The real target of the Syrian strikes

President Trump's decision to strike Syria left much of the world stunned and many of his most ardent supporters disillusioned. There's so much at play that it's not nearly as simple as outrage over images of little children being gassed.

There are two things we have come to know about Donald Trump: 1) His reaction to being wronged tends to lean toward a knee-jerk reaction, and 2) Hardly anything he does isn't carefully calculated.

From a casual view of the past week it appears that Trump saw the images of dead and dying children in Syria, was distraught and outraged over the images, and ordered airstrikes against Bashar al-Assad's airbase. To see it as only that would be missing so much of what's at play.

Before I get to what is at play, it needs to be pointed out that no matter whether Assad was behind the most recent gassing of Syrian rebels, we know definitively that he's a bad man. He has killed tens of thousands of his own people with chemical weapons, conventional weapons, and starvation. Thousands more have been executed in mass hangings. Remember Obama's red line? Assad thumbed his nose at it and attacked his own people with more chemical weapons. Obama did nothing.

Trump's position has been it's none of our affair, but the most recent gassing changed that. It is odd that the day before the attack Trump said Assad should be left alone. At that point, Assad had the support of Russia and Iran and the assurance that we would not interfere in the Syrian civil war. By all accounts, Assad is winning that war against the rebels. And the rebels have now been taken over by jihadists, many of whom were fighting the Americans in Iraq. This is no longer a civil uprising over human rights. It's ISIS and other Muslim extremists who now own the rebel cause.

Why in the world would Assad invite worldwide condemnation by gassing some innocent children? Some say he didn't. There are intelligence reports that say the Obama administration had been running weapons to the Syrian rebels for some time. Those weapons, they say, included chemical weapons. There's evidence suggesting that's what the Benghazi attack in 2012 was all about. If that's true, the Syrian rebels, now controlled by Muslim extremists, are in possession of chemical weapons. After seeing Trump pull back from deposing Assad, it's possible the chemical attack was actually an act of desperation on the part of the rebels to bring to pass exactly what happened: airstrikes against Assad.

I hope and pray that our intelligence information showing Assad was responsible for the attack is accurate. Let's assume that it is. Trump could've waited days, if not weeks, to formulate a response. He didn't. Nor did he act immediately. He waited until the visit by Chinese President Xi to act. I believe this was on purpose.

What was the primary reason for the meeting with Xi? Talks about our trade imbalance, yes, but the main focus was on North Korea. Everyone knows North Korea is a puppet regime of China. The airstrikes against Syrian were a not so subtle message to Xi that this is what happens to tin-horn dictators that hack off the president.

Xi heads back to China with one certainty. Donald Trump doesn't play. It also makes it clear that Trump's no Putin puppet. Every bad actor around the world has to be sleeping less soundly now.

For those who fear escalation, I think this airstrike should actually ease your mind. Trump has demonstrated that he can punish Assad any time he wants to and never set one pair of boots on the ground. We don't want to invade Syria. We don't need to invade Syria. If Assad decides to get out of line again he can expect a night sky filled with Tomahawk missiles. It's a marvelous behavior modifier. 

But make no mistake, those missiles weren't meant for just Assad. They were a message to Kim Jong-un, the ayatollahs in Iran, ISIS, and every other despot around the world. Don't screw with the U.S.A.

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

If the media won't cover it, did the scandal really happen?

You're probably sick hearing me say it, but media bias isn’t so much what they tell you, it’s what they don’t. Truer words were never spoken when it comes to the Susan Rice scandal. If you’re asking, “What Susan Rice scandal?” then you’ve been tuned exclusively to CNN, ABC, or NBC.

Let's start with a baseline of knowledge. You’re familiar with House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes and his rendezvous with an intelligence source at a secure location at the White House. He came out of that meeting incredulous that someone inside the intelligence community had unmasked the names of U.S. citizens caught up in surveillance. Eavesdropping on foreign entities doesn’t allow the exposure of U.S. citizens they may talk to or about unless that person is believed to be involved in something unlawful or if their lives are in danger. In this case, it was neither, and the citizens being surveilled were associates of Donald Trump.

Republicans in Congress, including Nunes, have been wanting to get to the bottom of who ordered the unmasking of the names of U.S. citizens. Now we know. It was Susan Rice, Obama’s national security advisor. Huge news, right? Not if you’re CNN, ABC, or NBC. The only mention on MSNBC was on Greta’s show. They’re probably regretting that hire about now.

CBS did mention the story but only to defend Rice. It’s indefensible. The Daily Caller reported that Rice ordered spy agencies to produce “detailed spreadsheets” of legal phone calls by Trump aides and Trump himself. This makes Watergate look like a traffic ticket.

The big question, of course, is what did the president know and when did he know it? I would suggest it is inconceivable that Susan Rice ordered detailed spreadsheets on Trump and his associates, distributed the information to various intelligence heads, including Obama’s Director of National Intelligence and the CIA director, and Obama knew nothing of it. 

One of the big fears of Barack Obama was that he was allowing our intelligence agencies to become too aggressive in gathering information on U.S. citizens. Remember when James Clapper, Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, was asked under oath before Congress if the NSA was collecting “any type of data at all” on American citizens? He said, “No, sir.” The Snowden leaks proved him a liar, revealing that the NSA was collecting domestic call records in bulk on American citizens.

Speaking of lying, don’t forget it was Susan Rice who went on five different Sunday talking head shows on September 16, 2012 to spread the lie that the Benghazi attack was a protest that boiled over because of a Mohammed video. Many parts of the Obama administration were rotten to the core and now we’re starting to smell the stench.

Yet, according to the same news media who won’t cover the Susan Rice story, it’s Donald Trump who lied when he tweeted back in March that Obama had Trump Tower “wire-tapped.” The media now seem obsessed with taking him literally. Wire-tapping to Trump, and to many others, is a catch-all phrase for surveillance. It’s splitting hairs, but they’ve sunk their teeth into the phrase like a determined dog because it’s the only hope they have.

The evidence is starting to show that Trump was right. He and his associates at Trump Tower were under surveillance, and possibly for up to a year before he took office, and President Obama may very well have ordered it. The fact that a large segment of the mainstream media chooses to ignore it should shake you to your core.

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

Let's stop the facade—Men and women are not the same

It’s time to stop pretending. As much as some people would like you to think there are no differences in men and women, there are. And the differences are huge. And they’re to be celebrated. Instead, we’re told that gender is simply a state of mind.

I’ve been watching the NCAA tournament, as I do each year the Tar Heels have a shot. It’s a way of leaving all the politics behind. Now the NCAA has dragged politics into sports. There was no regional contest in North Carolina. That was the NCAA’s way of protesting the now-famous bathroom bill. Commentators made mention of the controversy on several occasions, always closing with a quip like “everyone should be welcomed at the tournament.” News flash. Guess who’s not welcomed at the tournament. Women players. Why? Because they are literally in a league of their own.

You may have noticed the NCAA’s ‘Done’ PSAs that have run ad nauseam during the tournament. It shows various female athletes then one says, “Enough.” Another kicks a soccer ball then says, “Yeah, I’m over it.” The tag line at the end is “Genders don’t play sports. Athletes do.” In other words, there’s no difference between female and male athletes. That’s the big lie.

What the NCAA is doing through their silly protest over a common sense bathroom law and their obvious ignorance of physiological differences is set women’s sports on the path to extinction. I want something understood right up front. I want to protect women’s sports.

There’s a reason why there’s a women’s basketball team and a men’s basketball team. The NCAA wants you to think there’s no difference but there’s a huge difference. Just like there’s a difference in where men and women go to the bathroom. Keeping those facilities separate is not about exclusion. It’s about common decency. Like my wanting to protect women’s sports, I also want to protect women from perverts. That’s what the North Carolina bathroom bill is all about. Actual transexuals—people who have physically transitioned from male to female or vice versa—are not affected by the law. They can, by law, go to the bathroom facility that matches their new sex. What we’re talking about are cross-dressers.

Anybody can be a cross dresser. Anyone can claim to “feel like a woman.” In this age of political correctness we’re told we must simply accept the gender someone wants to be. The NCAA, by their boycott of North Carolina, tells us we must accept the gender any individual adopts. Fine. But don’t start objecting when guys who “feel like a woman” start going out for women’s sports. It will be the end of women’s sports.

You take a 6’9” guy who didn’t quite make the men’s squad and put him on the women’s team and he’ll put up 60 points a night. If four other guys have the same idea, that’s the end of women playing at that school. It’s easy to see how this mentality spreads. And don’t tell me it won’t. Who would’ve believed even three years ago that we would be arguing over which bathroom to use?

The NCAA has laid the path for just such a scenario and they would be helpless in court to stop it given their radical agenda. We don’t pit a Division III school against a Division I for a reason. We like competition to be fair. We don’t pit men against women in sports for the same reason. If we do, women will be driven out of sports.

Is that what the NCAA wants? I hope not.

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

The real hacking scandal the MSM ignore

I feel like I'm living in some parallel universe. The news media, the Democrats, and even some Republicans continue to beat the drum of some sort of collusion between Trump and the Russians. What if I told you that neither the FBI nor any other intelligence agency had ever inspected the DNC servers that were supposedly hacked? That would be front-page news, right? It’s true. FBI Director James Comey confirmed it in testimony in January and again this week before the House Intelligence Committee.

If the FBI didn’t determine the DNC servers were hacked, who did? It was a private firm hired by the DNC itself. This is the proverbial fox guarding the henhouse. Hillary’s people concoct this story that the Russians hacked their servers in order to help Donald Trump. Instead of investigating the allegations themselves, the FBI just took the DNC’s word for it. This is akin to a private investigator investigating a murder scene and the police just taking his investigation at face value. This is the big story in all of this and nobody’s talking about it.

If the Russians didn’t hack the DNC who did? Let’s look at the evidence. When we say “hacked the DNC” what does that mean? As far as we know, then-DNC chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s e-mails were the only ones hacked. Forget John Podesta. His e-mail account was a Google Gmail account. That, by definition, was not on the DNC server. That was an account any 16-year-old amateur hacker could break into.

So who had access to Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s e-mails?

There’s only one person aside from Schultz herself who had access to her e-mail and dozens of other Democrats’ e-mail accounts. It’s a guy who’s currently under investigation for accessing Congressional members’ computer networks without their knowledge or permission and stealing data and equipment from Congress. Imran Awan. He and his brothers—Abid and Jamal—managed IT for more than two dozen Democrat members, including the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. They owed money to a shady operator with ties to terrorists. The three men apparently went through little or no security scrutiny to get their jobs. After all, we wouldn’t want to make them feel uncomfortable just because they’re Muslim.

Who opened the gates and allowed this Trojan horse inside? Debbie Wasserman Schultz. She’s so politically correct that she wouldn’t dare question three guys who are Muslim and have ties to terrorism. In fact, even though they’re under police investigation for all sorts of crimes against the United States, Imran Awan still works for Debbie Wasserman Schultz!

But it gets worse.

According to the now-leaked e-mails from Wikileaks, Imran Awan had access to Schultz’s username and password at the DNC! Hello. We have leaked e-mails from Schultz’s account and the one guy who had access to her DNC e-mail is now under investigation for stealing data from Congress. Here’s the amazing thing. The Awan brothers are not under investigation by the FBI. It’s the Capitol Police. I’m not knocking the Capitol Police but you have guys stealing possibly sensitive data from Congress and the FBI is not called in?

Oh, did I tell you Imran Awan had a criminal record and bankruptcy? Not only did Schultz and the Democrats hire him, he didn’t even have to have Secret clearance. He also had major money problems giving him motive to sell secrets for cash.

While we continue this wild goose chase for Ruskies under every rock, the prime suspect is still sitting in Schultz’s office.

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

What to do about Obamacare

Unless you’re the most die-hard clinger to Obama’s legacy, the consensus is Obamacare was an unqualified failure. The only question now is what to do about it. The Republicans have put forth their plan, at least the first phase of it. The awkwardly-named American Health Care Act got low scores from the Congressional Budget Office. Of course, this is the same CBO the projected Obamacare would cost less than half this year what it actually does.

Obamacare needs to be replaced. What do we replace it with? Here’s a novel idea. How about the free market?

That’s not meant to be flippant. The free market lowers cost in every other imaginable sector. Cars are cheaper because of competition. Groceries are cheaper because of competition. So are clothes and houses. All of these are arguably bigger necessities than health insurance. Notice I said health insurance and not health care. There’s a big difference.

Healthcare is what we need when we’re sick or injured. Most of us—the vast majority of us—don’t need that on a daily basis. What we do need is transportation, shelter, food, and clothing. Only the most ardent socialists would argue that the government needs to provide those for us. Only the most ardent communist would argue that the free market hasn’t brought the cost of those necessities down.

So, why can’t the Republicans quite trust the market?

Good question. I suspect it’s the same Republicans who talked about how great capitalism was then bailed out the banks and the auto industry. These people are called Keynesians. That is, they subscribe to the economic theories of British economist John Maynard Keynes. Keynes believed the free market was great until it didn’t work, and then you needed the government to come in and bail it out. The free market is always preferable to government intervention.

What the Republicans all need to understand is the problem with health insurance isn’t all the government’s fault. Somewhere along the line the patient was disconnected from the product. HMOs are largely to blame for that. We became accustomed to paying a $10 or $15 co-pay for an all-you-can-eat buffet of health services. The result was higher healthcare costs.

Let me put the cookies on the low shelf. Let’s say you were able to drive into the dealership and get an oil change and pay a $10 co-pay. Who pays the other $40 or so? What if you could buy a new set of tires and pay a $10 co-pay? The last time I bought tires they were around a grand for a set of four. Who pays the other $990? The short answer is you do. It wouldn’t be long before your auto insurance went through the roof.

We were on the right track with health insurance. The market was moving us to higher deductibles and lower premiums. That’s basically where health insurance started. Remember? It was called ‘major medical’ or ‘hospitalization.’ Instead of paying for every oil change and new tire it paid for the big things, like a major accident. And healthcare was reasonably affordable.

Now we have an even better tool called HSAs, Health Savings Accounts. You can use pre-taxed dollars to save for that ‘major medical’ expense. The problem with Obamacare was not only did the deductible skyrocket, so did the premium.

The market would fix that. Let insurance companies do business across state lines, just like auto insurance. Let the market drive down the high cost of health insurance. Then we’ll worry about those who can’t afford it. 

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

News media ignore truth in 'Trumptap' scandal

I’ve often said media bias is not what they tell you, it’s what they don’t. There’s no truer example than the Trumptap scandal. After President Trump tweeted that he’d been wiretapped by the Obama administration, the mainstream media had a meltdown. The same media that had been beating the drum of an unfounded Russia conspiracy derided Trump’s claim as “false” and “baseless.” The scary part is they all knew that it wasn’t.

Something I noticed during last year’s campaign is the British news media are much more likely than the American media to report the truth about American politics. Three different news outlets in the UK were reporting, independent of one another, that a FISA warrant was requested on at least two occasions last year. FISA is the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It was designed to eavesdrop on foreign powers or those believed to be agents of foreign powers.

The British news outlets reported that someone either in Obama’s Justice Department or in the intelligence community went to the FISA court in June requesting a warrant to tap the information coming out of Trump’s campaign headquarters at Trump Tower. They named Trump specifically. That request was denied. One outlet says they tried again in July and were denied again. They all three agree that another attempt at a FISA warrant was made in October of 2016, just weeks before the election. This request did not include Trump as the target, rather it focused on individuals in the campaign. That request was granted and the subsequent inquiry turned up nothing.

The Washington Post’s so-called Fact Checker column was the only mainstream media outlet that even mentioned FISA. They determined that the three British outlets, including the BBC and a former member of Parliament, weren’t reliable enough. And that was that. By the way, Louise Mensch, the former Tory member of Parliament who writes for Heatstreet, is decidedly anti-Trump. One can only imagine that her reporting of the FISA warrant was meant to cast aspersions on Trump. 

The Fact Checker column the day after Trump’s initial tweet was the only mention of the FISA court in the mainstream media. If you were watching CNN you got headlines like “Trump’s baseless wiretap claim” and “Trump untethered to facts.”

Predictable Democrat stooge, Sen. John McCain, said Trump’s claim was unprecedented. He said Trump was accusing Obama of “violating the law.” McCain knows full well that if Obama or anyone in his administration got a FISA warrant they were not violating the law. Their pretense for the warrant may be questionable, but the frightening prospect is a sitting president was using the intelligence community against a political foe. At the very least, that’s a gross abuse of power.

This issue should be quite simple to sort out. Take a look at the FISA applications for 2016. Apparently there were 10,700 of them between 2009 and 2015, according to ABC News. Only one was rejected entirely. There’s a pretty low bar when it comes to FISA approval. The fact that the probe against Trump was rejected (possibly twice) should help Trump’s case. Also, the fact that the one warrant granted turned up nothing should put the whole Russia controversy behind us.

The left-wing media don’t want to put that behind us. They want to milk it for everything it’s worth. They have managed to scare the American public with a complete non-issue. Finally Republicans have started fighting back by showing as many Democrats with Russians as anyone else.

The truth will set you free, but only if the media report it.

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

What conservatives can learn from the Oscars

I must admit that I was determined not to watch the Oscars this year. Like many of you, I had grown weary of awards shows that turned into Trump-bashing festivals. Traditionally, my wife and I have watched the Oscars from red carpet to Best Picture. She coaxed me into watching the red carpet broadcast with the promise that when it turned political we would turn it off. Next thing I knew, we were watching the opening number of the Oscars.

Jimmy Kimmel took heat from both sides for his role as host. Here’s the deal. If Kimmel did not make jokes about Donald Trump during the Oscars it would’ve been comedic malpractice. There hasn’t been this much comedy gold in a White House since Bill Clinton—maybe ever. Trump’s feud with Hollywood was ripe for the picking. And, for the most part, I thought Kimmel’s jokes were not only funny but fair.

The left went nuts when Kimmel held up the 8-year-old star of the movie of Lion, Sunny Pawar, like he was the Lion King. Little Sunny happens to be from India. They said it was somehow racist. And then there was the brilliant stunt where Kimmel lured a dozen unsuspecting tourists into the auditorium under the guise they were viewing past Oscar gowns. In a passing impromptu interview with on of the tourists named Yulerie he had a hard time understanding her name. “It rhymes with jewelry,” she explained. Kimmel asked what her boyfriend’s name was. He said, “Patrick.” Kimmel replied, “Now that’s a name.” To the hypersensitive-offend-me-with-everything-liberals, that was racist because she was Asian.

Cue the rolled eyes.

Mark Rylance, who won last year’s best supporting actor Oscar, seemed to scold the people losing their minds over Trump. “Opposition is really good in society,” he said before presenting the Oscar for best supporting actress. “Something women seem to be better at than men is opposing without hatred.”

Even the commercials seemed to be more unifying. Cadillac’s ad showed crowds of protestors dating back to the ‘60s and flashing forward to today. It then reminded us, “What doesn’t make the news is this: We carry each other forward—no matter who we are or what we believe.” It closes by saying, “While we’re not the same, we can be one. And all it takes is the willingness to dare.” 

Aside from some foreigners who won and made snide remarks about the United States, the theme at this year’s Oscars seemed to be “Enough.” Enough with the hysterics. Enough with the hatred. Enough with the notion that if you disagree with me you must be evil. The behavior from the left, and specifically Hollywood, since Trump won leaves us longing for a time when we looked at one another and simply said, “You’re wrong.” That used to pass for division in this country. The people who profess to love everyone have taken hatred to a whole new level.

But it is incumbent upon those of us who point fingers not to fall into the same trap. We can’t flip the channel every time someone makes a joke at our expense. We can’t scream someone down just because they’re losing their minds at us. We can’t fail to see a good idea just because we didn’t think of it first. We can’t fuel the furnace of hatred with more hate. 

As conservatives, we have to be very careful not to be so thin-skinned that we can’t laugh at ourselves. Otherwise, we become just like the hysterical snowflakes on the other side.

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