Nationalism — and heckling — take spotlight at Trump-friendly CPAC

February 25, 2018 by admin
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The year’s largest gathering of conservative activists transformed into something else over a long weekend outside of Washington: A celebration of nationalism, American sovereignty and new limits on immigration.

Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, the youngest member of France’s far-right political dynasty, told the Conservative Political Action Conference that “mass immigration” had created a Muslim “counter-society” in her country. Right-wing British politician Nigel Farage warned that George Soros and other wealthy elites “want us to live in a world with open borders.”

And in a freewheeling 80-minute speech, President Donald Trump described the visa lottery system – inaccurately – as a way that other countries send their most dangerous immigrants to the United States.

“We’re letting people in, and it’s going to be a lot of trouble,” said Trump. “It’s only getting worse.”

Issues of immigration and identity politics, once hotly debated at CPAC and in the conservative movement, have largely been settled by Trump’s 2016 upset victory. At this year’s conference, in place of discussions of how to reach out to nonwhite voters, speakers, including Trump, spoke about keeping immigrants out.

Just as telling were the speakers whom conference-goers refused to tolerate.

Rick Ungar, co-host of a Sirius XM show, was heckled by a Friday afternoon audience when he said that many Latino immigrants could, if given citizenship, become Republican voters.

“As somebody who lived in Mexico for seven years of my life, Mexicans who are coming across this border have so much more in common with conservatives,” said Ungar.

Many Republicans have made similar points at previous CPACs and drawn heckling – but also a vigorous debate. In 2016, California-based Republican consultant Mike Madrid gave a presentation about the Latino vote, warning that the GOP was “viewed as a hostile party” and that “people do not come to this country to get on welfare.”

Watching from California this week, Madrid wondered whether the argument inside the party was over.

“It’s horrifying, but not surprising,” said Madrid. “The Republican Party is devolving into the home of white identity politics.”

The nationalist sentiment even stung former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele. Ian Walters, a longtime CPAC spokesman, reflected on the panic that had gripped Republicans after the victory of Barack Obama.

“In a little bit of cynicism, what did we do?” asked Walters. “This is a terrible thing – we elected Mike Steele to be the RNC chair, because he was a black guy.”

Walters quickly apologized to Steele, who did not accept the apology. Walters, who is not white, had seemingly argued that the first black chairman of the RNC had gotten the job through identity politics, not his credentials. (Steele had previously led Maryland’s Republican Party and the conservative GOPAC.)

“For a party that runs around and talks about merit, for him to say, ‘We elected you because you’re black,’ it undermines my work and dedication to the party,” said Steele. “It’s a reflection of an attitude that has become more pervasive in the party.”

Trump, who for years had been skeptically received at CPAC, had urged Republicans to give up on immigration reform and concentrate on winning the votes of American citizens. At the 2013 conference, held during the last major immigration debate in Congress, Trump warned that “every one of those 11 million people will be voting Democratic; that’s just the way it works.”

The next year, after the Senate had passed a reform bill, Trump repeated himself: “Of those 11 million potential voters, which will go to 30 million in the not too distant future, you will not get any of those votes.”

In interviews around the conference, CPAC attendees frequently agreed that immigration to the United States should be limited. Angie Ross, a sophomore at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, said immigration policy should reflect that America is “not a charity” but a sovereign country.

“I’m a second-generation American, and my family came here based on merit,” said Ross, as she waited in a throng of people trying to meet Nigel Farage. “We’ve had family members who were sent back – hey came to Ellis Island, and they didn’t qualify to be here. That’s how it goes. I think we should hold up on immigration for now, because there are so many Americans in poverty.”

Activists aligned with the alt-right or “new right,” who have argued that the Republican Party is better off focusing on nationalism rather than conservatism, were also happy with the bent of this year’s conference.

In 2017, the conference had denied credentials to some alt-right figures, and denounced the movement from the main stage. This year, pro-Trump “identitarian” figures including Richard Spencer and Peter Brimelow walked around the outskirts of CPAC.

Mike Cernovich, a pro-Trump media figure who has argued that Trump “rejected the concept of white guilt” on his way to victory, also made the rounds at CPAC, in advance of a party he had organized for Saturday night.

“White guilt won’t win any votes,” said Cernovich. “Guilt is a defensive emotion, based around a need to apologize. Once you start apologizing for something, people will dig up 100 more issues for you to apologize for. Then you’ll never move forward in life.”

By Saturday afternoon, as the conference began to thin out, so had the protests. Mona Charen, a conservative columnist, used a panel on the place of conservative women in the #MeToo movement to urge conservatives to be critical of Trump and nationalism.

“You cannot claim that you stand for women and put up with that,” said Charen of Trump’s extramarital relationships, speaking over a small number of hecklers. She went on to criticize the presence of European nationalists at the conference: “The Le Pen name is a disgrace. The fact that CPAC invited her is a disgrace.”

The room was mostly empty, and none of Charen’s co-panelists picked up the thread. When the panel was over, Charen was escorted outside by security guards, to protect her from any potential hecklers.

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Congress releases Democrats’ memo defending FBI surveillance of ex-Trump campaign aide

February 25, 2018 by admin
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The House Intelligence Committee released on Saturday a redacted memo authored by Democrats and intended to rebut GOP allegations that federal law enforcement agencies had political motivations for wiretapping one of President Donald Trump’s former campaign aides.

In their retort, Democrats charge that the GOP unfairly maligned the FBI and the Justice Department for citing in their surveillance application information from the author of a controversial dossier alleging that Trump had ties to Russian officials, research that was paid for by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

“Our extensive review … failed to uncover any evidence of illegal, unethical, or unprofessional behavior by law enforcement,” said Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the Intelligence Committee’s ranking Democrat.

Republican leaders have argued that the former campaign aide, Carter Page, was unfairly targeted, saying the surveillance court that approved the warrant was never told that information from the dossier’s author, former British spy Christopher Steele, was financed by the Democrats.

According to the Democrats’ memo, Page had been of interest to the FBI for years. It asserts that the bureau had interviewed him multiple times about his contacts with Russian intelligence, including in March 2016 – the same month he was named a Trump campaign adviser, and months before Steele was hired to conduct research on Trump and before he made contact with the FBI.

The court was told that Steele had been approached by a “U.S. person” who had been hired “to conduct research regarding Candidate #1′s ties to Russia,” according to a portion of the surveillance applications contained in the Democrats’ memo. Candidate #1 is a reference to Trump.

“The FBI speculates that the U.S. person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit candidate #1′s campaign,” the application says.

The memo’s content is the product of negotiations among the committee’s Democratic members, as well as with the FBI and the Justice Department.

According to Schiff, Democrats submitted their proposed redactions more than a week ago. At first, they were told the memo would be released Friday, then on Monday, he said. They learned of its release Saturday only shortly before the Intelligence Committee’s chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., announced that the document had been put online for public perusal, Schiff said.

“I think the White House tried to bury it as long as they could,” he told The Washington Post in an interview. The Republicans’ decision to release the memo without warning, on a Saturday, is “not what you do when you think you’re vindicated,” he added. “It’s what you do when you think the facts don’t reflect well on you.”

The president nonetheless claimed a victory on Twitter, calling the Democrats’ memo “a total political and legal BUST. Just confirms all of the terrible things that were done. SO ILLEGAL!”

Speaking Saturday evening on Fox News, the president characterized the memo as “a very bad document for their side” and, once more, attacked Schiff personally, calling him “a bad guy.” He also sought to depict the Democrats as sore losers.

“I don’t want to sound braggadocios,” Trump told host Jeanine Pirro. “I was a far better candidate. She was not a good candidate. She went to the wrong states.”

Initially, Trump would not agree to release the 10-page document without significant redactions, arguing that making it available to the public would risk revealing intelligence-gathering sources and methods. Democrats accused the president of applying a double standard, as he had promised to release the Republican memo before he had even read it, according to White House officials and the timing of his public comments.

No new information was declassified in the Democrats’ redacted memo, according to a senior Democratic committee official. Schiff had pledged to heed recommendations from the FBI and Justice Department regarding sensitive information.

But on Saturday, Nunes accused Democrats of colluding with the government in a “coverup.”

“We actually wanted this out,” he told an audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington. “It’s clear evidence that the Democrats are not only covering this up, but they’re also colluding with parts of the government to cover this up.”

Nunes’s accusations were directed not only at the Democrats who authored the memo, but also at the Obama administration.

“This was money from the Hillary campaign and the Democratic Party making its [way into the hands of] an agent who was paying Russian agents,” Nunes said. “Is it fair to ask, what did President Obama know?”

Surveillance applications and reports routinely obscure the identities of individuals and entities who are not the intended targets of wiretaps. The application to conduct surveillance on Page, and three extensions, were approved by four separate judges, all appointed by Republican presidents, the Democrats’ memo says.

Page has acknowledged that an FBI wiretap detected suspected Russian spies discussing their attempts to recruit him in 2013. He has told congressional investigators that he was interviewed by the FBI and cooperated as they investigated the men, who were ultimately charged with acting as unregistered foreign agents. Page continued to have extensive contacts with Russians, including making trips to Moscow in July and December 2016.

The Democrats said on Saturday that the FBI had several other reasons to suspect the Trump campaign of questionable connections to Russia – including evidence that foreign agents approached another former campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos – before Steele approached the FBI and produced his dossier.

“DOJ told the Court the truth,” the Democrats’ memo reads. “Christopher Steele’s reporting … played no role in launching the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference and links to the Trump campaign.”

The memo states that by the time Steele’s information reached the FBI’s Russia team in mid-September 2016, the bureau had already opened “sub-inquiries” into other “individuals linked to the Trump campaign.” The identities of those individuals are redacted in the memo.

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Nationalism — and heckling — take spotlight at Trump-friendly CPAC