The President and the Pandemic

  No defendant being impeached in any trial should be subjected to this level of legal uncertainty It is remarkable to contemplate   that even something as basic as the standard of proof required to convict President Trump cannot be agreed on between the House Managers and the President’s legal team. What then should be the standard of proof necessary for the House Managers to establish to convict the President of the alleged crimes for which he has been impeached: abuse of power and obstruction of justice? Should it be the criminal standard—proof beyond all reasonable doubt. or the civil standard—proof that tips the scales in favour of conviction? The president’s lawyers and House Managers clashed when the question:  “What standard of proof should be used in an impeachment trial?”   was posed to both the House Managers and Trump’s legal team by Senators Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, and Todd Young, R-Ind. In  response , House Manager Rep. ...

  The key to successfully ending this 100 years unresolved conflict requires Jordan’s borders to be extended to incorporate those areas designated as   “A Future State of Palestine”   in Trump’s already-defunct proposal. President Trump’s now released  deal   of the century   – calling for the creation of a second Arab state   in former Palestine in addition to Jordan (“the two-state solution”)  –  has predictably already been  consigned to the dustbin of history  by PLO President Mahmoud Abbas on the day of its publication.  Trump’s solution was a mirage based on the same shaky foundations unsuccessfully pursued by the international community since the 1980  Venice Declaration .  Trump’s failure to address the following issues ensured its collapse from the get go: The term “Palestinians” is not defined in the plan’s Glossary.  Who comprise “the Palestinians” and what constitutes their common identity?   Tru...

Respect for the rule of law and equality before the law for both Trump and the Senate must be determined by a strong and independent judiciary —not the law of the jungle – which separates a democracy like America from Russia. The impeachment trial of President Trump reveals how ready the Democrats are to overthrow the well-established principles of the rule of law and equality before the law in the interests of political expediency. Sharp differences between the Democrat-comprised—-and compromised—House Managers and the President’s legal team marked more than twelve hours of debate—as the House Managers unsuccessfully sought to have the Senate issue subpoenas to compel the production of new witnesses and documents to add to the volume of evidence elicited by the House in its partisan decision to impeach the President. The views expressed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and one of the House Managers —Jerrold Nadler—on the need for bipartisanship in the impeachment trial were ignored by th...

A Washington Post article threatening a campaign to impeach Trump had begun —published one day after his inauguration in January 2017—reeked of bias.  Speaker Pelosi’s decision to finally transmit the Trump impeachment papers to the Senate seems set to see highly-biased reporting by the mass media of Trump’s trial.  The mass media has never recovered from the damage to its credibility in predicting that Trump was virtually unelectable in 2016. Proving the voters made the wrong choice has been the mass media’s objective since—parroting the Democrats in denigrating and belittling Trump’s  very notable achievements  over the last three years. Stopping Trump being re-elected for another four years—or getting rid of him earlier—has seen readers and viewers abandoning the mass media as public confidence in their reporting  continues to decline. Leading the charge, a New York Times (NYT)  article  on 8 November 2016 headlined “ Who will be President?”,  ...

  Trump has once again spectacularly tapped into the American psyche President Trump’s  decision  to kill the leader of Iran’s elite Quds Force,  and eight other people who were accompanying Qassim HezbollahSuleimani at Iraq’s Baghdad airport,  is a sure vote winner that will contribute to Trump being re-elected for another four years as President. Trump’s loathing for State-sanctioned terrorism was made clear in his response to the   “pay for slay”  policy adopted by the   “State of Palestine”—  which is now paying more than US$300 million per annum to the families of the murderers and maimers of Jews—many of them Americans. The   Taylor Force Act   has stopped American economic aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) until the PA ceases paying these monies.  Trump’s targeted killing of terrorists offered safe haven or allowed to freely operate in and from UN recognized States to plot, murder and maim Americans—opens a new stage...

  Public confidence in the mass media to not disseminate fake news has now well and truly flown out the window. Trusted sources need to be found elsewhere Retribution has been quick in coming for the mass media since Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz released his Report on December 9 blasting the dossier prepared for the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton in 2016 by Christopher Steele (Steele Dossier) for the purposes of digging up dirt on then Presidential candidate Donald Trump. The Steele Dossier was used as the basis of four applications to the highly secretive FISA Court to surveil an American citizen - Carter Page - between October 2016 and January 2017. In the course of so doing an unknown number of  e mails and other communications  between members of the Donald J Trump for President Campaign and Page—a former member of that Committee—concerning campaign related matters were collected by the FBI. Their number and contents remain ...