Manafort & Cohen
 
By now you have heard about the verdict against Paul Manafort and the guilty plea by Michael Cohen.  Big Media is in full lynch-mob mode.  Here's what you need to know:
 

• With an unlimited budget, a team of aggressive, pro-Hillary lawyers and a grand jury drawn from a city that voted 76% for Hillary Clinton, Robert Mueller was able to get convictions on fewer than half (8 out of 18) of the charges he brought against Paul Manafort, who briefly served as Donald Trump's campaign manager.

• The eight counts were related to filing false tax returns and hiding money in offshore accounts, crimes that have nothing to do with President Trump and were investigated years ago.  You don't need a special counsel to prosecute old charges of tax evasion.

• There is only one connection between this verdict and the president, and the judge pointed it out in the opening days of the trial.  Mueller wanted to have a machete on Manafort's neck, so that he could threaten him with life in prison unless Manafort makes charges of illegality against the president.

• In an uncanny coincidence (if you believe that I have a bridge to sell you), the U.S. attorney's office in New York announced yesterday that one of Trump's former lawyers, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations and other offenses related to his own financial activities.  Cohen is being represented by former Clinton attorney Lanny Davis, whom I have debated many times.

• Regarding the alleged campaign violations, Cohen claims that he was directed by a federal candidate (an obvious reference to Trump) to make payments to women so they would not talk about past relationships with the candidate.  None of that has been proven. 

• In this lynch-mob atmosphere, it is worth remembering that campaign finance infractions are generally civil issues, not criminal issues.  Campaigns, particularly at the presidential level, are frequently fined for various infractions.  The Obama campaign was slapped with a record fine in 2013 for failing to disclose illegal donations.  No one went to jail.

• There is some precedent here.  In 2012, a jury failed to convict former Democrat Senator John Edwards on similar charges and the government dropped the case.  Famed liberal law professor Alan Dershowitz said the offense is "essentially jaywalking."

• We already know everything we need to know about Cohen's character.  He secretly recorded conversations between himself and Trump and then released portions of at least one, which Rudy Giuliani contends was edited or altered to imply something that did not happen.

 
The Bigger Picture
 
Notice what is missing in both of these cases -- neither of them has anything to do with Russian collusion. 
 
As of now, it appears that the false charge of Russian collusion was merely a ruse to justify a special counsel, whose purpose is to mire the Trump presidency in constant legal battles, thereby limiting his effectiveness, and perhaps remove him from office.
 
The stage is being set for the political process of impeachment.  The left will know in 76 days whether there has been a Blue wave and whether it can impeach Trump. 
 
My friends, virtually every headline you will see in the weeks ahead must be viewed through this prism:  Will the left succeed in overturning the 2016 election?  Or will Donald Trump and Mike Pence succeed in reversing America's decline?  That is the bottom line. 
 
The Really Big Picture
 
Let's review what this is really all about. 
 
The entire left-wing progressive movement and its deep state allies are attempting to destroy an administration that represents a mortal threat to the left's efforts to fundamentally transform America.  Here's what I mean:
 

• The left has used the courts to force radical social change on America.  It started by taking prayer out of the schools.  Now we are arguing about whether we can keep boys out of our daughters' bathrooms. 

• Every day Trump is in office, he is replacing left-wing judges with conservative judges who will resist this social engineering.  They have to stop him.

• For 40 years, America's political and corporate elites have marched us off the cliff of globalism.  They have surrendered our sovereignty to international bodies through trade deals that decimated hundreds of communities.  Meanwhile, coastal elites reaped huge financial windfalls.  Not only did they decimate our industrial core, they have maligned and ridiculed working class Americans.  (You know, the deplorable and irredeemable bitter clingers.) 

• Donald Trump has taken on left-wing globalists and Republican "free traders."  He is renegotiating ill-conceived trade deals that have hollowed out American industries and hurt American workers.  They have to stop him.

• For years the left has owned America's educational system and has methodically indoctrinated each rising generation with anti-American history.  In my lifetime, the schools I attended taught to me to be proud of America.  By the time I was under secretary of Education, textbooks were promoting neutrality between us and the Soviet Union in the Cold War.  Oh, for the good old days.  Today, many schools are teaching students that America was founded on genocide and is a force for evil in the world.  Watch Ronald Reagan's farewell address.  Toward the end of his speech (just over 15 minutes in), he warns about exactly this -- that we are failing to teach our children the truth about America.

• Trump is the loudest unapologetically pro-America voice in the country.  And he is telling young Americans to be proud of our country.  He is telling them that America was a great nation and will be a great nation once again.  They have to shut him up.

• The left is increasingly open about its desire for open borders.  Left-wing elites have combined two of the worst public policies -- massive illegal immigration coupled with a culture and schools that teach new arrivals that they have come to an evil nation.  Has there ever been a time in our history when some immigrants have so disrespected law enforcement while waving foreign flags? 

• Donald Trump believes in the rule of law.  He is serious about securing our borders and reforming our immigration system so that it benefits America first.  They must stop him.

 And that brings me to yesterday's other big story. 
 
A Needless Tragedy
 
Our hearts broke yesterday when the Tibbetts family learned that their beloved daughter, Mollie, who was their Dreamer, died at the hands of an illegal immigrant.  Cristhian Rivera should not have been in the United States.  Mollie's death should not have happened.  It was a needless tragedy. 
 
But according to police, Rivera entered the country sometime during the Obama Administration, between four and seven years ago.  That said, there is a lot we don't know. 
 
We do know that it is the job of our brave ICE agents to catch men like Rivera and get them out of the country.  But the progressive left is doing everything it can to abolish ICE. 
 
We do know if Rivera had fled Iowa and gone to a so-called "sanctuary city," liberal local authorities would have protected him from law enforcement. 
 
We do know that there are sadly many more victims just like Mollie Tibbetts.  Last year, ICE arrested more than 127,000 criminal illegal immigrants.  More than 1,800 were charged or convicted of homicide.  More than 5,000 were charged or convicted of violent sexual assault.
 
We do know that criminal illegal immigrants in U.S. prisons cost taxpayers $2.5 billion every year.