90 Miles From Tyranny

Thursday, January 10, 2019

Trump has exposed the real collusion – It's between the media and open-border Democrats

On Tuesday, I told you how President Trump exposed the Democrats' true shutdown motives - namely, the Democrats love the partial government shutdown because they think it helps them politically, which is why they refuse to move even an inch on the issue of wall funding. On Wednesday, the president exposed the media's motives in this drama as well.

Rather than giving us in-depth, objective reporting on the effects of illegal immigration on average Americans -- all of you out there, on your jobs, on your schools, on your safety and on your health -- the media spend their airtime parroting Democrat attacks on the president's character and motives. Now, before the president's speech Tuesday night, the media vowed to do their insta fact-checking - they wanted to do this in real-time.

Well, the fact-check squad didn't fare too well. I would have rather had the Mod Squad, frankly. In the aftermath of the Oval Office address, the media collapsed away from the fact-checks into old tropes and well some awkward admissions. What happened to the fact check? They just devolved into "Well, he [President Trump] looked tired."

The media's latest tactic -- and we're going to see more of it in the coming days -- is to re-feature the sob stories of government workers, who still, by the way, have not missed a paycheck. Well, watch carefully on what they're doing here. Rank emotional manipulation. Pure propaganda. Now, how many of these segments did they do over the years on American workers who got pushed out of entire industries as unscrupulous employers hire them for cash or at a fraction of the salary. How many close-up interviews of victims of illegal alien crime did they do? By the way, those people aren't experiencing a temporary loss of income, but a permanent loss of a family member.

Look at the front page of Wednesday's New York Times, which sought to frame the president's address a certain way. See the photo. It's a photo of migrants at a temporary kind of migrant shelter in Tijuana. Once again the media are focusing on interviewing people at the shelter, putting the feelings and the concerns of non-citizens over those of actual citizens. Well, at least the migrants have that nice widescreen and they could enjoy the president speech on that.

But perhaps the voters, after watching all this, hearing all of it, are not so easily manipulated. A Morning Consult poll found that a plurality of Americans - 42 percent -- believe the situation at the border is a crisis, including 72 percent of Republicans. Obviously, far fewer Democrats believe the border situation is a crisis.

Now, Trump has successfully shown that the Democrats are not substantively engaged in problem-solving on this issue of the border. But still, the media continues to carry the water for them. But when reporters begin acting like pundits, Kellyanne Conway showed us exactly how they should be treated on Tuesday when CNN's Jim Acosta asked her whether the president would "tell the truth" in his Oval Office address. In a moment that was all over television Wednesday, she called him a "smart ass." She obviously has been learning though from her boss a little bit.

The real collusion, my friends, is in Washington, and it's the one that Trump has so masterfully exposed. It's the collusion between the American media and the open-borders Democratic Party.

Trump laid the devastating smackdown on ABC's Jonathan Karl on Wednesday in...

Brother of 22-Year-Old Killed by Illegal Alien: He Was ‘One Hell of a Young Man’

The older brother of 22-year-old Pierce Corcoran of Knoxville, Tennessee — who was allegedly killed by an illegal alien days before New Year’s Eve — is mourning the loss of his loved one, calling him “one hell of a young man.”

As Breitbart News reported, Pierce Corcoran — an aspiring personal trainer — was killed in a head-on car crash allegedly caused by 44-year-old illegal alien Franco Cambrany Francisco-Eduardo days before New Year’s Eve.

The illegal alien, police said, was driving without a license and without proper registration for his vehicle. He has been charged with negligent homicide and driving without a license.

In a post on the Corcoran family’s memorial site for Pierce, his older brother Connor mourns the loss of the brotherhood he had before the deadly crash.

Connor writes of Pierce:

I was blessed to have a brother like Pierce. Through all the challenges between each other, and against the world, we were always there to prepare each other for anything and create better versions of ourselves. From the day he was born, I had a friend and a rival that nothing could have ever prepared me for. [Emphasis added]
…
I was just an ignorant, competitive young kid that couldn’t understand why he had such a fascination with everything I was interested in, and until many years later, it never occurred to me that he was always trying to impress me and get me to see him for the man he was so quickly becoming. And let me say that Pierce became one hell of a young man. Through all the challenges I issued him as an older brother, Pierce became the man he wanted to be despite my challenges and through them, and still considered me an equal even though he surpassed me in so many ways years ago. I was blessed to have a brother like Pierce. [Emphasis added]

He was kind, generous, virtuous, faithful, and fun loving. More so than anyone I know. As much as he looked up to me, I look up to him now. I’m proud to say he was my brother. [Emphasis added]

Pierce’s parents, Wendy and DJ Corcoran, have told the media that their son’s life could have been spared if illegal immigration was taken seriously and federal immigration law was adequately enforced.

“Absolutely, [the government is] to blame. You cannot come here and not … I mean we are re-victimized by the system and we’ve just learned that,” Wendy told Fox News. “We’ve seen other people deal with this and felt for them … much more tragic in some ways. And it’s just, it’s injust. Our son’s life meant something and our government makes us feel as if it didn’t. That somebody that had no right to be here matters....

During his prime-time Oval Office address Tuesday night, President Donald Trump left out any reference to declaring a national emergency as a way to build a physical barrier along the southern border. Instead, he focused on reaching a bipartisan deal with congressional Democrats to end the partial government shutdown over the issue.

However, by Wednesday, Trump talked about declaring a national emergency if he couldn’t reach any deal.

“I think we might work a deal, and if we don’t, I may go that route,” Trump told reporters. “I have the absolute right to do [a] national emergency if I want.”

When questioned, he added: “My threshold will be if I can’t make a deal with people that are unreasonable.”

During a White House meeting Wednesday, Trump asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., whether she would agree on funding a physical barrier along the southern border if he opened the government. Pelosi said no, and Trump walked out, Republican congressional leaders told reporters.

Declaring a national emergency isn’t rare or unprecedented. It is also subject to checks by Congress under a federal statute. A president typically makes such a declaration amid a natural disaster, public health threat, terrorist attack, or war.

The Trump administration contends the amount of drugs, the presence of criminal gangs, and the humanitarian situation at the southern border constitute a crisis or emergency.

Democrats contend the problems at the border do not constitute a crisis.

So, unlike a flood or a terror attack, a presidential declaration of a national emergency over the border situation would be a political question—which would be unusual.

Here’s four things to know about the process.

1. What Did Previous Presidents Do?

Presidents long have taken emergency actions to use the government to tackle an emergency without Congress, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that Congress passed a law to say not so fast.

President Abraham Lincoln took emergency actions without Congress during the Civil War, which few would dispute was an emergency.

President Woodrow Wilson was the first president to formally proclaim a national emergency. It happened on Feb. 5, 1917, during World War I, according to a 2007 report by the Congressional Research Service.

The goal was to limit the transfer of American ships to the possession of foreign individuals or entities. Wilson used executive authority to establish the United States Shipping Board to oversee water transportation. In March 1921, Congress terminated the board.

President Franklin Roosevelt took executive actions deemed an emergency during the Great Depression and World War II.

President George W. Bush notably declared a national emergency after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

In 2014, after the Russian invasion of Crimea in Ukraine, President Barack Obama signed an executive order declaring a national emergency as a means to freeze U.S. assets of any individual who asserted governmental power in Ukraine without the approval of the Ukraine government.

2. Where Does the Authority Come From?

During the 1970s, Congress became increasingly concerned about the power of the executive branch after the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal.

In November 1973, the Senate Special Committee on the Termination of the National Emergency, chaired by Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho, asserted that emergency proclamations “give force to 470 provisions” of U.S. law.

The Senate report states:

These hundreds of statutes delegate to the President extraordinary powers, ordinarily exercised by the Congress, which affect the lives of American citizens in a host of all-encompassing manners. This vast range of powers, taken together, confer enough authority to rule the country without reference to normal Constitutional processes.

Under the powers delegated by these statutes, the President may: seize property; organize and control the means of production; seize commodities; assign military forces abroad; institute martial law; seize and control all transportation and communication; regulate the operation of private enterprise; restrict travel; and, in a plethora of particular ways, control the lives of all American citizens.

In 1976, Congress passed the National Emergencies Act, sponsored by Rep. Peter Rodino, D-N.J. The legislation drew bipartisan support and President Gerald Ford, a Republican, signed it into law.

The new law put a statutory framework in place allowing a president to declare a national emergency, with limitations. Mainly, Congress may terminate the emergency declaration if it has the votes to do so. Also, a president must renew the declaration of an emergency after 180 days.

3. Where Do Conservatives Stand?

Several conservatives have weighed in during recent days about Trump’s possibly declaring a national emergency—pointing to the potential...