The Rudy Giuliani Interview The Left Doesn't Want You To See

By Stephanie Hamill


Hat tip: BadBlue Uncensored News, a real alternative to Drudge updated every 30 minutes.

Rudy Giuliani has the #MuellerReport Quote o' the Day

Via The Last Refuge, we just stumbled upon this keeper from one of the President's lawyers. As an aside, a quick rip through legacy media sites demonstrates their utter cluelessness of -- or maybe complicity with -- Spygate. It turns out that MSNBC and CNN are still, at this very moment, greedily gaslighting their poor, deluded viewers. More on that later.

The special counsel has Used a standard of proof that's unheard of. He can't be 'conclusively sure' that the president didn't commit obstruction. Well, that means the President has to prove his innocence. That kind of upends 2,000 years of jurisprudence...

...The overarching principle of obstruction law is it's very, very hard to make an obstruction case when there is no proof there's an underlying crime."

Sh**'s gonna get real for these fools very, very soon.

Related: The Timeline of Treason.

Handicapping the Trump Cabinet

There's a lot of speculation out there, but here are my guesses for President Trump's (doesn't that phrase feel good?) cabinet.

• Attorney General Rudy Giuliani
• Secretary of State former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich
• DHS Secretary Gov. Chris Christie
• Secretary of Defense Sen. Jeff Sessions
• Department of the Interior former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin
• Secretary of Energy Harold Hamm
• Surgeon General Ben Carson
• National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn
• Chief of Staff Reince Priebus
• Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin
• Secretary of Agriculture former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue
• Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross
• Secretary of Labor Victoria Lipnic
• Secretary of Education William Evers
• Veterans Affairs House retiring Veterans’ Affairs Chairman Jeff Miller
• EPA Director Myron Ebell

Alright, you geniuses: what did I get wrong?
 

RUDY GIULIANI: "Today Hillary Clinton Was Put Way Above The Law"

By Tyler Durden

The reactions to the FBI's shocking announcement in which it announced it would not seek charges against Hillary Clinton are coming in fast and furious, with House Speaker Paul Ryan announcing moments ago that, at least in his view, Trump was spot on when he tweeted over the holiday weekend that the system is rigged when he said that the FBI's decision not to suggest the Department of Justice brings charges against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton "defies explanation."

Sorry Cadillac Tight, but we all owe an apology to Hugh Hewitt

 
Joe Tobacco at Cadillac Tight offers a nicely delivered argument that the standard conservative themes no longer resonate with most Americans, thus explaining the incipient McCain nomination (hat tip: Glenn Reynolds).

...The [conservative establishment (e.g., talk radio combined with National Review)] really think that there is nothing wrong with their ideas, their methods, or their scorn for their own voter base. Even after the 2006 “thumping” they took in Congress, they don’t see it. Rather than take a step back and consider that McCain may actually be closer to the base in terms of his policy preferences (they can, after all, always tell themselves these primaries were about “electability”, not policy), they intend to soldier on with their losing agenda, keeping a nice supply of brickbats ready to hurl at their own base when things don’t work out the way they expected them to.

At first blush, the story doesn't pass my smell test. Talk radio and the center-right blogosphere, for example, were able to instantly marshal their forces against the open-borders crowd and defeat the amnesty bill, despite every advantage possessed by the President, Ted Kennedy, John McCain and a host of other beltway insiders.

As for a "thumping" in 2006, were it not for the "macaca" kerfuffle (vastly inflated by the progressive media), it's entirely likely that the Senate would have remained in GOP hands.

And if we're going to buy into CT's argument, I'd like some metrics that can help confirm or deny the assertions.

The candidates and the campaign

The Intrade political futures market provides insight into the dynamics and trending of the race. Look closely at the market for each candidate over the hottest period of primary season (mid-2007).

Giuliani: hovering between 20% and 40% during the meat of the campaign, Rudy had grabbed many national security conservatives and centrists who admired his handling of the 9/11 attacks. As for Second Amendment and social conservatives, many had their doubts. A lack of major-league funding rippled into tactical errors that quickly short-circuited his campaign.

Thompson: gravitating between 15% and 30%, Fred was beloved by the conservative backbone of the party. A late and ineffectual start followed by a sequence of debate breakdowns -- cause by an apparent lack of both preparation and eloquence -- accelerated his fall.

Romney: ranging between 15% and 25%, Mitt had the advantage of an unlimited warchest and a professionally staffed campaign. He was repeatedly wounded by the media, which focused inappropriate attention on his Mormon background (consider: did you ever read a news story about Harry Reid's Mormon upbringing?).

McCain: listing between 5% and 20% (on the lower end for most of the race), the war hero-cum-beltway insider was too old and too damaged by the immigration debate to be considered a serious GOP candidate. Or was he?

Huckabee was simply not a viable candidate until a series of wonderfully glib debate performances propelled him to mainstream media prominence.

Examined this way, conservatives had split between three viable candidates who combined for nearly 90% of the Republican sentiment in July of 2007! Later in the race, the GOP split even further. But why was the voting public so fragmented, so compartmentalized?

The mainstream media and the GOP race

Over the course of the Republican nomination process, the ultimate barometer of mainstream media sentiment -- the New York Times -- promoted candidates certain to be weakest against Democrats in the general election. To gauge this contention, let's examine the number of mentions in the Times over the past year for each candidate.

• John McCain: 97,400
• Mitt Romney: 87,400
• Mike Huckabee: 52,800
• Fred Thompson: 21,700
• Rudy Giuliani: 18,600

Consider that Huckabee, a man with no significant backing early in the cycle, was promoted by the Times nearly three times as much as New York's former mayor, a much more well-known and local figure. Or that John McCain was publicized (in the context of the GOP nomination) approximately five times as much as either Giuliani or Thompson.

And to reiterate, much of the MSM's attention focused on Romney's "oddball" Mormon background and other attack stories.

Put simply, the mainstream media relentlessly marketed the comeback of John McCain and the viability of a no-name, no-money, no-chance candidate like Mike Huckabee simply to fragment and weaken the Republican fold for the inevitable Clinton/Obama onslaught.

An apology to Hugh Hewitt

In short, the center-right blogosphere (myself included, eighth-tier player though I may be) and talk radio both owe an aoplogy to Hugh Hewitt.

Hewitt had the right idea all along: back the man with the best executive track record, eloquence, squeaky clean background, solid (if imperfect) conservative credentials and, yes, presidential appearance as the single man who could unite the GOP.

Had Rush, Sean Hannity and Mark Levin followed Hewitt's lead earlier -- using their bully pulpits as blunt instruments, just as the mainstream media is fond of doing (only they do so in the form of analysis disguised as news) -- Romney would be the presumptive nominee.

Perhaps these are our lessons for the next go-round.

That said, many things can happen before the general election. One never knows what shenanigans the Clintons might pull with the super-delegates, for instance.

McCain

 
The incomparable Ramirez:


If you want a genuine GOP candidate, you have three reasonable choices: Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson. Now that I think about it, a Romney-Thompson ticket sounds pretty damn good to me.

Powerline's analysis of Huckabee's evasions are must-reads.

Hat tip: The Astute Bloggers

Presidential candidates among "Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians" of 2007

 
Judicial Watch announced its Top Ten List of "Most Wanted Corrupt Politicans for 2007" (hat tip: Powerline). Included among the ten: four presidential candidates. You'll never guess who hit the top of the chart.

8. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL): A “Dishonorable Mention” last year, Senator Obama moves onto the “ten most wanted” list in 2007. In 2006, it was discovered that Obama was involved in a suspicious real estate deal with an indicted political fundraiser, Antoin “Tony” Rezko. In 2007, more reports surfaced of deeper and suspicious business and political connections It was reported that just two months after he joined the Senate, Obama purchased $50,000 worth of stock in speculative companies whose major investors were his biggest campaign contributors. One of the companies was a biotech concern that benefited from legislation Obama pushed just two weeks after the senator purchased $5,000 of the company’s shares. Obama was also nabbed conducting campaign business in his Senate office, a violation of federal law.

6. Governor Mike Huckabee (R-AR): Governor Huckabee enjoyed a meteoric rise in the polls in December 2007, which prompted a more thorough review of his ethics record. According to The Associated Press: “[Huckabee’s] career has also been colored by 14 ethics complaints and a volley of questions about his integrity, ranging from his management of campaign cash to his use of a nonprofit organization to subsidize his income to his destruction of state computer files on his way out of the governor’s office.” And what was Governor Huckabee’s response to these ethics allegations? Rather than cooperating with investigators, Huckabee sued the state ethics commission twice and attempted to shut the ethics process down.

5. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R-NY): Giuliani came under fire in late 2007 after it was discovered the former New York mayor’s office “billed obscure city agencies for tens of thousands of dollars in security expenses amassed during the time when he was beginning an extramarital relationship with future wife Judith Nathan in the Hamptons…” ABC News also reported that Giuliani provided Nathan with a police vehicle and a city driver at taxpayer expense. All of this news came on the heels of the federal indictment on corruption charges of Giuliani’s former Police Chief and business partner Bernard Kerik, who pleaded guilty in 2006 to accepting a $165,000 bribe in the form of renovations to his Bronx apartment from a construction company attempting to land city contracts.

1. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY): In addition to her long and sordid ethics record, Senator Hillary Clinton took a lot of heat in 2007 – and rightly so – for blocking the release her official White House records. Many suspect these records contain a treasure trove of information related to her role in a number of serious Clinton-era scandals. Moreover, in March 2007, Judicial Watch filed an ethics complaint against Senator Clinton for filing false financial disclosure forms with the U.S. Senate (again). And Hillary’s top campaign contributor, Norman Hsu, was exposed as a felon and a fugitive from justice in 2007. Hsu pleaded guilt to one count of grand theft for defrauding investors as part of a multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme.

As Powerline observes, the omission of John Murtha is a major blunder. For that matter, Allan Mollohan and William Jefferson also spring to mind as swamp-dwellers.