Author: Patrick J. Buchanan

President Trump is the leader of America’s conservative party. Yet not even his allies would describe him as a conservative in the tradition of Robert Taft, Russell Kirk or William F. Buckley. In the primaries of 2016, all his rivals claimed the mantle of Mr. Conservative, Ronald Reagan. Yet Trump captured the party’s heart. Who, then, and what is Donald Trump? In a Federalist essay, “Trump Isn’t a Conservative — And That’s a Good Thing,” Frank Cannon comes close to the mark. Trump, he writes, “would more accurately be described as a ‘radical anti-progressive’” who is “at war with the … Continue reading →

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That memo worked up in the Intel Committee of Chairman Devin Nunes may not have sunk the Mueller investigation, but from the sound of the secondary explosions, this torpedo was no dud. The critical charge: To persuade a FISA court to issue a warrant to spy on Trump aide Carter Page, the FBI relied on a dossier produced by a Trump-hating British spy, who was using old Kremlin contacts, while being paid to dig up dirt on Donald Trump by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Not only were the Clinton campaign and DNC paying the spy, Christopher Steele, for his dirt-diving, the … Continue reading →

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“All the News That’s Fit to Print” proclaims the masthead of The New York Times. “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” echoes The Washington Post. “The people have a right to know,” the professors at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism hammered into us in 1962. “Trust the people,” we were admonished. Explain then this hysteria, this panic in the press over the release of a four-page memo detailing one congressional committee’s rendering of how Trump-hate spawned an FBI investigation of the Republican candidate and President Donald Trump. What is the press corps afraid of? For it has not ceased keening and caterwauling … Continue reading →

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If Turkey is not bluffing, U.S. troops in Manbij, Syria, could be under fire by week’s end, and NATO engulfed in the worst crisis in its history. Turkish President Erdogan said Friday his troops will cleanse Manbij of Kurdish fighters, alongside whom U.S. troops are embedded. Erdogan’s foreign minister demanded concrete steps by the U.S. to end its support of the Kurds, who control the Syrian border with Turkey east of the Euphrates, all the way to Iraq. If the Turks attack Manbij, the U.S. will face a choice: Stand by our Kurdish allies and resist the Turks, or abandon … Continue reading →

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Asked if he would agree to be interviewed by Robert Mueller’s team, President Donald Trump told the White House press corps, “I would love to do it … as soon as possible. … under oath, absolutely.” On hearing this, the special counsel’s office must have looked like the Eagles’ locker room after the 38-7 rout of the Vikings put them in the Super Bowl. If the president’s legal team lets Trump sit for hours answering Mueller’s agents, they should be disbarred for malpractice. For what Mueller is running here is not, as Trump suggests, a “witch hunt.” It is a … Continue reading →

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The war for dominance in the Middle East, following the crushing of ISIS, appears about to commence in Syria — with NATO allies America and Turkey on opposing sides. Turkey is moving armor and troops south to Syria’s border enclave of Afrin, occupied by Kurds, to drive them out, and then drive the Syrian Kurds out of Manbij further south as well. Says President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, “We will destroy all terror nests, one by one, in Syria, starting from Afrin and Manbij.” For Erdogan, the Kurdish YPG, the major U.S. ally in Syria, is an arm of the Kurdish … Continue reading →

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President Trump “said things which were hate-filled, vile and racist. … I cannot believe … any president has ever spoken the words that I … heard our president speak yesterday.” So wailed Sen. Dick Durbin after departing the White House. And what caused the minority leader to almost faint dead away? Trump called Haiti a “s—-hole country,” said Durbin, and then asked why we don’t have more immigrants from neat places “like Norway.” With that, there erupted one of the great media firestorms of the Trump era. On Martin Luther King Day, it was still blazing. Trump concedes he may … Continue reading →

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After a year in which he tested a hydrogen bomb and an ICBM, threatened to destroy the United States, and called President Trump “a dotard,” Kim Jong Un, at the gracious invitation of the president of South Korea, will be sending a skating team to the “Peace Olympics.” An impressive year for Little Rocket Man. Thus the most serious nuclear crisis since Nikita Khrushchev put missiles in Cuba appears to have abated. Welcome news, even if the confrontation with Pyongyang has probably only been postponed. Still, we have been given an opportunity to reassess the 65-year-old Cold War treaty that … Continue reading →

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Informing Iran, “The U.S. is watching what you do,” Amb. Nikki Haley called an emergency meeting Friday of the Security Council regarding the riots in Iran. The session left her and us looking ridiculous. France’s ambassador tutored Haley that how nations deal with internal disorders is not the council’s concern. Russia’s ambassador suggested the United Nations should have looked into our Occupy Wall Street clashes and how the Missouri cops handled Ferguson. Fifty years ago, 100 U.S. cities erupted in flames after Martin Luther King’s assassination. Federal troops were called in. In 1992, Los Angeles suffered the worst U.S. riot … Continue reading →

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As tens of thousands marched in the streets of Tehran on Wednesday in support of the regime, the head of the Revolutionary Guard Corps assured Iranians the “sedition” had been defeated. Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari is whistling past the graveyard. The protests that broke out a week ago and spread and became riots are a fire bell in the night for the Islamic Republic. The protesters denounced President Hassan Rouhani, re-elected last year with 57 percent of the vote, for failing to curb inflation or deliver the benefits he promised when Iran signed the nuclear deal. Supreme Leader Ayatollah … Continue reading →

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What caused the FBI to open a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign in July 2016, which evolved into the criminal investigation that is said today to imperil the Trump presidency? As James Comey’s FBI and Special Counsel Robert Mueller have, for 18 months, failed to prove Donald Trump’s “collusion” with the Kremlin, what was it, in mid-2016, that justified starting this investigation? What was the basis for the belief Trump was colluding, that he was the Manchurian candidate of Vladimir Putin? What evidence did the FBI cite to get FISA court warrants to surveil and wiretap Trump’s team? Republican … Continue reading →

The post The Times Rides to Mueller’s Rescue appeared first on LewRockwell.

Asked what he did during the French Revolution, Abbe Sieyes replied, “I survived.” Donald Trump can make the same boast. No other political figure has so dominated our discourse. And none, not Joe McCarthy in his heyday in the early ’50s, nor Richard Nixon in Watergate, received such intensive and intemperate coverage and commentary as has our 45th president. Whatever one may think of Trump, he is a leader and a fighter, not a quitter. How many politicians could have sustained the beatings Trump has taken, and remained as cocky and confident? And looking back on what may fairly be … Continue reading →

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The original question the FBI investigation of the Trump campaign was to answer was a simple one: Did he do it? Did Trump, or officials with his knowledge, collude with Vladimir Putin’s Russia to hack the emails of John Podesta and the DNC, and leak the contents to damage Hillary Clinton and elect Donald Trump? A year and a half into the investigation, and, still, no “collusion” has been found. Yet the investigation goes on, at the demand of the never-Trump media and Beltway establishment. Hence, and understandably, suspicions have arisen. Are the investigators after the truth, or are they … Continue reading →

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President Trump, every Republican senator, and the GOP majority in Speaker Paul Ryan’s House just put the future of their party on the line. By enacting the largest tax cut since the Reagan administration, the heart of which is cutting the corporate rate from 35 to 21 percent, Republicans have boldly bet the farm. They have rewritten America’s tax code to reflect their belief that cutting taxes on the private sector will produce the prosperity they have promised. If it happens, the GOP will reap the rewards, if not by 2018, then in 2020. Democrats, as the Party of Government, … Continue reading →

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In the run-up to Christmas, President Donald Trump has been the beneficiary of some surprisingly good news and glad tidings. Sunday, Vladimir Putin called to thank him and the CIA for providing Russia critical information that helped abort an ISIS plot to massacre visitors to Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg. Monday found polls showing Trump at his highest in months. Stocks soared 200 points at the opening bell in anticipation of pre-Christmas passage of the Republican tax bill. The Dow has added a record 5,000 points in Trump’s first year. And the Russiagate investigation may have busted an axle. Though … Continue reading →

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