What passes for news these days

If there were ever any doubt that the mainstream media are no longer the watch dogs of government but the lap dogs of the left that doubt should have been obliterated by the latest New York Times hit piece on Justice Kavanaugh. I’ll spare you the details on the accusation, but the Times claimed Kavanaugh had exposed himself to a fellow student while at Yale. Turns out the woman he supposedly exposed himself to has no recollection of the incident. In other words, it didn’t happen, yet the Times reported it as if it did.

When President Trump refers to ‘fake news’ this is exactly what he’s talking about. Many in the journalistic community—and some who supposedly support Trump—say his ‘fake news’ mantra is dangerous to the underpinnings of our republic. What’s dangerous to the underpinnings of our republic is rumor and innuendo that’s passed off as solid news. When the president refers to fake news he’s not talking about all news. He’s talking about stories like the one the New York Times ran about Kavanaugh.

My first encounter with how the left-wing media operate was back in 1995. It was during the government shutdown when Newt Gingrich had just ascended to the speaker’s chair in the House of Representatives. At issue was a budget bill which would have slowed the growth of Medicare spending. The Democrats and their complicit media were telling the American people that the Republicans were trying to cut Medicare and give a tax cut to the wealthy. I had actually read the bill and knew that there were no cuts to Medicare.

I was broadcasting from the basement of the Capitol and had just finished my radio show. I went in search of the facilities, and as I was making my way back to my broadcast room I encountered a swarm of reporters surrounding a prominent Democrat. I waded through the reporters trying to get through the hallway. As I did I heard this Democrat say, “The Republicans want to cut Medicare and give a tax cut to their rich constituents.” I couldn’t just let that pass. I said, “Congressman, isn’t it true that the Republican plan actually increases spending for Medicare? It just doesn’t increase it as much as the Democrats want.” The lights of the news cameras turned on me. I then proceeded to tell him that I had been there all week and I’d yet to hear one media outlet report that, and I pressed him for an answer. He hemmed and hawed then made some excuse as to how he was late for a meeting and quickly dashed away.

I went back to the room where I was broadcasting and a reporter for NPR followed me in. She angrily demanded to know who I was, which I told her. She said I was not allowed to ask questions of a congressman. Seriously? I told her, “I was just a citizen walking through the halls of Congress, heard a congressman telling a lie, and called him on it. Instead of yelling at me why don’t you ask him the tough questions?” She turned on her heels and stormed out.

Later that day I was observing the debate in the press section of the Senate gallery. The head of the press office came over and informed me that my press credentials had been revoked.

The media are referred to as the Fourth Estate. They’re supposed to be the final check against government corruption and abuse. Supposed to be. They’re not always. Advocacy posing as news is not news. It’s propaganda.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show on SuperTalk 99.7WTN in Nashville. He's also co-host of The PodGOATs podcast.

Nashville is shielding violent criminals...and the news media are silent

It’s become a familiar refrain with me, but I too often have to say that media bias isn’t necessarily what they tell you. It’s what they don’t. Case in point is a recent story in Nashville. ICE agents attempt to apprehend a criminal illegal alien and he flees in a box truck, almost running over one of the agents as he does. Shots were fired by one of the ICE agents and the suspect was hit. He later turned himself in and was treated at an area hospital.

That, in and of itself, is a rather dramatic story. It got local coverage in Nashville, but inexplicably got virtually no coverage on the national news. It was what I was able to learn afterwards and what was not reported that was so disturbing.

ICE agents just before illegal flees in box truck

But let’s back up to the original story itself. This illegal alien, who allegedly tried to run over a federal agent, was called a ‘victim’ in a statement issue by Nashville Mayor David Briley. Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition called ICE a “rogue agency” that was “terrorizing and traumatizing the entire community.”

I knew ICE didn’t routinely arrest illegals who were just going to their jobs (although I think they should). They normally removed violent criminals from the country. I wanted to know what this particular illegal alien’s name was and what crimes he had committed. My staff and I were stonewalled at every turn. Nashville police referred us to ICE and wouldn’t tell us the suspect’s name nor would they reveal his crimes in Nashville. ICE referred us to the FBI since the FBI had taken over the case because a federal agent had been involved in a violent incident. The FBI wouldn’t return our inquiries.

I finally made contact with a government official in the know who asked to remain anonymous. I will tell you that this person is as close to this investigation as you can get and the information he gave me is beyond question. I was able to confirm that the information on the suspect’s identity we got through other investigative avenues was correct. The man’s name is Jose Fernando Andrade-Sanchez. He’s been living in the Antioch section of Nashville. He has a conviction of aggravated child abuse and another conviction of domestic violence. He’s a bad man, and ICE was trying to get another violent illegal alien criminal off the streets. Instead the government and the news media tried to keep that information from the public. My government source told me I was not the only one from the media to whom he had imparted that information, which meant I was just the only member of the media actually reporting it.

Now, if you’re doing a story on ICE trying to apprehend an illegal alien and it ends with the suspect being shot, isn’t an important part of the story why they were trying to arrest him? I would suggest it’s the most important part of the story, yet no news media outlet bothered to inform the public. This is a blatant attempt to not paint an illegal alien in a negative light, even though he deserved to be.

What’s more, Mayor Briley, fully knowing that this guy was a convicted child abuser, issued an executive order to ignore state law and forbid anyone in Metro Nashville government from working with ICE. Even when he issued the EO the news media still kept under wraps that he was blatantly protecting a violent criminal.

We all should be outraged over this, but it’s hard to outraged if you never even know.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show on SuperTalk 99.7WTN in Nashville. He's also co-host of The PodGOATs podcast.

Emotional support animals are out of control!

OK, so this emotional support animal business is getting ridiculous. I recently read a story about an emotional support horse on a flight from Chicago to Omaha. Yeah, it was a miniature horse, but a horse nonetheless. The horse is not nearly the nuttiest of emotional support animals.

A woman in Wisconsin was asked to leave a McDonald’s after entering with Jimmy, the emotional support kangaroo. There’s a teen who overcomes anxiety with a bearded dragon. Pigs seem to be very popular. A woman was tossed from a flight in 2014 because of her 80-pound emotional support pig. And we thought Arnold the Pig in the TV show Green Acres was for laughs.

Turkeys are also a popular emotional support animal. Several have been booted off flights in recent years. How about this one? An emotional support marmoset. One got loose at the Las Vegas airport. Probably won him in a card game.

Snakes, peacocks, ducks, chickens, and squirrels have all been passed off as emotional support animals. Even a goldfish. Is this a sign of the times? I’m afraid so, but it’s not the animals that tell the story. It’s their pathetic owners.

Don’t get me wrong. I get the whole emotional malady thing. We have depression and anxiety in our family. What we don’t have is someone with an emotional support goat. Ever heard the expression the inmates are running the asylum? That’s exactly what we have here. The nuttiest among us are demanding that the rest of us act like there’s nothing wrong with taking an animal with you everywhere you go.

Yes, I know there are truly those who need an animal at their side. Blind people need a seeing-eye dog. People who’ve lost limbs sometimes need animals to help them get around. Some soldiers with PTSD sometimes need an animal to keep them calm when they travel. For the rest of us there’s a stiff drink or a sleeping pill if we have trouble flying.

And there’s really never a reason to take your animal to the home improvement store. Contrary to what some polite customers may tell you, nobody wants to see your dog. They really don’t. Leave him at home. Or at least in the car. On second thought, someone will probably call the cops if they see your pooch in the car. I saw this first hand. A woman left her dog in the car long enough to come in and buy a cup of coffee. That was too long for the manager on duty. She followed the woman back to her car and read her the riot act. Yeah, I understand if you leave a dog in a hot car for an hour while you shop, although my mother did that to us and nobody thought twice about it. She didn’t even leave us a bowl of water.

We’ve turned into a society of pitiful little weenies. You think we could storm Normandy with this crowd? Probably have half the guys with a salt water allergies. At least all of this pandering used to be considered weird. Now you can’t say anything for fear of offending people. I’m sorry, it’s just weird. There. I’ve said it. And I don’t feel bad.

If you can’t leave the house without your pet sugar glider (that’s a tiny possum, by the way) then you probably don’t need to be leaving the house. If you do try to board a flight with a donkey then, for the love of all that’s holy, don’t expect the rest of us to think it’s completely normal.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show on SuperTalk 99.7WTN in Nashville. He's also co-host of The PodGOATs podcast.

Trump moves closer to break with China

It was two weeks ago here when I let the cat out of the bag on what I believe are President Trump’s true intentions on China. More evidence has rolled in over those two weeks to bolster my theory that Trump’s ultimate goal is to put the commies in China out of business.

He met privately with Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple. Cook complained, according to news reports, that his rival, Samsung, had an advantage since its phones were made in South Korea, the home of Samsung. Cook said the tariffs on China were putting him at a competitive disadvantage. Then Trump did something amazing that was glossed over by the media. He suggested Apple stop sourcing its products in China.

This is no small development. Were Apple to pull up stakes in China and start sourcing its products elsewhere it could trigger a stampede for the exits. 

Then the president made an even bolder statement which I believe reveals his true intent. He tweeted, “Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing your companies HOME and making your products in the USA.” Hard to get more direct than that. Experts scoffed that Trump doesn’t have the authority to “order” companies to leave China, but he just might. The International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 may allow him to do just that. The Congressional Research Service says it only applies during a time of war.

Could that be next?

I’ve long predicted that we will end up in a hot war with China over Taiwan. China has long claimed ownership of Taiwan under the so-called ‘One-China’ policy. The U.S. has recognized that policy ever since Richard Nixon sold us out with the Shanghai Communiqué of 1972. That communiqué has no force of law. The Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 does. That act allows, but does not require, us to defend Taiwan against the Chinese. 

The Chinese have never been happy about it, and they’ve continued to claim Taiwan as their own. Recently they’ve been conducting military exercises in the Taiwan Strait. Back in July they warned that if Taiwan declares independence there will be war. Trump’s response? He just sold 66 F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan. We could be closing in on the big showdown.

Here’s how events could go down. Taiwan declares itself an independent country, with the blessing of the United States. China invades. We send ships to the aid of Taiwan and we’re in a hot war. Remember that International Emergency Economics Powers Act that can only be triggered in time of war? Guess what.

About 18 percent of China’s exports go to the United States. That doesn’t include all of the U.S. companies that have put down roots there. What if all of a sudden every U.S. company instantly pulls out? That 18 percent of their exports also dries up almost instantly. How soon would it be before China collapsed? 

China is already buying their way into poor countries around the world with the Belt and Road Initiative. They build infrastructure for these cash-strapped nations. When they can’t pay the money back China essentially forecloses. They end up controlling these countries. President Trump’s well aware of this too. That was what behind the whole ‘buying Greenland’ story. They were going to mortgage themselves to the Chinese. Trump offered to buy them instead. The long and short of that story is China backed down. For now.

The Chinese government needs to be destroyed. And President Trump knows it.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show on SuperTalk 99.7WTN in Nashville. He's also co-host of The PodGOATs podcast.

The 'White Nationalist Epidemic' lie

The mainstream media are becoming so transparent in their agenda that it’s a wonder anyone believes anything they report anymore. But, unfortunately, they do. The majority of Americans now believe President Trump is a racist, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll, even without an ounce of proof. The New York Times leads the charge, and they have ever since a few months before the 2016 election when they stated in their pages that journalists could no longer simply report the news. They had to actively work to defeat Donald Trump.

That obviously didn’t work, so they concocted this illusion that Trump had colluded with the Russians to steal the election. That fizzled as well. Now the Times is leading the charge to paint the president as a white supremacist. How do we know? Because someone leaked an audio recording of a meeting conducted by the Times’ executive editor, Dean Baquet. “We built our newsroom to cover one story [Russia collusion], and we did it truly well,” Baquet said. “Now we have to regroup, and shift resources and emphasis to take on a different story [Trump’s racism].”

Right on cue the rest of the mainstream media jumped into action. Now we’re seeing and hearing daily stories on how white nationalism is an epidemic and these white nationalists are taking their cues from Trump. MSNBC even had a former deputy director for counter intelligence at the FBI on to explain how Trump’s raising the flag to full staff after lowering it in respect for the shooting victims in El Paso and Dayton was a secret sign to the white supremacists. He said Trump was raising the flag on August 8. The number 8 means something special to the white supremacists. Eight means the letter ‘H’ which stands for Hitler. Raising the flag on 8/8, he said, means ‘Heil Hitler.’ You can’t make this stuff up!

Brett McGurk, senior foreign affairs analyst at MSNBC, claimed white nationalism was behind most domestic attacks since 9/11. I counted 81 mass killings since 2001. Three were racially motivated. And don’t forget the El Paso killer was an eco-terrorist who targeted Hispanics because he believed the influx of new people into the country was destroying the environment.

By the way, of those 81 mass killings, 9 were carried out by Islamic extremists. There were several more where fewer than 4 people were killed, the threshold for the FBI’s definition of a mass killing. What’s even more disturbing is to think that less than 1 percent of the population in America is Muslim. Nine mass murders by less than 1 percent of the population is huge.

Of course, Don Lemon at CNN says white males are the biggest terrorist threat to America. There’s no doubt that white men usually are behind mass shootings, but mass shootings are seldom acts of terrorism. What Lemon and others purposely ignore is that half the murders in this country are committed by black males. That’s a far bigger problem that I believe can be traced to our failed housing projects, as I’ve written here before.

Be forewarned that many of your news sources have gone rogue. Dispensing of information is no longer a service, it’s a weapon. Many of the trusted news outlets are on a mission to make sure Donald Trump is not re-elected in 2020. I wish it were not so, but it is.

In an age where information is literally at our fingertips any time we want it you’d think we’d be well-informed. Instead we’re misinformed, which is far worse even than being uninformed. 

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show on SuperTalk 99.7WTN in Nashville. He's also co-host of The PodGOATs podcast.

Trump's ultimate plan for China

All eyes are on China these days. The dreaded tariffs that the so-called experts told us would devastate our economy have yet to come true. Could those tariffs be part of a broader plan from President Trump? More on that in a moment.

The president claims that China is paying the bulk of the tariffs, that the U.S. consumer is not. There’s one angle that all of the experts are missing, one key indicator that Trump is right. We import about 17.7 percent of our goods from China. Despite well over 70 percent of the items you buy in Walmart coming from China, only 17.7 percent of our goods across the economy come from China, according to government figures. Still, that’s a lot of stuff. If we as consumers were actually paying a 25 percent tariff on 17.7 percent of the things we buy inflation would be rising. It’s not.

The consumer price index, which is, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “a measure of the average change over time in the prices paid by urban consumers for a market basket of consumer goods and services,” is actually trending down. Lower energy costs are driving the overall number down, but take energy out of the equation and we’re still only running at 2.1 percent inflation. The latest numbers for June have us down to 1.6 percent for the month. In other words, a 25 percent tariff on 17.7 percent of the goods we’re buying has so far had no effect whatsoever.

If China is taking the hit for the tariffs how are they doing it. And why? First as to why. The communist Chinese government is a partner in every Chinese company. As those companies go, so goes China. They have a vested interest in keeping their products competitive on the American market. China is able to avoid a price increase in the United States by doing two things. 

First they can devalue their own currency thus making the product cheaper in real dollars for American importers. They’ve been known to do this with regularity. Trump has always called them a currency manipulator. They were officially designated as such from 1992 to 1994. The U.S. Treasury department just officially designated China as a currency manipulator, confirming what President Trump has been saying.

The second way they stay competitive despite the U.S. tariffs is to lower the prices of their goods to importers in the United States. Let’s say you have an item that wholesales for $10. You slap a 25 percent tariff on that item and the importer has to jack up the price by $2.50. But what if China lowers that wholesale price to $8? The tariffs raise the price to $10 and the importer is right back where he was.

Lower prices and currency devaluing are very expensive. When China devalues its currency it may make their goods more attractive here, but it costs their consumers more to import goods from everywhere in the world. And they import a lot of goods.

This is where I think Trump has laid out a brilliant strategy. This is not something he would ever say publicly. I believe Trump’s ultimate goal with the tariffs is to bring the communists in China to their knees. Before you scoff remember that the so-called experts were telling us in 1988 that the Soviet Union would last a thousand years, that they were in much better shape economically than the U.S. A year later they were gone.

Could China be to Trump what the USSR was to Reagan?

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show on SuperTalk 99.7WTN in Nashville. He's also co-host of The PodGOATs podcast.

El Paso killer was an eco-terrorist

How often have I told you that media bias isn’t necessarily what they tell you, it’s what they don’t? Well, the El Paso shooting is a shining example. The news media, especially CNN, focused on the ‘white nationalist’ angle and tried to somehow tie that to Trump. What they didn’t tell you is the guy is a whacked-out environmentalist who thinks there are too many people in the country and he needs to kill off some. In other words, he’s an eco-terrorist.

Did CNN tell you that? Not even Fox News, whose higher-ups support the manmade global warming theory, wanted you to know that. Not one major news organization posted the guy’s manifesto that I could find. I posted it on Facebook and it was promptly blocked by the Facebook censors. They said it made some Facebook users feel ‘unsafe.’ 

Unsafe? You know what’s unsafe? Not getting the full story on a crazed killer. Not being able to see his writings and understand where he was coming from, as twisted as his logic might be. After every one of these types of shootings we all wonder what was going through the killer’s mind. In this case he maps out everything, even the weaponry he chose and why he chose it.

The media folks will claim they don’t want to encourage other killers by posting his writings. Fox News Alert: It’s not the writings that encourage copycat killers. It’s the round-the-clock coverage from the news channels. There’s no discussion of ignoring this story because it might prompt another killing. Nor should there be any talk like that. This is not only a news story it’s an epidemic. In order to cure the epidemic we need information, yet the news media and Facebook think you need less information. That’s so they can cherry-pick from the manifesto and spoon-feed you their version of his motivation.

By the way, the Dayton killer’s motivation got loose before the information czars could put a lid on it. That guy was a far-left socialist Antifa Elizabeth Warren supporter. Not one person at CNN or other liberal outlets said Elizabeth Warren was responsible and should tone down her rhetoric.

But wait until you read some of what the El Paso killer wrote. He wrote, “our lifestyle is destroying the environment.” He wrote that oil companies were polluting our water and our “consumer culture is creating thousands of tons of unnecessary plastic waste.” He wrote that “the average American isn’t willing to change their lifestyle, even if the changes only cause a slight inconvenience.” In fact, he titled his piece ‘The Inconvenient Truth.’ Where do you think he got all that? No, we shouldn’t be blaming Al Gore for the shooting, but we surely shouldn’t be blaming President Trump. This guy was the odd blend of an Occupy Wall Street radical environmentalist and a white separatist. The fact that he went on a shooting rampage is no one’s fault but his own.

I have to say that in the wake of the recent shootings I felt like I was in the Soviet Union. Watching CNN was like watching the TASS news service. It was not just the disinformation and misinformation, it was purposeful hiding of all of the information. I knew the real story about the eco-terrorism angle. Most people, unfortunately, did not, and still don’t. When I tried to alert the public via Facebook I was censored.

Our critical information services are in crisis. Services like Facebook are supposed to be our way around them. Now they are them.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show on SuperTalk 99.7WTN in Nashville. He's also co-host of The PodGOATs podcast.