The Patriot Post® · Thursday Short Cuts

For the record: “Donald Trump speaks to Africans frankly. Africans need to solve their problems. You can’t survive if you are weak. It is the Africans’ fault that they are weak.” —Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni

Observations: “America has always been divided. But the divide is typically policy based. The Left and the Right will either love or hate a president based on his beliefs and his ideas for how government should be run. With President Trump, the chasm is almost solely based on whether or not you like Trump as a human being. That’s new.” —Suzanne Venker

Food for thought: “The biggest driver of illegal immigration isn’t on the supply side; it’s on the demand side. Immigrants, legal and illegal, come to America primarily to work. They stay because their employers, many of them Republicans, don’t care or don’t ask about immigration status. Democratic politicians, particularly in sanctuary cities, want to keep it that way. The wall, in theory, would stop illegal border crossings from Mexico, but it wouldn’t do anything about people who come here legally and then simply overstay their visas — about 42 percent of immigrants in the country illegally. … If Trump wanted a clear — and immediate — win on illegal immigration, he’d evolve and recognize that the wall’s greatest utility might be as a bargaining chip.” —Jonah Goldberg

Blame-thrower: “This is what happens when the president of the United States, Donald Trump, repeatedly attacks members of the press simply for reporting facts he does not like.” —CNN’s Don Lemon blaming Trump for the guy who threatened to shoot people at CNN over fake news

The Deep State: “[John] Kerry asked [a Palestinian Authority official] to convey a message to [Mahmoud] Abbas and ask him to ‘hold on and be strong.’ Tell him, he told [the official], ‘that he should stay strong in his spirit and play for time, that he will not break and will not yield to President [Donald] Trump’s demands.’” —The Jerusalem Post

And last… “Government shutting down — partially — is not a disaster. The real disaster is paying $4 trillion a year to keep it running and getting such poor service in return.” —John Stossel