Don's Tuesday Column

                   THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   5/22/2018

          Candidates speak; anti-Trump plot

Local Republicans have had statewide candidates of our party personally make their case for office. Gubernatorial candidates John Cox and Travis Allen impressed attendees at the Republican Red, White and Blue dinner in April. California Secretary of State candidate Mark Meuser found time to make his pitch to the Republican Central Committee last Thursday. In both instances, other candidates were contacted but their limited availability ruled out appearing.

By my count there are 5 Republicans running for Governor, out of a total of 27 names on the ballot. Allen and Cox seem to have the most attention; Peter Liu’s name has also garnered some publicity, without the fund raising of the top 2 names.

President Trump and Congressman LaMalfa have expressed strong support for “Businessman/Taxpayer Advocate” John Cox; Assemblyman Gallegher has strongly advocated for “California Assemblyman/Businessman” Travis Allen. I would be happy to have either man win the election; I just hope one of them can emerge out of California’s ludicrous “jungle primary” (designed to marginalize Republicans out of the November ballot) and give our voters a choice other than the “left or left-er” Democrat. Tehama County could vote 100 percent for anyone and be a rounding error among our state’s 10 to 14 million voters. Still, it could happen.

I commend Mr. Meuser for his impassioned but rational approach to the office of California Secretary of State. He has an irrefutable case for restoring integrity and confidence to our state elections by removing from the voter rolls “Those who are dead; Those who have moved; and Those who are ineligible to vote pursuant to the California Constitution, such as non-citizens.” He points to the “$4 per voter to send balloting materials…false data on voter turnout…and the opportunity for fraud since California does not require voter I.D.” Republican Raul Rodriquez, Jr. is also running for that office.

Last week’s column ended with the words of New York Post’s Paul Sperry, even more relevant a week later: “DEVEOPING: A major new front is opening in the political espionage scandal. In summer 2016 Brennan with his FBI liaison Strzok, along with help from Kerry @ State, were trying to set Russian espionage traps for minor players in the Trump campaign through cultivated Intel assets.”

This column is reticent to get ahead of the facts of breaking scandal and corruption due to the inevitable emergence of “the rest of the story.” However, consider the entire trajectory of charges, counter-charges and revelations over the 2016 campaign, Russia’s interference, accusations of collusion with the Trump campaign—and behind-the-scenes actual collusion between the Clinton people, the DNC, a British ex-spy, real Russian sources and the Mueller probe. All of that and more lends credibility to the widely reported, unrefuted, disclosures of infiltration of “assets,” spies or otherwise by Obama’s FBI/DOJ/CIA into the Trump campaign. A name has surfaced.

Bear in mind that the Democrat/media/Obama-ite complex pounced on Donald Trump for stating that he was “wire tapped.” (Likewise, and hypocritically, they echoed and cheered Obama when he ridiculed the idea that Russians or anyone could interfere in, or affect, our election.) By the time it was verified that Obama’s people secured FISA warrants to surveil, or spy on, Carter Page and possibly others—which spying would necessarily have involved Trump’s phone calls with Page—the news media caravan had moved on. No need to correct that little bit of Trump-bashing failed narrative.

Just know that, regardless of the scant attention given by the networks to this blockbuster of Watergate-scale (times 10) political skullduggery, I have a good dozen articles in front of me containing tens of thousands of words of reporting and analysis—none from fringe sources. The news media could be giving this dawn-to-dusk attention but they choose not to for an obvious reason: the white and black hats are on the wrong heads.

Given that Loretta Lynch cited a January 2017 meeting in the White House over the need to conduct the ongoing probe of Russia/Trump collusion “by the book”—together with references to having Barrack Obama in the loop and involved in it all—it holds the potential of turning Obama et al into Nixon and his “plumbers.” It was Obama’s fundraising operation that disabled the filtering protocols, allowing unrestricted foreign contributions. It was Hillary Clinton that oversaw $150+ million in contributions to the Clinton Foundation while making decisions favoring contributors. But never mind all that, right?

Trump’s tweets, with his 52 million followers, are looking more and more like Reagan’s “going over the media’s heads.” Monday morning, he quoted conservative author, and NYPD and secret service veteran Dan Bongino: “[Obama’s CIA Director] John Brennan is panicking. He has disgraced himself…the Country…(and) the entire Intelligence Community. He is the one man who is largely responsible for the destruction of American’s (sic) faith in the Intelligence Community and in some people at the top of the FBI. Brennan started this entire debacle about President Trump.

“We now know that Brennan had detailed knowledge of the (phony) Dossier…he denies knowledge of the Dossier, he briefs the Gang of 8 on the Hill about the Dossier, which they then used to start an investigation about Trump. It is that simple. This guy is the genesis of this whole Debacle. This was a Political hit job. This was not an Intelligence Investigation. Brennan has disgraced himself, he’s worried about staying out of Jail.”

              Victoria Toensing: “There was a brazen plot to get Hillary Clinton cleared from her clearly criminal culpability. And then if she didn’t get elected, they would see to it that Donald Trump would have a horrible presidency.” Democrats should ask themselves how they would feel if President George Bush had orchestrated everything done to Trump, but to Barrack Obama in 2008, before objecting.