Kevin De Leon Cartoons

Sen. Dianne Feinstein Cartoons

North Korea Demands Sanctions Relief For Denuclearization

A photo released by the White House shows Mike Pompeo, then C.I.A. director, meeting with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, in Pyongyang during Easter weekend. Credit The White House, via Associated Press

OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 8:59 PM PT — Sat. Aug. 4, 2018

A North Korean official from Kim Jong Un’s inner circle says that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is undermining the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.
The claims come after North Korea denounced the U.S. for calling on the rest of the world to maintain pressure on Kim Jong Un through international sanctions.
North Korea is saying that President Trump promised to ease sanctions on the country if it shut down its nuclear program.
However, the U.S. State Department responded back, saying that sanctions must remain in place until the denuclearization occurs.

'Fake News' shirts pulled from Newseum gift shop after media complaints

"Make America Great Again" hats displayed at Trump Tower in New York City, Aug. 20, 2016.  (Reuters)

Bowing to pressure from journalists who complained about it stocking Trump-related merchandise, a museum in Washington, D.C., on Saturday said it would no longer sell T-shirts that say "You Are Very Fake News."
The Newseum -- which claims to celebrate the role and history of the press in America -- says it has removed the shirts from its gift shop and online store, and issued a public apology and show of support for members of the media.
“We made a mistake and we apologize,” the organization said in a news release, the Hill reported. “A free press is an essential part of our democracy and journalists are not the enemy of the people.”
The statement marked a reversal from a previous Newseum position, in which the museum said it offered the "Fake News" shirts and other items out of respect for conflicting viewpoints.
Newseum spokeswoman Sonya Gavankar had defended the merchandise to Poynter.org, a website for a media think tank, saying the museum encourages an environment of free expression.
“As a nonpartisan organization, people with differing viewpoints feel comfortable visiting the Newseum," she said, "and one of our greatest strengths is that we’re champions not only of a free press but also of free speech."
But members of the free press weren’t buying it.
The T-shirt debacle followed a heated exchange earlier this week where journalists asked White House press secretary Sarah Sanders to declare that the media is not the “enemy of the people,” a position espoused by President Trump, who has also helped popularize the term “fake news.”
The mission of Newseum, a nonprofit enterprise, is to “increase public understanding of the importance of a free press and the First Amendment,” according to its website.
While the Newseum will no longer sell the “fake news” shirts, it told FOX5 DC that it will continue carrying other Trump-related merchandise, including the top-selling “Make America Great Again” hats.

Dan Gainor: The insults, they never stop! Anti-Trump media just can’t help themselves

The media didn’t even need Hillary Clinton this past week to denounce President Trump and his supporters as deplorables once more.
Trump supporters were depicted as “deranged” and being fed “venom” by the president “on an almost daily basis.”
Washington Post columnist and former Republican Jennifer Rubin said the president is “a desperate man,” “completely out of control” and “completely unhinged.”
The latest episode escalated when President Trump spoke to supporters at a rally in Tampa, Fla. CNN’s Chief White House Correspondent Jim Acosta, a constant Trump critic, was heckled by the crowd. Boos and chants of “CNN sucks” reverberated across the Internet.
Acosta even claimed he felt like “we weren’t in America anymore.” Apparently, CNN’s America only has free press, not free speech.
Journalists couldn’t decide who they were angrier at – President Trump or his supporters – so they went after both, with Acosta as their standard-bearer.
The ever-aggrieved CNN correspondent then took his complaints to the White House press room. There he hectored press secretary Sarah Sanders about President Trump’s view that many in the media are “the enemy of the people.”
Acosta noted how Sanders didn’t respond to a previous question the way he wanted. He whined that she “did not say that the press is not the enemy of the people.” This extended the life of the story and ensured Acosta was in the center ring for the circus that followed.
Is Acosta auditioning for his own CNN opinion show?
Fair to say that Acosta didn’t like Sanders’ response. Sanders listed numerous problems with the media and how they have raised the level of vitriol in the U.S. She added that, “as far as I know, I am the first press secretary in the history of the United States that’s required Secret Service protection.”

The Times might consider changing its motto from "All the news that's fit to print" to “Do as we say, not as we do.”

None of that mattered. Media reaction to being booed devolved into journalists defending journalists.
Politico writer Marc Caputo mocked the crowd at the president’s rally as having a “full set of teeth” only if you put them all together. He also called them “garbage people” before he had to apologize.
“Meet The Press” and MSNBC host Chuck Todd went off the deep end, comparing the crowd booing CNN to the deadly white supremacist attack in Charlottesville, Va.
“And this kind of unfocused visceral anger at the other side of really neutral people like folks in the press corps, it can lead to this,” he warned, before showing video of the attack that killed Heather Heyer in Chartlottesville.
“Really neutral.”
CNN political analyst April Ryan went so far as to claim that “Jim Acosta's life, in my opinion, was in jeopardy that night.” Even though Acosta was also asked for autographs at the event.
Meanwhile, “The View” panelist Sunny Hostin described President Trump as a “dictator.” “Dictators attack the press routinely and we’re seeing it in this country,” she said.
NBC Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Andrea Mitchell even went on Comedy Central and compared President Trump to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin for talking about the press as enemy of the people. “You know, this is something that we first heard from Josef Stalin,’ she said.
2. A Blatant Double Standard on Racism: The New York Times turned a blind eye to anti-white racism when it named tech writer Sarah Jeong, who was born in South Korea, to its editorial board. Controversy followed immediately when the Asian-American writer’s old tweets surfaced. Like a good liberal, she had blasted out numerous tweets attacking “white people.” Many of them had curse words in them directed at whites.
Jeong called to “#CancelWhitePeople,” asked if they are “only fit to live underground like groveling goblins” and referred to them as “Dumb--- f------- white people.”
In one tweet she commented: “White people have stopped breeding. you’ll all go extinct soon. that was my plan all along.”
Naturally, the Times stood by her, arguing that: “For a period of time she responded to that harassment (she said she was receiving online) by imitating the rhetoric of her harassers.”
Jeong referred to it as “counter-trolling.” Among the many other targets for her hate, she also attacked men, police (“a--holes” we should talk about “banning”) and people at the Times.
Andrew Sullivan skewered both Jeong and the Times, writing for New York magazine: “Another indicator that these statements might be racist comes from replacing the word ‘white’ with any other racial group. #cancelblackpeople probably wouldn’t fly at the New York Times, would it?” he asked.
Sullivan is right. The Times is obsessed with diversity. “Building a diverse and inclusive workplace is essential to that mission,” it claims on its official diversity page. According to Nexis, the newspaper used the word “diversity” 840 times this year in the first seven months. Only The Times isn’t diverse, a point the paper is desperate to hide.
Fast Company wrote in March: “The diversity of the New York Times’ leadership hasn’t budged in years.” In a nation where white people make up 60.7 percent of the population, they make up 72 percent of Times staff and 80 percent of its management.
The Times might consider changing its motto from "All the news that's fit to print" to “Do as we say, not as we do.”
3. That Free Speech Thing: The end of the week delivered a silly, pearl-clutching moment as professional journalists got upset over hats and T-shirts.
Journalism’s Poynter Institute reported that: “The Newseum is selling MAGA hats and 'fake news' T-shirts.” The press reacted like someone had violated hallowed ground, similar to how history buffs reacted to plans that Disney wanted to build a theme park near a Civil War battlefield.
Except this was about hats and T-shirts.
Journalists from outlets like PBS, CNN and The Washington Post did their best version of a Twitter outrage mob.
Boston Globe Deputy Washington Bureau Chief Matt Viser complained: “This t-shirt doesn’t belong anywhere. It particularly doesn’t belong at the @Newseum, a place that celebrates journalism and has the First Amendment etched in stone outside its building.”
Vice News Editor-in-Chief Ryan McCarthy snarked: “Looking forward to the Newseum's ‘Enemy of the people’ onesie.”
Washington Post journalist Karen Tumulty said: “Next up: Air and Space museum selling coffee mugs that say the moon landing was a hoax.”
And Washington Post Deputy Audience Editor Mark W. Smith responded like he was scolding a dog: “This is bad, Newseum.” Then he tried to sell followers some of the paper’s “Democracy Dies in Darkness” T-shirts. Because this is 2018.
CNN did extract a statement to toss to the mob from an unlucky Newseum spokesperson Friday: “Fake news is a word that is in our popular culture now and this is intended to be a ‘satirical rebuke’ and appears in our store with T-shirts that include a variety of other ‘tounge-in-cheek’ (sic) sayings.”
Of course the mob won soon after that. The cries of whiny journalists succeeded in banning speech that journalists didn’t like from the Newseum. (Irony alert!)
Here’s the official statement  from the Newseum (note the obvious anti-Trump dig at the end.): “The Newseum has removed the ‘You Are Very Fake News’ t-shirts from the gift shop and online. We made a mistake and we apologize. A free press is an essential part of our democracy and journalists are not the enemy of the people.”

Trump, Feinstein spar over reports of Chinese spy on her staff

At his rally in central Ohio on Saturday night, President Trump took aim at U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, criticizing the longtime member of the Senate Intelligence Committee for reportedly having a suspected Chinese spy on her staff in the past.
“The leader of the Russia investigation, Dianne Feinstein, had a Chinese spy as her driver for 20 years,” Trump said about California’s senior U.S. senator, the Washington Times reported. “And she’s leading the Russian ‘witch hunt.’ Isn’t that something? And then she says to me, ‘What did you know about this and that?’ Give me a break.”

“The leader of the Russia investigation, Dianne Feinstein, had a Chinese spy as her driver for 20 years. And she’s leading the Russian ‘witch hunt.’ Isn’t that something? And then she says to me, ‘What did you know about this and that?’ Give me a break.”
- President Donald Trump, at a rally in Ohio on Saturday

The president’s remarks continued a feud that Trump had begun on Twitter on Friday night, when he reacted to reports of the Feinstein story.
“Dianne is the person leading our Nation on ‘Collusion’ with Russia (only done by Dems),” the president tweeted. “Will she now investigate herself?”
Feinstein retaliated with a pair of tweets Saturday.
“The FBI told me 5 years ago it had concerns that China was seeking to recruit an administrative member of my Calif staff (despite no access to sensitive information),” Feinstein wrote in the first message. “I took those concerns seriously, learned the facts and made sure the employee left my office immediately.
“Compare that to your actions: attacking the FBI and refusing the advice of your national security team. SAD! I appreciated then and now the diligent work of our law enforcement and intelligence agencies and acted in the best interests of the country. Give it a try!”
Earlier in the week, Politico and other outlets reported that Feinstein learned from the FBI about five years ago that a staffer in her San Francisco office was suspected of delivering political intelligence, though nothing top secret, to officials at the local Chinese Consulate.
Feinstein was said to have been “mortified” when she learned the news, according to Politico.
The FBI wasn’t able to charge the individual, but Feinstein “forced him to retire,” a source told the San Francisco Chronicle.
In Ohio, Trump used the Feinstein story as an example that other countries besides Russia are engaged in espionage against the United States.
“Not only China, it’s a lot of people,” Trump said, according to the Washington Times. “And we’ve got to stop it. We’ve got to stop meddling, we’ve got to stop everybody from attacking us. But there are a lot. Russia’s there, China’s there. We’re doing well with North Korea, but they’re probably there [spying]. We’ve got to stop everybody.
“And I like Dianne Feinstein. But I don’t like the fact that she had a Chinese spy driving her, and she didn’t know it.”
Earlier this year, Trump blasted “sneaky Dianne Feinstein” after the Democrat released the transcript of a congressional interview with the co-founder of Fusion GPS, the firm behind the anti-Trump dossier, claiming the move was “possibly” illegal.
“The fact that Sneaky Dianne Feinstein, who has on numerous occasions stated that collusion between Trump/Russia has not been found, would release testimony in such an underhanded and possibly illegal way, totally without authorization, is a disgrace. Must have tough Primary!” Trump tweeted in January.
Trump’s visit Saturday to Lewis Center, Ohio, was mostly about supporting state Sen. Troy Balderson, a Republican looking to win a special election for a U.S. House seat this coming Tuesday.

Cartoons Presumptuous Politics

New Law in Israel Sparks Backlash from Arab Minority Group

OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 7:55 AM PT — Fri. Aug. 3, 2018

A new law in Israel is sparking fury and protests among religious minority group in the country.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu walked out of a meeting with Druze leaders Thursday, following the backlash from a newly imposed nation-state law.
He was in the meeting to negotiate whether a separate law would be used to protect the religious minority or to add an amendment to the Jewish nation-state law.

Israelis hold a banner showing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a protest against the Israel Jewish nation bill, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Monday, July 30, 2018. Last week Israel’s parliament approved a controversial piece of legislation that defines the country as the nation-state of the Jewish people. Opponents and rights groups have criticized the legislation, warning that it will sideline minorities such as the country’s Arabs. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)

The Druze are the most integrated minority in Israel, but the controversial law has provoked anger and fear.
“We see it as a discriminatory law which doesn’t give expression to our citizenship, doesn’t give expression to our sense of belonging,” stated Rafik Halabi, head of the local Israeli-Druze Council. “We told the prime minister unequivocally – we want civilian equality for all residents, we won’t be able to live in a state where part of its population, especially such a loyal and good population, feels excluded.”
Following the talks, Druze community leaders say the community is planning to demonstrate against the proposed legislation on Saturday.

Deputy AG Rosenstein Says Justice Dept. Should Not Be Driven by Politics

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said the Justice Department is duty-bound to make decisions that are not pleasing to everyone.
He made those remarks Thursday at a meeting with the American Bar Association in Chicago.
Rosenstein said the DOJ must never be driven by politics, but make decisions based on the cautious wisdom required by the law.
While he did not mention his critics by name, Rosenstein said government attorneys often have difficulty dealing with Congress.
Last month, members of the House introduced articles of impeachment against Rosenstein for not complying with congressional records requests.

China Defends Relationship with Iran, Refuses to Halt Oil Imports

China is defending its relationship with Iran, calling their cooperation “justified, reasonable and lawful.”
During a news conference Friday, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said China does not support unilateral sanctions against the Islamic Republic or “long arm jurisdiction.”
Shuang went on to suggest China’s rights and interests should be preserved.
“We hope Japan will translate its positive remarks regarding China-Japan ties into concrete actions, do something conducive to improving ties and push forward with the development of bilateral relations in the right path,” he stated.
The remarks come in response to an American request to halt Iranian oil imports.
According to recent reports, Chinese officials did not agree to stop the oil imports. However, they said the country would agree to not increase them.