The Patriot Post® · Focus, Please

Two events that have major implications for American foreign policy have unfolded in the last 72 hours. Ending days of speculation, President-elect Trump announced [yesterday] that Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, will be his nominee for secretary of state.

The other big event was the recent announcement by the CEO of another iconic American company, Boeing. Under pressure from the Obama administration, Boeing announced a multi-billion dollar deal with the mullahs of Iran. They announced this deal for commercial aircraft at a time when Iran is already using commercial aircraft to transport troops and supplies into Syria, where they and their allies (Russia and the Assad regime) are crushing the people of Aleppo.

Guess which one of these two events has Washington and our media in complete meltdown? Incredibly, it is the appointment of the CEO of ExxonMobil. You don’t need much more information to understand why this city so often seems deranged.

I don’t agree with Tillerson on everything. Not surprisingly, as the head of a multinational company, he has been against past U.S. sanctions efforts, and he isn’t great on social issues. But those issues won’t be in his portfolio. Going forward, Tillerson will have to adjust his views to conform with those of the Trump administration.

But how is Tillerson’s appointment more controversial than the Boeing deal, which puts corporate profits above our national interests in the Middle East? The House of Representatives felt so strongly about the potential threats that it recently voted to block the Boeing deal. And with good reason.

Iran is directly responsible for the deaths and grievous wounding of thousands of American soldiers. It is exporting revolution all over the Middle East. Its leaders routinely shout their desire for a second holocaust of the Jewish people.

On the financial network CNBC, the liberals who hold sway there were crowing this morning. “What is Trump going to do now?” they asked. “He wants jobs, but if he interferes in the Boeing deal he will kill jobs,” they said.

Sometimes national security must come before corporate profits. In this case, the Boeing deal makes it more likely that young Americans will be killed on the battlefield.

I don’t know what Donald Trump will do when he takes office next year. But I hope one of his actions will be to tell Boeing to look for profits someplace else. America is more than just commerce at any cost.

More Fake News

Having worked in the Reagan White House, I am more than a little amused by the left’s fretting over Russia’s influence in our elections. It wasn’t that long ago when the left was eager to accommodate the Soviet Union. In fact, KGB archives suggest that Ted Kennedy invited the Soviets to interfere in the 1984 elections. But I digress…

As I mentioned yesterday, there is no consensus within the government about the extent of Russia’s involvement in the elections. Today brings more news that undercuts the left’s effort to delegitimize the results.

According to Reuters, “The overseers of the U.S. intelligence community (the Office of the Director of National Intelligence) have not embraced a CIA assessment that Russian cyber attacks were aimed at helping Republican President-elect Donald Trump…” One official who spoke to Reuters said the CIA’s conclusion was based on “a thin reed.”

Once again, the whole country has been exposed to the left-wing media’s fake news designed to undermine the new administration. When will the left accept the results and move on?

Senator John McCain, who has called for an investigation into the issue, also acknowledges that “there is no information that [the Russians] were intending to affect the outcome of our election…”

I wonder if John Podesta is having second thoughts about that briefing he demanded for members of the Electoral College.

Europe’s Islam Experiment

The European experiment, in which various governments invited mass Muslim immigration followed by a migrant wave from the Muslim world, continues to produce bitter fruit.

In the most populated state of Germany, North Rhine-Westphalia, “unknown” men went on a rampage, violently destroying scores of Christian crosses and statues of Jesus. The area is heavily Muslim.

Across France, 11 people were arrested for aiding and abetting jihadist Mohamed Bouhlel, who drove a 19-ton truck into a crowd in Nice during Bastille Day celebrations. More than 80 people were killed and more than 400 were wounded. At the time, the French government claimed that Bouhlel acted alone.

In Italy, a Catholic-owned cemetery is not putting up its annual nativity scene this year for fear it would irritate local Muslims.

Welcome to the cradle of Western Civilization, which appears to be in the process of killing itself.