President Trump’s speech in Phoenix brought out the usual cast of misfits and miscreants.
And no, I’m not just referring to
the “Antifa” anarchists who were, for the most part, denied their
typical practice of wielding clubs, hurling feces, throwing rocks,
setting vehicles ablaze and destroying buildings.
I’m talking about chronic Trump critics like James
Clapper, the former Director of National Intelligence. Spouting off on
CNN immediately after the speech, Clapper said he questioned the
president’s
“fitness to be in this office."
Lying to Congress is a felony. Yet Clapper managed to
avoid prosecution for criminal perjury by hiding behind President Obama.
So, when Clapper decries the “complete intellectual, moral or ethical
void” of President Trump, the irony is lost on no one.
Clapper seems to be making a career out of trashing
Trump. He’s like a guy who can’t resist cramming a cannoli in his mouth
every time he passes a pastry shop. Whenever Trump speaks, Clapper
starts yapping. It is no coincidence that his mouth, and the lie that
came out of it back in 2013, is what should have landed him behind
bars.
While testifying before Congress, Clapper was asked,
“Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” The DNI responded,
“No.”
It was a breathtaking lie, of course. Soon
thereafter, the story broke that the National Security Agency had,
indeed, been doing exactly what Clapper denied under oath. When
confronted with his lie, he told a reporter,
“I responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or at least untruthful manner by saying ‘no.’” Huh?
Later, Clapper apologized for his “clearly erroneous”
answer, but explained he had simply forgotten all about the massive
government operation to secretly collect metadata on hundreds of
millions of U.S. citizens. That’s like saying Christmas slipped his
mind.
Lying to Congress is a felony. Yet Clapper managed
to avoid prosecution for criminal perjury by hiding behind President
Obama. Obama’s pal, Attorney General Eric Holder, made sure the case was
tossed in a broom closet somewhere, never to be seen again.
The pompous media has never understood why much of
America does not embrace their liberal values. Most members of the
press are too insular and dogmatic to ever conceive of any intelligent
beliefs beyond their own.
So, when Clapper decries the
“complete intellectual, moral or ethical void”
of President Trump, the irony is lost on no one. Clapper became the
poster child for ethical decay when he served as the nation’s chief
intelligence officer.
At roughly the same time Clapper was spewing his
usual drivel, Hillary Clinton was attempting to sideswipe Trump with her
own revisionist rubbish.
Clinton, who mangled her presidential aspirations
with acts of self-immolation unmatched in modern political history, is
at it again. Old habits are hard to break. You’ll recall that she
famously blamed her husband’s infidelity with a young intern on a “vast
right-wing conspiracy” two decades ago. She has been playing the
narcissistic “blame game” ever since.
Her latest incantation is really quite laughable. In
a breathless recitation of excerpts from her new book “What Happened,”
Clinton bemoans that the mere sight of Donald Trump during the campaign
made her skin crawl. It is the tripe of dime novels, but no less
hypocritical.
Wouldn’t Hillary want to crawl out of her
own
skin because of her self-destruction? Wouldn't she blame herself for the
utterly unnecessary, but fatal, scandal of her own making? When she
looks in the mirror, does she see a crook staring back? How could she
not?
Like Clapper’s lies, Clinton managed to escape
prosecution and prison for what appears to be a clear violation of the
Espionage Act in the mishandling of classified documents. Once again,
Obama’s Justice Department provided cover, with a significant assist
from then-FBI Director James Comey.
Perhaps Clinton’s most revealing line in her book is when she recounts her
"lifetime of dealing with difficult men trying to throw me off.” While
it is intended to be a swipe at Trump, it sounds more like an angry
confession of living a tortured life in the company of Bill Clinton.
There will be more self-serving excerpts to come. Lucky us.
But Hillary Clinton and James Clapper are like pesky
flies compared to the mainstream media. Driven by its pronounced
liberal bias, they immediately condemned Trump for denouncing them at
the rally. The president knows he can provoke them into revealing their
prejudices. And when he did so during the speech, they reacted like
Pavlov’s dogs.
The gnashing of teeth at CNN was predictable, if not comical. Calling the president
“unhinged” and
“wounded,” anchor Don Lemon declared that Trump
“came
out on stage and lied directly to the American people. His speech was
without thought, without reason, devoid of facts, devoid of wisdom.” Lemon
blathered on and on, but you get the picture. He seemed to light up
like a pinball machine when his guest, Clapper, launched into his “unfit
for office” shtick. Is it any wonder that the convention hall crowd
began chanting, “CNN sucks?”
The pompous media has never understood why much of
America does not embrace their liberal values. Most members of the
press are too insular and dogmatic to ever conceive of any intelligent
beliefs beyond their own.
Which is why journalists never imagined that Trump
would be elected president. When it happened, they lapsed into
something akin to “septic shock” from which they have yet to recover.
Likely, they never will. They will persist in predicting Trump’s
imminent demise and assert their own intellectual and moral
superiority.
In so doing, they are sowing the seeds of their own
destruction. Not as a professional endeavor. There will always be
journalists.
But America will no longer hold them in respectable regard.
Gregg Jarrett is a Fox News legal analyst and former defense attorney.
