Don's Tuesday Column

               THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   Red Bluff Daily News   2/28/2017

              Swedish Muslims and American press

A little over a week ago, President Donald Trump (he’s the only president with my first name) elicited howls from the usual “main stream news media (MSN)” partisans, even a Swedish leader, over a clumsily phrased assertion about problems Sweden is experiencing from refugees and immigrants. Non-MSN observers and analysts (and Trump in a tweet) correctly pointed to a segment on Tucker Carlson’s Friday night Fox News show, not a terrorist attack.

I found Mr. Trump’s grasp of several issues to be under whelming during the presidential campaign. I winced—even disapproved—when, for instance, he lambasted a judge for his Mexican descent; and when he recently disparaged, as “so-called,” a judge in Washington state that ruled against his immigration executive orders. The Hispanic judge may indeed have had an anti-Trump prejudice in the lawsuit before him; and the judicial opinions from the Washington and 9^th Circuit Court judges were horrible rulings that ignored the plain text of the Constitution and established immigration law. Those were inappropriate statements by Trump.

It must also be acknowledged that Trump’s spokesman accurately stated that the judiciary is “a coequal,” not a superior, branch of government. Judges have a long history of getting major issues completely wrong (i.e. Dred Scott decision denying blacks the right, as citizens, to sue in federal courts). I think that Trump is on a learning curve and getting better by the day.

Trump’s statement, the outcry and subsequent analysis have, to the chagrin of his supporters (including this writer), shown that taking Trump “seriously, not literally” has once again shown him to be spot on. The MSN and Democrats (a redundancy given the 80 to 90 percent of news media people that support, vote for and contribute to the Dems) engaged in another “ready, fire, aim” knee-jerk pile on.

Look up: “Trump Was Right; Migrants Riot, Loot, Fight with Police and Set Cars On Fire in Sweden—While the media was dismissing Trump, riots were breaking out in the immigrant suburb of Rinkeby in Stockholm” (by Chris Menahan); “Looks Like Donald Trump Was Right About Sweden After All” (by Emily Zanotti); and “The Silly Sweden Flap” and “More Evidence That Trump Was Right About Sweden” (by John Hinderaker).

It is now incontrovertible that Sweden has joined Germany, France and other countries in trying the risky “open borders” experiment with their own citizen population. They have no inoculation against the violence, sexual depredations, idleness and reliance on government benefits that followed Syrians and other Muslim refugees into Europe.

A chart showing official Swedish sex crime data, “Reported Sex Offences,” showed the dramatic increase in annual criminal sex acts over the last 10 years—from about 12,000 to nearly 20,000. Liberal/progressive European blinders cannot hide the irreconcilable cultural and religious divide, some might say subversion, that follows such refugees and immigrants—not all, to be sure, but a sizable, unapologetic core.

Despite the wishes and fantasies of native Europeans, Muslim enclaves form, which can devolve into shariah-adhering, Islamic fundamentalism-enforcing, “no go” zones for police and other emergency services. The riots mentioned above sprang up without outside organization in response to an attempt to arrest one immigrant drug offender. That produced spontaneous violence directed at, not just those simply enforcing the law, but also against the fire fighting personnel arriving to put out the burning cars and other fires set by the violent crowds.

“The Swedish government’s response to the increased crime attendant upon mass Islamic immigration is along the lines of, ‘Who are you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?’ The bottom line is that when it comes to Sweden and immigration, Trump was right (J. Hinderaker, 2/20).” Most Americans agree with President Trump when he says, “Here’s the bottom line. We’ve got to keep our country safe. You look at what’s happening. We’ve got to keep our country safe…(Sweden) took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible.” Liberals put their collective heads in ideological sand; don’t trust them to keep us safe.

Another ill-stated opinion from Trump, arguably true in some respects, was his naming CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC and major newspapers, calling them “enemies of the American people.” While over-generalized and excessively pointed, it could be compared to similar sentiments that we’ve heard from Barack Obama and numerous Democrats and leftists over the last 15+ years.

Liberals and progressives would be hypocritical to condemn Trump unless they had spoken out against, for instance, Obama’s repeated disparagement and ad hominem attacks against Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, the Tea Party movement, etc. Isn’t it rich with irony that the same liberals that mocked, insulted and hurled foul “tea bag” epithets at Tea Party adherents, now praise, support and cheer Trump resisters as “the left’s Tea Party”? They’re all hypocrites.

I am convinced that much of the left-leaning MSN secretly, if not openly, consider President Donald Trump to be an “enemy of the American people.” In tweets, on Facebook and other social media, some reporters, editors and supposedly “objective” journalists—who revel in the First Amendment’s freedom of the press—have made no secret of their hatred for Trump, his family, his supporters, conservatives and Republicans in general.

Their tweets are often deleted, but such vituperation exists; it energizes, colors and slants their coverage of everything he says, proposes and enacts. Are they “Enemies of the American people”?  No, they’re just bitter, implacable foes who despise all supporters of President Trump.