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Hugh Fitzgerald: Shut Up and Deal, or Brittle Man, You’ve Had a Dizzy May

May 19, 2017 7:35 pm By Hugh Fitzgerald

Donald Trump has had a busy May. Lots of confusion worse confounded, of who’s in, who’s out, and where are the snows of yesteryear. In-and-out like Flynn, up-and-down like Bannon, here-and-there and everywhere, like Jared Kushner of Kushner International Realty. And quick to take offense at the slightest slight, a brittle man in the middle of the muddle. The most disturbing of his acts was his nonchalant revealing to the Russian Foreign Minister, Lavrov, and the Russian ambassador, Kislyak, of classified intelligence information about the Islamic State’s latest, and deadliest science project to date, to put undetectable explosives in laptops that can be carried aboard planes. Information about this worrying threat, including exactly where, in what Syrian city, this macabre start-up is getting ready for its I.P.O., was provided to American intelligence from its most reliable, valuable, and steadfast ally, Israel. What makes Trump’s lapse even more worrisome is that “Israel had previously urged the United States to be careful about the handling of the intelligence that Mr. Trump discussed.” And when we further learn, according to General McMaster, that Trump decided “on the spur of the moment” to reveal secrets the American government had been warned to carefully keep, this makes his negligence more disturbing still. On-the-spur-of-the-moment? That was not a time, that was not a place, and that was not a fit subject for our President to show off to the Russians with something akin to a schoolboy’s schoolyard boast, “I know something you don’t know.” While the Israelis are putting an uncomplaining public face on it, they surely must be unhappy. And other allies, too, must now be worrying as to what to share with, and what to withhold from, Trump, because apparently the classification “Top Secret” and specific warnings to hold very close within the American security services this intelligence provided by a close ally were ignored. And now we must all worry that the Russians may be able, on the basis of what they learned from Trump, to  engage in reverse-engineering, to determine (Israeli) sources and methods, and then Russia may share what it discovers with its close ally Iran, which just happens to be Israel’s mortal enemy.

“What the president discussed with the foreign minister was wholly appropriate to that conversation and is consistent with the routine sharing of information between the president and any leaders with whom he’s engaged,” General McMaster said at a White House briefing, seeking to play down the sensitivity of the information Mr. Trump disclosed. Really? Was it “wholly appropriate” for Trump to reveal the most sensitive intelligence information gathered by a close ally, that had requested it be closely held even within the American security establishment, and to do so because, as General McMaster added, the President, who he said was unaware of the source of the information, made a spur-of-the-moment decision to tell the Russians what he knew?

“General McMaster also appeared to acknowledge that Thomas P. Bossert, the assistant to the president for Homeland Security and counterterrorism, had called the C.I.A. and the National Security Agency after the meeting with the Russian officials. Other officials have said that the spy agencies were contacted to help contain the damage from the leak to the Russians.”

General McMaster would not confirm that Mr. Bossert made the calls, but suggested that if he did, he was acting “maybe from an overabundance of caution.” So the justified worries of national security officials, attempting to “contain the damage from [Trump’s] leak,” are described by McMaster as “an overabundance of caution.” It’s not an “overabundance” of caution — it’s bizarre to charge those who are exhibiting common sense with being “too cautious,” in order to defend the President from his heedless lack of caution. “Overabundance of caution” — that’s certainly one charge that can never be made against Trump.

Some of those Israeli agents providing extraordinarily valuable information about terrorist planning by those inside the Islamic State may now, thanks to Trump, be in mortal danger. Or, at the very least, they may have to curb some of their intelligence gathering. Israel will now be under much greater scrutiny. And as for sharing what its agents manage to discover, Israel now has to worry about how much to share with the Americans, given that they now are uncertain what will be kept secret, and what President Trump may, in a moment of boastful negligence, reveal. The Israelis (or any other allies who share intelligence with us, for that matter) must now be in a quandary: can they trust President Trump to keep a secret — or even understand that something is a secret to be kept? Much may depend on what happens now to the Israeli agents inside the Islamic State.

The meeting with the Russians took place on May 10, and while Washington was still reeling from that, Trump announced that the first stop, on his first foreign trip, will be to Saudi Arabia. It’s a curious choice: America’s most dangerous state enemy in the war against the Jihad, surpassed only by the non-state actors of ISIS and Al Qaeda, is given pride of place.

Trump will, by this visit (where the Saudi hosts will pull out all the stops for their powerful guest, who enjoys Saudi-like over-the-top luxury) be further legitimizing a country, Saudi Arabia, that he ought to be shunning. Saudi Arabia has spread Islamic fundamentalism all over the globe, spending billions on mosques and madrasas and subventions to imams and theologians and on Western pseudo-academic centers of Islamic studies, such as John Esposito’s Alwaleed bin Talal Center for the  Study of Christian-Muslim Understanding, currently headed by the egregious Defender of the Faith, Jonathan Brown, and funded by Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, that promote not just Islam, but defend the Wahhabism of Saudi Arabia. Saudi textbooks, that are used by Muslim students around the world, bristle with hatred of Infidels. Wahhabi Saudi Arabia is one of only two Muslim countries (Shia Iran is the other) that imposes the full Sharia as its legal code. Saudi Arabia is the  country that  provided 15 of the 19 World Trade Center bombers. Osama bin Laden was not only a Saudi, but from the very highest ranks, the son of a billionaire contractor who was the richest non-royal in the Saudi kingdom. All over the world, from the building of mosques to the funding of extremist imams, and payments for teachers in madrasas following the Wahhabi line, Saudi money has been used to push fundamentalist Islam.

Here’s a tiny sample of what Saudi schoolchildren learn:

Among the passages found in one 10th-grade Saudi textbook on Monotheism is this: “The Hour will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews, and Muslims will kill all the Jews.” Another work (M. H. Shakir’s translation of the Holy Qur’an) states in one of its glosses to the text: “It’s allowed to demolish, burn or destroy the bastions of the Kuffar (infidels) – and all that constitutes their shield from Muslims if that was for the sake of victory for the Muslims and the defeat for the Kuffar.”

And there is much more in the same vein. But after 9/11, the American government finally got around to asking  the Saudi government to revise its textbooks, eliminating any passages that spread “intolerance and hate” against Christians and Jews, and to reform its educational curriculum, including textbooks in Saudi schools and distributed worldwide, by reviewing and revising educational materials and eliminating any that promoted holy war against “unbelievers.”

Al Fawzan, the author of the textbook on monotheism used in Saudi schools and “one of the staunchest religious conservatives in the education system,” replied in 2002 to the American request, in the Saudi newspaper Al Jazeera:

“The Jews and Christians and the polytheists have shown their heartfelt hatred and try to prevent us from the true path of God. They want to change our religion and our teaching to disconnect us from Islam so they can come and occupy us with their armies. It is bad enough when it comes from the infidels, but worse when they are of our skin. They say we create parrots, but they are the real parrots repeating what our enemies say of Islam.”

By 2006, Saudi officials assured the United States that the textbook and curriculum reforms were completed. Not everyone was willing to take them at their word. Freedom House investigated twelve Saudi religious textbooks, and concluded that much more needed to be done to eliminate the inculcated anti-Infidel hate. The Saudis, of course, have steadfastly maintained that they have reformed their educational curriculum, but none of the organizations that have looked into the matter have found convincing evidence for this. And though the affable Prince Turki bin Faisal, Riyadh’s man in Washington (who has taken to heart the famous definition of a “diplomat” as a “ man sent abroad to lie for his country”) has gone around the USA on speaking tours to assure Americans that the Saudi textbooks now are just fine, no one appears any longer to take his assurances seriously. Except possibly Donald Trump, for what else could explain his touching faith in a proposed alliance between the West and a “unified” Muslim world led  by Saudi Arabia?

In November 2010, the BBC’s investigative program Panorama reported that Saudi national textbooks advocating antisemitism and violence against homosexuals were still in use in weekend religious programs in the United Kingdom.

In October 2012, Robert Bernstein, who founded Human Rights Watch, serves as a chairman of Advancing Human Rights, and was a former chairman and CEO of Random House, expressed — along with  other book publishers — their “profound disappointment that the Saudi government continues to print textbooks inciting hatred and violence against religious minorities.” They gave as an example of an 8th grade textbook in which it is written that “The Apes are the people of the Sabbath, the Jews; and the Swine are the infidels of the communion of Jesus, the Christians.”

Now it is mid-2017, and General McMaster has announced that President Trump will visit Saudi Arabia first on his first foreign tour, and  “will deliver an inspiring but direct speech on the need to confront radical ideology and the president’s hopes for a peaceful vision of Islam to dominate across the world.”

“Inspiring.” “…need to confront radical ideology…” “president’s hopes for a peaceful vision of Islam…”

Haven’t we heard something very much like this many times before, not least from our Presidents (think of Bush constantly praising Islam as a religion of peace, or the effusions of Barack Obama in his speech in Cairo, where everything he said, about a “peaceful” and “tolerant” Islam and Muslims as always being “part of American history” was false), that is, heard enough nonsense about Islam? Haven’t successive American governments repeatedly talked about the need for Muslims to confront “a radical ideology” (or, in another variant, “a handful of extremists”) instead of recognizing that what that “handful of violent extremists” believe is no different from what mainstream Islam teaches? And where, in Islamic theology or Muslim history, has a “peaceful vision” of Islam ever dominated? What makes Trump think that his “peaceful vision” of Islam can overcome what is to be found in the  Qur’an, Hadith, and Sira, and 1400 years of Islamic history? It’s a tall, a trump-towerish, a burj-khalifaish — no, it’s an impossible — order.

But let’s allow our imaginations to run riot. Let’s allow ourselves to believe that Donald J. Trump has fallen under the spell of McMaster and Trump’s imaginary but entirely plausible Muslim friend Omar, who has disinterestedly been tutoring him in Islam. Let’s allow ourselves to believe further that he’s been deeply impressed by several verses in the Qur’an which he’s learned about only just recently, and that he’s ready to make, with the Saudis and other Muslims, a grand alliance against the “extremists” whom he now believes, just as General McMaster says, have “perverted” a great religion to further their “criminal and political” agendas. Trump, McMaster tells us,  will set out an “inspiring” (how does McMaster know beforehand that it will be “inspiring”?) but “direct speech on the need to confront radical ideology” (as defined by whom?)  for a “peaceful vision of Islam.”(When, in the past 1400 years, has there been a “peaceful vision of Islam”?)

Remember, this nightmare scenario is being imagined, in true apotropaic fashion, to ward off — inshallah — the conceivable evil of a Trump who’s been turned, or perhaps just mesmerized by the appetizing prospect (this is the other main aim of the stopover in Riyadh) — of selling the Saudis $100 billion worth of weaponry.

It will be fascinating to hear Trump’s speech in Riyadh to his new, true, Saudi and other Muslim friends. Will he recite Qur’an 5:32, that appears to denounce killing? And will he then carefully refrain from reciting 5:33, that lists those who should  be killed? If so, he would merely be following the lead of both Bush and Obama, and of so many other apologists, both Muslim and non-Muslim, for Islam. Will he ask the members of his audience, from 50 Muslim countries, all to pledge, in the spirit and letter of 5:32, to combat those who continue to “pervert a great religion” by calling for the killing of Infidels? Sure, why not pledge, or better still, reaffirm the words of the Holy Qur’an against the “killing of innocents.” No one will direct Trump’s attention to 5:33. And neither he, nor General McMaster, whose view of Islam, has become disturbingly and unacceptably benign, are going to raise 5:33. That would be impolite to Trump’s Saudi hosts.

Will Trump then continue with 2:256, claiming that “the Holy Qur’an says that there is to be ‘no compulsion in religion’” and “we need, all of us, to get that message out”? Has Trump been told that 2:256 does not prevent the death penalty from being inflicted on apostates — and that, surely, is the worst form of “compulsion”? Does he know — we all have assumed he must, but doubt begins to creep — that Infidels under Islamic rule have three choices: death, conversion to Islam, or life as dhimmis, allowing them to practice their religion (if they are Christians or Jews), as long as they meet a host of onerous requirements, including the payment of the Jizyah, or capitation tax, to which dhimmis were subject?

Here’s how I can imagine Trump ingenuously discussing 2:256:

I think we can all agree on that fundamental principle of Islam, that as the Holy Qur’an says, there should be “no compulsion in religion,” and we must work together — and I like working together with a team, it’s how you really get things done, as long as we stay — to make sure that the “handful of extremists” who oppose such an idea are not allowed to win. They deserve to lose. They’re losers. We’re going to make them lose. I promise. If more people actually knew some of the basic principles that Islam — the real Islam — stands for, they’d be a lot less suspicious, a lot less worried. And I have a confession to make. I don’t want to hold anything back. I was, not so long ago, one of those people. I used to be one of them. I mistakenly took what bin Laden said, and what the Islamic State proclaimed, and just assumed that they stood for what many, many Muslims  believed. But I knew I should study, look into Islam, try to get to the bottom of things. So I did, every day, here or at Mar-a-Lago. I would read the Qur’an, and some of the commentaries, even for more than an hour at a time. I know what the Hadith are, and the Sira — you never heard Barack Hussein Obama mention either one. And I had a personal tutor — a Muslim from Iraq, who worked with our troops. A great guy. Completely trustworthy. I can call him up to ask a question at any hour of day or night.

Yes, ever since I became President, I’ve been looking into Islam more deeply — no one in American history has looked into Islam as deeply as I have — and I can say that it’s not been treated fairly. Yes, I, Donald J. Trump, am willing to admit that I had a change of mind. It’s not that there aren’t some bad apples in the barrel. Of course there are. But as my Iraqi friend likes to say, how many? There have been more than 30,000 terrorist acts by Muslims since 9/11/2001. Sounds like a lot. But there are 1.5 billion Muslims. That means that about one out of every 50,000 Muslims has been involved in terrorism. Or, if we assume that there are at least four terrorists for each attack, on average, then we’d have four out of every 50,000 Muslims. Still not very many. See, I like numbers. I’m a numbers guy. Numbers tell you a lot. And it’s ridiculous to accuse 1.5 billion Muslims or be suspicious of them because one or two or three or four out of every 50,000 has engaged in terrorism. It just doesn’t make sense. Believe me.

We can’t let the terrorists win. We just can’t. So what I, Donald J. Trump, am calling for today is a partnership between you, the world’s Muslims, and the world’s non-Muslims. We need to isolate the extremists — and I know that not all extremists are Muslims, we have our own to worry about — so that you no longer have to endure being lumped in with them. We need to put a stop to those who taunt Muslims by maligning the Prophet Muhammad. Believe me, there is never any excuse, absolutely none, to make fun of a sacred figure in someone else’s religion. We wouldn’t like it, not at all,  if someone did it to Jesus, and there’s no reason for Muslims to be expected just to put up with it, and say nothing, when the Prophet Muhammad is mocked. It’s just a tremendous, tremendous insult and we’re not going to expect you to put up with it, just as we wouldn’t put up with mockery of Jesus. Have you been insulted for standing up for your Prophet? Yes, you have. And I’m sorry. And that has got to go. Believe me, I know what it’s like to be badly treated by the media. I have without a doubt been treated worse by the media than anyone in American history. And as Muslims, you know the feeling. So this fight belongs to both of us.

What the terrorists want, of course, is to set us off against each other, rather than to appeal to our common humanity. They don’t want non-Muslims and Muslims to be friends. They even claim that in the Qur’an it says not to take Infidels as friends. I don’t believe that for a minute. I’ve had plenty of Muslim business partners. They’re good friends. Good businessmen, too. I’ve made a tremendous amount of money for them. Yes, it’s hard to believe, but extremist Muslims really don’t want us even to be friends. They pull some story out of somewhere and claim it’s what Muhammad wanted, and some young kids listen to some crazy imam and believe this stuff is really Islam. We have to clean up those acts. It’s not fair to the Muslim kids. I, Donald J. Trump, hereby pledge that I will help you put a stop to this kind of thing.

But first, I think it’s important for the Muslim world to unite against its real enemies — the Islamic State, and other extremist groups. They are not just giving Islam a bad name — they are real bad guys, make no mistake — and are actually attacking many Muslims as well. In the West, too few people realize that the greatest enemies of the extremist Muslims are the moderate Muslims. They are engaged in a war for Islam’s soul, and I, Donald J. Trump, was determined to come here, to Saudi Arabia, the heartland of Islam, as my first foreign stop, to express my support for you and your effort to fight them. I know that the Saudis have done a wonderful job in reeducating radicalized Muslims and letting them back into the community.  And it’s that kind of effort that needs to be expanded. You’re the good guys in this fight. I know that, and I want more Americans to know that. A few years ago we pointed out to our Saudi friends some problems with their textbooks, and that’s all it took, just one reminder, for them to clean them up — the royal family hadn’t been paying attention to those books which, I learned, had long been tampered with by some rogue clerics who had managed to put in some unpleasant material about Christians and Jews. And no sooner was the problem pointed out than Prince Alwaleed bin Talal himself personally took charge of getting rid of those passages, and I’m sure he did a great job of that, he always does — he’s a great guy, I’ve known him for years, he went in with me on a tremendous deal, a golf course in Dubai. Tremendous, really tremendous. You’d be surprised how many beautiful golf courses they can build in the desert. Sure, it takes a tremendous amount of water, but when you have to pay a quarter of a million just for basic membership in a truly fabulous golf club, the water is not a problem. Definitely, no problemo. Where was I? Oh, yes, while the Saudi textbooks were taken care of just as soon as we alerted the Saudi authorities to the matter,  we have the bigger problem, believe me, of fighting ISIS, fighting Al-Qaeda, the extremists, the haters.

There’s been a lot of trouble and infighting in the Muslim world, and that weakens the ability of Muslims to fight the extremists. What I want to do, as I told General McMaster, is to help start an Arab NATO, get Muslim troops on the ground running, and this Arab NATO can move forces around quickly to this or that Muslim country, to fight the extremists wherever they pop up, so that we in the West don’t have to become the peacekeepers for the whole Muslim world. We’ve had sixteen years of trying to make things better in Afghanistan, and almost as long in Iraq. We’ve spent at least four trillion dollars. But Al-Qaeda is still here. The Islamic State is still here. It seem that they keep popping up, getting new recruits, no matter how many are killed. So we need you Muslims to handle things on the ground. We’ll be happy to help, from the air or sea, you saw what I did in Syria, I wanted to send a message, I surprised everyone, even Putin with whom I am supposedly — the media lie as usual — so buddy-buddy — and the message was sent loud and clear: Donald J. Trump doesn’t mess around, he means business.

My new policy will guarantee, and for trillions — trillions — less, the success we all need. We need our Arab friends, our Muslim friends, to join together, not to fight with each other — excluding Iran, which is a special case — and as General McMaster said, to “take a firm stand against extremism and those who use a perverted interpretation of religion to advance their criminal and political agendas.”

With General McMaster, the Trump  Administration’s view of Islam has become scarcely distinguishable from what was offered in the Age of Obama and of Bush. An absolutely mainstream Islam, centered on the duty of Jihad, becomes, in this telling, “a perverted interpretation of Islam to advance [the extremists’] criminal and political agendas.” What was “perverted” about the “interpretation” of Islam offered by the Muslims of the Islamic State, dutifully following what is prescribed in the Qu’ran and in the Hadith, where the example of Muhammad, the Perfect Man and Model of Conduct, remains to be forever emulated? What evidence is there of the slightest difference between mainstream Islam, and what McMaster described as a “perverted interpretation of religion”? He offers none. And there is none. And what are the “criminal and political agendas” of Muslims, if not the duty to participate in Jihad, against all those considered to be Infidels, in order to expand Dar al-Islam at the expense of Dar al-Harb, until Islam everywhere dominates, and Muslims rule, everywhere?

Why would any Infidel leader want to help create a “united Muslim front,” instead of exploiting signs of disarray within the Camp of Islam? Why can’t Trump see the benefit of sectarian fissures, mainly between Sunni and Shia, and now on violent display in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Lebanon, Pakistan? Surely Donald Trump remembers the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88), that went on for eight years, and consumed the aggressive energies of both sides. Wasn’t the Iran-Iraq War a good thing? Didn’t it use up men, materiel, money, and morale, of both Iran and Iraq? And what about the ethnic conflict, within Islam, of non-Arabs resentful of the way that Islam is a vehicle for Arab supremacism, requiring a kind of ideal “arabization”? The Berbers in North Africa have suffered cultural imperialism at the hands of the Arabs, who have tried intermittently to get them to  abandon their Berber language and culture, in a campaign of forced arabization. The Kurds in Iraq suffered, under Saddam Hussein’s Arabs, a still worse form of arabization; the Arabs killed 182,000 Kurds, and then Arabs were moved into formerly Kurdish-populated villages. And how many Muslims elsewhere have wanted, because Arabs are superior to non-Arabs in the Islamic pecking order, to claim a pseudo-Arab identity, as in Pakistan, where so many take on the name “Sayyid” (meaning a descendant of the Prophet)? While Muslims are called the “best of peoples” in the Qur’an, it is clear that the Arabs are the “best of Muslims.” For the Qur’an was dictated in Arabic, to an Arab, the Prophet Muhammad. Muslims must face toward Mecca, in western Arabia, five times a day, and ideally copy the dress, mores, and customs of 7th century Arabs. And until recently, the Qur’an was to be read only in Arabic and still, today, tens of millions of madrasa students read, recite, memorize the Qur’an in Arabic, even when they can hardly understand the language.

Is Donald Trump aware of this history? What makes him think the West has more to gain from a “united” Muslim world than from one that is divided against itself, in either sectarian or ethnic conflict? How would the West suffer if Saudi Arabia and Iran, instead of fighting through proxies, engaged in a full-scale war? And why wouldn’t the West have far more to gain if the Kurds managed to establish an independent Kurdistan on territory that was formerly part of Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Turkey? A Kurdish state would certainly be loyal to its indispensable American ally, a good deal more loyal than Erdogan’s Turkey, though the latter is a member of, and receives considerable benefits from, NATO.  While re-islamizing and de-kemalizing Turkey, Erdogan has also treated his Western allies with considerable disdain. He demanded that the American government ignore its own legal procedures and simply hand over Fethulleh Gulen to Ankara, and he bitterly denounced the Americans when they refused. In Germany, where Erdogan’s men were prevented from holding a referendum among local Turks on Erdogan’s “reforms” — the ones that will make it possible for him to stay in power until  2029 — he  repeatedly denounced German officials as “Nazis.” Not exactly what one expects from a NATO ally. In his warm welcome to Erdogan in early May, Trump decided to overlook all that. Perhaps he was already thinking ahead to his big reveal in Riyadh, later in the month.

“How is it that I, Donald J. Trump, have moved all the way from my campaign call for a ‘complete and total shutdown on Muslims entering the United States’ to going off to visit Saudi Arabia, where I’m going to stand right in front of the representatives of 50 Muslim nations, and where I will call for a ‘united Muslim front’ and an alliance between that ‘united Muslim front’ and the West? Well, I’ve learned a lot in the last few months about Islam that I didn’t know before. And I’m always willing to recognize when I don’t know something. You can’t be a good businessman if you can’t take in new information. I didn’t know about the ban on killing innocents, right there in the Qur’an, I think it’s 5:32. I didn’t know that in the Qur’an it says that “there is no compulsion in religion.” I didn’t know that the Prophet Muhammad was really a feminist — I mean, so many people claim women are oppressed in Islam, but let’s get real. He married a successful businesswoman, Khadija, he wasn’t the kind to keep his wife at home. She was like Ivanka. Women actually had it better after the Prophet Muhammad came along. He allowed them to inherit property. And their dowry was paid to them directly, not to their families. Women were allowed to control their own money and property. And yes, it’s true that a man could have up to four wives, but only if he could support them all. It was the women who had a right to live off the men, if they wanted to, not the reverse. Is that ‘oppression’? And there’s an emphasis, my friend Omar explained, in the Qur’an and in the stories about Muhammad, called the hadith, on the spiritual equality of men and women.

“And when  Omar — who’s been a great help, believe me — pointed out that even if there have been 30,000 terrorist attacks, that’s not much when we’re talking about 1.5 billion Muslims, my mind opened. One or two or even five out of every 50,000 Muslims. Not very much. Do the math. Should I condemn Muslims because one, or three, or even five, out of every 50,000 Muslims turns out to be a real bad egg? I don’t think so.

“Listen, we’ve spent a tremendous amount of money trying to fix up Iraq, Afghanistan. Really tremendous. Tillerson told me its trillions! We need that money! And we can’t renovate these properties. Look at Iraq, look at Afghanistan. They’re still a mess, and still counting on us to rebuild and rescue them. No. We’ve spent more than enough.  The people who live there have to do it themselves. My strategy — my alliance of the West with the mainstream Muslims who hate the extremists just as much as any of us, maybe more  — is going to work. The Saudis are with us!  Everyone said it couldn’t be done, that they would never join us. Well, just watch how they greet me when I arrive in Riyadh. My strategy is going to win. I’m not used to losing. I don’t like losing. I’ve never been  a loser. Look at how I won the election, while the media said it would never happen. Listen, I came out a winner from all of my so-called bankruptcies. People have been trying to pull me down for decades. They’ve never succeeded. They tried during the campaign. Nobody thought I could win. They’re still trying. I don’t want to start being a loser now. There’s going to be so much winning with my strategy, you’re going to be bored with winning. It will be tremendous. Saudi Arabia. The Middle East. Muslims all over the place, joining our team. No more Us and Them. Believe me, it will be absolutely tremendous.”

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Filed Under: Donald Trump, Featured Tagged With: H. R. McMaster


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Comments

  1. Wellington says

    May 19, 2017 at 8:07 pm

    Here’s what I fear is the reality (and as tending to be confirmed by Hugh Fitzgerald in this article of his): President Trump has the correct instincts, actually way above average instincts, but he remains deficient in knowledge and, at least at times, judgement. And one out of three here is simply not enough.

    The President needs the best advisers possible. Patriots who care not at all about themselves but only the country. Soon like.

    • gravenimage says

      May 19, 2017 at 8:20 pm

      That’s my take on the situation as well, Wellington.

    • Terry Gain says

      May 19, 2017 at 11:02 pm

      Men with correct instincts do not grab pussies.

      • Wellington says

        May 19, 2017 at 11:58 pm

        Disagree, Terry Gain. Now, understand, I’m not defending the action in question, but very sane, very smart, and even very good men, men with pretty damn good instincts overall, if allowed to, as it is important to remember that this is what Trump said, may very well let the better angels of their nature be absent temporarily and “oblige” a woman who, because of a man’s wealth and power, per what Trump narrated, indicates in one way or another that a tactile “encounter” with her private parts is not off limits. Just sayin’.

        • Terry Gain says

          May 20, 2017 at 7:26 am

          Wellington

          Men who grab pussies lack judgment and self-control which are prerequisites to being a competent President.

        • Magali Marc says

          May 20, 2017 at 8:20 am

          We don’t know that Trump actually grabbed women’s private parts, we just know that he bragged that he could do it if he wanted to !
          Besides where are the lawsuits against Trump concerning this alleged «pussy grabbing» frenzy?
          I am dismayed by JW buying into the anti-Trump hysteria of the NYT, the WAPO and CNN!

      • Mike says

        May 20, 2017 at 3:53 am

        And you Terry , what do you grab ?

        • Gart says

          May 20, 2017 at 5:26 am

          Socks

        • Terry Gain says

          May 20, 2017 at 7:13 am

          Mike

          I grab the Bible one of Churchill’s books or a good bottle of wine or my golf clubs or the remote if there’s a game or movie on I want to see. You know me so well I’m surprised you had to ask.

          Fitzgerald’s essay is brilliant, especially the part where Trump speaks. One of the reasons I was a NeverTrumper in the GOP leadership contest is that I didn’t think he had the right stuff to handle The Muslim File.

          I had great hope for Trump when he appointed his cabinet but he’s turning into a disaster.

      • gravenimage says

        May 20, 2017 at 10:53 pm

        Terry, I just meant Trump appears to have pretty good instincts on recognizing that Jihad is a threat.

        That does not mean I agree with him on all matters.

    • Steve Klein says

      May 20, 2017 at 10:49 am

      Wellington, he’s picked at least three of the most worrisome advisers imaginable when it comes to Islam, the Middle East and Israel, Gen. James Mattis, Rex Tillerson, Gen. H. R. McMaster.

      • Gordon Miller says

        May 20, 2017 at 1:25 pm

        Steve, you got that right. What the h*ll was he thinking. Well, let’s see if our President does any bowing while he’s in Saudi Arabia. That will be the tip-off.

      • Wellington says

        May 20, 2017 at 11:32 pm

        Trump also said, Steve Klein, “I think Islam hates us” and issued two executive orders to temporarily ban people from several Muslim-majority nations. He also has Steve Bannon as an adviser who has made clear that he understands what Islam is really about. And you have to admit that Trump is far better on Israel, America’s borders, energy, the economy, defense, the environment, the police, taxes———it’s a long list——–than his immediate processor. Verdict still out yet I would argue.

        • Wellington says

          May 20, 2017 at 11:34 pm

          I meant “predecessor” and not “processor.” Time for bed.

    • Ken says

      May 22, 2017 at 12:22 am

      Saudi Arabia aside. I suppose Hugh believes like the Democrats, CNN and others that Trump is a Russian spy. Or maybe he would just be happy to see another airline full of Russian civilians get blown out of the sky.

      What a joke.
      ”
      I thank Yahovah (the LORD) for President Donald Trump because the sons of this world or more shrewd than the sons of the light.”

  2. ChzBurger says

    May 19, 2017 at 9:40 pm

    Trump looks ready to give the Saudi family of Arabia, anything they want.

    • Richard says

      May 20, 2017 at 1:21 am

      Yes and no. President Trump says he will sell the Arabs a hundred billion dollars of weaponry. I look at it more as a loan. They will eventually return much of those bullets and bombs to us an ways we will not like. This is really the most terrifying article I have read on this web site so far. Its like Donald in Wonderland with his Muslim advisor as the Cheshire Cat. Only about 50,000 Muslims have been involved in terrorism? How would Russia or China respond if we sent only fifty thousand Marines into their countries? Come to think about it, the Russians warned us about Islamic terrorists twice, and were ignored both times – until the bombs went off in San Francisco. President Putin just doesn’t realize how really kind and peaceful these Islamists are.

      • billybob says

        May 20, 2017 at 7:51 am

        “Donald in Wonderland with his Muslim advisor as the Cheshire Cat” I loved that. Very creative! Only you were a bit muddled about the bombs that went off in Boston and the attacks in San Bernardino.

  3. SV says

    May 19, 2017 at 10:03 pm

    I’m quite displeased with McMaster’s words, but perhaps it’s prudent to wait until after the Trump’s travel has completed to make judgements rather than write out paragraphs of imagined speeches to inflame hysteria. Did we already forget what happened after meeting with China after the faux hysterics of Trump speaking to Taiwan? Did you muster the same response when Trump said he would speak with the dictator of North Korea? Is the PR speak regarding Trump’s meetings, which haven’t occurred, worthy the same response as Obama’s statements regarding the future and those who slander Muhammad?

    • Anon says

      May 20, 2017 at 3:41 am

      Do a google on Gina Powell, McNaster’s assistant and member of the NSC.

      She is a Egyptian born Muslim and friend of Huma Abedin who initially worked as a secretary for a congressman and socialized her way on up the latter to being a member of McMaster’s staff.

      The fact McMaster has her on his staff shows terrible judgement on his part. Or that Powell is more than a staff member.

      • RichardL says

        May 20, 2017 at 6:11 am

        Anon, your information is off. Dina Habib is a Copt.

        I am dismayed by how much dissent we have on JW these days.

      • gravenimage says

        May 20, 2017 at 11:04 pm

        Anon, Richard is right. Muslims *hate* Dina Powell because she is a Copt:

        “Appointment: ‘A Thumb in the Eye’ to Muslims”

        http://www.publicdiplomacy.org/50.htm

  4. jewdog says

    May 19, 2017 at 10:13 pm

    A marketing man once told me that it’s not the depth of your knowledge that counts, but the height of your convictions. What holds in marketing seems to apply to the Presidency as well, which explains how we wound up with a salesman, not a statesman. I want a refund.

  5. no_one says

    May 19, 2017 at 10:27 pm

    Trump may have bad advisors, but he would be one to pay the price. He is going to be a one term president in the best case.

    As far as Russia is concerned I didn’t fear Putin since I thought he was an Orthodox Christian. Now I think that taking pictures in church on Christmas and Easter does not make him a true Christian. He is too good with Iran and Turkey. Betrayed Bulgaria at some point to please Turkey. So, whoever tells me Bulgaria has an ally in Russia is plain wrong. So Russian politicians are the same as others, secular, not Christian and that means a lot to me. They are dangerous. And from what I read only about 2to 3 % of Russians are real Christians. The rest is just kissing holy objects and goes to church at most twice a year.

    • billybob says

      May 20, 2017 at 7:56 am

      Putin a true Christian? He is the head of the Russian mafia, a ruthless man and a killer. Only when a mafioso becomes head of state, you don’t call him that anymore. Perhaps “head of the oligarchy” is as harsh as you dare.

    • dumbledoresarmy says

      May 20, 2017 at 8:04 am

      Mate…

      Right now, the best thing that any of us who identifies as a practising Christian can do, is … PRAY. I suggest Psalm 146 and Psalm 37. Many Christians in the western world are undertaking a spiritual project called “Thy Kingdom Come”. Between Ascension Day and Pentecost, daily, 25 May to 4th June, we will be praying and meditating on that clause of the Lord’s Prayer: and praying for revival, praying for mission… *I* will be praying for large-scale exorcisms and conversions of Muslims!

      To any Eastern Christians here posting or lurking – and I address particularly any Russians – I urge them to pray and intercede **for the United States of America** and for its President.

      That, right now, will be very difficult. But sometimes the person you may *least* want to pray for, is the person you *must* pray for. Pray for wisdom. Pray for deliverance from dhimmitude; from appeasement of Islam. Pray for courage. And.. pray for *liberation* from the extremely-unhealthy entanglements with Sunni Muslim entities, notably Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Indonesia, the Emirates, Qatar, and hideous Islamic Pakistan (with its nukes, no doubt used, behind the scenes, in many a diplomatic interview, as blackmail/ threat).

      As for us in the west – those of us in Europe, and in the Anglosphere, should *also* pray for America and its President… and *we* must pray, too, for Russia. For *renewal* of the church, for Russia’s deliverance from corruption and organised crime… and for liberation from the extremely-unhealthy Russian entanglement with Islamic Iran and with any *other* Islamic entities that are making Russia ‘offers too good to refuse’. And for the *conversion* of the Muslims within the Federation… or for their departure from within that Federation. Russia is hampered by an enormous Muslim ‘Fifith Column’, far bigger than the Fifth Column that is already deeply entrenched in the USA (and that *ought* to be rooted out, as fast as possible; but Trump is not the man to do it, that is – sadly- becoming clear).

      NO infidel state should be doing deals with Muslim entities; such deals are, ultimately, worthless and, not only worthless, but… DEADLY, for the infidel side. Sooner or later. The later might be a while later, but the ‘later’ deadliness always transpires.

      Pray.

      Ora et labora, as St Benedict said.

      Prayer does not preclude action. All of us who pray must also do whatever it is that we, where we are, can try to do, to wake up our co-religonists and to warn and advise our politicians, and continue to spread the awful truth – “Got Muslims? Got Jihad”.

      But prayer *can* focus and clarify action, and sometimes, just sometimes, it can precede remarkably surprising ‘turns’ of events that nobody could have predicted or expected.

      Let us of the Eastern and Western churches pray for each other and for each other’s nations and leaders, fervently and often.

  6. Shoshonna says

    May 19, 2017 at 10:28 pm

    Someone REALLY should have told CNN that the information was classified, top secret…as they ran the story on APRIL FIRST. http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/31/politics/terrorist-laptop-bombs-may-evade-security/

    • mousey says

      May 20, 2017 at 12:43 am

      good point. The only thing not in the cnn report is that israel was somehow involved in the intel–don’t know why that would be so shockingly top secret, and the city, or one city, where the laptop bombs were being made…

  7. Flavius Claudius Iulianus says

    May 19, 2017 at 10:51 pm

    Cruz is looking awfully good at the moment.
    Cruz in 2020?

    • jewdog says

      May 20, 2017 at 7:11 am

      I liked the Cubans – Cruz and Rubio – in the last primary. I was very disappointed when neither one made it.

    • dumbledoresarmy says

      May 20, 2017 at 8:06 am

      Me, I just wish that Allen West could be persuaded to step up.

      • gravenimage says

        May 20, 2017 at 11:05 pm

        I hope he does run at some point–a very knowledgeable and principled man.

  8. somehistory says

    May 19, 2017 at 11:01 pm

    Perhaps he never heard the term, “Loose lips, sink ships,” or if so, didn’t realize it might apply to him.

    Everyone should know how to keep a confidence, a secret. Something that should be taught to the young, “don’t tell everything you know.”
    But egos overrule secrets.

  9. MikeC says

    May 19, 2017 at 11:24 pm

    If Trump didnt spill the beans when was everyone going to be told about this laptop threat so they could protect themselves from it. After people get killed i guess. Bit like 911. FBI never bothered to do any serious investigation and infact hindered investigations despite the huge amounts of evidence of threats prior to 911. I guess allowing terrorism to be successful is a great way to justify more government power, more globalism and higher law enforcement budgets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vALc-oU3Hqg&t=2143s

    • somehistory says

      May 20, 2017 at 12:44 am

      I think we deserve to know, but not tell the Russians where he got the information.

  10. mike ryan says

    May 19, 2017 at 11:45 pm

    I am indeed disappointed with this man-child that we’ve elected king.

  11. mousey says

    May 20, 2017 at 12:46 am

    i actually read the whole article, and despite the seriousness of it all, the trump speech was so…so…hugh really knows his trump. I just had to laugh and cry at the same time. I only hope somehow trump reads this speech before he gives his.

    • dumbledoresarmy says

      May 20, 2017 at 8:07 am

      You wrote – ” I only hope somehow trump reads this speech before he gives his.”

      Well… send him a copy! Send it over and over. Print it out and put it in a paper letter.

  12. Davegreybeard says

    May 20, 2017 at 2:09 am

    So the only political figure on the world stage, to ever come close to publically speaking the truth about Islam, is now to be kicked to the curb.

    Perhaps those, such as Hugh, (and the mainstream media) who claim to have the gift of divining the future, are correct about Trump.

    I just find it very disconcerting that Hugh and Rachel Madcow are singing the same tune in this regard.

    Personally, I would like to see a little more history unfold before I climb aboard the “Demon Trump” train.

    • gravenimage says

      May 20, 2017 at 11:20 pm

      Yes, Dave–time will tell.

      And whatever happens, he is still almost certainly better than the alternative would have been.

  13. Rob says

    May 20, 2017 at 3:41 am

    Muslims rage against Jews and Christians because we have decided not to accept Islam as the final revealed truth. In its early days Islam expanded East as well as West. Hence Muslim Indonesia and Malaysia and parts of the Philippines. also of course the Western-most parts of China.
    Even with all this fertile ground for Islamization in East Asia, Islam continued to obsess with Europe.
    The higher rate of attacks on Christians at Easter underpins their rage. Easter is when Christians proclaim believe in the 3 aspects of God.
    To Islam this is polytheism.

  14. Mike says

    May 20, 2017 at 3:56 am

    It seems MSM propaganda is living well on this website …..

  15. Virginia says

    May 20, 2017 at 6:01 am

    Russia is fighting ISIS while we are still financing and training ISIS! I’m with Trump on this one. I trust Putin more than I do our own CIA or Israel. And, by the way, this whole topic is designed to take attention away from the Seth Rich onvestigation. We’ll see who’s side Trump is really on when we see how far his Russia Affair Special Prosecuter gets with exposing the Hillary leaks and DNC coverup. Or will WWiII get in the way first?

  16. Nigel GFF says

    May 20, 2017 at 6:12 am

    The catch is democracy. Damned if you do and, most assuredly, damned if you don’t. Whether Mr Trump goes for a second term is impossible to predict (who thought he’d win the first?) but who else in the G.O.P. would have spoken as he did and win? Perhaps, softly softly may catch the monkey – hope springs eternal …

  17. billybob says

    May 20, 2017 at 7:45 am

    What a frightening vision you portray of a Trump who suddenly “gets Islam” in the worst way possible – the way of Obama and Bush, only with Trump’s own unique personality stamped upon it. That is to say, doesn’t get it at all. A vision of our worst nightmares come true, the growing fear that during the election campaign Trump was just parroting things he had heard from others and that he had no personal understanding or insights into Islam whatsoever. Only he’d discovered that repeating these things he’d heard had a shock effect, ultimately generating a lot of attention for him, the thing he craves.

    During his campaign, he got my attention with that simple phrase “Islam hates us”. Those three simple word caught it all – the [mean] spirit of Islam. Then we learned there was not only Bannon, but also Flynn on his team, and we assumed – others as well. Actually, before Flynn became the subject of the nightly news I had stumbled across a video on YouTube of one of his talks, where he was exposing Islam exactly as it is, and I was thrilled he had been selected to lead defense.

    We had such hopes that finally an entire team was coming to office that understood the threat, and cheers went up everywhere when he fired off his first shot, a shot heard around the world, when he said he was going to restrict immigration of Muslims – something we interpreted as – beginning with those 7 countries.

    Then the unbelievable blowback and the judgements tying his hands on immigration. It was more than a disappointment for me. Back then, it left me wondering about the competence of his team to do anything, because I had imagined any proposed ban would have been worked out in advance during the months of his campaign with a team of legal scholars and constitutional lawyers that would write bulletproof legislation – at least, that is what I would have done.

    Then Flynn turned out to be a sleaze and a conman and was banished to the hills. There were other changes on his team. Then Jared Kushner started taking over from Bannon with his leftist views, and then the last straw, this traitor General McMaster. All this makes Fitzgerald’s surreal nightmare vision a plausible next step.

    btw: I loved the alliteration in the phrase you coined, “a brittle man in the middle of the muddle”.

  18. Salome says

    May 20, 2017 at 8:03 am

    His quickness to take offence rivals that of the muslims.

  19. Rose Marie Russell says

    May 20, 2017 at 10:27 am

    Ugh,I hate this piece by Fitzgerald!It gives me chills and a feeling of dread at the pit of my stomach!
    I agree with the poster Magali Marc: I am dismayed by JW buying into the anti-Trump hysteria of the NYT,the WAPO,and CNN.
    Obviously the other posters were not Trump fans at the outset and will write anything negative in order to try to influence JW readers/supporters!
    Well I was and am! Trump is being piled on by self-serving leaches from the dreaded D.C. SWAMP!
    You go, Pres.Trump,we the people have your back!

  20. TheDane says

    May 20, 2017 at 11:36 am

    Excellent read! Very, very informative and well-written. I hope the Israelis read it too…. no more sharing info with the lunatic president of the US! Nor should they really bother with warning European countries anymore, unless the same countries abort their nasty Boycot Israel agendas.

  21. gamaliel says

    May 20, 2017 at 11:51 am

    The New York Times revealed the laptop bomb information before Trump did. This is ridiculous. http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2017/05/17/ann-coulter-every-time-try-mad-trump-media-pull-back/ . Then the press revealed Israel was the source of the information.

    • gravenimage says

      May 20, 2017 at 11:23 pm

      Thanks for that.

  22. bouboulina says

    May 20, 2017 at 1:31 pm

    Untrue that Trump revealed secret Israeli intel–quite a while ago the info. about undetectable explosives having been developed by ISIS to be put in laptops was revealed in at least 2 articles–one of them even showed the Muslim strangers on camera in the airport who gave a laptop to the old man who was blown out of the side of an airplane–that was the trial run. Then a later article or articles came out about how ISIS had managed to develop this nightmare threat to aviation & the general public. Fitzgerald needs to stop lying about Trump having betrayed our ally Israel–the only ones who’ve managed to keep the Iranians in line so far plus much other assistance. I repeat, this has been in the press a number of times so no secret has been revealed by Trump admin. in this regard. Enough of the lying!

  23. common sense says

    May 20, 2017 at 1:56 pm

    That’s a crock Hugh and wholly your opinion show some facts that are actually damaging to my country or yours that are actually 100% the fault of my President and then show proof of the damge that it did cause. I can see the MsM is causing damage by telling lies enough that people start look for something to criticize Trump for which there is enough of without making up more opinions. This is sure to bring more lefties to this site spouting things that are not established facts only established lies by the MsM.

    • gravenimage says

      May 20, 2017 at 11:25 pm

      Hugh Fitzgerald is an American.

  24. Davegreybeard says

    May 20, 2017 at 3:32 pm

    It’s the Fitzgerald bird, the grandest, most erudite and loquacious of them all. Normally this cunning and oh so very clever bird leads the flock to brilliant new insights – but not today.

    It is disappointing and more than a little aggravating to hear him squawking and cackling and parroting the very same song as those who would destroy us.

    Take a deep breath Hugh, savor an adult beverage of your choice and take the time to reflect a bit on just what effect your words may have on both friend and foe.

    Then ask yourself, does your piece above make us stronger, or does it cause unneeded dissension and thereby weaken us?

    • common sense says

      May 20, 2017 at 4:08 pm

      Hear hear Daveygreybeard. I also do immensely enjoy reading Hugh’s articles and none of us is always going toi agree 100% I’d like to see unequivocal proof like Obama funding Iran for example.

      • gravenimage says

        May 21, 2017 at 12:01 am

        common sense wrote:

        I’d like to see unequivocal proof like Obama funding Iran for example.
        ………………………

        common sense, I’m surprised you are unaware of the deal Obama made with Iran. Here is some information:

        “Obama administration has given Iran $700 million each month since nuke deal signed, totaling over $10 billion”

        https://www.jihadwatch.org/2017/01/obama-administration-has-given-iran-700-million-each-month-since-nuke-deal-signed-totaling-over-10-billion

        I’m not going to address Fitzgerald’s opinions on Trump here, but Obama’s appeasement of Iran is indisputable.

  25. Aussie Infidel says

    May 20, 2017 at 6:01 pm

    The accusation that Trump first revealed the information about laptop bombs to the Russians, is more ‘fake news’. At the time, I was on a cruise ship and the information was broadcast on the Fox News satellite channel, as a report from the New York Times. There was no mention of Trump being the source of the leak. As almost everyone on board had a laptop or a tablet, it was discussed ad nauseum.

    The standard joke among the passengers was, “Are you sure there’s not a bomb in there?”

  26. commonsense says

    May 20, 2017 at 7:48 pm

    This is the most depressing and sickening article Hugh has ever written…because all of it is prescient, I fear, and predictive of what will actually happen. God help us. And don’t blame Hugh for connecting the dots.

  27. Debi Brand says

    May 20, 2017 at 10:43 pm

    Excellent article, Hugh, topnotch and spot on.

    Just a few excerpts from it below, and my comments following them:

    “The most disturbing of his acts was his nonchalant revealing to the Russian Foreign Minister, Lavrov, and the Russian ambassador, Kislyak, of classified intelligence information about the Islamic State’s latest, and deadliest science project to date, to put undetectable explosives in laptops that can be carried aboard planes. Information about this worrying threat, including exactly where, in what Syrian city, this macabre start-up is getting ready for its I.P.O., was provided to American intelligence from its most reliable, valuable, and steadfast ally, Israel.”

    Oh well, not to worry then—just Israel.

    Thus, as is clearly articulated and underscored in Trump’s steadily increasing viscous allegiance to and friendship with promoters of the way of the alleged prophet of Islam, Israel will soon learn, take it, my “friend,” or suffer our ire and our chastening, and the same of our “friends and allies.”

    “Israel had previously urged the United States to be careful about the handling of the intelligence that Mr. Trump discussed,” provides Hugh.

    Trump actions highlighted above are deplorable. Shameful!

    “’ What the president discussed with the foreign minister was wholly appropriate to that conversation and is consistent with the routine sharing of information between the president and any leaders with whom he’s engaged,’ General McMaster said at a White House briefing, seeking to play down the sensitivity of the information Mr. Trump disclosed.”

    “Wholly appropriate,” in the mind of fools who reckon, selling Israel down the river, betraying them, is fine and dandy—it is, after all, just Israel.

    “Some of those Israeli agents providing extraordinarily valuable information about terrorist planning by those inside the Islamic State may now, thanks to Trump, be in mortal danger.”

    And FoXNews fools, circling the Trump wagon, defending this garbage! Shame on them.

    “Trump will, by this visit (where the Saudi hosts will pull out all the stops for their powerful guest, who enjoys Saudi-like over-the-top luxury) be further legitimizing a country, Saudi Arabia, that he ought to be shunning.
    ………………….

    Saudi textbooks, that are used by Muslim students around the world, bristle with hatred of Infidels. Wahhabi Saudi Arabia is one of only two Muslim countries (Shia Iran is the other) that imposes the full Sharia as its legal code. Saudi Arabia is the country that provided 15 of the 19 World Trade Center bombers. Osama bin Laden was not only a Saudi, but from the very highest ranks, the son of a billionaire contractor who was the richest non-royal in the Saudi kingdom.”

    Yup. Shameful. How can so many be so foolish to continue to defend this man in such acts of betrayal?

    (http://www.debibrand.org/hugh-fitzgerald-shut-up-and-deal-or-brittle-man-youve-had-a-dizzy-may/#sthash.TfHh65Be.dpuf)

    • Davegreybeard says

      May 20, 2017 at 11:39 pm

      Wikipedia: Feb 2, 2015 Daallo Airlines flight 159 attacked by use of a “laptop computer bomb.”

      Feb. 13, BBC “Somali plane bomb: What happened?” The article talks about a laptop bomb.

      Mar. 21, 2017 The Daily Beast headline “Raid in Yemen led to laptop ban on flights, officials say”

      April 1, 2017 CNN headline: “New terrorist laptop bombs may evade airport security”

      But we have IDIOTS HERE hysterically shrieking that IT WAS TRUMP that revealed STATE SECRETS TO OUR ENEMIES! And even worse to the RUSSIANS!

      In light of the above facts, hastily gathered, will one of you who holds that Trump foolishly betrayed us, please explain exactly how you reached your oh so insightful conclusions?

      • Debi Brand says

        May 21, 2017 at 3:17 am

        “….will one of you who holds that Trump foolishly betrayed us, please explain exactly how….”

        By calling, thus, declaring Islam —the guidance and tenets of which were followed in all those slain, marred, disfigured, or maimed as a good “believer,” in short, obeyed “Allah and His Messenger”—a great religion.

        Thus, by his clear paying homage to this “religion” he counts and calls “great.”

        (“In that spirit of unity, I will travel to lands associated with three of the world’s great religions.”
        [https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/05/19/president-donald-j-trumps-weekly-address])

        That, Mr. greybeard, I count as clear betrayal, so too, abject foolishness.

        • Davegreybeard says

          May 21, 2017 at 1:37 pm

          Admitting that Islam is a “great religion” does not implicitly mean “good.” Which is extremely thin justification for your abject demonization and vilification of the only world leader who had the balls to say “I think Islam hates us.”

          Note that the allegation of betrayal came from Trumps mendacious and corrupt political enemies, who have repeatedly lied in the past to smear him.

          Note that what was breathlessly reported as “NEWS!” (Jihadis building laptop bombs) is actually year and a half old – enough time for even the intelligence service of Zimbabwe to analyze and dissect it.

          Note that the report is BASED ON ANONYMOUS SOURCES.

          Note that the report was publically and vigorously denied by a key person who was actually at the meeting.

          Note that Israel has stated that they have no problem with what was said.

          Note that Russia has military “boots on the ground” in the area and has been the target of such devices.

          And finally note that Trump as President has complete authority to disclose what he choses to whomever he wishes.

          You are leaping to conclusions not evident Debi and repeating the propaganda of our enemies. Which is the definition of “abject foolishness.”

    • Ken says

      May 22, 2017 at 12:25 am

      I suppose you and Hugh believe like other Democrats, CNN and the rest that Trump is a Russian spy. Or maybe you would just be happy to see another airline full of Russian civilians get blown out of the sky.

      What a joke.
      ”
      I thank Yahovah (the LORD) for President Donald Trump because the sons of this world or more shrewd than the sons of the light.”

  28. livingengine says

    May 20, 2017 at 11:31 pm

    virtuoso: a person who is extremely skilled at something, especially at playing an instrument or performing

  29. B Deplored says

    May 21, 2017 at 10:54 pm

    McMaster! The Leaker.

  30. Love 2 B Deplored says

    May 21, 2017 at 10:55 pm

    McMaster! The Leaker.

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