Liars, Leakers, and Liberals: The Case Against the Anti-Trump Conspiracy Read online

  I can attest to that. Ben comes to my house and plays with my standard poodle, Sir Lancelot. They’re happy campers.

  Eric’s charity, the Eric Trump Foundation, has been renamed Curetivity and is being run by cofounder and executive director Paige Scardigli. Eric stepped away from the foundation after his father’s election to avoid any appearance of impropriety. Eric’s interest is in supporting the pediatric cancer unit at St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital. He has raised close to $20 million for this cause. Oh, by the way, he started this campaign at age twenty-one!

  Eric attended the prestigious New York City Trinity School, boarded at The Hill School in Pennsylvania, and graduated with honors from Georgetown. By 2012, he was receiving recognition as a leader in business.

  Lara Trump graduated from North Carolina State University and worked as a producer at Inside Edition and Real News. Also strongly independent and a family loyalist, Lara, an avid equestrian, can often be seen on Instagram with her rescue dogs, Charlie and Ben.

  She is a strong supporter of her husband and not afraid to “mix it up” in support of the president. During the campaign, she was on the road for months burnishing her credentials as an engaging, articulate public speaker.

  Like Don Jr., Eric worked non-stop on the campaign from the moment his father announced, raising funds, speaking at rallies across the country, and doing whatever was necessary for his father to win the White House. Since the election, both sons have taken over running the Trump organization.

  Eric speaks of his father as admiringly as does Don Jr. “He is an amazing man—there is nobody I admire more. I consider him my best friend and could not be prouder of my father.”

  Eric has given several interviews discussing the implosion of the Democrat Party. He recently told me many Democrats seem to have a policy of hate and obstruction without any real message of their own. I agree.

  Tiffany Trump is the daughter of President Trump and Marla Maples. Tiffany, twenty-four, graduated from the prestigious University of Pennsylvania and is now studying law at Georgetown University Law Center.

  In May 2016, she joined her siblings on the campaign trail. Tiffany has for the most part ducked the spotlight, but she gave a speech about her father at the 2016 Republican National Convention, and quoted her favorite advice from her dad: ‘If you do what you love, hold nothing back, and never let fear or failure get in the way’ then you’ll succeed.

  Barron William Trump is the youngest of the Trump children, and the child of the president and the First Lady. Like his mother, Barron is multilingual. He attended the Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School in Manhattan, and now attends St. Andrew’s Episcopal School in Potomac, Maryland. With the help of his siblings and strong encouragement—as well as fierce protection from the First Lady, he is surviving cruel comments from the liberal Left.

  Nicknamed “Little Donald,” he has his own views and a a penchant for fine suits. He is tall, smart, and, like the rest of the inner circle, will in time make great contributions to his country.

  Melania understood the viciousness of the campaign and focused on maintaining privacy for her son, Barron. During the campaign Melania preferred to remain out of the spotlight and she was often portrayed by the media as being aloof. They went so far as to make fun of her accent. As First Lady she puts them to shame as she speaks five languages fluently. She is an extreme asset to President Trump during special dinners and social events. Finally, another Jacqueline Kennedy by the president’s side. Anyone who has observed her and the president as a couple can easily see what I saw when they dated: that she is her own person, with a clear sense of who she is and this is reflected in her role as First Lady.

  Melania Trump would rather help children around the world, provide hurricane relief, and address the opioid crisis than participate in the hand-to-hand political combat other first ladies like Hillary did.

  General Kelly on the Real West Wing

  Not too long ago, I met with the White House chief of staff, General John Kelly, in a conference room in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. As he walked in, I noticed the general was wearing a splint on his right hand, his fingers swollen to twice their size. I asked what had happened, but he shrugged off the question.

  What really commanded my attention wasn’t his injured hand. It was his eyes. Anyone meeting John Kelly for the first time would be struck by them. Not so much the steel-blue color, but the clear sense these are eyes that have seen man’s inhumanity to man in the worst of all settings, the battlefield. He has the look of a man who has spent his life defending the rest of us, the grateful and the ungrateful. Those eyes betray a hint of sadness one might explain by his being a Gold Star father who lost his son in war. The experiences that left their mark on that powerful visage have given him a quiet steadiness that is not likely to be disturbed by anything thrown at him in politics.

  As a four-star marine general, a rank that is about as rare as a snowstorm in July (there have only been fifty-one active-duty four-star marine generals in the history of the Marine Corps and only one—Kelly—in the last quarter century), General Kelly isn’t prone to chitchat. He talked at length about his relationship with President Trump. Many would think the relationship incongruous—a marine loyal to a Manhattan billionaire—with love of country as the common denominator.

  The media wants us to believe General Kelly merely tolerates President Trump out of a sense of duty. Nothing could be further from the truth. One of the stories the general told me was about the president’s experience at Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day in 2017, his first year in office. The president gave a speech and then accompanied the general to an area of the cemetery called Section 60. It’s in that section of Arlington where the deceased from the wars since 9/11 are buried.

  That day, because of the holiday, Section 60 was filled with families of the fallen armed service members. They sat in lawn chairs and had coolers with drinks and picnic spreads. Many of them, holding special photos—from prom and high school photos to formal military photos of their children, brothers, and sisters—came up to talk to President Trump. They just wanted to share their memories, and the president listened to every one of them. “Nothing affects this president more than when a member of our military dies in service of our country,” the general told me. “He’s a very sensitive and appreciative guy,” General Kelly said.

  One of the duties the general has taken on is to deliver news of the deaths of service members to the president personally. And when he does, he told me, President Trump becomes quiet, and then often asks the same question: “Why did they do this?”

  I know as I write these words there will be people who will twist that quote to put the president in a bad light. But if those LIBERAL haters would stop and think, they would realize the words the president uses are more than appropriate. Most of us can not comprehend what gives someone the courage it takes to die for one’s country. That we have a president who realizes that says all you need to know about President Trump.

  “At the end of it all,” General Kelly said. “I would tell you that this president lives and breathes doing what’s good for America and Americans. And his greatest frustration is when he can’t do that.”

  The general also conveyed a genuine sense of respect for the people he works with in the West Wing. Leaks were a major problem when he was brought on board, a problem he had to solve. This is a man for whom, as he put it, “security is a way of life; it’s a religion.” He understood coming into the job that not everyone had his experience with classified information, determining what is or isn’t classified, and deciding with whom one can or cannot share certain information.

  One of the first things he did, with help from Zachary Fuentes, deputy assistant to the president and senior advisor to the chief of staff, was to try to get his arms around that inexperience. “We brought people in for briefings to say, ‘this is what your responsibilities are when handling classified documents.’ So, we’ve rais
ed people’s awareness. So, I think a lot of the leaks just went away. Because a lot of the people who had access just talked about it. And didn’t realize that no, you’re not supposed to talk about it.”

  The general spoke to the staff about their oath to the Constitution, reminding them they would likely never have to put their lives on the line to defend it, as so many young people he had served with and commanded had. He asked them to think about that when they were tempted to violate their oaths. “I had people come up to me afterward and say, ‘I was the one.’ I said, ‘I don’t care what you did in the past. This is a new kind of world,’” he said.

  General Kelly showed the kind of leadership tackling this problem that earned him his rank. One of the ways he earned his staff’s respect was having genuine respect for them. “These are good people,” he told me, “overwhelmingly good people. Great Americans. Some of them old, some of them young. Some of them experienced, some not so experienced. But they’re good people.”

  Because they are good people, the leaking problem all but took care of itself, once Kelly imparted the proper understanding of security. But no administration is ever completely free of leaks and this one is no exception. Now that Bannon and so many others are gone, we must ask: Who are the hidden LEAKERS in the White House?

  Unreliable Sources

  I am sure you are aware there’s talk the president has considered firing special counsel Robert Mueller. He’s also considered sitting down with him. While I think either option is a mistake, I want to discuss what purportedly happened between President Trump and White House Counsel Donald F. McGahn II.

  Mueller was appointed special counsel partly because Attorney General Sessions, to the president’s dismay, recused himself. It was clear to anyone with half a brain that Mueller’s team was stacked with pro-Hillary supporters and Mueller had his own conflict of interest due to his friendship with Comey. Reports are the president called McGahn into his office and ordered Mueller fired. McGahn purportedly threatened to resign if the president took that action. Mueller wasn’t fired.

  That begs the question: If the president brought McGahn into his office and privately directed the firing of Mueller, how did the story get out? Certainly, the president did not leak it. And if the president didn’t leak it, who else from this meeting did?

  Maybe it was McGahn, but why would he do it? Well, maybe he was afraid that if Mueller were fired it would implicate him in an obstruction of justice charge. Only McGahn knows the answer.

  One thing is clear: the president also thought Sessions should be booted for not taking on the Russian investigation himself. Did McGahn advise against this? And, could the president be getting more and more irate at McGahn and Sessions over Sessions’s absurd recusal?

  There are several published reports that I went to the White House on November 1, 2017, to meet with the president about the lack of an investigation of the Clinton-Russia connection in the Uranium One deal. General Kelly and Don McGahn were the only people present in the Oval Office besides the president and me.

  During the meeting, I clearly voiced my views on Attorney General Sessions’ lack of prosecutorial balls, as well as on Mueller’s “find-a-crime” mission. The president was annoyed, but not with me, and left the room. The New York Times reported that General Kelly said I was not helping things, according to their LEAKER. I probably wasn’t helping General Kelly keep order, and I clearly wasn’t helping McGahn. The president had showed his displeasure with McGahn’s namby-pamby approach to things. But who leaked this?

  When the New York Times called for a comment, I was shocked that anything from a closed-door meeting in the Oval Office with the President of the United States, had made it to the New York Times. I called the president and General Kelly about the leak. Certainly, I didn’t leak it and the president didn’t leak it. I trust General Kelly didn’t leak it, either.

  Don McGahn was the only other person there. A well-placed source tells me McGahn leaks information when he believes it suits his purposes.

  And people still wonder why Donald Trump must keep cleaning house.

  Nevertheless, General Kelly has helped smooth out the bumps every administration experiences in its first year. And once this one found its sea legs, it was full speed ahead.

  Making America Great Again

  This is the Trump administration I’ve seen firsthand. It’s quite different from the fictional one you’ve been told about by the twenty-four/seven anti-Trump hate campaign. Let me tell you something, if one-tenth of the lies you’ve been told about the president, his family, and his administration were true, I wouldn’t have been friends with Donald Trump for over thirty years. I wouldn’t have put up with the boogeyman the media have created. Luckily, that boogeyman doesn’t exist, least of all in the Oval Office.

  Just as egregious as all the distortions, mischaracterizations, and outright lies being published about Donald Trump are all the things not being published. Most Americans have no idea that less than two years after his inauguration, Donald Trump has accomplished more than most presidents accomplish in their entire presidencies. The media might as well be writing for Trump-hating Hollywood, as accurately as they’ve reported what’s really happened over the past year and a half. Out here in the real world, Americans are more prosperous, less likely to be unemployed, and live in a far safer world than they did on January 19, 2017.

  Yes, the media grudgingly reports when the Trump administration accomplishes something, putting a negative spin on that accomplishment whenever they can. But they bury the positive news, which is all true, under a mountain of negative coverage, which is mostly false. It’s the equivalent of a hard-copy newspaper putting an innocent man’s indictment on page one and later reporting his acquittal on page thirty-six of one of their least-read sections.

  So, let me take a moment to tell you about the real Trump presidency, the one that is, as Donald Trump promised, making America great again. Since President Trump was elected, the economy has added three million jobs. In fact, today there are more jobs available than there are unemployed. That’s resulted in the lowest unemployment rate in seventeen years. The stock market has roared to new highs despite the Federal Reserve raising interest rates five times since Trump’s election.

  By the way, do you know how many times the Fed raised rates between Obama’s election and Trump’s? Once. After announcing they would set a course back to “normalcy,” having kept interest rates near zero for over seven years, the Fed raised rates in December 2015 and the stock market plunged. They never attempted to raise them again until after Donald Trump won.

  Building a Real Economic Recovery

  That the market went up over 25 percent despite one rate hike after another shows the difference between the state of the economy under Trump versus Obama. President Obama was inaugurated just after a historic market crash and at the beginning of a deep recession. There was nowhere for the economy or the stock market to go but up. Yet, despite literally coming in at the bottom, Obama managed to hamper the economy badly enough to preside over the slowest, most anemic recovery in modern US history. The economy needed monetary stimulus from the Fed under Obama. As soon as it was decreased ever so slightly, the market crashed. Since Trump has been in office, it has soared despite regular rate hikes.

  That’s because President Trump has implemented policies that make this country hospitable to business again. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the largest tax cuts and reforms in US history, lowered rates for American families and businesses. And guess what? Despite all the baloney about these merely being “tax cuts for the rich,” those cuts merely brought the United States in line with the world average. The United States’ 39 percent corporate tax rate was the third highest in the world. Do you know what the corporate rate was in every lying liberal’s paradise, Sweden? Twenty-two percent! The Trump tax cuts merely brought our corporate tax rates in line with Sweden’s.

  This tax reform bill wasn’t just good for business. It will save the t
ypical American family of four more than $2,000 in taxes each year by doubling the standard deduction, creating the child tax credit, and lowering individual rates for average income earners. And let’s not forget the bill repealed the totalitarian Obamacare individual mandate.

  Speaking of the Left’s fascination with Scandinavia, I’d also like to point out another inconvenient truth the Fake News never tells you about: Those countries may have larger welfare states, but they have much freer economies as far as regulation is concerned. While they’d do even better with less welfare, they are able to pay for it because their economies are not nearly as strangled as ours was under President Obama.

  On the campaign trail, Donald Trump promised to address this problem by instituting a rule for regulatory agencies to repeal two regulations for every one new regulation put in place. Well, the Trump administration didn’t just keep that promise. They kept it more than tenfold, issuing twenty-two deregulatory actions for every one new regulatory action since January 2017.

  The president hasn’t just taken executive action, either. Unlike President “Pen and Phone” Obama, President Trump has worked with Congress, successfully getting resolutions passed to repeal fourteen onerous Obama-era rules and regulations.

  Also unlike his predecessors, President Trump isn’t satisfied merely to see the stock market boom and corporate earnings improve—although both have occurred under his watch. This president promised American workers they’d have their fair share of the prosperity as well. Before his seat in the Oval Office was even warm, the president withdrew from the harmful Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and began renegotiating NAFTA.

  Using the negotiating skills that made him a billionaire in the private sector, he secured new concessions in the Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS) that will benefit American automobile, pharmaceutical, steel, and agricultural producers. And he’s taken a tough, but respectful, stance against China, fighting back against unfair Chinese trade practices and intellectual property theft. He announced $50 billion in new tariffs on Chinese goods and levied tariffs of 25 percent and 10 percent on Chinese steel and aluminum imports.