The Patriot Post® · At the White House

By Gary Bauer ·
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/52870-at-the-white-house-2017-12-12

What an incredible day! Once again, I had the privilege of meeting with President Trump in the Oval Office. I was there with 20 faith-based leaders.


Among other topics, we praised the president’s pro-Israel policies and presented him with an award for his courageous Jerusalem decision last week. Then we briefed a pack of hostile, snarling reporters on the White House lawn.

NYC Dodges a Bomb


Two weeks ago, the Islamic State threatened a terrorist attack against New York City. ISIS supporters posted a picture of Times Square with the caption, “We meet at Christmas in New York … soon."


Yesterday, Akayed Ullah, a 27-year-old wannabe suicide bomber, attempted to make good on that threat. Ullah strapped a pipe bomb onto his chest and tried to detonate the device in an underground "passageway linking the Times Square and Port Authority subway stations,” The New York Times reports.


Three people were injured in the attack. Thankfully, no one was killed. Ullah is reportedly a permanent resident from Bangladesh.


This bombing comes just six weeks after Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov murdered eight people in New York City with a rented truck. Saipov was in the country thanks to the “diversity visa lottery.”


Let me repeat: The worst thing that can happen today is if they Mirandize this jihadist and tell him he has a right to remain silent and the right to an attorney. We are not experiencing a crime wave.


We are in a war against Islamic supremacists. We are being attacked by committed enemies, yet we are allowing our own constitutional rights to handcuff us in this battle.


Speaking of enemies, the Investigative Project on Terrorism reports that Sheikh Ramadan Elsabagh did not react well to President Trump’s formal recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The imam posted a prayer Thursday on his Facebook page calling on Allah to “destroy the Zionists and their allies.”


What makes Imam Elsabagh’s prayer particularly noteworthy is that his mosque is not in Gaza but in Garland, Texas.


California. South Carolina. Tennessee. Texas. How many radical imams are preaching such hatred in America? How many more Saipovs and Ullahs must we endure?



Fake News


ABC, CNN and The Washington Post all botched big stories in recent days. All had to issue corrections and apologies. As we reported last week, James Goldston, the president of ABC News, suspended veteran reporter Brian Ross for a month without pay.


To his credit, Goldston ripped the ABC staff for rushing a story without sufficient facts. “I don’t think ever in my career have I felt more rage and disappointment and frustration than I felt through this weekend and through the last half of Friday,” Goldston said last week.


Unfortunately, most conservatives feel rage, disappointment and frustration on a regular basis due to the media’s left-wing bias.

Over this past weekend, Washington Post reporter David Weigel tweeted out a picture of a half-empty stadium at a Trump rally in Pensacola, Florida. Weigel also mocked the president, suggesting his popularity was waning.


The only problem was that the picture Weigel posted was taken hours before the event started. Weigel later deleted the post and apologized. President Trump demanded he be fired.


Perhaps the most egregious example of “fake news” came from CNN. While some media outlets were reporting that other members of Special Counsel Mueller’s team have close Clinton ties — one even attended Hillary’s election night “victory” party — CNN refused to cover this breaking news.


Instead, the “Clinton News Network” was talking about a report that the Trump campaign allegedly colluded with WikiLeaks to release damning emails on Hillary Clinton. Predictably, it was wrong. Trump didn’t get a “sneak peek” at the emails.


One commentator noted yesterday that all the media errors on Russian collusion only go one way. Left-wing partisan hacks masquerading as journalists always assume guilt or evil intent on the part of Donald Trump, and they are eager to publish anything that puts the president in a negative light.


They act as if it is only a matter of time before “the smoking gun” is discovered. And they are all rushing to be the reporter who breaks THAT story so they can write the book, “How I Took Down Donald Trump.”

Good News


Here’s some good news headlines that will hopefully add some Christmas cheer to your day:

  • Liberals are increasingly dismayed by their inability to block Senate confirmation of President Trump’s conservative judicial nominees.

  • The Trump administration is protecting America’s sovereignty and recently pulled out of another Obama “global governance” effort that threatened, as Secretary of State Tillerson noted, to “undermine” our ability “to enforce our immigration laws and secure our borders.”

  • Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue is reversing an Obama-era policy that prohibited states from requiring food stamp recipients to pass drug tests.