South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman draws gun, says 'I'm not going to be a Gabby Giffords'

To make a point that guns are dangerous only in the hands of criminals, a South Carolina congressman on Friday pulled out a loaded handgun during a meeting with constituents.
U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman, a Republican, reportedly placed the .38-caliber gun on a table during the "coffee with constituents" meeting at a Rock Hill restaurant.
"I'm not going to be a Gabby Giffords," Norman said, referring to the former Arizona congresswoman who was shot outside a grocery store during a 2011 constituent gathering.
In a follow-up statement, Giffords' husband, retired NASA astronaut Mark Kelly, criticized Norman’s stunt.
"Americans are increasingly faced with a stark choice: leaders like Gabby, who work hard together to find solutions to problems, or extremists like the NRA and Congressman Norman, who rely on intimidation tactics and perpetuating fear," Kelly said.
Norman, who reportedly holds a state-issued concealed-carry gun permit, said he'll display his gun at future constituent meetings.
"I'm tired of these liberals jumping on the guns themselves as if they are the cause of the problem," Norman told the Post and Courier. "Guns are not the problem."
Norman's point about gun safety drew support from Republicans in the state, the newspaper reported.
"Hysterical to see liberals freak out over @RalphNorman accurately demonstrating that guns really are inanimate objects," state GOP Chairman Drew McKissick tweeted.
But some meeting attendees had a different view.
" ... (H)he chose to take the gun out and put it on the table not knowing if any of us had mental health issues," said Lori Carter, a schoolteacher from Charlotte, N.C., told the newspaper. "What was to prevent me from leaning across the table to take that gun?
"I felt it was highly inappropriate for an elected official, honestly, and it almost felt like an intimidation tactic," Carter added.
Meanwhile, South Carolina Democratic Party chairman Trav Robertson criticized Norman's action, saying "no responsible gun owner" would do such a thing.

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Liz Peek: Trump gains ground, much to liberals’ horror

In 2010, as President Obama’s popularity spiraled downward, Jeff Greenfield wrote for CBS News that “historically, no president in modern times has significantly improved his approval numbers in his second year.” Don’t look now, but some polls show President Trump is doing just that.
In the second year of his presidency, President Trump’s approval ratings are climbing, to the utter horror of liberals, who cannot for the life of them understand why.
Some 51 percent of the country now supports the president, according to the Rasmussen poll – up from 42 percent a year ago.
President Obama, at the same date, had 47 percent of the country behind him, down from 57 percent the year earlier.
The stock market is skittish, trade wars loom, President Trump tweets with abandon, Stormy Daniels dominates headlines, White House staff members come and go, and – oh yes – there’s pesky Special Counsel Robert Mueller trying to find evidence that President Trump obstructed justice or that he or his campaign conspired with the Russians.
Democrats wonder, how on Earth can Trump be gaining ground?
Here’s a clue: real growth is running above 3 percent, unemployment claims are the lowest since 1969, wage growth is the best since 2009 and Americans are more optimistic than they have been since 2004.
These are stunning stats, but just as important is this: many Americans think the president is trying to do the right thing. They view him as confronting a hostile media and an entrenched bureaucracy. And on numerous policy issues – like immigration, gun control and trade with China – President Trump is in synch with most Americans.

The same cannot be said for progressive Democrats or, for that matter, many of the Freedom Caucus very conservative types.
How do we know? Polling on the “direction of the country” indicates that Americans are more positive on what’s going on in the United States than they have been since 2009.
Meanwhile, approval ratings for Congress show it surely isn’t our legislators who are getting credit for the positive trend.
The president has long called out media bias; the public is beginning to agree with him. In a recent Gallup survey, nearly half the country thinks that there is a “great deal” of political bias in our news coverage, up from 37 percent in 2012.
A new Rasmussen poll finds that 52 percent of likely U.S. voters believe “when most reporters write or talk about the president, they are trying to block him from passing his agenda,” up from 44 percent a year ago and 47 percent in August.
This is why President Trump calls out the media at every opportunity. Not only is he right, it makes him an underdog, and Americans love underdogs.
On immigration, the president, like most of the country, supports a path to legal status for the so-called Dreamers, but also favors tightening our borders.  A huge majority of the country agrees, with both those opinions.
A Harvard Harris poll conducted earlier this year found that 79 percent of Americans favor a secure border, and nearly 70 percent oppose the diversity lottery system now in place. Almost 80 percent prefer merit-based immigration to a policy that prioritizes family ties. A Morning Consult/Politico poll also revealed a preference for merit-based immigration.
The left has become untethered on this topic, increasingly equating legal and illegal immigration. Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez says that asking about citizenship on the U.S. census form is a "craven attack on our democracy." He’s got it exactly backwards; sending legislators to Congress to represent people who are in the country illegally is an attack on our democracy, and most Americans agree.
Gun control is another issue on which the president has veered towards the popular middle, demanding that his administration produce a rule banning bump stocks, for instance.
President Trump’s open White House meeting after the Parkland shootings shocked the political establishment, as the president called out his GOP colleagues for being in thrall to the National Rifle Association and proposed expanded background checks as well as other controversial measures. Though he later walked back his endorsement of further gun controls, he left no doubt that he was behind commonsense reforms, even if political necessity required a more tempered approach.
It appears that President Trump’s efforts to confront China have widespread appeal, and not just in the rust belt.
Pew Research reports that Americans’ view of China has deteriorated in recent years, with more than half the country having an unfavorable view of the world’s second-largest economy and, as of last year, 65 percent saying that China is either an adversary or a serious problem. Moreover, the president has the support of businesses operating in China, which have been on the front lines of China’s unfair trade practices and discriminatory rulings.
As many Americans applaud President Trump for his hard line on China or efforts to resolve the DACA issue, they see him hamstrung by unceasing Democratic resistance and a lack of cooperation even from some GOP members of Congress.
But that’s not the only reason that President Trump’s popularity may be inching higher. Unlike President Obama, President Trump did not enter the Oval Office burdened by high expectations.
In describing President Obama’s tough first year, in which he “suffered the steepest decline in job approval of any first year president since they started keeping such data,” Greenfield suggested that the drop was because Obama’s fans were overly optimistic. People expected too much and “more important, he did not come to office with a strong sense of where he was going.”
That is not the case with President Trump. He ran on boosting job creation through lower taxes and lighter regulation, and on making the country more secure. Whether it’s demanding fairer trade with China, tightening our control of our border or passing a big hike in defense spending, his agenda is surprisingly consistent for a man often guided by impulse.
Maybe the increase in approval comes from a much simpler place: President Trump is doing what he promised he would. 

Sen. Kamala Harris raises eyebrows on 'Ellen' with Trump joke

Sen. Kamala Harris, D- Calif., a rising Democratic star and potential 2020 presidential candidate, raised eyebrows during an appearance on “The Ellen Degeneres Show” Thursday for one of her answers to a hypothetical question.
Ellen Degeneres, the host, asked Harris a series of light-hearted questions, ranging from whether she has any tattoos (no) to her celebrity crush (Tito Jackson).
She was then asked, “If you had to be stuck in an elevator with either President Trump, (Vice President) Mike Pence or (Attorney General) Jeff Sessions, who would it be?”
“Does one of us have to come out alive?” Harris asked, prompting cheers from the audience. Harris laughed hysterically at the joke and took a second to compose herself.
The San Francisco Chronicle’s report pointed out that “Even Degeneres applauded the senator's wit.”
Conservatives responded to the remark on social media. Fox News’ Sean Hannity called the comment a “shocking new low.”
Harris, California’s first African-American senator, has not responded to the conservative response online.
Degeneres asked her if she is considering a 2020 run, and the senator responded, "Right now, we are in the early months of 2018, and at this very moment in time, there are people across America who have priorities around their health care, have priorities around: Can they get through the month and pay the bills? Can they pay off their student loans? Can they afford to pay for gas, housing?" Critical issues."
This is not the first time a Democrat received backlash over comments about Trump.
Former Vice President Joe Biden, a possible 2020 candidate, made headlines in March when he said he would “beat the hell” out of Trump back in high school for disrespecting women.

Stock futures fall after Trump threatens $100b in tariffs on Chinese goods

What's Walmart going to do now :-)

President Donald Trump on Thursday threatened an additional $100 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods, which sent stock futures tumbling after a day that saw stocks rise for a third day.

Dow Jones futures were down triple digits, or 0.86%. The S&P 500 was lower by 0.77% and the Nasdaq Composite was off 0.84%.

The move by Trump comes one day after China imposed $50 billion in retaliatory tariffs on U.S. products.

Stocks had rebounded since then, as trade tensions seemed to ease as the threats were seen more as a way to begin negotiations.

Trump added that he’s instructed the Agriculture Department to explore protections for U.S. farmers in light of China’s recent measures.

China’s commerce ministry warned it would fight back "at any cost" with fresh measures to safeguard its interests if the United States sticks to its protectionist actions.

Chinese equity markets remained closed for a holiday.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng closed up 1.1%, after beginning the session higher as the market caught up following Thursday’s holiday.

Japan’s Nikkei ended the day down 0.4%, and up half a percent for the week.

European markets opened lower.

Germany’s DAX was lower by 0.83%, France’s CAC was down 0.57% and London’s FTSE was off 0.21%.

Before Trump’s announcement. the story that traders and investors thought would be the main topic, would be the monthly jobs report that will be released Friday morning.

The U.S. economy is expected to have added 193,000 new nonfarm jobs last month in the closely watched report, according to economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters.

The unemployment rate is expected to fall one-tenth of a percentage point to 4%.

In the Thursday trading session, the Dow increased by 240.92 points, or 1%, to 24,505.22 at the close of the regular trading session. The S&P 500 rose by 18.15, or 0.7%, to 2,662.84 while the Nasdaq climbed by 34.44, or 0.5%, to 7,076.55.

Oil prices fell after Trump’s threat was announced. U.S. crude was down 0.55% to $63.19 a barrel.

Trade war or war of words? Experts sound the alarm as China promises to 'fight to the end'

Experts warned Thursday that the United States and China are barreling towards a potentially catastrophic trade war, citing each country's increasingly heated rhetoric and unique economic pressure points.
Most Asian stock markets were holding early Friday, in an early sign that investors—for now--are brushing off concerns about the brewing brouhaha between the world's two biggest economies.
President Trump on Thursday called for Robert Lighthizer, the U.S. trade representative, to consider $100 billion in additional tariffs against China. The two nations have already slapped each other with planned tariffs totaling $50 billion this week.
But economic analysts said the situation -- which some U.S. news outlets have already branded a "trade war" -- could change rapidly, especially given the nations' ongoing war of words.
“This is what a trade war looks like, and what we have warned against from the start,” National Retail Federation President and CEO Matthew Shay said in an interview with Reuters.
For their part, Chinese officials said they won't capitulate to U.S. demands.

China and the U.S. have exchanged plans to impose sweeping tariffs on each others' exports this week.  (Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

"If someone wants a trade war, we will fight to the end,” Wang Shouwen, China’s commerce vice minister, told reporters Wednesday, after announcing a planned tax on U.S. goods, including airplanes and soybeans, the biggest U.S. export to China.
CHINA PROMISES TO FIGHT US 'AT ANY COST' AFTER TWO SIDES THREATEN HUGE TARIFFS
One trade policy expert specifically faulted Trump's communications strategy in an interview with the AP.
"Mr. Trump is upping the ante, but the lack of a clear game plan and an incoherent messaging strategy from the administration is setting this up for an all-out trade war rather than a fruitful negotiation," said Eswar Prasad, professor of trade policy at Cornell University.

"I like to say that there is a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow."

Chinese officials know they can effectively target specific sectors of the American economy, experts said, decreasing the likelihood that they will feel the need to retreat from the brink.
“The American agricultural sector is quite influential in the Congress,” Peking University economics professor told The New York Times. “China wants the American domestic political system to do the work.”
Some of that work was being done by Nebraska Republican Sen. Ben Sasse, who said this week that Trump was “threatening to light American agriculture on fire" and calling the White House's approach "the dumbest possible way to do this.”
China, by contrast, has unique tools to counteract U.S. tariffs, according to analysts. President Xi Jinping's government controls huge swaths of the country's economy and has an iron grip on the press, which would insulate the administration from some political and financial pressures in the short-term.
“My impression is that there is in Washington an exaggerated sense of how painful these tariffs might be” in China, Gavekal Dragonomics director Arthur R. Kroeber told the paper.
But as President Trump noted on Twitter on Wednesday, the U.S. runs a significant trade deficit with China, giving the White House its own blunt leverage.
"We are not in a trade war with China, that war was lost many years ago by the foolish, or incompetent, people who represented the U.S.," Trump wrote. "Now we have a Trade Deficit of $500 Billion a year, with Intellectual Property Theft of another $300 Billion."
Trump economic advisor Larry Kudlow told Fox Business that negotiations are underway, suggesting that talk of a trade war is premature.
“There is a process here, there’s going to be some back and forth, but there’s also some negotiations and we may talk about that, but that’s the key point," Kudlow said, describing Trump as "the first guy with a backbone in decades" to take some action on China — "at least preliminary actions."
Kudlow downplayed the urgency of the situation, saying tariff discussions won't play out overnight.
“In the United States at least, we’re putting it out for comment, it’s going to take a couple months," he said, referring to the proposed new tariffs. "I doubt if there will be any concrete action for several months. ... Trump’s putting his cards on the table. He’s standing up for this country, but he’s also standing up for better world trade.”
China on Thursday also formally challenged the U.S. tariffs at the WTO, setting the stage for a potentially lengthy legal battle.
The result of all the tension and brinksmanship, the White House says, will be a fairer international business climate for U.S. industries.
"I like to say that there is a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow," Kudlow told Politico this week.

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Hillary Clinton says US in middle of 'war on truth, facts and reason'

Hillary Clinton said Wednesday night that the U.S. is "witnessing an all-out attack on core values of democracy," in what appeared to be the latest in a series of criticisms of the Trump administration.
The former Democratic presidential candidate was giving closing remarks at the annual Vital Voices Global Leadership Awards in Washington, D.C. The awards honor women leaders in human rights, economic empowerment for women or political reform.
Though Clinton did not mention Trump or specifically reference his administration, she lamented, "we're seeing a retreat from the commitment to embrace women’s advancement as an objective of U.S. foreign policy."
HILLARY CLINTON CLAIMS 'FOX NEWS IS ALWAYS TRYING TO IMPEACH ME'
"I don’t think it's a coincidence that at the same time, we are witnessing an all-out attack on core values of democracy: free speech and the rule of law," Clinton went on. "A war on truth, facts and reason. So women’s voices have always been vital, but never more so than right now."
Clinton has not been shy about criticizing Trump, who defeated her in the 2016 presidential race. One night earlier, speaking at a women-only workspace in New York City, the former first lady and secretary of state said America was in "a very bad spot."
"I think it's very unfortunate to contemplate but more can happen that would put our rights at risk, our freedom at risk, our values, our fundamental views about what it means to be Americans," she said.
Clinton also took a shot at Fox News, accusing the network of "always trying to impeach me."

Judge Andrew Napolitano: What Is Robert Mueller looking for?

Robert Mueller is the special counsel appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in May 2017 to probe the nature and extent of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign. The investigation began in October 2016 under President Barack Obama when the FBI took seriously the boast of Carter Page, one of candidate Donald Trump’s foreign policy advisers, that he had worked for the Kremlin.
The FBI also had transcripts of telephone conversations and copies of emails and text messages of Trump campaign personnel that had been supplied to it by British intelligence. Connecting the dots, the FBI persuaded a judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to issue a search warrant for the surveillance of Page, an American.
Page never registered as a foreign agent, and working for the Kremlin and not registering as a foreign agent is a crime for which the FBI should have investigated Page. Such an investigation would have included surveillance, but not from the FISA court. Surveillance in a criminal case requires a search warrant from a U.S. District Court based upon the constitutional requirement of probable cause of crime -- meaning that it is more likely than not that the thing to be searched (internet and telephone communications) will produce evidence of criminal behavior.
But the FBI didn’t seek that. Instead, it sought a warrant to surveil Page’s communications based on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act standard, which is probable cause of communicating with a foreign power. This lower, easier-to-demonstrate and unconstitutional standard is the tool of choice these days for FBI agents because it requires less effort and is used in a court that grants 99.9 percent of search warrant applications.
The temptation to use the FISA court and its easy standard instead of a U.S. District Court and its privacy-recognizing constitutional standard to get a search warrant is often too much for the FBI to resist. This is a form of corruption because it presents a path for criminal investigators to invade the privacy of Americans that the Constitution protects.
Yet the FBI used whatever it learned from the surveillance of Page to get that surveillance extended. Even the Trump Department of Justice went to the FISA court to spy on Page. Lost in all this is the purpose of FISA -- to prevent government surveillance of Americans and limit it to agents of foreign powers.
When Jeff Sessions became attorney general, he recognized that he himself would most likely be a witness in the Mueller investigation because of his involvement in the Trump campaign, so he removed himself from all matters pertaining to Russia, and his deputy, Rosenstein, appointed Mueller to run the investigation.
What is Mueller looking for?
When the feds are examining a potential crime committed by a group, their treasure-trove of evidence can often be a member of the group who reveals the criminal behavior of his former colleagues. That’s why the feds often indict people for crimes that appear to be irrelevant to the ones they are investigating -- in this case, lying to the FBI and bank fraud allegedly committed before the 2016 election.
When such an indicted person can then be persuaded to turn on his former colleagues in return for a lesser charge or a lighter sentence, prosecutors can have a field day. This is a form of bribery -- you tell us on the witness stand what we want to hear and we’ll go easy on you -- that is permitted only to prosecutors; and the courts condone it. If defense counsel gave as much as a lollipop to a witness to shade his testimony, both would be indicted.
From the backgrounds of those whom Mueller’s grand juries have indicted and from the deals they have cut with him, it appears that Mueller is looking at three areas of potential criminal behavior. Mueller has already established as a base line the saturation of the 2016 presidential campaign by Russian intelligence agents. If his indictments of these Russians are accurate, they were here virtually and physically and they spent millions to help Trump. But the indicted Russians are not coming back to the U.S. for their trials.
Mueller is examining their potential American confederates for the crime of conspiracy -- or, as my colleagues in the media call it, collusion. This would be an agreement by campaign officials to accept something of value from a foreign person, entity or government, even if the thing of value -- for example, Hillary Clinton emails -- was never actually delivered. The crime is the agreement, and it is prosecutable after at least one of those who agreed takes a material step in furtherance of the agreement.
Mueller’s second area of examination is possible obstruction of justice by President Trump himself. Obstruction is the interference with a judicial proceeding for a corrupt purpose. Was FBI Director James Comey fired because Trump couldn’t work with him or because he was hot on the president’s trail and Trump wanted to impede that? If it was the former, it would have been licit. If it was the latter, it could have been criminal.
The third of Mueller’s areas is financial dealings by the pre-presidential Trump. These bear little surface relationship to Russian involvement in the campaign, yet evidence of wrongdoing must have come to Mueller from his FBI agents or his cooperating witnesses, and he is following the money as prosecutors do.
Where will all this go? The president cannot seem to find an experienced criminal defense lawyer. Mueller has 16 experienced federal prosecutors and a few dozen FBI agents passionately at work. And he also has witnesses he legally bribed and a few hundred thousand documents from the White House and from Trump’s financial affairs that the president has not personally reviewed.
And now Mueller wants to interview the president. Who will have the upper hand if that happens?
Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel.

Many presidents have bashed business, but Trump's Amazon offensive is personal

Donald Trump isn't the first president to take on a business or industry he doesn't like.
As the New York Times reminds us, Barack Obama once went after Staples for not providing adequate health care for its workers and slammed Wall Street banks over bonuses.
Bill Clinton's administration pushed an antitrust suit to break up Microsoft.
Jack Kennedy assailed steel executives for raising prices by saying "my father always told me that all businessmen were sons of bitches."
And FDR railed against "malefactors of great wealth."
But Trump's attacks on Amazon are being treated very differently—and most of his predecessors didn’t name the offending CEOs.
At this point, of course, it's just words. The president hasn't actually proposed to change any policy that affects Amazon. But he's repeatedly complained about Amazon unfairly benefitting from low Postal Service rates, and that initially knocked $60 billion off the value of the company’s stock. (Many companies have continued to lose value as the markets slide with China retaliating for Trump's tariffs.)
What makes this different is that Trump's case against Amazon is so personal—and linked to, as he has told me and others, Jeff Bezos’ separate ownership of the Washington Post, a newspaper that the president is convinced has treated him unfairly. (The Post insists that Bezos has nothing to do with its news coverage.)
Amazon, for its part, has said nothing, has issued no statement challenging the president on the facts. It's a secretive company that rarely responds to journalists, and this in my view is a failure of corporate communications, even if it wants the story to die down.
The Times piece makes a larger argument about the president’s approach to corporate America: "Lately, Mr. Trump's antibusiness rants have become particularly menacing and caused the stocks of some companies to plunge."
The story notes that over the years he has attacked companies as varied as Verizon, Coke, Nordstrom, Sony and H&R Block, as well as media giants.
He has criticized the proposed merger between Time Warner (which includes CNN) and AT&T, which is under antitrust review by his administration.
The president has also gotten results. Even before taking office, he threatened to cancel Boeing's deal to build the next generation of Air Force One planes—though in the end he knocked down the price from $4 billion to $3.9 billion.
Clearly, having a career businessman as president brings both strengths and weaknesses. He's accustomed to using hardball negotiations, pointed threats and lawsuits to get his way.
But a president, unlike a real estate developer, can decimate a company's stock with a few words.
There's nothing wrong with Trump trying to get a better deal for the beleaguered Postal Service (though he names most of the board members that run the service). Yet that would affect every package shipper, not just Amazon—which, by the way, is incredibly popular with consumers even as the site (and many others) have hurt brick-and-mortar stores.
It's the perception that this is a personal feud—tied to the president's resentment of Bezos and the Post—that undercuts his case.
Howard Kurtz is a Fox News analyst and the host of "MediaBuzz" (Sundays 11 a.m.). He is the author "Media Madness: Donald Trump, The Press and the War Over the Truth." Follow him at @HowardKurtz. Click here for more information on Howard Kurtz.