“The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is probably the most ideologically intoxicated, most dogmatic political party of Leninist stripe in human history. Yet, we don’t tend to think of the CCP that way.”

Tonight, we sit down with Miles Yu, who served as Senior China policy adviser to Mike Pompeo when he was secretary of state. While many today still harbor illusions about the Chinese regime, the CCP seeks to “replace the U.S.-led international order with its own authoritarian model of governance,” Yu says. And “their internal designation of the United States as chief adversary has never changed.”

Miles Yu grew up during China’s Cultural Revolution, a decade of revolutionary change and violence in which millions were killed. In 1985, he came to the United States as an exchange student.

He’s been a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy for 26 years and after finishing his time at the State Department, he’s now a senior fellow with the Hudson Institute.

Van der Veen stressed—when addressing the issue of what Trump did or didn’t do while the riot was occurring—that the House’s single article of impeachment is for incitement and not for anything else.

“To claim that the president in any way wished, desired, or encouraged lawless or violent behavior is a preposterous and monstrous lie,” van der Veen said. “In fact, the first two messages the president sent via Twitter once the incursion of the Capitol began were ‘Stay peaceful’ and ‘No violence because we are the party of law and order.’ The gathering on Jan. 6 was supposed to be a peaceful event. Make no mistake about that.” //

Schoen complained about a lack of due process for Trump, including the House’s impeachment and the Senate’s trial.

“The hatred that the House managers and others on the left have for President Trump has driven them to skip the basic elements of due process and fairness,” Schoen said.

A bigger problem was the lack of opportunity for Trump’s lawyers to review the integrity of the evidence, he said:

On Wednesday of this week, countless news outlets repeated the Democrat talking point about the power of ‘never-before-seen’ footage. Let me ask you this: Why was this footage never seen before? Should the subject of an impeachment trial, this impeachment trial, President Trump, have the right to see the so-called new evidence against him?

More importantly, the riot and the attack on this very building was a major event that shocked and impacted all Americans. Shouldn’t the American people have seen this footage as soon as it was available? For what possible reason did the House managers withhold it from the American people and President Trump’s lawyers? For political gain? How did they get it? How are they the ones releasing it?

Wow, what coincidental timing.

The story claiming that a police officer was murdered by Trump supporters during the Capitol Hill protest on January 6 is, for all practical purposes, retracted by the NYT the day after Pres. Trump is acquitted on the impeachment charge of having instigated those protests — which were declared by Democrats and the media an “insurrection” against the government. //

Was Officer Sicknick beaten or wasn’t he? Three individuals died from medical emergencies and one person was shot and killed by Capitol Hill Police. So Officer Sicknick was the other person “killed by hostile action.”

But the truth is that the NYT no longer has any interest in the truth of what actually happened to Officer Sicknick. The story can no longer be wielded as a political weapon against Donald Trump, and that was the entire purpose of the exercise from the beginning.

Trump War Room
@TrumpWarRoom
WATCH: @MarkMeadows highlights how former President Trump requested the National Guard two days before the events of January 6, 2021. //

Meadows had previously said that in an interview on Fox with Maria Bartiromo, according to Real Clear Politics.

Even in January, that was a given, as many as 10,000 National Guard troops were told to be on the ready by the Secretary of Defense. That was a direct order from President Trump and yet here is what we see, all kinds of blame going around but yet not a whole lot of accountability. That accountability needs to rest with where it ultimately should be and that’s on Capitol Hill. //

Here’s the timeline that shows that Trump approved the guard on Jan. 3. It also shows they offered a quick reaction force from the National Guard but Bowser on Jan. 5. said that she needed no further support. //

It appears that they had the Guard then mobilized about 3:04 p.m. when the breach was about 2:20. But while it was put on availability by Trump and Christopher Miller, it wasn’t asked for, apart from limited traffic detail kind of stuff, before everything went wild on Jan. 6.

So if Trump were trying to actually incite an insurrection it doesn’t match the reality that he authorized the Guard and even encouraged 10,000 to be delegated if Miller is correct. That’s one of the things they didn’t want people to know because it would kill the whole false story that Trump never authorized the Guard

Early in my career as a prosecutor, I learned a valuable lesson from a seasoned and highly regarded criminal defense attorney.

The best defense in a trial before a jury is to attack the case that the prosecution doesn’t make. Fight on the ground that the prosecution has looked past or ignored. If the prosecution tries to “circle back” and cover that ground, the defense becomes about what the prosecution missed — or better yet, what didn’t they want the jury to know when they chose to ignore it in the first instance. //

When the prosecutor calls a young agent to the stand — and there is almost always at least one youngster involved in order to get the experience — that agent is going to spend a long time answering questions from me about all the things he/she did not do during the course of the investigation. That sets in the jurors’ minds the idea that I know more about how the investigation should have been handled than the investigators do, and that the investigators took shortcuts and ignored evidence. It’s not necessarily evidence of “innocence”, just the fact of ignoring evidence calls into question the completeness of what they did and their competence doing so.

That’s what Lindsey Graham did today — likely aided by Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and a couple of other GOP Senators with trial experience in a courtroom. I’m not sure there is a single good trial lawyer among the Democrats in the Senate.

if this had been a regular trial, how do you pull a move like this after both sides have already rested?

They had their chance to present witnesses in the House. They didn’t even bother to have a hearing, they went ahead with a vote on impeachment without even that or any evidence. They didn’t even move to have witnesses earlier in the Senate trial. Talk about a last minute move to try to save their case.

But Americans hopefully have seen how hypocritical they are. They don’t care about doing the people’s work. It’s about doing anything they can to stop their political opponent, even after he’s already out of office.

Hopefully Americans make them pay heavily for this at the ballot box

Ted Cruz
@tedcruz
CNN is no longer a news organization. They’re Dem propagandists.

Facts they are ignoring:

(1) senators are NOT jurors, as Dem Sen. Harkin clarified: https://tinyurl.com/4tvlnnl3

(2) Schumer repeatedly confers w/ House managers, as always & fully appropriate.

Three GOP senators meet with Trump's lawyers on eve of impeachment defense presentation
cnn.com //

Indeed. Also, I must have missed the CNN report that talked about how an “impartial” Democratic “juror” (Pat Leahy) presiding over the trial “told us all we need to know.”

The 10 minute video the defense showed was absolutely brutal, and Rep. Maxine Waters, Schumer, Biden, and Harris took center stage in them. They also used a full two minutes of Sen. Elizabeth Warren talking about bringing “the fight” and not backing down: //

There are legal arguments being made and political arguments being made during the trial by both sides. While the minds of the senators watching are likely to remain unchanged by any of it, it was imperative that the defense team show the American people the darker, much less “tolerant” side of Democrats that the mainstream media has desperately tried to keep hidden.

Why? Law professor Jonathan Turley broke it down earlier this week:

If this trial boils down to irresponsible political rhetoric, the public could find it difficult to distinguish between the accused, the “prosecutors” and the “jury.” That is the problem with a strategy that seems focused not on proving incitement of an insurrection but some ill-defined form of political negligence.

Joel Pollak
@joelpollak
.@RepRaskin plays a deceptively edited video of Trump's Jan. 6 speech that leaves out the passage where he said people should protest "peacefully and patriotically." This is sheer demagoguery, an abuse of power by the Democrat-run House, ands should be rejected

Raskin played a deceptively edited video that claimed that Trump had called Neo-Nazis “very fine people.” He edited out where Trump said, “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally.” He was talking about folks on the left and free speech purists on the right. It’s a lie that’s been debunked for years. But that didn’t stop Raskin. Raskin also stupidly improperly identified the Charlottesville in question.

But Schoen then destroyed that today by playing, perhaps for the first time ever on some of these liberal networks the full remarks of that day where it was clear that Trump denounced Neo-Nazis and white nationalists decisively.

In regards to what we actually know right now, he notes that one person died of what appears to have been a heart attack while on the phone with his wife. Another man had a stroke, and there’s no evidence he was even part of the riot that day. Another woman died after passing out, possibly being trampled by the crowd as a result.

In other words, of the five people listed as dying that day due to the riots, three of them were unquestionably accidental. Does that fact make their deaths any less tragic? Of course not, but it does provide context to the idea that a rabid mob, as bad as their behavior was, was simply murdering people without care that day.

The fourth person to die that day was Ashley Babbitt, a woman who had entered the Capitol Building that day. As Tucker notes, she’s the only one whose circumstances of death are essentially confirmed. She was shot by a police officer while attempting to crawl through a broken window. The bullet hit her in the neck and she died shortly after.

That brings us to Sicknick. His death has been heavily politicized, including an apparently false death story spread by mainstream outlets for a month. Yet, the mystery surrounding what actually happened to him remains. What is looking more likely is that his death, like the first three people discussed, was accidental.

David Harsanyi
@davidharsanyi
You can be pro or anti Trump, but the notion that he suddenly changed is silly. //

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it many more times between now and the next presidential election. Haley is way, way too focus-grouped to be the 2024 nominee in my opinion. She’s just so quintessentially beltway, even though her major experience is as a governor. That doesn’t mean I’d wholly reject her if she made it through the primary (though a lot of Trump voters would), but it does mean the GOP should be aiming higher than someone who mirrors Jeb Bush more than Ron DeSantis.

Trump isn’t really on trial here, everyone who voted for him is. Democrats are arguing guilt by association, and they’re not stopping with Trump.

perhaps one of the central issues is that there was no hearing in the House, no witnesses or evidence actually presented and so no record of the case from which to work. Which means that the House managers are scrambling all over the place and pulling things out of the hat which aren’t true or are at odds with their stated theory of the case presented in their Article charging “incitement” because of Trump’s Jan. 6 speech. //

according to the Deseret News, what Lee actually said and what was left out from the Democratic presentation was that “Lee said when he later asked Tuberville about the conversation, he got the impression that Trump didn’t know about the chaos going on in the Senate chamber.”

The House managers left out that part, which directly contradicts its narrative that Trump knew about the riot and was relishing it as he was calling to further delay the electoral certification. If true, the House’s timeline argument would lose coherence, if not collapse entirely.

The House repeatedly argued that Trump wanted the riot and then used it to delay the proceedings. Yet, this call occurred “shortly after 2 p.m.” and, according to Lee, Trump did not appear to the senator to be aware of the extent of the chaos. A few minutes later, at 2:38, Trump tweets, “Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!”

“What is lacking here? All the talk and video, what’s lacking? Evidence.

“Where is the evidence that Trump worked with a single individual or single one of the groups? There is no evidence.

“Where is the evidence that anything he said in that speech resulted in the attack on that capitol? Lindsey Graham has said it. It was in “The New York Times” of all places. This was all preplanned.

“The FBI knew it might be coming. They were tipped off about it. There are many questions. What the hell did the FBI know and when did it know it?

“We know the sergeant of arms of the house was told by the former chief of the capitol police, you better get national guardsmen here and more help. What did he do? Nothing. Did he tell Nancy Pelosi? That would be a good question.

“Not only that, the sergeant of arms of the Senate was told. Who does that person report to? Reported to McConnell. What did McConnell know? What did they do?”

“So the whole story line that Donald Trump caused this by his speech has fallen apart due to good law enforcement activity,” he said. “And here’s what I want to know: What did Nancy Pelosi know, and when did she know it? If this was widely known by the FBI and Capitol Hill Police that people were planning to come to Washington before the 6th to create violence, I want to know did she know about that?” he asked.

consider the below summary in the context that over 90% of Republican voters cast their ballots to reelect President Trump last year.

First, the Republican National Committee had no nationwide campaign strategy that leveraged the widespread popularity of an incumbent Republican president. Then, despite foreknowledge of the election theft to come, the RNC had no legal strategy at all to either preempt the illegal state election law changes made by governors and secretaries of states or contest the fraud after Election Day. All legal challenges were left to the Trump campaign and “independent lawsuits.”

Next, despite the two months of election fraud evidence forthcoming from independent statistical analyses, at least 400 sworn affidavits in dozens of lawsuits filed in swing states, sworn testimony in election fraud hearings in several states, and videos of criminal conduct-in-action on Election Day, many elected Republicans in Congress (less 7 senators and 121 representatives) ducked their obligation to faithfully represent their own voters by rushing to certify an illegitimate president in the dead of night on 6 January without debating and reviewing any of that evidence. They didn’t even remark on the vote-shifting that took place in the tabulations reported in several states in real-time on Election Day night that Americans saw on network news with their own eyes!

Concurrently, not a single Republican in the Senate or House leadership commented on the fact that only a tiny fraction of the lawsuits filed that were decided in the courts actually examined the evidence of fraud that had been meticulously compiled. Where were their demands to see the evidence reviewed in courts of law? Where was the unified Republican demand to forensically audit the ballots cast in the disputed states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada? And toss Minnesota, Colorado, New Jersey, and Michigan in for good measure, too! //

There’s an old saying derived from Proverbs that “there’s no loyalty among thieves.” Well, that apparently applies to elected Republicans, too, as they have bailed out on the leader of their party since Election Day 2020 and are trying to avoid accountability to their own voters, too.

11th Hour
@11thHour
'America is back': Biden ends 'America first' Trump agenda.

Learn more: http://on.msnbc.com/39MVaBp

“We will repair our alliances and engage with the world once again, not to meet yesterday’s challenges, but today’s and tomorrow’s,” Biden said during an address at the State Department that attempted to turn the page on isolationism [America first] and restore diplomacy [globalism] as the tool of choice. [Wait — who’s the “tool”?]

“America is back. Diplomacy is back,” Biden said... //

New York Post
@nypost
Pompeo slams Biden over 'America is back' foreign policy shift https://trib.al/BndGb6r

During an appearance on “Fox New Primetime,” Pompeo shared those thoughts with host Trey Gowdy.

“Does he mean back to when ISIS controlled a caliphate in Syria that was the size of Britain? I hope not. President Trump and our team took that down.”

[Pompeo drops mic, walks off stage.] //

“When he says “back,” when America is back, does he mean back to letting China walk all over us, destroying millions of jobs in places like Kansas and South Carolina, that we know so well? I hope that’s not what he means by back.

“He talked about allies, when he said go back, does he mean back to dissing allies and friends like Israel and treating the terrorists in Iran like friends by giving them $150 billion in pallets of cash?

“I don’t think the American people can afford to go back to eight more years of Barack Obama’s foreign policy. I hope they’ll move forward with a foreign policy look much more like our ‘America First’ foreign policy.

TIME
@TIME
The secret history of the shadow campaign that saved the 2020 election
https://ti.me/2NZBUbg

TIME wrote a very interesting piece making some very alarming claims. Namely, that a secret cabal banded together across the country to stop Donald Trump from winning re-election. This included everything from manipulating media coverage to getting election laws changed, at least according to TIME’s account. //

Tim Pool
@Timcast
I just want to say that it is the opposite of Democracy when a secret cabal of wealthy and politically connected elites conspire to manipulate the rules and laws of an election in order to win

But s**, not like this is a new story

The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election
time.com //

No matter, this secret cabal isn’t made up of imaginary Russians so it’s all good. The left truly only care about election interference and manipulation when they deem it a threat to their own preferred outcomes. Otherwise, they are all for it. You won’t see the mainstream media decry this. You won’t see a tearful lament from Nancy Pelosi about the dangers it poses to our republic. Rather, this will all be ignored. Heck, it’ll be celebrated as a brilliant political strategy.

And while I’m sure some fact-checker will have qualms with me describing what this group did as manipulation, I believe the objective definition of that word more than applies here. When you seek to stop people from having information that could affect their vote, that’s manipulation. When you go and lobby to get certain laws changed specifically to help your side, that’s manipulation. It is what it is. //

deornwulf
5 minutes ago
This is the spin to make the truth, when it comes out, to be that the fraud was done to preserve Democracy.

Remember when “kids in cages” was a rallying cry of the left and their mainstream media allies? Yeah, that’s quickly shifted to a much more realistic view of the world. What a coincidence, right?

Priscilla Alvarez
@priscialva
·
Feb 2, 2021
NEW: The Biden admin is reopening an overflow facility in Texas for unaccompanied migrant children apprehended at the US-Mexico border. It comes amid an increase in apprehensions + reduced capacity limits at other facilities due to Covid-19.

Biden administration prepares to open overflow facility for migrant children
cnn.com