signs, like “Life – the first Inalienable Right.”
Chatfield, who describes himself as a college student with a conscience, said that his initial response to news about the shocking disclosures on the videotape was a flip one.
“I thought it was a joke. We’re not that bad,” he said.
But when Chatfield heard the comments made by Nucatola – who quotes a price of $30-$100 per part to a pair of actors pretending to be representatives of a human biologics company – he realized it wasn’t the stuff of science fiction.
“We’re that bad!” exclaimed Chatfield.
“[The comments on the video] go against everything America stands for,” complained George Horniman of the Emmet County Right to Life organization.
The non-profit, which was the branchild of Margaret Sanger and is controversial for its abortion counseling services, has received federal dollars since 1970. Planned Parenthood’s Annual Report for 2012-2013 reports that the group was awarded over $540 million in government grants for FY 2013.
“It is sad that the government keeps funding Planned Parenthood,” noted Rachel Evans a 22-year-old woman who is pregnant with her first child (whose mother is pregnant with her 11th child), who heard about Chatfield’s protest via local talk radio.
Mitten state lawmakers have also weighed in on the videotape controversy without mincing words. State Senator Phil Pavlov, R-St.Clair issued a press release: “I am calling on the Michigan departments of Health and Human Services and Licensing and Regulatory Affairs to launch formal investigations into Planned Parenthood affiliates across Michigan to determine whether or not any Michigan-based facilities have participated in the horrifying sale of babies’ body parts.”
“We must make sure this is not happening in Michigan, and that if it has, those responsible are brought to justice,” added Pavlov.
Congressman Fred Upton, R-St. Joseph, chair of the U.S. House panel on Energy and Commerce, has promised to investigate the claims made by Planned Parenthood’s Nucatola, describing the video as “abhorrent.”
Paul Chatfield injected a spiritual perspective into an already heated debate.
“Government should reflect God’s laws; this is in direct defiance of the Bible,” he said.
Friday, July 17th, marked the 19th anniversary of the deaths of 230 people on TWA Flight 800. There remain unaddressed questions about how this jet mysteriously exploded off the coast of Long Island. But the mainstream media aren’t interested in providing the public with much needed answers, pursuing this scandal, or even, really, marking the anniversary of the victims. Instead, recent coverage of this anniversary has been confined to some local news reports. I’m sure there will be much more coverage next year, for the 20th anniversary.
But the media continue to do a disservice to America and the memories of those lost, by ignoring this enduring scandal and its many victims. They are not interested in re-litigating the facts because the facts overwhelmingly point to an administration cover-up, and to expose this scandal would implicate the Clintons in yet another scandal.
Andrew Danziger, a 28-year airline veteran, spoke out this past April about the transparent government cover-up that took place nearly two decades ago.
“This investigation smelled like bull all those years back, and time has done nothing to soften that stench,” wrote Danziger for the New York Daily News. “I don’t believe the findings, and neither do hundreds of other pilots that I know.”
That might be because the FBI, he says, took the “lead” in the investigation, an “unprecedented” step. In particular, Danziger wrote, one of the lead investigators representing the interests of the TWA pilots at the time told him that “the mechanics and their representatives were denied access, in the early going, to the hangar where all of the recovered material was stored and being re-assembled.”
His colleague also told him that “During the investigation, the FBI periodically required everyone to leave the hangar due to ‘national security issues.’”
“Only after they ‘sterilized the area’ were folks allowed back in to continue where they left off (that is, if what they were examining was still there),” writes Danziger. In addition, eyewitnesses were not allowed to testify, and their words were only summarized in FBI reports which they could not personally review.
“Lots can go wrong with an airplane,” he wrote. “But jets do not explode in midair.”
“…Hank Hughes, an [National Transportation Safety Board] NTSB investigator who headed up the reassembly of the wreckage in a hangar in Calverton, New York, had been telling what he knew since early in the investigation,” I recalled for Accuracy in Media two years ago. “He told a Senate committee in 1997 that he witnessed evidence being tampered with, and some being destroyed.”
I still believe that “the evidence remains overwhelming that the plane was brought down by a missile or missiles.”
AIM conducted a detailed investigation of the downing of Flight TWA 800 to attempt to expose the truth. We examined the evidence supporting each of the three leading theories of what caused the plane to explode, and then crash into the Atlantic, 19 years ago this week. Our award-winning documentary, “TWA 800: The Search for the Truth,” can be viewed here.
In a Sunday column in The Washington Post, “Stop laughing at Donald Trump,” a liberal analyst from the Brookings Institution tries to warn the Washington, D.C. beltway elites that they should take the businessman seriously because he has figured out how to win a national election—by taking the white vote. This is the “silent majority.”
While it is true that minorities and other groups helped elect President Obama twice, “the white portion of the electorate, which votes strongly Republican, underperformed in support of John McCain in 2008, and white turnout was down in 2012,” when Mitt Romney was the Republican presidential nominee, notes William H. Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a population studies professor at the University of Michigan.
In other words, if McCain and Romney had only come across in a more conservative and assertive manner, and had appealed to more white voters, they probably would have won.
Frey comments that Trump “appeals to a vein of the U.S. electorate that will remain a significant voting bloc for several election cycles to come: older whites.”
Yet, GOP politicians and Fox News commentators such as George Will and Charles Krauthammer have been attacking Trump and his policy positions. McCain went further, smearing Trump supporters as “crazies,” before Trump fired back, in comments on McCain’s war record. Veteran reporter Sharyl Attkisson said Trump’s comments were taken out of context and distorted by The Washington Post.
It appears that the “crazies” include a lot of ordinary Americans who are sick and tired of politics as usual. Trump, in contrast to McCain and Romney, has figured out a way to fire them up and tap their anger and frustration.
A 2014 study by Professor Marisa Abrajano on the coming backlash to immigration policy not only explains the Donald Trump phenomenon, but also why the liberal media are so determined to destroy him. The media know that Trump’s appeal threatens the ability of the Democratic Party to continue to fool white voters into embracing liberal policies that destroy their own communities.
Her academic paper, published by the Brookings Institution, was clearly designed to warn liberals about how a “broad backlash” to immigration could damage the Democratic Party. She said a backlash could not only “shift the balance of power between Democrats and Republicans” but benefit “rightward leaning candidates throughout the country” who want to do something about it.
“Immigrants may be arriving in historically high numbers,” she noted, “but they account for only a relatively small fraction of the nation’s population. Native-born whites still represent 63 percent of the population and, perhaps more importantly, some 75 percent of its voters.”
Hence, the key to Democratic Party success lies in manipulating the minority groups and immigrants into voting for Democrats in overwhelming numbers, as they currently do, while also conning a significant number of whites into voting Democrat. This is a con because the Democratic Party has no interest in protecting the interests of white people as a political or special interest group.
The Abrajano report has some interesting comments about media coverage of the issue that may help explain the reaction to Donald Trump. It says, “At the aggregate level, we find that when media coverage of immigration uses the Latino threat narrative, the likelihood of whites identifying with the Democratic Party decreases, and the probability of favoring Republicans increases.”
Of course, the liberal media never use the “Latino threat narrative,” and the phrase is meant to suggest that concerns about immigration are somehow racist or improper. Our media have done their best to play down the problem, through such maneuvers as banning the term “illegal alien” and substituting “undocumented worker.”
What Trump has done is bring the issue to the fore, making it out to be the threat that it is. The Trump surge, plus the murder of a young American in San Francisco by a Mexican illegal alien and the prison escape in Mexico of a drug cartel leader, have put the dangers on the front pages of our newspapers in a manner that has garnered the attention of the nation. Our media have been forced to cover the issue in a way that captures the peril our nation currently faces. As a result, the Democrats and their liberal media allies fear that white voters have now been dramatically educated about the political stakes and may vote accordingly in favor of their own interests.
The media have no problem with blacks and Hispanics voting for Democrats in large numbers and affirming and protecting their own racial identities. But when whites do it, it suddenly becomes racism. That charge has carried a lot of sting in the past, but with illegals streaming across the border and Middle Eastern Muslims creating enclaves in places like Tennessee, it looks more and more like members of the “silent majority” are deciding to be silent no more. They are realizing that the lives of their family members and the cultural identity of their nation are at risk.
“Immigration and other factors appear increasingly to be pitting the declining white majority against the growing non-white minority,” she wrote. That majority may have found its voice in Trump, a man unafraid of the liberal media and the GOP establishment, which wants to continue the losing strategy of pandering to the minorities who overwhelmingly vote Democrat.
Abrajano also wrote, “The conventional view of pundits and prognosticators and maybe even most social scientists is that the dramatic growth of the minority population and its strong ties to the Democratic Party portend the demise of the Republican Party.” She adds, “That may be true in the long term. But that prediction ignores the white population and the possibility of a widespread white backlash in the short term.”
It appears that “short term” has now arrived. His name is Donald Trump.
Abrajano’s co-author, Hajnal, a professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, recently wrote that Republicans’ “opposition to immigration reform actually represents a winning strategy, not a losing one.”
Of course, the term “immigration reform” is code for amnesty for illegals.
That aside, he acknowledges that “Republicans win or lose largely depending on white voters. Whites still make up the vast majority of voters—some 75 percent in 2014—and whites tend to favor the Republican Party by large margins. Republican congressional candidates garnered 60 percent of the white vote in 2014. All told, 89 percent of all Republican votes in 2014 came from white voters. Put simply, the Republican Party doesn’t really need the minority vote.”
Since the Republicans have a winning strategy, what holds them back from using it? It’s called political correctness, which holds that appealing to people based on their fears of immigration destroying their country is racist and wrong. Trump didn’t care what the media thought and decided to address the issue anyway. The response speaks for itself.
It’s not surprising that GOP presidential candidates like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio would go after Trump. For whatever reason, perhaps because they want to appear “inclusive,” they are desperate to appeal to Hispanics, a voting bloc that is essentially owned by the Democrats.
This is not to say that some Hispanics do not agree with Trump.
Maria Espinoza launched the group America First Latinos, in order to “prove, once and for all, that the majority of Latino citizens are solidly behind the U.S. Constitution and a secured national border.” Espinoza also launched the Stolen Lives Quilt project, whose members appeared with Trump at his July 10 news conference. The group remembers the victims of illegal alien crimes in the U.S. and is coming to Washington, D.C. this week to press their case against criminal aliens coming across America’s open borders.
