{"id":799702,"date":"2019-09-23T14:28:54","date_gmt":"2019-09-23T20:28:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/?p=371962"},"modified":"2019-09-23T14:28:54","modified_gmt":"2019-09-23T20:28:54","slug":"opinion-morgan-liddick-clutch-your-pearls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/local-news\/opinion-morgan-liddick-clutch-your-pearls\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | Morgan Liddick: Clutch your pearls"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Clutch your pearls, ladies. It\u2019s Trump-hate phony scandal time again.<\/p>\n

This time, The Washington Post leads the charge with The New York Times on harmony. They report the president made unspecified promises to an unnamed foreign leader<\/a>, possibly Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, on an unmentioned topic so terrible that an anonymous whistleblower reported them to the intelligence community inspector general, who somehow passed the information to members of the House.<\/p>\n

Shortly thereafter, the well-orchestrated mob showed up, howling for blood and egged on by the usual suspects in Congress and the scribbling classes. Harvard\u2019s Lawrence Tribe, who considers President Donald Trump one of America\u2019s \u201ccarnival barkers and fantasists and pathological liars<\/a>,\u201dsaid the president\u2019s actions were \u201ctreachery if not treason\u201d and urged he be removed from office \u201cas soon as possible<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tribe hadn\u2019t the slightest idea what Trump said. Neither did anyone in the press. Which stopped not a single one of them from wriggling and panting like a boxful of puppies waiting for treats and pets at the fanciful idea that at last, they have him. This time, there\u2019s proof. This time, he\u2019ll be removed from office, and they can all go back to talking nonstop about what an awful place America is. If it\u2019s true that \u2026<\/p>\n

Ah, if. The word on which the entire scheme hangs. To date, we know only that an unnamed \u201cintelligence official\u201d tattled about what he\/she saw as \u201cserious misconduct\u201d by the president during a phone call. What it was, we don\u2019t know. How the tattle got to Congressional Democrats and the media, we don\u2019t know either \u2014 but we can guess. Remember, this is the same intelligence community that surveilled candidate, and later president, Trump<\/a> based on a phony \u201cdossier\u201d created with help from Russian contacts<\/a>, who used foreign agents to entrap Trump campaign advisors<\/a>, who coordinated with the FBI to erase the problem of Hillary Clinton\u2019s classified emails<\/a>.Yeah, that intelligence community.<\/p>\n

So one has the right to suspect the whistleblower\u2019s politics and motives. We know the motives of the political classes currently squealing to high heaven about the president\u2019s malfeasance and crimes. From Adam Schiff to Gerald Nadler to Mitt Romney, they loathe the president because he has consistently bested them, proved impervious to their slanders and in general exposed them as the gaggle of spoiled, ignorant brats they are.<\/p>\n

Most of the media has similar hatred for the man because try as they might \u2014 and they have \u2014 they cannot bring him down. Trump has shown that much of what passes for mass media journalism is actually liberal propaganda and hackery. Witness the recent New York Times\u2019 scurrilous slander of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, based on a witness who refused to be interviewed and whose friends said she remembered nothing of what was alleged. It was simply a fabrication, the latest in a long series of fabrications published in an attempt to damage the president and anyone who might be associated with him.<\/p>\n

The current phone call kerfuffle also exposes the ignorance or hypocrisy \u2014 or both \u2014 of those in politics and the media currently having an attack of the vapors over this president\u2019s conversation with a foreign leader. These sorts of talks are part of the essential nature of the executive, as explained by Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist No. 70. He noted that elements of the office included \u201cDecision, activity, secrecy, and dispatch<\/a> \u2026\u201d adding that a strong executive was necessary to protect the nation \u201cagainst the intrigues of ambitious individuals who aspired to tyranny, and the seditions of whole classes of the community whose conduct threatened the existence of all government.\u201dIf that doesn\u2019t remind you of certain Democratic members of Congress, you haven\u2019t been keeping up on current events.<\/p>\n

The principle danger posed here isn\u2019t to the president. The phone call scandal is just as flimsy as the one before it, and the one to follow. It doesn\u2019t threaten the careers of Trump-hating politicians, whose constituents will return them until hell freezes, out of spite. The real danger is to the institutions of government, particularly of national security, and to the politicized media whose mischaracterizations, exaggerations, fabrications and outright lies continue to be exposed. When none of these can muster a scintilla of trust in the general public, the work of those who have toiled for decades to topple the republic will almost be done; it will then require the merest nudge to send it over the brink.<\/p>\n

Well done, all.<\/p>\n

Morgan Liddick\u2019s column \u201cOn Your Right\u201d publishes Tuesdays in the Summit Daily News. Liddick spent 27 years working for the U.S. Foreign Service, primarily living abroad. He also spent 12 years teaching U.S. history and Western civilization at community colleges in Colorado and Texas. He lived in Summit County as recently as 2015. Contact him at<\/em> mcliddick@hotmail.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clutch your pearls, ladies. It\u2019s Trump-hate phony scandal time again. This time, The Washington Post leads the charge with The New York Times on harmony. They report the president made unspecified promises to an unnamed foreign leader, possibly Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, on an unmentioned topic so terrible that an anonymous whistleblower reported them to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-799702","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-24 10:21:41","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=799702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799702\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=799702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=799702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=799702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}