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Who has the better record on foreign policy? Donald Trump or Joe Biden?

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President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo

Christians often like to try to make elections about a single issue, typically abortion. I’m pro-life, and opposing abortion is important to me. However, my goal is to get the election result I want in the real world, not just to be right in my own mind. So, I think conservatives should be able to discuss many different issues, like economics, energy, job creation, health care, education, etc. persuasively.

One issue you can use to convince people to vote Republican is foreign policy. Has Trump got a good record on foreign policy? Is it better or worse than Joe Biden’s record? Let’s take a look.

It’s always a good thing when a leader is able to make peace between warring countries. Trump is actually really good at this.

The Federalist explains:

Sudan will be removed from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list and will begin a partnership with the United States and Israel, President Donald Trump announced on Friday.

[…]The agreement comes just weeks after Trump secured two other historic peace deals in the Middle East through the signing of The Abraham Accords with Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, which established full diplomatic relations of the countries with Israel. These deals facilitated by the Trump Administration are meant to bring “stability, security, and prosperity” in the region.

[…]Trump granted Sudan’s removal from the terrorism list after the nation paid “$335 million to compensate American victims of past terror attacks and their families.”

In addition to those deals, Trump’s diplomatic team just brokered a deal to get Armenia and Azerbaijan to stop shooting at each other.

The Wall Street Journal explains:

Armenia and Azerbaijan, which have spent nearly a month engaged in a violent conflict in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, have agreed to a humanitarian cease-fire, the U.S. and the two Caucasus neighbors said Sunday afternoon.

The cease-fire, based on commitments made in Moscow earlier this month, will take effect at 8 a.m. local time on Monday, according to the joint announcement.

[…]Sunday’s announcement follows a series of meetings in Washington aimed at preventing the long-simmering conflict between the two former Soviet republics from expanding to the wider region.

Trump didn’t start any new wars in his first 4-year term, and kept his promises about bringing troops home. That’s a lot better than Joe Biden, who was VP during THREE failed US interventions in Egypt, Libya and Syria. And the Obama-Biden administration pulled us out of Iraq, which caused the rise of the Islamic State caliphate. Trump actually had to clean up the ISIS mess, and he did: reducing them from a massive area of influence to a tiny area of influence.

Trump also likes to deter Iran, the number one sponsor of terrorism in the world. He pulled out of the Iran deal, which Biden championed. That deal gave Iran pallets of cash, and allowed them to work on developing nuclear weapons. In contrast, Trump has been very tough with Iran.

The Washington Examiner explains:

Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian military general who was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Iraq on Thursday, was responsible for the deaths of over 600 U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

“General Soleimani and his Quds Force were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and coalition service members and the wounding of thousands more,” the Pentagon said. “He had orchestrated attacks on coalition bases in Iraq over the last several months — including the attack on December 27th — culminating in the death and wounding of additional American and Iraqi personnel. General Soleimani also approved the attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad that took place this week.”

The Department of Defense added that the strike against Maj. Gen. Qassim Soleimani, the leader of the Quds Force, the extraterritorial wing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, “was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans.”

And just this past week, Trump continued to sanction Al Qaeda leaders.

Sky News reports:

The man believed to be al Qaeda’s second-in-command has been killed, Afghan security forces have said.

Abu Muhsin al-Masri was on the FBI’s most wanted list and was charged with conspiracy to kill US nationals.

[…][Al-Masri] had also been charged in America with providing material support and resources to a foreign terrorist organisation.

Very good, and much better than Joe Biden, who seems to be always wrong on foreign policy.

The Washington Examiner again:

In his 2014 memoir, Duty, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates famously shared his view that Biden, then the vice president and previously chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had been wrong about “nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”

[…]Early on Jan. 7, Biden was savaging Trump as “dangerously incompetent” for the strike that had killed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps terrorist leader Gen. Qassem Soleimani a few days earlier. Biden claimed that Trump was close to starting an “endless war in the Middle East” and that “this outcome of strategic setbacks, heightened threats, chants of ‘Death to America’ once more echoing across the Middle East, [and] Iran and its allies vowing revenge — this was avoidable.”

None of Biden’s predictions ever materialized, because he knows less about foreign policy than my keyboard.

Biden is terrible on Osama Bin Laden and the Cold War:

This is the man who once tried to dissuade Obama from his operation against terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden; who supported the Iraq War and said in 2003, “I voted to go into Iraq, and I’d vote to do it again”; and who vocally opposed President Ronald Reagan’s military buildup and the Strategic Defense Initiative, which helped bring down the Soviet Union.

The Obama/Biden administration created ISIS by retreating from Iraq:

Biden claimed he had atoned for his Iraq War vote by spearheading Obama’s 2011-2012 withdrawal from Iraq. But that withdrawal was a disaster, and it led to the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS).

Joe Biden was also part of the administration that traded FIVE top Taliban commanders for Private Bowe Bergdahl. Bergdahl put his fellow soldiers in danger when they had to go searching for him, after he deserted his post. And then there was the Benghazi scandal, when the Obama-Biden administration abandoned their people when they came under attack by terrorists. Then they blamed the attack on a YouTube video.

We shouldn’t put someone with a bad record on foreign policy – Biden – into the White House, when we can have someone with a good record on foreign policy instead: Trump.

News

Fact-checkers silent as their hero Joe Biden repeats Politifact’s LIE OF THE YEAR

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Where did all this money come from?
Where did all this money come from?

Big Tech social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. all would like you to believe that they are very interested in honesty and integrity. But what’s the truth? During the Thursday night debate, Joe Biden claimed that not a single person lost their health insurance after Obamacare. The claim was labeled the Lie of the Year in 2013. Yet the fact-checkers are silent now.

First, here is the clip of Biden claiming that no one lost their health insurance as a result of Obamacare:

Here are the facts as reported by Just The News:

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said during Thursday night’s debate that nobody lost their health insurance plans when Obamacare was fully implemented, but millions of individuals had their insurance policies cancelled at the time.

A RAND Corporation study estimated that 5.9 million people lost their insurance plans due to Obamacare’s rules and regulations.

Obamacare is the 2010 health care law crafted by former President Obama, for whom Biden served as vice president for both of his terms.

Obama was heavily criticized at the time for telling Americans that if “you like your plan, you can keep your plan,” which turned out not to be the case.

Politifact rated Obama’s promise the “lie of the year” in 2013.

Biden said this during the debate:

“Not one single person with private insurance would lose their insurance under my plan, nor did they under Obamacare. They did not lose their insurance unless they chose they wanted to go to something else,” he said.

Although Politifact rated the claim “Lie of the year” in 2013 – AFTER OBAMA’S RE-ELECTION WAS FINISHED – they actually rated the exact same claim “True” before the election. They did this so to trick people into voting for the re-election of the Democrat candidate.

Avik Roy, health care policy expert at Forbes magazine, wrote about Politifact’s assessment of Obama’s promise to Americans about keeping their health plans after Obamacare.

In 2008, before the presidential election, PolitiFact rated Obama’s claims about Obamacare “True”:

Roy writes: (links removed)

On October 9, 2008, Angie Drobnic Holan of PolitiFact published an article using the site’s “Truth-O-Meter” to evaluate this claim: “Under Barack Obama’s health care proposal, ‘if you’ve got a health care plan that you like, you can keep it.’”

And she concluded:

[…]…people who want to keep their current insurance should be able to do that under Obama’s plan. His description of his plan is accurate, and we rate his statement True.”

Roy notes:

PolitiFact’s pronouncements about Obamacare were widely repeated by pro-Obama reporters and pundits, and had a meaningful impact on the outcome of the election. Indeed, in 2009, PolitiFact won the Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the 2008 campaign.

Here’s the screen capture from 2008:

Politifact caught with its pants on fire
Politifact says that everyone who likes their health care plan can keep it

Before the election, it’s true! And Obama got re-elected, because people believed that. But what happened after the election?

In 2013, after the 2012 election, PolitiFact rated Obama’s claims about Obamacare “Pants On Fire”:

Roy writes: (links removed)

On December 12, [2013] the self-appointed guardians of truth and justice at PolitiFact named President Obama’s infamous promise—that “if you like your health care plan, you can keep it”—its 2013 “Lie of the Year.”

[…][N]one of the key facts that made that promise “impossible” in 2008 had changed by 2013. The President’s plan had always required major disruption of the health insurance market; the Obamacare bill contained the key elements of that plan; the Obamacare law did as well. The only thing that had changed was the actual first-hand accounts of millions of Americans who were losing their plans now that Obamacare was live.

And the screen capture from 2013:

Politifact says: we were just kidding! Kidding!
Politifact said one thing before the election, and the opposite afterwards

So when Politifact rates a statement by a Democrat as true, what they really mean is that it’s pants-on-fire-false, but it’s election time so they can’t say that. This is what “fact-checking” by far-left progressive “journalists” amounts to. They’re liars.

News

Joe Biden claims that he and his son Hunter aren’t corrupt – is he lying?

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Is Joe Biden "The Manchurian Candidate" for president?
Is Joe Biden “The Manchurian Candidate” for president?

There was a neat story that broke late on Thursday night by Kimberly Strassel, writing for the Wall Street Journal. It’s covers additional information about the Hunter Biden – China scandal. The latest story is that an investor involved in the deal between the Biden family and EFC China Energy, a Shanghai-based conglomerate, has decided to come forward and speak out.

The article says:

[A] former business partner of Hunter Biden’s has come forward to provide the ugly details of the “family brand.” Tony Bobulinski, a Navy veteran and institutional investor, has provided the Journal emails and text messages associated with his time as CEO of Sinohawk Holdings, a venture between the Bidens and CEFC China Energy, a Shanghai-based conglomerate. That correspondence corroborates and expands on emails recently published by the New York Post, which says they come from a Hunter laptop.

In a statement, Mr. Bobulinski said he went public because he wants to clear his name, which was contained in those published emails, and because accusations that the information is fake or “Russian disinformation” are “offensive.” He attests that all the correspondence he provided is genuine, including documents that suggest Hunter was cashing in on the Biden name and that Joe Biden was involved.

There are indicators that Joe Biden was not only invovled, but stood to gain financially from the deail:

Hunter, in his own angry texts, makes clear that his contribution is his name. He rails at Mr. Bobulinski that the CEFC heads are “coming to be MY partner to be partners with the Bidens.” He reminds him “that in this instance only one player holds the trump card and that’s me. May not be fair but it’s the reality because I’m the only one putting an entire family legacy on the line.” Mr. Gilliar privately tells Mr. Bobulinski to show flexibility, since “I know why [CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming] wants the deal and what makes it enormous, It’s the family name.”

CEFC was closely entwined with the Chinese government and military until it went bankrupt, following U.S. charges of money laundering. There is no question CEFC was buying Hunter for influence.

Joe Biden claims he has never discussed his son’s business. Yet a May 2017 “expectations” document shows Hunter receiving 20% of the equity in the venture and holding another 10% for “the big guy”—who Mr. Bobulinski attests is Joe Biden.

In one text, Hunter says that “my Chairman gave an emphatic NO” to a version of the deal. Mr. Walker, Hunter’s partner, explains in a text to Mr. Bobulinski that when Hunter “said his chairman he was talking about his dad.”

Mr. Bobulinski’s texts show he even met with Joe Biden. Mr. Gilliar reminds him in May 2017: “Don’t mention Joe being involved, it’s only when u are face to face, I know u know that but they are paranoid.” Mr. Biden had left office by then, though CEFC was always a suspicious company with ties to a rival government. It would have a been risky for any public figure to deal with it, much less a potential presidential candidate.

WSJ using paywalls their articles after a few hours, so you can read the full text of the article here.

In the Thursday night debate, Joe Biden said that the e-mails and the laptop were “Russian disinformation”. Unfortunately for him, he couldn’t point to the names of anyone. On the other hand, there are specific people who contradict what he said, specifically, the Director of National Intelligence.

The Daily Wire reported:

John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence, told Fox Business on Monday morning that Hunter Biden’s laptop was not part of a Russian disinformation campaign despite the media’s attempts to claim otherwise.

Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo pressed Ratcliffe about claims from House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who made repeated false claims during the Russia investigation, that the news surrounding the laptop was Russian disinformation.

“Is this Russian disinformation, director?” Bartiromo asked.

Ratcliffe responded, “So, Maria it’s funny that some of the people that complained the most about intelligence being politicized are the ones politicizing intelligence and unfortunately in this case, it is Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, who as you pointed out on Friday said that the intelligence community believes that Hunter Biden’s laptop and e-mails on it are part of some Russian disinformation campaign.”

“Let me be clear, the intelligence community doesn’t believe that because there is no intelligence that supports that and we shared no intelligence with chairman Schiff or any other member of Congress that Hunter Biden’s laptop is part of some Russian disinformation campaign,” he continued. “It’s simply not true.”

So it’s pretty clear that Biden lied about the laptop and the emails that implicate Hunter Biden in a scheme to purchase access and possibly influence with foreign dollars. Hunter was cashing in on his father’s position, and the evidence suggests that Joe Biden was at least aware of what was going on, and might even have been getting a cut of this foreign money.

By the way, the image is from one of my favorite anti-communist movies: “The Manchurian Candidate”, 1962. Do NOT see the re-make. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it.