What really scares the Democrats about Trump

Well, the liberals are 0 for 3. Hillary Clinton lost the general election, she lost the recount, and now she’s officially lost the Electoral College. All the talk leading up to the Electoral College count was how many electors Trump would lose. In the end, it was only 2, while Hillary lost 5! 

The prospect of 37 electors turning on Trump and pushing the election — and liberal hopes — to the House of Representatives was so high that stories abounded the morning of the Electoral College. The morning after there was not a single story about the Electoral College on CNN’s front page.

That’s because the story of the Electoral College was that electors abandoned Hillary Clinton at over twice the rate they abandoned Trump. MSNBC did mention Trump in several stories on their website, the lead being ‘Trump’s win is anything but historic.’ True, it may not be historic in terms of electoral votes, but this election has certainly been historic in terms of whining.

Remember when George W. Bush won a hotly contested race in 2000 with hanging chads and Supreme Court decisions? He needed 270 electoral votes to win and ended up with 271. That would’ve been the perfect year for ‘faithless electors.’ I don’t recall any effort on the part of the Democrats to steal that election for Al Gore.

I guess that begs the question why now in 2016?

It has everything to do with Donald Trump. You would think someone who used to be a Democrat and who once gave money to Hillary Clinton would be the least of their worries. Truth is Trump is their worst nightmare.

Let me explain.

The Democrat strategy for years has been a numbers game. Their plan has been to flood the country with immigrants, largely illegal ones, in the hopes of one day giving them amnesty. I refer to these people as undocumented Democrats. They’ve been hugely successful in California. George H.W. Bush won California by about 300,000 votes in 1988. He was last Republican to do so. Trump lost California by more than 4 million votes.

What happened?

Immigration to California — both legal and illegal — exploded after 1988. According to 2010 Census figures, 25.4% of Californians are now foreign born. That number is certainly higher by now. Compare that with a state like Texas, which everyone assumes has a large foreign-born population, and it’s 10.8%. 

Unfortunately, Democrats see immigrants as fertile ground. Used to be you had to live in this country 5 years before you could get any kind of welfare assistance. Not anymore. According to the Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), 51 percent of households headed by an immigrant are now on some form of welfare. This is not by happenstance.

The immigrants of old came to America for the opportunity. Too many of today’s immigrants come for the benefits. The Democrats are only too eager to provide those benefits. Food stamp recipients, for example, are up 42% under Obama. You create a dependent class and you create Democrat votes forever.

The centerpiece of the Trump administration will be stopping the flood of illegal immigrants. These illegals are the farm team for the Democrats. Trump and the Republicans have a better idea. Create jobs and, thus, create independence instead of dependence. The Trump strategy is to help everyone who is able to become self-sustaining. He believes Americans are more productive and happier when they have good jobs. This is something the liberals still don’t quite understand.

The Democrats are still banking on dependence. Trump is banking on hope.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

T. Rex is coming!

The left is having a fit over Rex Tillerson, the CEO of ExxonMobil, as Trump’s pick for secretary of state. I’ve dubbed him T. Rex. After Mad Dog Mattis, all of Trump’s picks need to have nicknames. Let’s face it, the reason the left is going nuts over T. Rex is because he heads up Big Oil. They hate Big Oil. They think Big Oil is destroying the planet. They think people like Tillerson should be treated like war criminals.

But the inexplicable focus is his friendship with Vladimir Putin. Look, I know Putin is former KGB. I know he came out of his borders. I understand being upset about Crimea. What I don’t understand is when did Russia become our enemy? Oh, yeah, I remember the Soviet Union. I also remember that it crumbled. After that, Russia became our friend, our ally.

Heck, I remember Hillary meeting with the Russians and pressing that cheesy reset button. What happened to that? Just four years ago, Obama whispered to a Russian politician that he’d have a lot more leeway after the election. Remember that? I don’t recall the Democrats having a cow over that. I remember some Republicans being upset, but they were upset because Obama was telling us one thing when his obvious plan was another.

Could it be the Russians took advantage of him? Obama does look a lot like a wimp next to Putin, even though Obama’s got him by a foot. I think that’s what really gripes the liberals. Putin and Russia have run rings around us. Now there’s a new sheriff in town. Trump doesn’t take garbage from anybody. Just ask the Chinese.

Speaking of whom, why was no one calling for a congressional investigation when they were hacking into our defense contractors and private companies like Yahoo? And why are the people on the left so freaked out about Russia, which is a republic, and not China, which is a communist dictatorship?

Sure, the Russians may have hacked into the DNC, although I have my doubts. I have no problem with launching an investigation to find out. However, how did any of the hacks have any effect on the election? They didn’t. One moment the Democrats are blaming the Russians, the next they’re blaming James Comey and the FBI. How about blaming Hillary Clinton? Nobody trusted her. Few people liked her.

What was the centerpiece of Hillary’s campaign? I’ll tell you. It was that Trump was unfit for office. It was some mythical war on women. It was how people weren’t ready for a strong woman or a female president. It was about how everyone was out to get her. It was about all sorts of things that either didn’t exist or nobody cared about.

What was the centerpiece of Trump’s campaign? Build the wall. Secure the border. Lower taxes. Get a better trade deal with China. Get people working again. These were all subjects that resonated with the American people. Now that they’ve lost, all the Democrats can do is cry that the election wasn’t fair.

Now they want to do away with the Electoral College. Look, that’s how the game’s played. Had it been about the popular vote then Trump’s strategy would’ve been different. One of my listeners put it this way. Two teams are playing football. One has 350 total yards. The other has 300, yet the one with 300 yards made 3 touchdowns. The team with 350 yards made one. It’s not about the total yardage. It’s about the score.

So with that I’ll leave you liberals with one thought. Scoreboard!

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Trump, Taiwan, and the hysterical media

Who would’ve thought one little phone call would cause such a stir? Donald Trump takes a congratulatory call from the president of Taiwan and the left-wing news media go nuts. They start screaming “One China Policy” and suggest Trump may have upended the whole world order.

It’s something that needs upending. A little background. When the communist took over China in the civil war of 1949, the legitimate government of China set up shop in Taiwan. They still refer to themselves as the Republic of China. America’s One China Policy dates back to Richard Nixon. When Nixon was trying to open trade with China, he issued a diplomatic communique stating there was only one nation called China. That did not acknowledge China’s dominion over Taiwan. It merely opened to door to trade relations with China by officially recognizing them.

Jimmy Carter broke off relations with Taiwan in 1979 which prompted Congress to pass the Taiwan Relations Act. That act sets up diplomatic relations with Taiwan and promises to protect them from invasion by China. That is America’s official relationship with Taiwan. Any other relationship that favors China over Taiwan is simply a presidential policy. As we know from the Obama administration, those are easily cast aside by a new president. Regarding China, Trump should do just that.

One would think that the American left would be more sensitive to human rights abuses than anyone else. After all, they’re the ones constantly reminding us of the very slightest hurt feelings of college snowflakes still devastated by Hillary Clinton’s loss. They’re the ones who vigilantly guard our language so that we don’t say something inappropriate that might upset the protected classes. Yet they want to protect and excuse the most brutal regime ever known to mankind.

According to The Black Book of Communism, the Chinese Communist regime has killed 63 million people. That compares to about 11 million who were killed during the Nazi Holocaust. Why we even trade with a regime with such an abysmal record is beyond me. We broke off trade relations with Cuba over about 3,000 people executed in firing squads.

But the left-wing media are scared to death to upset China. Remember when the same news media were scared of Ronald Reagan because he had vowed to relegate the Soviet Union “to the ash bin of history” when he was running for president? And he did. Imagine how nuts these people would’ve gone had Trump vowed the same thing for China.

I’ll say it out loud. Communist China needs to be relegated to that same ash bin of history. The magnitude of Trump’s phone call with Taiwan was not measured in terms of diplomacy. It was measured in terms of fear. There needs to be an abrupt change in trade policy with China. First of all, no item made with slave labor should ever be allowed to enter this country. Basic human rights should be observed. You lock up dissidents, you raid churches, we don’t trade with you. That’s how you affect change. That’s how you free the oppressed. That’s how you break the grip of brutal communism on an entire nation of people. That might very well be Donald Trump’s greatest legacy, while the mainstream news media cower.

The left seems to have a fascination with communist regimes like China and Cuba and the Soviet Union. Of course, they’ve never had live under one of them. In their effort to right the wrongs of the aggrieved, maybe the American left ought to start with the Chinese people. They’re certainly deserving of a cry-in.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Terrorist seems to be the hardest word

Abdul Artan was a terrorist. That simple sentence is impossible for the left-wing media to utter, but it’s true. Artan was the 18-year-old Somali immigrant who rammed his car into a crowd of students at Ohio State University then hopped out with a butcher knife to stab anyone in sight. He was also a student at Ohio State. 

NBC News reported that Artan had posted on Facebook about reaching the “boiling point” and talked about “lone wolf attacks.” He even cited radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Then they asked, “Did Ohio State University attacker have terror ties?”

You think?

He complained to the school newspaper that there weren’t enough prayer rooms for Muslims and that he was “kind of scared” to pray in public. In the end, it was everyone else who had cause to be scared of him. 

It almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when radical Muslims complain of feeling alienated then end up killing or trying to kill a bunch of people. I had a girlfriend once who was obsessed with the idea that I was cheating on her. I wasn’t, but nothing I could say would convince her. Our relationship ended when I caught her cheating on me. It seems some of these terror attacks are similar. Paranoid people tend to transfer their paranoia onto other people.

One of the first steps of radicalization is to be thoroughly convinced you’re being persecuted. It’s this sense of persecution—real or imagined—that lays the foundation for your future actions as a terrorist. Artan was a man who graduated cum laude from Columbus State Community College then headed off to Ohio State. Somewhere along the way he learned to be offended by the fact that he was Muslim and most of the people around him weren’t. It’s highly unlikely that his persecution as a Muslim was anything more than a figment of his imagination.

People can literally drive themselves crazy over their perceptions. Radical Islamists prey on those perceptions. Radical Islamists are, by definition, nuts. Their obsession with their religion has driven them to the point of madness. Yes, there are crazy Christians, too, but their psychosis seldom manifests itself in murder.

This is the distinction the politically correct fail to make. Truth be known, we’re all a little bit crazy in our own way. The question is, are our idiosyncrasies a threat to others? It’s foolish to ignore the obvious. When Muslims go nuts they go nuts in a big way. That’s not to say, of course, that all Muslims are crazy. It’s just an obvious observation that crazy Muslims are a bigger threat than crazy people of any other religion.

Knowing that, why on earth do we continue to allow possible ticking time bombs to enter the United States without proper vetting? Artan came to us from Somalia via Pakistan. Was he radicalized along the way? It’s doubtful anyone checked. After all, we don’t want to make anyone feel uncomfortable.

This terrorist came to the United States legally. How many others are coming illegally? And just days before the attack, Ohio State students were protesting in favor of making their campus a sanctuary campus for illegals. They might want to re-think that position. It’s bad enough that we’re letting crazy people in the front door, the last thing we need to be doing is allowing unvetted students to roam freely on American campuses.

There’s a very good reason why we provide a legal avenue of immigration. It’s to weed out the criminals and the terrorists. If we don’t, what good is it?

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Trump's first 100 days

Donald Trump is moving ahead with his bold plan to make America great again and the left-wing media are stunned. They didn’t think he’d actually follow through on his campaign promises. They’re accustomed to conniving politicians who say what the voters want to hear just to get elected. Rarely do these politicians follow through. Trump is following through big league.

And what’s more, he’s bypassing the media and going directly to the people via YouTube.

The first thing he plans to do is withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Most Americans have no idea what the TPP is all about, and that’s by design. It was largely negotiated in secret and written by corporate lobbyists and lawyers. That’s not to say that TPP might not have some benefits. It’s very much like Obamacare. We have to pass it find out what’s in it. Trump’s not willing to take that chance, so we’re out.

Upon taking office, Trump will cancel Obama’s executive orders and actions that choke the energy sector. At long last, we will begin using the vast energy reserves we have, which will mean millions of jobs and affordable energy for everyone. That’s not to say that we’re abandoning so-called green energy. It’s just that green energy will not exist to the exclusion of traditional energy sources. The market will be reintroduced into the energy sector and all sorts of energy sources will compete on an even playing field.

Trump is also regulating regulations. His new rule means that for every new regulation enacted we must eliminate two old regulations. In other words, government will begin loosening its stranglehold on American businesses. According to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Obama holds the top 4 rankings in presidents with the most regulations in a year. This year set a new record with over 81,000 pages of new regulations. These regulations seldom expand our liberties, they contract them. Trump understands that, and he’s adopting rules to start chipping away at them.

Trump is tasking the Defense Department with developing a plan to protect our infrastructure from cyber attacks. We have been hit countless times by Russia, China, and other countries who don’t have our best interests at heart. Trump understands that we’re leaking secrets—both from the government and the private sector—to countries that are potentially hostile. This was, ironically, one of the issues that kept Hillary Clinton from the White House.

On immigration, Trump is instructing the Labor Department to investigate all forms of work visa abuse, from fake visas to immigrants overstaying their visas. That’s not to say that the wall is now off the table. It’s simply a first step in putting American workers first.

One of the most interesting items on his list is a ban on executive branch lobbying for five years. In other words, no one in his administration will be able to leap-frog seamlessly to a cushy lobbyist job upon leaving his employ at the White House. Furthermore, no one working for the president will ever be able to lobby for a foreign country.

While the left-wing media portray Trump’s transition team as being in disarray, Trump is diligently going about the difficult task of undoing much of the damage that has been done over the past 8 years. And this is just the beginning. I personally can’t wait until they pull Obamacare out by the roots and replace it with a free market system that actually works.

People are either excited or terrified about Trump’s presidency. There’s one thing for sure. The next four years will not be boring.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

The false enthusiasm for the first female president

In the aftermath of the presidential election, I watched female anchors on CNN report with sadness how they took their daughters to the polls with them. They were hoping to be a part of the historical election of the first female president. That sounds great but it’s a horrible excuse to vote for somebody. We found that out with Barack Obama.

The irony is Kellyanne Conway was the first successful female campaign manager of a presidential campaign. Funny how such firsts are unimportant to the mainstream media when they’re Republicans.

Too many in the media were so fixated on Hillary becoming the first female president that they ignored the reality. Very few Americans really cared about the issue. Newsweek, the once great weekly news magazine that has devolved into an obscure online Democrat sycophant, declared “the presidential election was a referendum on gender and women lost.” In just one more example of how out of touch these people are they also demonstrated how wrong they were and continue to be. Women were not the issue. Hillary was. Their myopia was so acute that they only saw a female candidate. The rest of us saw a candidate under constant federal investigation who demonstrated questionable judgement on numerous occasions and was perceived by much of the country as too crooked to be president. But, of course, we just hate women.

Now these same forces are trying to saddle Donald Trump with labels such as racist and anti-semitic. Do you realize how insane this is? When Donald Trump opened up his Mar-a-Lago golf club he upset the Palm Beach norms by accepting blacks and Jews. Now the mainstream media are trying to paint his senior advisor, Steve Bannon, as anti-semitic. You do know that Trump’s own daughter, Ivanka, is Jewish, right? So are his son-in-law and one of his daughters-in-law. The notion that Trump would have allowed some so-called “alt-right” neo-Nazi into his inner circle is absurd. Bannon, by the way, worked for Goldman Sachs, Breitbart, and owns a piece of the hit TV show, Seinfeld. All Jews.

The mainstream media are obsessed with things that obviously are second nature to Trump. Blacks like Dr. Ben Carson and Herman Cain have enthusiastically embraced his campaign and now his presidency. He’s always surrounded himself with bright women like Conway and his daughter, Ivanka. First and foremost, he surrounds himself with the best. That’s something we’re not accustomed to seeing with Obama and the Democrats. They’re more concerned with diversity. Trump’s more concerned with winning. Barriers are broken when excellence is allowed to thrive. Otherwise, it means nothing.

And yes, breaking through barriers is something to celebrate. When Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith became the first black coaches in a Super Bowl in 2007 it had nothing to do with affirmative action. It had everything to do with excellence. Nobody spotted the Bears or the Colts points so they would win their divisions. They earned the right to be there.

That was Hillary’s problem. The Democrats nominated her, in large part, because it was her turn and because she was a woman, not because she was the best they had to offer. The rest of the country was less enamored with the prospect of making her the first female president. First for first sake is folly. We’re due a female president. That will happen, and when it does it will hopefully be someone in the tradition of Margaret Thatcher or Jeane Kirkpatrick. Thank God a flawed candidate like Hillary Clinton didn’t screw that up.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

What part of illegal don't you understand?

If there’s one issue that’s been thrust to the forefront because of the 2016 presidential election it’s the issue of illegal immigration. Donald Trump tapped into a long-frustrated electorate that believed their voice wasn’t being heard on the issue. Conventional wisdom had kept Republicans pretty much away from the issue for fear of hacking off Hispanic voters. But they failed to understand the frustration within the Hispanic community itself.

Pulse Opinion Research conducted a poll just before the election and the results were shocking to the beltway crowd that thought Hispanics were a monolithic voting bloc. When asked if the government’s efforts to enforce immigration law have been too much, too little, or just right, 51% of Hispanics said the government’s efforts had been too little.

When asked if employers should be required to verify legal status of their workers, nearly half of Hispanics said yes.

Asked if they would support a policy that forces illegals to return to their home countries and one that penalizes employers who hire them, half said yes.

What the open borders crowd fails to realize is the people most adversely affected by illegal aliens are legal aliens. Many of them are competing for the same jobs, for the same opportunities. Illegals have a distinct advantage because they don’t play by the rules. Both parties have pandered to the illegals for too long.

President Obama was asked before the election if so-called “dreamers”—kids brought here illegally by their parents—would get in trouble if they voted. The interviewer referred to these people as “undocumented citizens,” a ridiculous oxymoron. Citizens, by their very nature, are documented. The president told the interviewer that no one would try to intimidate them into not voting. He went on to say that if you manage to vote then you’re a citizen! It’s supposed to be the other way around.

The rule of law has been thrown out the window over the past eight years, but ignoring immigration law certainly didn’t start with Obama. George W. Bush was as bad, if not worse. Like Obama, he was pandering for votes, not recognizing the undercurrent of anger in the Hispanic community.

The wave of illegal aliens over the past several years has been mind-boggling. The plan is to flood the country with illegal aliens, put them on welfare, grant them amnesty, then add them to the voter rolls. We should start referring to these people as what they are: undocumented Democrats.

It’s a numbers game. California went Republican as late as 1988. The flood of immigrants, legal and illegal, has ensured that California will never be red again. Democrats want to spread that model to the rest of the country.

And you’re a racist if you don’t go along. This is the single biggest issue of our time. Republicans have been scared to make it the centerpiece of their campaign. Donald Trump was not, and we owe him a debt of gratitude for having the courage to do that. It’s up to the individual states to make sure they don’t become California. Many states have laws on the books against hiring illegal aliens. We need governors to grow backbones and enforce those laws.

Republicans need to stop being afraid of confronting this issue. Whether it’s overcrowded prisons or overcrowded schools, high crime rates or the scarcity of good-paying jobs, illegal immigration is a component of every major problem we face. It’s time we recognize that at least half of Hispanics in America are on the right side of this issue. Let’s fix it before it’s too late.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

What an election!

People ask me all the times these days, “What are you going to talk about after the election?” I must admit that this has been the most entertaining election I can remember. That’s due almost entirely to Donald Trump. Of course, the past week has been immensely pleasing, watching smug Democrats who thought they had the election in the bag suddenly scrambling for excuses. 

There is no excuse. All of Hillary Clinton’s wounds are self-inflicted. It’s not a vindictive FBI director. It’s not dirty tricks by the Republicans. It’s karma.

And I love the counter attack. Trump is in cahoots with Putin and the Russians to steal the election. Hear that sound? Click, click, click. They’re out of ammo. They’re fresh out of porn stars to launch at Trump. Now they’re left with the deafening sound of their own incompetence.

We probably won’t know for some time what’s in the e-mails on Anthony Weiner’s computer. Here’s what we do know. Huma Abedin was so inept that she couldn’t figure out how to print from the government system, so she forwarded classified e-mails to her joint account with her husband and her Yahoo account. Hillary didn’t even have a computer in her State Department office. She also didn’t know how to run her home fax machine. Sounds like a bunch of yahoos were running the secretary of state’s office.

The irony that a sexting scandal involving Anthony Weiner could bring Hillary down is delectable. She spent most of her life cleaning up behind her own husband, destroying his accusers, and snatching both of their political careers from the jaws of death on numerous occasions. Now it’s her own aide’s husband’s sick perversions that might be the end of her career. Of course, Bill Clinton “officiated” the Weiner-Abedin wedding. What a way to start a marriage.

If Trump wins on Tuesday it’ll set up an epic fight between the looters/moochers and the producers. The Democrats, who have planted and tended their crop of dependents, will find themselves in the unenviable position of trying to stop a man from freeing the liberals’ prisoners from cyclical government addiction. Then there’s illegal immigration. The battle with Mexico over the border wall will, alone, be worth the price of admission. Not to mention the fun in watching the Larry Tate Republicans who will suddenly act as if they’d been on Trump’s side all along.

Even if Hillary wins there’s the prospect of the FBI drilling deeper down into the president-elect’s self-made labyrinth of deceit. All along Wikileaks will provide an endless stream of tantalizing e-mails from various crooked people the Clintons seem to surround themselves with. Oh, and the sure-to-come James O’Keefe videos that will continue to chronicle the corruption behind the Democrat machine. Does Hillary pardon herself? Will she pardon Huma and Weiner and everybody else who will surely take the fall around her, or will she leave them, as John Ehrlichman famously said during Watergate, to twist slowly in the wind?

And speaking of Watergate, will Hillary go down in history as half of the only husband and wife tandem to be impeached by Congress? What drama. And we haven’t even gotten to the gun-running that was apparently the reason Hillary and Obama made up the story of a video-induced protest at the consulate in Benghazi when the real target was the CIA annex. Or the toppling of regimes in Libya and Egypt, and the continued efforts to overthrow the government of Syria.

Indeed, what shall I talk about after the election?

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Obamacare working as planned

The revelation that Obamacare premiums will jump an average of 25 percent next year seemed to catch many by surprise. Critics claim Obamacare is imploding. The reality is it’s working just as it was planned.

A Fox News story stated “about 1 in 5 consumers will only have plans from a single insurer to pick from.” That, my friends, is the plan. I’ve been warning since Obamacare was first debated in Congress that the end goal is single-payer health insurance. Now we’re seeing that plan come to fruition. Major insurers like UnitedHealth Group, Humana, and Aetna have drastically scaled back their roles in many states. This is all by design.

The economics of Obamacare are pretty simple. They herded the riskiest consumers into one exchange. Instead of spreading risk, they’ve concentrated it. That means that premiums have to go up and/or coverage has to go down. Insurance companies gleefully lined up behind President Obama when he signed the legislation into law. They loved the idea that everyone would now be required to buy insurance. How they couldn’t see that the model was unworkable is a mystery.

Obama lured them into the trap with promises the government would back the payments. Now the government is in arrears to insurance companies to the tune of billions of dollars. The companies have sued the government, and Obama is trying to use the little-know ‘Judgement Fund’ from the Treasury Department to pay them off. In other words, Obamacare has become just another welfare program, despite being sold to the American people as a way to cut healthcare costs.

Then there are the unintended consequences of Obamacare. Employers with more than 50 employees are now required by law to provide health insurance. This has, naturally, forced many companies to reclassify certain positions as part-time. Part-time workers are defined under Obamacare as logging less than 30 hours per week. It’s not just the work week requirements. If an employee works more than 120 days in the year they’re considered full-time! That’s less than half the days a full-time employee works, but they’re considered full-time.

In my line of work—and I’ve seen it in all sorts of other businesses—part-time workers’ hours and days are closely monitored. Even when we need part-timers, like when workers go on vacation, we don’t have adequate staff because of Obamacare rules. There’s no telling how much productivity has been depressed in this country as a result. Not to mention all these people who would have more hours and more money but don’t because the government has seen fit to run their businesses.

The single biggest mistake of those opposing Obamacare was not challenging the employer mandate in court. They, instead, chose to fight the individual mandate. Those numbers were so small as to be insignificant. The real trouble with Obamacare was how it would affect businesses. I brought that point up to an “expert” at the Heritage Foundation and was told that employers providing health insurance has become expected, that they didn’t see the sense in challenging it. Expected and required are two entirely different things.

My having health insurance has nothing whatsoever to do with my job. Employers started offering health insurance as an incentive. The liberals have now turned a gift into a right enforced by the IRS.

We can’t count on the Republicans in Congress to do anything about Obamacare. That’s why we gave them control of both houses and they’ve done nothing. I’m afraid if Hillary Clinton is elected that single-payer health insurance is inevitable.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Election rigging in broad daylight

Once upon a time, back when I was younger and more naive, I believed that the voting process in this country was sacred. Sure, I was aware of the Chicago Machine, Tammany Hall in New York, and a few scattered, isolated incidents of ballot stuffing. Of course, I knew about the Klan and voter intimidation and poll taxes and other methods to rig elections. But I truly thought those were from a bygone era.

The recent revelations in the 2016 election have made it clear that election rigging is alive and well in the United States of America.

The James O’Keefe videos from Project Veritas prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that people will do anything they can to steal an election. These videos prove a concerted conspiracy to organize people and descend upon a state with illegal voters who employ techniques from registering and voting illegal aliens to registering and voting dead people.

The Chicago Machine, Tammany Hall, poll taxes, the KKK, and registering illegals and dead people to vote all have one thing in common. Democrats. That’s not to say that Republicans haven’t committed voter fraud, but the vast majority of it is by Democrats.

Yes, Donald Trump said some crass and offensive things when he didn’t know he was being recorded, but it’s crystal clear that the Access Hollywood tape was a weapon the Democrats held and deployed at a strategic time in this election. It’s also apparent that the parade of Trump accusers meant to fit nicely with the words on that tape were orchestrated and planned well in advance.

Obviously, the Democrats have had the tape since Trump announced he was running for president. It’s also obvious from the Wikileaks e-mails that Hillary Clinton and the Democrats wanted desperately for Trump to get the Republican nomination. That’s why they sat on the tape throughout the primaries. They fully expected to be 20 points ahead a month before the election. When they weren’t, they knew Donald Trump must be destroyed.

The allegations have been so over the top that they may have overplayed their hand. The countless accusations of public groping stretch credulity. It’s not as though no one had ever heard of Donald Trump. Had such conduct been commonplace the media would surely have gotten wind of it before now.

And what of the accusers? The woman who says she was groped on the airplane 30 years ago, it turns out, has been in a long property dispute with one of Trump’s golf courses. Many of the other women have turned out to be Democrat operatives and/or Hillary contributors and supporters. One woman was a reporter for People Magazine, for Pete’s sake. She was tasked with interviewing Trump. Don’t you think such a salacious story would’ve made the cover of that gossip rag had it been true?

We now have a very public view of an overt attempt to steal an election. This is no longer the stuff of the tinfoil hat crowd. It’s now all out in the open. The Wikileaks e-mails and the O’Keefe tapes prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt. But the scariest part is how the mainstream media ignore both. Time was when they were the watchdogs of these corrupt SOBs who were trying to steal elections. They are now their lap dogs. 

Heaven knows that Trump is an imperfect candidate, but he is the rage against the machine. He is our only hope that the people can triumph over the evil that has infested our election process. God help us all if he fails.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Back from the dead

On Friday October 7, I would’ve sworn that Donald Trump’s presidential campaign was mortally wounded. The vulgarity of the leaked Access Hollywood tape seemed too much to overcome. The 48 hours between the release and the second presidential debate gave America a chance to let the issue marinate. All eyes were glued on Trump as he took to the debate stage to see how in the world he would overcome such an embarrassing revelation.

He got off to a rocky start. The odd way he held the microphone while one shoulder was higher than the other made him look nervous. Right out of the gate, the issue was thrown right in his face. Despite what many commentators said afterward, his response was contrite. He didn’t belabor the point but spent just the right amount of time on it. Then he moved on to what some would describe as an odd segue: ISIS. I had suggested he pivot to something more Trumpish, like building the wall or putting Americans back to work, but bringing up ISIS was fine. What he was doing was pointing out that there were far bigger problems to tackle than some ‘locker room’ chatter from 11 years ago.

I had hoped he would hold his tongue on the Bill Clinton sexual predator remarks and Hillary’s role in destroying the women who accused him, and he did. He waited until Hillary pounced on the issue to deliver a jab the Clintons have had coming for 20 years. The bewildered look on Bill Clinton’s face in the audience was priceless.

In all his years of abusing women and having Hillary clean up the mess by destroying lives, Bill has never had anyone with the guts to confront the Clintons head-on. Trump did, and to those of us who’ve waited two decades to see it, it was glorious.

Within 15 minutes of the debate, the tawdry audio tape was all but forgotten. Like Rocky Balboa, Trump took one body blow after another until Hillary had exhausted her arsenal, and then he unloaded on her. It was a thing of beauty.

CNN’s poll said Hillary won the debate but we all know the truth. Trump not only defused the audio tape issue, he destroyed her on every other issue that was brought up. He even left some things on the table for the next debate.

If he wants to win this election, he’s going to have to put a finer point on some of the issues that still are not clear to the American people. When asked by moderators who obviously are pro-actively working for Hillary what he’s going to do to make sure the rich are paying their ‘fair share’ of taxes, Trump needs to tell them and the American people the truth. According to the IRS, the top 5 percent of wage-earners pays 60 percent of the income tax. His question to Hillary should be, “How much of the tax burden do you want them to bear?”

On the issue of his own tax deductions, he needn’t point to Soros and Buffet as doing the same thing. Bill and Hillary wrote off $700,000 of capital gains losses just last year. It’s not on the same scale as Trump but the principle is the same. One doesn’t pay income tax unless one has a profit. You don’t pay taxes on money you lose. It’s something the American people will surely understand if it’s framed in those terms.

Trump’s campaign is miraculously back from the dead. Like Rocky, Trump now has to give us something to cheer for.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Is this all Hillary has?

If you made a billion dollars, would you have to pay taxes on it? Sure. What if you lost a billion dollars? Would you have to pay taxes on that? Of course not. Then why is this concept lost on Hillary Clinton?

It’s not.

In 2015, she and Bill carried over a loss of nearly $700,000, just like Donald Trump did, only on a smaller scale. The tax code is very complicated for sure, but there’s one thing that’s perfectly clear. You only pay taxes on profit. If you have a loss, you’re allowed to write that loss off against your profit, and sometimes for several years of profit until the loss is erased.

The New York Times was giddy with glee when they came into possession of Donald Trump’s 1995 tax return. Publishing stolen tax returns is a felony punishable by up to 5 years in prison. Chances are they’re in possession of more than just 1995’s returns. It’s very likely that they cherry-picked which year they wanted to publish. Remember what I always tell you. Media bias is not what they tell you, it’s what they don’t.

Hillary and the Times are banking on the ignorance of the American people when it comes to tax law. Seeing as how Hillary and Bill did exactly the same thing as Donald Trump, it’s impossible that her attacks are coming from a position of ignorance. She fully understands that losses are counted against profits. She’s just counting on your ignorance to win this election.

What’s notable are the issues she chooses to campaign on down the home stretch of the campaign. A tax return from over 20 years ago and a contrived controversy involving Miss Universe 20 years ago. Both were business decisions. On the latter, Trump had just bought into the Miss Universe pageant. The newly-crowned winner ballooned by 42 pounds. The Miss Universe pageant is a business. She won the contest at 118 pounds. Within a year she was 160.

The irony in this so-called scandal is that Donald Trump was the only thing standing in the way of Alicia Machado losing the crown. “When you win a beauty pageant,” Trump told People Magazine at the time, “people don’t think you’re going to go from 118 to 160 in less than a year, and you really have an obligation to stay in a perfect physical state. We want her to stay as Miss Universe, and she is working on her problem.” Machado now claims Trump was body-shaming her by inviting the press into her workout sessions at the gym. What he was trying to do was turn an embarrassing situation for her and the pageant into a heart-warming lifestyle story of how one can overcome the struggles of weight gain that millions of people fight every day.

I’m certainly not going to sit here and claim that Donald Trump is perfect, but, good grief, are these the most important issues facing America today? You’d think so by the media feeding frenzy.

Need I remind you that four Americans died in Benghazi waiting for Hillary Clinton to send someone to help them? Have we forgotten that tens of thousands of e-mails were scrubbed from Hillary’s illegal private e-mail server to cover her tracks in a pay-to-play scheme involving the State Department and the Clinton Foundation? Not to mention her role in destroying all the women whom her husband sexually assaulted.

An overweight Miss Universe and Donald Trump writing off loses from a casino project are the least of our worries.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Who won the first debate?

Hillary Clinton went on full offense at the first presidential debate. Donald Trump was playing a prevent defense. Did he let Hillary score? The short answer is yes. Trump seemed unwilling to play to his major strength, which is illegal immigration. Hillary hammered him on his temperament, and on several occasions he played into her hands. However, Trump has something that Hillary desperately needs right now and that’s momentum.

We can all sit here and Monday morning quarterback the debate, but it was obvious that Trump’s handlers had one objective. That was to make sure Trump didn’t step on his own message. To that end, they were successful. However, he left a lot on the table.

Hillary’s people obviously told her to smile a lot, and she did to the point of looking robotic. In the early stages of the debate, her eyes made her appear as though she was falling asleep. They closed so slowly that one was left wondering if they would open again. As the debate wore on she got better. With all of her recent health problems, there was speculation that she might not remain vertical through the 90-minute debate. For that reason alone she surpassed expectations. Hillary’s health was the one issue Trump needed to avoid at all costs, and he came dangerously close when he questioned her stamina.

This debate lacked much in the way of substance. It was Hillary charging hard into the line and Trump trying to keep her from advancing the ball. She justifiably hit Trump on the birther charge then twisted it into some sort of racial attack. Trump seemed to allow her the yardage and really didn’t push back against the racism charge. Think what you will about questioning Obama’s birthplace, but there’s nothing racist about it. Trump asked the same questions of Ted Cruz and he’s a white guy. Of course, pointing out that he has a habit of such tactics only feeds into Hillary’s narrative that he’s unstable. He lost points on that issue, but it’s probably not an issue that many people care about.

What was conspicuously absent from Trump’s presentation was the central issue of illegal immigration and building the border wall. Perhaps it would’ve sounded too much like a caricature of himself. Maybe his handlers advised him to stay away from it, but it’s the central issue in his campaign and its absence left a gaping hole at the end of the night.

He also showed uncharacteristic restraint in not hitting Hillary on the issue of trustworthiness. It was an apple begging to be picked and he left it on the tree. But that would mean his game plan had changed to offense instead of defense, and it was obvious that was not how he planned to win.

Polls the day of the debate showed Trump pulling even in battleground states like Pennsylvania and Colorado. If he wins Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida this thing is pretty much over. His campaign team understands that, and they also understand that reverting to the candidate who seems to love the taste of his own foot is not how you win battleground states.

I said from the day Trump announced his candidacy that he is the empty vessel into which people pour their hopes and dreams. If he fills that vessel with his own Trump Punch then it defeats the purpose. Deliberate vagueness will always serve him better than specifics. That’s probably why the majority of those polled thought he won the debate.

This first debate was Trump’s to lose, and he managed not to do that.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

The snake among us

It’s interesting how history has placed the right person in the right place for the right job. Ronald Reagan wanted to be president in 1976, but it was not yet his time. It’s amazing how different the circumstances were four years later and the rest, as they say, is history.

The inability or unwillingness of President Obama to understand and act upon domestic terrorism is one of the driving factors behind the recent Trump surge.

Trump has become fond of reading the lyrics from the song “The Snake,” which was written by the late Oscar Brown, Jr. It’s based on one of Aesop’s fables and tells the story of a woman who takes in a half-frozen snake she found by the side of the road and nurses it back to health only to have the snake turn on her once he’s healthy and kill her with a venomous bite. The snake, of course, represents the terrorists we’re taking in through our ill-conceived refugee program.

Trump gets it. The premise is so simple and rings so true that most Americans get it, too. Ironically, the family of Oscar Brown, Jr. doesn’t. They want Trump to stop using his lyrics. But the story so succinctly incapsulates the times in which we’re living. Obama is that woman. He’s in such denial that he couldn’t even utter the word “terrorism” in connection with the recent bombings and stabbings in New York, New Jersey, and Minnesota. 

Obama claims there’s no connection between the attacks, but there is one obvious and undeniable link. ISIS. For months now, they have been urging followers across the globe to embark on acts of terrorism wherever they live. No one is off limits, according to ISIS, if they turn away from their radical worldview. 

Even when Obama does utter the word “terrorism,” he refuses to use it in the same neighborhood as “Islamic.” However, he’s fond of referring to the current band of barbarians terrorizing the Middle East and Europe as ISIL. The subtle difference is worth noting. ISIS stands for Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. ISIL stands for Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. That takes in a much bigger swath of the Middle East including Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, and, yes, Israel. This difference is totally ignored by the media. It gives ISIS credit for having influence over a much larger area.

For someone who refuses to say “radical Islamic terrorism,” Obama is saying it every time he mentions ISIL. Not matter if you call them ISIS or ISIL, there’s one commonality. Islamic State. If Obama doesn’t believe the terrorists are truly Muslim, why does he keep referring to them as the Islamic State? If he doesn’t believe the terrorists are truly Muslim, why does he insist on accommodating occupants of Gitmo with Qurans and halal, the Muslim diet?

Obama brags that he’s ahead of schedule in allowing refugees into this country. He wants to bring in another 110,000 next year. We know that ISIS controls several passport offices in Syria. That fact alone makes it clear that we have no way of safely vetting refugees from that country. The FBI has made that clear. We simply don’t know who’s who, yet Obama and Hillary refuse to see the problem for what it is. The American people are starting to see, and Trump’s surge is indicative of it.

The snake has been taken in by naive nations across Europe that ignore its true intention and believe they’re being compassionate. Now, the snake is here, and there’s only one man who’s willing to kill it.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

The fog that surrounds Hillary Clinton

Imagine if Donald Trump left an event, suddenly was unable to stand, and was dragged into a waiting car and whisked away. Instead of going to the hospital, the car drove him home where he rested and emerged later as if nothing had happened. What do you think the mainstream media would do? 

Such an event would be disturbing, to say the very least.

The circumstances surrounding Hillary Clinton’s 9/11 health emergency are so bizarre that one is left wondering what is really going on. The obfuscation by the Clinton camp is now so routine that nothing they present as the truth is believable.

For weeks, we were told that any questions surrounding Hillary’s health were merely conspiracy theories cooked up by the ‘alt-right,’ whatever that’s supposed to be. The morning of 9/11, those conspiracy theories suddenly had credence. Even the big networks couldn’t ignore the obvious, but they quickly reset to their default mode of denial. 

Here’s what we know. Something is wrong with Hillary. What’s wrong is left to speculation since the Clinton campaign continues to cover its tracks. I have been hesitant to join the speculation, but just take a look at the video of Hillary leaving the 9/11 commemoration ceremony. Why did only one camera capture her departure? I’m being told that the media following her were prohibited from following her out of the event. That, in and of itself, should raise suspicion.

What immediately struck me while watching the video is how routine the whole episode seemed. The Secret Service and Hillary’s staff appeared not at all alarmed. Again, imagine if that were Donald Trump. There would be absolute panic if he were unable to board the vehicle under his own power. At the very least, the car would’ve headed immediately to the emergency room.

Instead, the Secret Service seemed to fall into a routine pattern. Two of them lifted her off her feet into the waiting vehicle while the rest closed ranks to block out prying eyes. Obviously, they had seen this all before. The only person on the scene who seemed panicked was a New York City cop who rushes toward the van as Hillary collapses. Everyone else is as nonchalant as if she just left an event normally.

She has a history of fainting at events going back as far as 2005. The circumstances surrounding her concussion are still murky. Again, it’s blamed on a virus and being dehydrated. Why would she fall so hard as to cause a concussion and double vision? As the Daily Mail put it, “Hillary’s shielded medical history is no longer just for conspiracy theorists as her ‘penchant for privacy’ gets serious scrutiny.”

The mainstream media seemed jilted by the 9/11 event, asking why the campaign lied to them. They have to ask?

Hillary’s entire life has been shrouded in inexplicable excuses and stories that turned out to be outright lies. For example, her marriage to a serial woman abuser, and her desperate attempts to destroy any woman who came forward with accusations. Her odd—and illegal—use of a private server while secretary of state. The unbelievable number of meetings while in that office with direct donors to the Clinton Foundation. The missing e-mails. The classified information that was loosely handled by her and her staff. 

Now speculation swirls around her very ability to physically endure the office of the presidency while getting to the real story is, again, made nearly impossible. Whether Hillary is up to the task is beside the point. Now it’s simply a matter of trust.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.