"Americans are Dreamers, too!"

image credit: 989thewolf.net

I thought President Trump's State of the Union speech was outstanding, and most of the commentary I've read is positive. I especially appreciated a few short takes by Don Surber:

Trump forced one of his nagging critics, Chris Cillizza, CNN's editor-at-large, to concede the brilliance of the move.

"Perhaps not surprising for someone who has lived his life in the spotlight and who built a life on image and brand, the stagecraft of Trump's first State of the Union was outstanding. From the families who lost loved ones to the MS-13 gang to Otto Warmbier's parents to the North Korean defector and his crutches, the visuals -- and the stories they told -- were haunting and memorable," Cillizza wrote.

The photograph that won the night was not President Trump, but rather Ji Seong-ho holding his crutches aloft. He escaped North Korea in 2006, and now lives in South Korea helping others escape.

Here’s the photograph of Ji Seong-ho:

I did not know Ji Seong-ho’s story, and it is harrowing. Here’s the link to the page on Wikipedia. Surber continues:

His presence was testimony to the appreciation of President Trump's efforts to confront Kim Jong Un, which may lead to the departure of Kim, and the unification of the two Koreas.

Incorporating the victims of MS-13 and the heroes of America made his message theirs. And they are more credible to those who are not as Trumpian as we are. They sold his policies.

To be sure, [there] was the co-opting of the Democratic Party line. The line of the night was "Americans are Dreamers, too!"

For the rest of Don Surber’s SOTU commentary, go here and here.  

 # # #

State of the Union and more!

photo credit: cnn.com

Your television viewing guide for this evening (Tuesday, Jan. 30):

President Donald J. Trump’s first State of the Union address is tonight at 9pm on all major news networks.

Massachusetts congressman Joseph Kennedy III will present the Democrat party’s official response following the SOTU.

After the SOTU address, Rep. “Auntie Maxine” Waters (D-CA) will probably renew her demand for impeachment on BET TV. According to the HuffPo:

Waters will deliver her remarks on the BET program “Angela Rye’s State of the Union,” 

a program that is not at present showing up on the Cleveland Spectrum listing. 

UPDATE: The BET program is on Weds., Jan. 31 at 9pm.

# # #

Good bye to Chief Wahoo

vintage official scorecard

Good bye to Chief Wahoo (because, you know, it’s r-a-a-a-a-cist)

ABC News reports:

Divisive and hotly debated, the Chief Wahoo logo is being removed from the Cleveland Indians' uniform next year.

The polarizing mascot is coming off the team's jersey sleeves and caps starting in the 2019 season, a move that will end Chief Wahoo's presence on the field but may not completely silence those who deem it racist.

The Associated Press was informed of the decision before an official announcement was planned for Monday by Major League Baseball.

Yet another casualty of political correctness. I grew up with this logo and am sorry to see it go. 

PS I always thought choosing a mascot carried with it a compliment. Indians were worthy warriors. Who would want to be cheering for The Cleveland Worms? 

# # # 

Today’s scary read: the moving dictatorship

Image credit: trump.news

Daniel Greenfield redefines the “Deep State” and it’s scary. The full transcript of his speech to the  South Carolina Tea Party Coalition Convention in Myrtle Beach is also posted at Zero Hedge (h/t Instapundit).   Here are a few extracts:

the Democrats have rejected our system of government

…

You can hate the other party. You can think they’re the worst thing that ever happened to the country. But then you work harder to win the next election. When you consistently reject the results of elections that you don’t win, what you want is a dictatorship.

Your very own dictatorship.

The only legitimate exercise of power in this country, according to the left, is its own. Whenever Republicans exercise power, it’s inherently illegitimate.

The attacks on Trump show that elections don’t matter to the left.

. . .

It’s the moving dictatorship. It’s the tyranny of the network.

You can’t pin it down. There’s no one office or one guy. It’s a network of them. It’s an ideological dictatorship. Some people call it the deep state. But that doesn’t even begin to capture what it is.

To understand it, you have to think about things like the Cold War and Communist infiltration.

A better term than Deep State is Shadow Government.

Parts of the Shadow Government aren’t even in the government. They are wherever the left holds power. It can be in the non-profit sector and among major corporations. Power gets moved around like a New York City shell game. Where’s the quarter? Nope, it’s not there anymore.

The shadow government is an ideological network. These days it calls itself by a hashtag #Resistance. Under any name, it runs the country. Most of the time we don’t realize that. 

. . .

Civil wars swing around a very basic question. The most basic question of them all. Who runs the country?

Is it me? Is it you? Is it Grandma? Or is it bunch of people who made running the government into their career?

America was founded on getting away from professional government. The British monarchy was a professional government. Like all professional governments, it was hereditary. Professional classes eventually decide to pass down their privileges to their kids.

America was different. We had a volunteer government. That’s what the Founding Fathers built.

This is a civil war between volunteer governments elected by the people and professional governments elected by… well… uh… themselves.

In the intro, Greenfield acknowledges and thanks “anyone and everyone still fighting the good fight.” Including Tea Party people volunteering in their communities. Read the rest here.    # # #

Unraveling Obamacare bit by bit

Steve Breen cartoon via strangefunnies.blogspot.com

Today, Mr. Speaker Gingrich posted at Fox and to his newsletter list his assessment of the Trump Administration’s ongoing efforts to bring down healthcare costs, chip away at what remains of Obamacare, and gradually introduce better options for all Americans. Here is part of his posting:

President Trump has also moved beyond opposing Obamacare and has begun to develop a better system for the future. What replaces Obamacare is at least as important as voting to repeal it.

Replacing Obamacare requires a lot of specific steps to return to a market-based, decentralized system in 50 different states. The Trump Administration and its Republican allies in Congress have been working diligently in that direction.

At the Department of Labor, Secretary Alexander Acosta issued proposed rules which would dramatically expand the availability of Association Health Plans. These plans could be national and regional, allowing for the sale of insurance across state lines, but critically still maintain state autonomy in regulating insurance – which will help police against fraud. Some of the details of the rules may need to be improved to prevent insurance companies from cherry-picking healthy customers, but overall this represents a potentially game-changing reform that could have huge cost saving implications for small business owners and the self-employed.

The Trump Administration has also allowed insurers to continue offering “grandmothered” plans created prior to Obamacare, maintaining these lower cost plans for long-time customers. This saved many small businesses and self-employed people a lot of money and anxiety which would have been caused by the Obamacare plan to force them into the government system even if they were happy with their current plan.

In addition, the Trump Administration fixed a number of loopholes in the Obamacare enrollment rules, which some customers had been using to game the system to avoid paying their premiums and wait until they got sick to get coverage, by claiming they qualified for a “Special Enrollment Period.” This fraud drove up prices for everyone. The Trump Administration issued new rules that fixed a number of these problems.

President Trump also made it easier for people to shop for health insurance without using the Healthcare.gov website. For 2019 enrollment, customers can fully use the insurer websites, as well as aggregators like ehealthinsurance.com. All of this increases convenience, expands choice, and makes lower costs possible.

Finally, just last week, Congress enacted a key reform which flew almost completely under the media’s radar. The Continuing Resolution passed to reopen the government this week suspended the health insurance tax for one year, the device tax for two years, and delayed the Cadillac tax until 2022, all of which were part of Obamacare. All of these taxes were simply passed on to patients in the form of higher premiums, so each of these steps will save patients money.

“Replacing Obamacare requires a lot of specific steps to return to a market-based, decentralized system in 50 different states.” So here is related news:

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Concerned about soaring health care costs, Idaho on Wednesday revealed a plan that will allow insurance companies to sell cheap policies that ditch key provisions of the Affordable Care Act.

It's believed to be the first state to take formal steps without prior federal approval for creating policies that do not comply with the Obama-era health care law. Health care experts say the move is legally dubious, a concern supported by internal records obtained by The Associated Press.

Idaho Department of Insurance Director Dean Cameron said the move is necessary to make cheaper plans available to more people. Otherwise, he said he fears the state's individual health insurance marketplace will eventually collapse as healthy residents choose to go uninsured rather than pay for expensive plans that comply with the federal law.

Hope to see more of this. The rest of Newt’s article is here.

# # #

Dennis K would shut down energy production in Ohio

 photo credit: change-links.org

From cleveland.com

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dennis Kucinich on Thursday unveiled a series of proposals designed to bring a complete end to oil and gas drilling in Ohio.

At a news conference in downtown Columbus, the liberal former congressman and presidential candidate said that as governor, he would use eminent domain to acquire and close all existing traditional and fracking-style oil and gas wells in the state. Kucinich pledged to block any new drilling permits and order a statewide injection-well ban.

In addition, Kucinich would direct the Ohio State Highway Patrol to stop, inspect, and turn away vehicles found with fracking waste.

Sounds like a winning strategy.

# # #

Another reason not to watch the Super Bowl

Even those of us who are not football fans sometimes turn the TV on just to watch the ads. Not this year. The Army Times reports:

AMVETS officials are decrying "corporate censorship" from the National Football League for their decision not to run an ad in their Super Bowl program which responds to league players’ decision to kneel for the national anthem in protest of national equality issues.

The ad, which would have cost the veterans organization $30,000, features the tag "#PleaseStand" with a picture of service members saluting the American flag and information on how to donate to the congressionally-chartered organization.

Group leaders said NFL officials refused to include the ad in their Super Bowl publication, but did not issue a reason why.

Ace of Spades comments:

The NFL claims it doesn't permit ads that could be interpreted as making a political statement.

Oh, sure, the NFL totally doesn't want political statements during its games. That's why it's permitted a year and a half of National Anthem protests, I guess.

Sad to see the American sports culture in self-destruct mode.

UPDATE: The Hill reports that former NFL quarterback and Kneeler-in-Chief Colin Kaepernick has been named a finalist for the NFL Players Association 'Community MVP' award.  

# # #

Chuck Schumer ends his shutdown

Via Instapundit:


More commentary at Legal Insurrection here.

# # #

Multiculturalism: not good

Photo credit: onlyinus.wordpress.com

American children

Many of my relatives and friends take pride in their enthusiastic embrace of multiculturalism. I oppose it because it discourages assimilation, and it celebrates cultural differences rather than common values. As far as Cleveland Tea Party is concerned, one of the core values, that of limited government, is subverted by uncontrolled immigration that expands the nanny state and dilutes our cultural fabric. The melting pot is giving way to the societal mosaic, more apt to shatter.

A Canadian contributor to PJ Media, David Solway, eloquently summarizes “The Scourge of Multiculturalism” (h/t Instapundit):

The argument made by immigration and refugee enthusiasts, namely that the Western democracies were founded and settled by immigrants and therefore should continue to welcome newcomers, is valid only to a point. In the course of time the original settlers created a national identity, a sense of communal membership in a common world unified by custom and law. It is that identity that should be preserved. . . .

I am not opposed to immigration per se, only to ill-advised and special interest agendas that would weaken and adulterate the stable domestic accords arrived at over many generations.

To say “we are a nation of immigrants,” then, is immaterial. We are now a nation of citizens. Skilled immigrants, properly screened and taking into account real domestic needs, should be part of the country’s future, but not in multiples that threaten to dilute a nation’s internal cohesion, not from backward countries whose inhabitants are all too often uneducated, illiterate and functionally unassimilable, and certainly not from parts of the world -- in particular, the Islamic world -- whose history, culture, theology and politics have ranged it against everything that Western civilization comprises. The plight of European nations like Germany, Sweden, England and France, sinking into a morass of civil unrest, criminal violence and legal subversion, should be an incontrovertible object lesson that multiculturalism is the devil’s gift to a forgetful and undeserving people.

The congeries of welfare recipients bankrupting our fiscal resources, inner-city ghettoes of disaffected and belligerent residents, the array of lawfare plaintiffs, the proliferation of de facto censorship procedures . . . and the consequent erosion of community standards are the poisoned fruit of such unstructured immigration protocols -- a scourge prettified under the term “multiculturalism.” 

. . .

There is no shame in cherishing and defending one’s “old country” patrimony and the values upon which civic and communal life are founded. This has nothing to do with an antecedent “Eurocentrism” that ostensibly degrades other peoples or with the risible canard of “white supremacy,” but with the sense of belonging to, for all its flaws and errors, the greatest civilization ever to appear on earth, a Judeo-Hellenic-Christian civilization that gave us, among innumerable gifts, the Bible and the Greek library, the magna carta, the concept of individual liberty, scientific and medical advances never before seen, and a technological, commercial and industrial infrastructure that has made life easier for untold millions.

Full essay is here.

# # #

General Mattis on the government shutdown

DC Whispers shared General “Mad Dog” James Mattis’s letter to our men and women in uniform concerning the government shutdown:

Click to embiggen, if necessary.

Photo credit: theepochtimes.com

# # #

One year ago today

Photo credit religionnews.com

The inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States took place one year ago today. Several hundred thousand people witnessed in person the ceremony held on Friday, January 20, 2017 on the West Front of the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.

President-elect Donald J. Trump was sworn into office by Chief Justice John Roberts, with his hand on two Bibles held by his wife Melania. Wow. 

wstale.com

  

Fashion note: Melania's gown for the Inauguration evening festivities is now in the Smithsonian. But somewhere I read (and recent searches failed to find the source) that FLOTUS conceived of the dress as an homage to America’s founding documents, and her concept of the dress was symbolic of those founding documents on parchment, complete with red ribbon. OK, I could not find the interview, but here’s a visual:

Happy Anniversary!

# # #

Derangement Syndromes

photo credit: cnn.com

Tomorrow is the one-year anniversary of President Donald Trump’s inauguration. It will also be the anniversary of  Hillary Clinton's failure to ascend to the Presidency. Robert Arvay at The American Thinker reflects:

I have a confession to make.  I have HDS – Hillary Derangement Syndrome.   It is dormant, but only because Hillary Clinton did not become president of the United States.  Had she, I would now be every bit as deranged as are those who exhibit Trump Derangement Syndrome.

It would have started on election night.  I watched on television as Hillary-supporters wept in disappointment, even anguish [see photo above], as it became clear to them that their expected victory celebration had suddenly turned into the lamentation of their crushing defeat.  In a bizarre way, I felt sorry for them – not because I wished they had won, but because I had pessimistically expected to be in their state of mind.  I had expected to be disgusted by the sight of a fiendishly grinning Hillary Clinton coming on stage to don the crown she so fervently believes is her birthright.  The depth of my sorrow for America would have been more painful than the grief experienced by the 'Clintonistas.'

After that brief moment of empathy, I felt overjoyed.  The Trump victory had rescued the nation from a fate worse than we knew at the time.  Given the revelations of corruption that have surfaced since then, the suppuration of bureaucracy is even more sinister than we had imagined.

. . .

The very Constitution itself would have become a swirl of words that would mean anything the radical left deemed.  Our history would be taught only in terms of condemnation. 

I could go on, but the bottom line is that, along with millions of my fellow citizens, I would be adamantly opposed with every glint of my being to the policies Hillary Clinton would have imposed.  My opposition would be based on the principle "whatever it takes" to preserve freedom for my children and grandchildren.

I would no longer view my political opponents as merely mistaken, but as evil, just as they now regard us.

Happily, none of this came to pass, and hopefully, it never will.  But just thinking about it gives me a little better understanding of those who feverishly and frantically exhibit Trump Derangement Syndrome.  Their world is ending, and they know it.  They are like the Beast who knows that his time is short and seeks to devour whom he may.

They are not to be underestimated.  They will stop at nothing.

We dodged a bullet - perhaps an incoming missile. Mr. Arvay's full article is here.

# # #

Cartoon of the Day

Cartoonist Gary Varvel at Townhall:

image credit: Townhall 

Lots more laughs at the GOP website announcing winners of President Trump's 2017 Fake News Awards, starting with Paul Krugman. Link is here. 

# # #

Sparta Report’s Biggest Fools Of The Year

cartoon credit: joyofjello.com

Sparta Report announced its Winners Of The 2017 Fools Of The Year Contest, determined by over 1,000 of their readers. My kind of contest.

The big winner is NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. The other winners were CNN’s rudest moron, Jim Acosta (includes video of his arrogant and unprofessional meltdown in front of President Trump and President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan; and Hillary “Felonia von Pantsuit” Clinton.

Fun commentary / photos / video are here.

###

Keep the immigration enforcement/no amnesty calls flowing

art credit: beforeitsnews.com

From our friend Steve Salvi at Ohio Jobs & Justice Pac :

The backlash that Pres. Trump has gotten from immigration activists is moving him away from his "I sign anything" stance just days ago. Keep the immigration enforcement/no amnesty calls and social media posts flowing into the White House and US Congress! We're still far from stopping an amnesty let alone any end to chain migration, visa lottery, and funding for border protection.

So here are two recent CTP Action Alerts, re-posted:

#1   Take Action and call the White House

White House comment line: 202-456-1111

What to say: Ask the President to oppose any illegal alien DREAMER amnesty and to immediately end the unconstitutional DACA program.

Need talking points or background before you make your call? The Cleveland Tea Party blog citing Rep. Dave Brat (R-VA) on DACA is here. Our blog citing Mark Steyn, with link to Ann Coulter, both on the priority of stopping illegal immigration, is here. 

This blog also linked to additional facts and background information about the DREAMers amnesty. Click here.

#2   DACA Amnesty Alert from NumbersUSA:

CAN YOU HELP STOP THIS? The bi-partisan Senate proposal is a DACA amnesty that

(1) continues Chain Migration

(2) rejects E-Verify

(3) gives green cards to TPS, and

(4) rewards parents of DACA with lifetime of work permits

In other words, the Senate proposal is the opposite of the House of Representatives DACA bill -- H.R. 4760 -- that NumbersUSA is endorsing.

Your senators need to know that their voters see the so-called balanced senate amnesty deal as a scary joke.

Phone Sen. Sherrod Brown at (202) 224-2315

Phone Sen. Rob Portman at (202) 224-3353

Pick one or more numbered items from above that you oppose and tell the Senators' staffers that is why they should make it clear that they want nothing to do with that "Durbin-Flake amnesty proposal" presented to the White House Thursday.

# # #

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

photo credit: alcalde.texasexes.org

The above pictures monument of Rev Martin Luther King, Jr. is at the University of Texas; it was installed in 1999. It captures the inspiration of the man. 

Then there is the The Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial monument in DC, which was dedicated in 2011. At that time, blogger Aaron Worthing at patterico’s pontifications had this to say:

However, there has been controversy over the choice of Lei Yixin, a 57-year-old master sculptor from Changsha in Hunan province, to carry out the work. Critics have openly asked why a black, or at least an American, artist was not chosen and even remarked that Dr King appears slightly Asian in Mr Lei’s rendering.

And of course the actual work was mainly outsourced:

Mr Lei, who has in the past carved two statues of Mao Tse-tung, one of which stands in the former garden of Mao Anqing, the Chinese leader’s son, carried out almost all of the work in Changsha.

More than 150 granite blocks, weighing some 1,600 tons, were then shipped from Xiamen to the port of Baltimore, and reassembled by a team of 100 workmen, including ten Chinese stone masons brought over specifically for the project.

Personally, I think to focus on the ethnicity of the man kind of misses the point of Dr. King’s legacy.  If the best sculptor doesn’t happen to be black, what of it?

Wanting to have it made in America isn’t wrong, however, but let me posit this.  If it should be a source of national pride for the Chinese that one of their own made this, then perhaps it will encourage the Chinese to learn more about the man.  They will learn in his belief in freedom, and equality of opportunity.  They will learn of his courage, and he will tell them forthrightly from the grave that it was his faith that gave him that courage.  Is that such a bad thing?  It seems the Chinese could use some of his philosophy.

So my only objection is, well…  look at it.

Photo credit: AP via Patterico’s Pontifications

The monument is intended to honor a great American, but instead it brings to mind the role of cultural Marxism in expressions of art, architectures, etc., and, in this case, statuary. Jay’s Analysis has a summary of that school of expression:

It is a frequently misunderstood notion that "modern" and "abstract" art was an organic development that arose from grassroots battles against "oppression" and the "folk art" of the lower classes. In fact, ugly, degenerate art arose from Soviet and communist circles as a means to attack aesthetic beauty. I often remark that "Bauhaus" architecture is communist to the surprise of listeners, but the facts are, "modern art" is almost wholly a communist and Soviet invention of weaponized culture. To understand this, one must look at the Frankfurt School of Marxism, tasked primarily with social engineering and destroying culture.

Weaponized culture was a key tool for destroying the West's social values and social structure. This is also true of the modern transformations of "art" into its own internal nihilist critique of meaning itself  . . .

It’s in the same family as what Olivia Mull described as “Brutalist buildings” in London. Big, clunky, and just plain ugly. Well, that's my take, anyway.

Here’s a link to photos of two dozen monuments to the Reverend. Most of them strike me as a more appropriate tribute to Rev. Martin Luther King than the one in DC.

Here's the background on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

# # #

Could the false alarm in Hawaii happen here?

NORAD provides airspace surveillance to protect all states in the lower 48, including Ohio. But like Hawaii, Ohio also has its own Emergency Management Agency.

RIck Moran at American Thinker reports:

The false alert yesterday that informed Hawaiians a missile was inbound and told for residents to seek shelter was caused by an employee of the Emergency Management Agency pushing "the wrong button" during a shift change.

. . .

It should be noted that some empty headed leftists are blaming Trump for the SNAFU, but that's just ignorant. The [Hawaii] EMA is wholly a state agency and the responsibility for issuing alerts rests completely with the state government.

Those of us in Ohio probably don’t feel as vulnerable as Hawaiians to incoming missile attacks, but Moran raised the point:

Today, I have no doubt that the other 49 states in the nation are looking at their notification systems under a microscope. But what should they look for? What happened in Hawaii?

. . .

Hawaii says the alert was sent out because of a mistake made by an employee. Currently, we have no reason to doubt that explanation. But would Hawaii - or any state - announce to the public that the system had been hacked and the entire EMA system was vulnerable to intrusion?

As in, hacked by the Russians?

Seriously, the Ohio Emergency Management Agency’s website’s most recent postings concern extreme weather alerts and information. It has a page with information about the three nuclear power plants constructed in Ohio. The only other reference to anything “nuclear” at the website is a link to the “Center for Rad/Nuc Training at the Nevada National Security Site Program,” so the agency does not appear to have incoming nuclear missiles or improvised nuclear terror attacks on its priority lists. Still, those potential events could be covered by The EMA Watch Office:

The Ohio EMA Watch Office is one of the newest branches of the agency and is a key component of the state emergency management system. This office aims to help facilitate a quicker, more informed decision-making process for the preparation for, and response to hazards and incidents impacting Ohio. 

Just FYI.

# # #

Trump craziness

Glenn McCoy cartoon via trump-conservative.com

Last week, Conrad Black wrote a column on the Trump presidency and the continuing temper tantrums on the left. It was published by the New York Sun with the colorful title “Trump’s Foes Beat Retreat To a Rat-Infested Trench And Wave 25th Amendment.” Mr. Black contrasted Michael Wolff’s recent “demonography” [Fire and Fury] and concomitant media pronouncements concerning Trump’s mental incapacity, with President Trump’s negotiations with members of Congress about illegal immigration – live in front of the TV cameras. Mr. Black’s column concludes:

To appreciate what has happened, a little perspective is needed: Mr. Trump’s candidacy was a joke; then he was unelectable, then his election could be invalidated, then he could be impeached, and then he could be removed for past harassment of women, or violating the Logan Act, or obstruction of justice, and now mental incapacity.

Donald Trump is a strange cat and an acquired taste, but he is one of the most vivid, and one of the most astoundingly successful figures of American history. I predict that a year from now, David Brooks and Bret Stephens will be at least closet supporters, even if they have socio-cultural clothespins on their noses.

Black’s column is here. And in related comments on social media about how crazy Trump is: 

             The people calling Trump “mentally ill”:

·         Dress like genitalia to protest Trump [see below: Eye Bleach caution alert]

·         Scream at the sky

·         Think there are 63 genders

·         Think that cutting off your genitalia is normal

·         Need “safe spaces” to protect their feelings

Photograph credit: dailywire.com

# # #

Did Trump even say that bad word?

image credit: uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com

Josh Dawsey at the Washington Post reports on Trump's offensive, obscene, racist remarks in a meeting with some Senators:

. . . according to several people briefed on the meeting.

“Why are we having all these people from $#!+hole countries come here?” Trump said, according to these people, referring to countries mentioned by the lawmakers.

Cue: media freak out. But did Trump actually say that? According to Jim Treacher’s brief analysis at PJ Media:

Take a closer look at Dawsey's construction there. He got this from "several people briefed on the meeting." Oh, okay. So these people, whose names we do not know, were told that Trump said this bad word by somebody who was actually in the room at the time. We're getting it third-hand.

So, who are these unnamed people? Any hints? MSNBC's Kyle Griffin gives us one.

NBC News has confirmed Trump's "$#!+hole countries" remark with a Democratic aide briefed on the meeting.

So it's been confirmed by... a Democrat. Who wasn't even in the room.

Hey, what more proof do you need?

As Treacher agrees, maybe Trump said it. Or maybe it’s Fake News, in compliance with the new standard: “If it rings true, it is true.”  

# # #