The Patriot Post® · Friday Short Cuts

Upright: “There’s an old saying — and you military people will, of course, nod your heads at this. ‘When you’re taking a lot of flak, you must be over the target.’ Well, I think Scott Pruitt is over the target. … I really hope this guy does not get sidetracked. You know, it’s tough to hold up under this kind of assault. … And you just hope that he can hang on. You don’t know until you see these people under fire, and man is he under fire. … He’s being singled out for doing something that has always been done because that’s how [leftists] view the best way to go get the guy and discredit him, rather than to try to frighten people about what he’s doing with the regulatory side of things.” —Rush Limbaugh

For the record: “Before 2013, approximately one out of every 100 arriving aliens claimed credible fear, which is the first step in the United States asylum process. Today, more than one out of 10 do so. Why this matters is because this number unfortunately demonstrates and is indicative of the rising level of fraud that plagues our system. … Before 2011, over 90 percent of arriving aliens were single adult males. Today, 40 percent are families and children. The traffickers and smugglers know that if you arrive with a family under our current legal and court system, you have a much better chance of being released into the United States. We have seen the smugglers advertise this as an enticement, and we have seen traffickers unfortunately fraudulently use children to gain entry into our country.” —DHS Secretary Kristjen Nielsen

Braying Jackass: “I’ll gladly work with the president when his ideas aren’t stupid and detrimental to the United States.” —Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ)

Village Idiots: “The people I care about are those young people who demonstrated. They’re the future. They know. They say, ‘We’ll remember in November.’ They’re the ones who feel the way we do. Not the way the gun lovers and the NRA do, with all that idiocy to the point of absurdity.” —actor Robert De Niro

And last… “We must always remember that all children are blessings from our Creator. They are endowed from conception with value, purpose, and human dignity. They are a source of unmatched joy, and they represent our Nation’s future.” —Donald Trump