In the heart of the heartland, in Des Moines, Iowa, the Democratic Party has at last found a perfect candidate, the one who finally looks like America. She is white and black and Hispanic, all in proper proportions. She has some remnants of Jewish and Arabic blood, and 0,001% of the Native American one. She is transgender and bisexual, an athlete and Rhodes Scholar to boot. She hates personal pronouns and prefers to go under the name, They. Her last name is Legion.

They Legion is being groomed by DNC for the role of a super challenger who will finally unseat Trump. In order to extend They’s appeal to the alt-media community, the DNC decided to grant me this rare interview. Below are the excerpts. And unfortunately, I don’t have the voice beguiling voice of Terry Gross, but try to imagine that she conducts the interview.

VG: So, They, you had a very rough childhood, but you write in your biography, called, Democratic Hope Dies Last, that what kept you going was listening to NPR. When did you first discover NPR?

They Legion (TL): F..k Trump!

VG: I am sure our listeners would appreciate this comment, but can you please expand. What made you join Democratic Party, and become its intrepid champion?

TL: F..k Trump!

VG: I admire you persistence and determination, something that has been lacking in Democratic Party recently, but please share with our listeners your views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As a person with strong connection to both groups, what steps are you going to take in order to solve the problem?

TL: F..k Trump!

VG: That will surely be a start, but are you not aware that there are other players in the area, like Russians, Chinese, Iranians?  A true leader has to look at the heart of the problem.

TL: F..k Trump!

VG: You seem to pre-empt all my questions. So, our highly intelligent listeners would surely guess the answer to the next question of our interview, related to the tensions with Russia and China, arms race, and the US decision to withdraw from INF treaty?

TL: Yeah, f..k Trump!

VG: I am sure that with the few heart-felt words you managed to whip our listeners into a perfect frenzy. I see them gulping on their chardonnay, rejoicing at hearing of such a perfect candidate right now, and not in the distant future. Still, I am sure there are still some independents, listening to this station, who need an extra push to get convinced. Can you please elaborate on your platform. How, for example, do you plans to elevate poverty and inequality, and other social ills that plague modern America?

Read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2019/01/07/my-interview-with-democratic-candida...

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Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s House has more women, persons of color and LGBT members than any House in history—and fewer white males.

And Thursday, the day Rashida Tlaib was sworn in, her hand on a Quran, our first Palestinian-American congresswoman showed us what we may expect. As a rally of leftists lustily cheered her on, Tlaib roared, “We’re gonna impeach the (expletive deleted)!”

Not only was no apology forthcoming, the host of the New American Leaders event where Tlaib spoke warmly endorsed her gutter language.

Her remarks, said Sayu Bhojwani, “were raw and honest, and came straight from the heart. … a refreshing break from the canned comments our elected leaders usually make. Tlaib spoke…with the fire that so many at our event wanted to hear.”

Sunday, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, 29, the youngest member of the new House, told CNN there is “no question” President Donald Trump is a “racist,” for he regularly uses “historic dog whistles of white supremacy.”

While the Democratic Party is celebrating a diversity that insists that the more women, persons of color and gays in leadership ranks, and the fewer white males, the stronger and better the party, has all of America embraced this as an ideal?

Is there no limit to the ideological, political, religious, racial and ethnic diversity a party and nation can tolerate before it comes apart?

Are Democrats inviting an eventual Balkanization of their party and country?

Consider: this week, Julian Castro, former mayor of San Antonio and HUD secretary, appeared about to enter the race for the Democratic nomination. Castro has seen fellow Texan Robert F. O’Rourke, who goes by the nickname “Beto,” walk off with his Hispanic constituency in a 2018 Senate race. So Castro intends to win it back it in the Democratic primaries.

Former Congressman O’Rourke has been accused of trying to pass himself off as Hispanic, though he is of Irish descent. Elizabeth Warren suffered a near-fatal wound trying to pass herself off as part Cherokee Indian.

In December, Maze Jackson, morning host of a radio station that reaches into Chicago’s black community, said of the mayoral election to succeed Rahm Emanuel, where 21 candidates have filed and a black woman and a Hispanic woman are the front-runners, “This thing is going to get so tribal.”

The Democratic front-runners for the presidential nomination—Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Beto—are all white males. Ranked just below them are black Senators Cory Booker and Kamala Harris.

South Carolina is a state where a large slice of the Democratic vote is African-American —Jesse Jackson won the caucuses in 1988—and Harris and Booker should expect to do well if they do not split that vote.

While racial and ethnic voting is not new, it appears much more intense.

In the last Congress, the 33 U.S. congressional districts with the largest concentrations of black voters almost all elected African-Americans who became members of the racially exclusive Black Caucus.

The first two battles of 2020, Iowa and New Hampshire, are in states predominantly white. Sen. Elizabeth Warren has made several stops in Iowa with impressive turnouts, putting pressure on Biden and Sanders to decide soon.

But while Biden is the front-runner, consider how far away the ex-vice president is from the new realities in his party.

Though millennials are one voting bloc Democrats are courting most, Biden would be the oldest president ever elected. He was in the Senate for a decade before Ocasio-Cortez and Tlaib were even born.

Biden is an old white male in a party that wants the torch passed to women and minorities. He backed George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in voting for the war in Iraq. He backed an anti-crime bill in the early 1990s that incarcerated individuals now gaining release by the latest crime bill. As Judiciary Committee chair, he presided over the hearings that resulted in a vote to elevate Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court.

The Republican Party, even with the never-Trumpers gone, still seems more united than a Democratic Party where the differences are not only ideological but also racial, religious and tribal.

Ocasio-Cortez is backing a hike in the top federal income tax rate to 70 percent. Castro has suggested taking a look at a top rate of 90 percent. How will this sit with the big Democratic donors?

Joe Biden, like Pelosi, was raised Catholic in a Church that taught that homosexuality was immoral and abortion was the killing of the innocent unborn for which the sanction was automatic excommunication.

Today, the Democratic Party celebrates same-sex marriage as social progress and regards abortion as a cherished constitutional right. A floor battle erupted at its 2012 Charlotte, North Carolina, convention over whether God should even be mentioned in the party platform.

Yet Nancy Pelosi did last week denounce as “immoral” the idea of building a security wall along America’s border with Mexico.

No, this is not JFK’s party anymore. That party is long dead.

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever.

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/buchanan/the-coming-balkanizatio...

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Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren has announced her intention to run for president of the United States in 2020 as a champion of middle-class Americans and an adversary of big banks and Wall Street.

Senator Warren, who said she was creating an exploratory committee that will allow her to raise funds and hire staffers, will be among a crowded field of Democrats planning to take on Donald Trump, the New York Post reports.

Read more:

https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/leaders/democrat-elizabeth-warren-a...

read also:

http://yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/35123

Freshly reinstated as the third-most powerful person in the US government, Pelosi assumed an undiplomatic tone as she spoke with MSNBC's Joy Reid about a range of topics, including the Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigation, which has failed to unearth any damning evidence of collusion despite sending an array of Trump associates to jail on unrelated charges.

Following up on the 'Russiagate' probe, Reid asked Pelosi what she makes of the relationship between Putin and Trump.

"I think that the president's relationship with thugs all over the world is appalling," Pelosi responded, receiving a thunderous round of applause from the audience that muffled her next words.

Vladimir Putin, really? Really? I think it's dangerous.

READ MORE: Moscow controls Trump? Nonsense, it’s a ‘witch hunt,’ says Putin’s spokesman

The US and Russian leaders have met twice, first in Helsinki in July and briefly on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in early December. Both meetings attracted quite a lot of attention, stirring up anti-Russian sentiment and rumors of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. In the wake of the Helsinki summit, Democrats and even some hardline Republicans picked on Trump for cozying up to Putin, calling his behavior "nothing short of treasonous." Mainstream media, incensed over the fact that neither Putin nor Trump attacked each other during the final press conference, branded the US leader's performance "disgraceful" and "a political victory for the Kremlin."

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/usa/448160-pelosi-putin-russia-dangerous/

I suppose this glorious stupid lady with the gavel prefers war to détente. Peace is a dirty word in the present mind of Democrats — unless it's achieved by unilateral conquest of all nations by the USA. Then what? 

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy criticized Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi on Friday for not adequately reprimanding a freshman member of her caucus who vulgarly referenced President Donald Trump.

“[Pelosi] is the speaker of the House. She is also the head of the Democratic party. She has a new freshman incoming individual that uses that type of language that has a determination of what she’s going to do with no facts in the basis,” McCarthy told reporters. “I think this is a role as a leader and the speaker to have a conversation with this member on whether she approves of this or not.”

Just hours after Democratic Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib was sworn into Congress on Thursday, she vowed to go after Trump, telling a crowd of progressive supporters that she would help Democrats “impeach the motherf*****r.”

Pelosi responded to the vulgarity noting that why she doesn’t prefer the language that Tlaib used, she is “not in the censorship business.

“We watched a new freshman stand up, use this language, get cheered by their base and we watched a brand new speaker say nothing to her. That is not the body of what we serve in and that action should not stand,” McCarthy continued. “Somebody should stand up to it. She’s the speaker. That individual serves in her caucus. I would hope if she wouldn’t, others would in her caucus would.”

The minority leader also lamented the lack of decorum and commitment to the Americans within the new House majority. (RELATED: America’s First Two Muslim Congresswoman Officially Endorse Anti-Israel Legislation)

“Are the House majority going to be serious about anything? I sat up on the dais, provided the gavel to the new speaker, talked about ways we can work together, laid out firm core principles that we would not compromise on, and then we see this language going forward,” McCarthy said. “They go down into a place that they have a move on that they think others aren’t watching, using foul language, they introduce that they just want to impeach the president over what basis?”

“You know what happened in the last Congress when Republicans were in the majority?” McCarthy continued. “They put a resolution together to actually work with one another. To not use foul language, and they got almost every single freshman to sign on to it. This is the difference with this new Congress and it’s wrong.”

Read more:

https://dailycaller.com/2019/01/04/mccarthy-pelosi-tlaib-trump/?utm_medi...

When the Democrats get too cocky, the world is poorer for it. When the Democrats get in bed with the rich, the world is poorer for it. When the Democrats are in favour of war, invasion and shit, the world is poorer for it. 

The gesture of protest came hours after Davis took to Facebook and called the retraction “not an attack against me but rather against the very spirit of the indivisibility of justice.”

The mass resignation is the latest step in a spiraling conflict that has torn apart a respected civil rights research center, and publicly humiliated Davis, who, at 74, remains an active campaigner and academic.

The scandal started innocuously enough in October, when the Alabama institute gave the former Black Panther and American communist party figurehead its biggest annual accolade, calling her “one of the most globally recognized champions of human rights, giving voice to those who are powerless to speak."

There was no immediate pushback, and a “homecoming” for Birmingham-born Davis, who is professor emeritus at the University of California, was scheduled for next month.

As the date neared, organized dissent began to be heard. Online publication Southern Jewish Life wrote a 1,200-word editorial in December saying “there might be some indigestion at the [award-ceremony] dinner over this year’s honoree,” and detailing her consistent support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, which “isolates Israel.”

On January 2, the Birmingham Holocaust Education Center wrote a letter directly to the civil rights institute, expressing “concern and disappointment” at Davis being honored, while local celebrity, retired four-star Marine General Charles Krulak, an outspoken friend of Israel, also issued a public statement condemning Davis, through a member of the local Jewish community.

On January 4, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute caved in, and issued a vague statement in which it said it had conducted a “closer examination” of Davis’ pronouncements, and concluded that she “does not meet all the criteria on which the award is based.”

This set off a new round of outrage – now from Davis supporters, and from the activist herself.

Saying that she is “passionately opposed to antisemitism” she explained that her work on behalf of “the Palestinian cause” was in its essence the same as the domestic struggle “against police violence, the prison industrial complex, and racism more broadly.”

“I have indeed expressed opposition to policies and practices of the state of Israel, as I express similar opposition to U.S. support for the Israeli occupation of Palestine and to other discriminatory U.S. policies,” she wrote.

David first made national headlines in 1970, when then-California Governor Ronald Reagan successfully demanded that she be terminated for her links with the communist party. She became a national celebrity just months later when guns she purchased were used for a fatal hostage taking by the Black Panthers in Marin County court.

The months-long massive manhunt and arrest of the person who President Richard Nixon called the “dangerous terrorist Angela Davis” was widely covered. During her trial, she was defended as a political prisoner, had an eponymous song written about her by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and became perhaps the second most famous American in the Soviet Union, which campaigned worldwide for her release. She was eventually acquitted.

She subsequently ran for US vice president, and more recently has attracted renewed attention due to racial riots over purported police brutality, and a re-invigoration of the feminist movement under Donald Trump, having been chosen as the honorary co-chair of the Women’s March on Washington two years ago.

She said in her statement that she planned to attend an alternative event in Birmingham next month, organized for her by “those who believe that the movement for civil rights in this moment must include a robust discussion of all of the injustices that surround us.”

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/usa/448507-angela-davis-israel-bds/

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GUTHRIE: “After that infamous Oval Office meeting before the holidays, you reportedly came back, spoke to some members of your caucus, other Democrats and said the wall, it seems like it might be a manhood thing. It might be about his manhood. That’s a statement that’s capable of interpretation. Care to explain what you meant?"
PELOSI: “Well, I wish my members had not repeated that outside the room.”
GUTHRIE: “Do you think he deals with you differently because you’re a woman?"
PELOSI: “I have no idea. We’ll see. Now how he’ll deal with the speaker of the House. And that doesn’t matter whether you’re a woman or not. But I hope he recognizes that a new day has dawned in America.”

Meanwhile 

In a side-by-side comparison, Q13 Fox in Seattle appears to have edited its coverage of Trump’s address, turning the president’s skin color a ludicrous shade of orange. In between sentences, the station seems to have doctored the footage to show Trump sticking out his tongue and licking his lips.

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/usa/448500-trump-fake-video-speech/

...

This is, of course, not the first time that Democratic voters have wildly shifted their “beliefs” based on the party affiliation of the person occupying the Oval Office. The party’s base spent the Bush-Cheney years denouncing war on terror policies, such as assassinations, drones, and Guantánamo as moral atrocities and war crimes, only to suddenly support those policies once they became hallmarks of the Obama presidency.

But what’s happening here is far more insidious. A core ethos of the anti-Trump #Resistance has become militarism, jingoism, and neoconservatism. Trump is frequently attacked by Democrats using longstanding Cold War scripts wielded for decades against them by the far right: Trump is insufficiently belligerent with U.S. enemies; he’s willing to allow the Bad Countries to take over by bringing home U.S. soldiers; his efforts to establish less hostile relations with adversary countries is indicative of weakness or even treason.

At the same time, Democratic policy elites in Washington are once again formally aligning with neoconservatives, even to the point of creating joint foreign policy advocacy groups (a reunion that predated Trump). The leading Democratic Party think tank, the Center for American Progress, donated $200,000 to the neoconservative American Enterprise Instituteand has multilevel alliances with warmongering institutions. By far the most influential liberal media outlet, MSNBC, is stuffed full of former Bush-Cheney officials, security state operatives, and agents, while even the liberal stars are notably hawkish (a decade ago, long before she went as far down the pro-war and Cold Warrior rabbit hole that she now occupies, Rachel Maddow heralded herself as a “national security liberal” who was “all about counterterrorism”).

All of this has resulted in a new generation of Democrats, politically engaged for the first time as a result of fears over Trump, being inculcated with values of militarism and imperialism, trained to view once-discredited, war-loving neocons such as Bill Kristol, Max Boot, and David Frum, and former CIA and FBI leaders as noble experts and trusted voices of conscience. It’s inevitable that all of these trends would produce a party that is increasingly pro-war and militaristic, and polling data now leaves little doubt that this transformation — which will endure long after Trump is gone — is well under way.

Read more:

https://theintercept.com/2019/01/11/as-democratic-elites-reunite-with-ne...

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During an interview with Joe Rogan earlier this week, New York Times columnist Bari Weiss called Hawaii representative and prospective Democratic Party presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard an “Assad toady.” But when challenged on it, Weiss couldn’t define the term or even spell it, much less substantiate the accusation itself.

Weiss, an opinion columnist for the New York Times, went on the radio show The Joe Rogan Experience on Monday to discuss current events, but things got embarrassing when she went in on Gabbard, a progressive Democrat whose foreign policy positions have turned more than a few heads.

​She has "monstrous ideas… she's an Assad toady," Weiss tells Rogan.

When Rogan asks for clarification, she says, "I think that I used that word correctly." She then asks someone off camera to look up what toady means.

"Like toeing the line," Rogan says, "is that what it means?"

"No, I think it's like, uh… " and Weiss drones off without an answer. She then attempts to spell it, and can't even do that. "T-O-A-D-I-E. I think it means what I think it means… "

Rogan then reads the definition: "Toadies. The definition of toadies: A person who flatters or defers to others for self-serving reasons."

"A sycophant. So I did use it right!" Weiss exclaims.

"So she's an Assad sycophant? Is that what you're saying?"

"Yeah, that's, proven — known — about her."

When Rogan asks what Gabbard has said that qualifies her as a sycophant, Weiss replies: "I don't remember the details."

"We probably should say that before we say that about her — we should probably read it, rather, right now, just so we know what she said," Rogan notes.

"I think she's, like, the motherlode of bad ideas," Weiss then says. "I'm pretty positive about that, especially on Assad. But maybe I'm wrong. I don't think I'm wrong."

It seems to us here at Sputnik that such claims should be made with a bit more confidence than this. So let's set the record straight.

Gabbard, who announced her presidential campaign on January 11, has drawn incredible amounts of ire from mainstream Democrats tripping over themselves for war with Syria because in January 2017, Gabbard met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and denounced the opposition rebels in the country's civil war as "terrorists." She has also expressed skepticism about accusations that Assad's government has used chemical weapons during the conflict and spoken out against cruise missile attacks by the US and its allies against the country.

"Initially I hadn't planned on meeting him," Gabbard, an Iraq War veteran, told CNN's Jake Tapper following the meeting. "When the opportunity arose to meet with him, I did so, because I felt it's important that if we profess to truly care about the Syrian people, about their suffering, then we've got to be able to meet with anyone that we need to if there is a possibility that we could achieve peace. And that's 

"I have seen this cost of war firsthand, which is why I fight so hard for peace," Gabbard said. "And that's the reality of the situation that we're facing here. It's why I have urged and continue to urge [US President Donald] Trump to meet with people like Kim Jong Un in North Korea, because we understand what's at stake here. The only alternative to having these kinds of conversations is more war."

Moreover, in a March 2016 speech before Congress, Gabbard called Assad "a brutal dictator," noting that her opposition to what she called a "war bill" was over the legal ramifications that she feared would lead to the overthrow of Assad, which she opposes on anti-interventionist grounds.

"[T]oppling ruthless dictators in the Middle East creates even more human suffering and strengthens our enemy, groups like ISIS and other terrorist organizations, in those countries," Gabbard said at the time.

Gabbard has been thoroughly demonized for her pro-peace views by global liberal media, as Trump has been for his moves to end the war in Syria and avoid another on the Korean Peninsula. For example, The Daily Beast's article announcing her candidacy called Gabbard "Assad's Favorite Democrat" in its headline; a Haaretz headline from last week say she had "Tea With Assad," and the Washington Post has called her "Assad's Mouthpiece in Washington." The UK Independent called her a "defender of dictators."

It's not clear what Weiss had in mind when she called Gabbard a "sycophant" and a "toady," since the congresswoman's rhetoric about Assad has consisted of skepticism and opposition to intervention, and she hasn't hesitated to call the Syrian president a "brutal dictator." What Gabbard's treatment has demonstrated is that a Democrat who steps out of line from the party's pro-regime change agenda in Syria and who condemns Muslim extremists associated with Daesh and al-Qaeda should be prepared to suffer for it in the mainstream media.

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/society/201901231071755360-NYT-Columnist-Calls-G...

Read from top...

See also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsi_Gabbard

An impressive young woman for President of the USA... But the Democrats will shit themselves at the prospect of peace...

Senator Bernie Sanders didn’t run in 2016 to push his bold platform of economic and social justice on America. No, instead his campaign was orchestrated by the Kremlin to divide the left and help Donald Trump take the presidency. At least that’s according to former New York Times columnist, and current Wired editor and Los Angeles Times writer, Virginia Heffernan.

Many of his 2016 supporters, she tweeted on Saturday, were “Kremlin minions.” For evidence, Heffernan relies on indictments against the Russian Internet Research Agency “troll farm” – claims that have never, and will never be proven in court.

...

Better not tell Heffernan that Democratic lobbyist Tony Podesta, Clinton strategist Mark Penn, and John McCain’s 2008 campaign manager Steve Schmidt also lobbied for Yanukovych in the late 2000s.

Better not tell her too that some Americans disagreed with Hillary Clinton’s brand of watery, focus-grouped centrism in 2016. That might be too much for a writer who once described Clinton as “an epochal heroine” who “cannot be faulted, criticized, or analyzed for even one more second.”

In reality, even with the Democratic National Convention secretly rooting for her, Clinton couldn’t match Sanders’ popularity by the end of the 2016 primary campaign. Clinton trailed the socialist Senator in favorability by 14 points, days before she was declared presumptive nominee in June. Indeed, as the DNC got underway and prepared to make her candidacy official, Clinton’s public image was at its lowest point in two decades. These polls were conducted by Gallup, via telephone interviews with real American voters, not Russian bots.

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/usa/449923-bernie-sanders-russian-agent/

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“It is right to get our troops out of Syria,” Senator Elizabeth Warren told Rachel Maddow in early January. That a progressive Democrat would say this to a liberal television host shouldn’t be remarkable.

In 2019, it is.

When President Donald Trump announced in December that he wanted an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, there was more silence and opposition from the Left than approval. The 2016 election’s highest-profile progressive, Senator Bernie Sanders, said virtually nothing at the time. The 2018 midterm election’s Left celeb, former congressman Beto O’Rourke, kept mum too. The 2004 liberal hero, Howard Dean, came out against troop withdrawals, saying they would damage women’s rights in Afghanistan.

The liberal news outlet on which Warren made her statement, MSNBC, which had already been sounding more like Fox News circa 2003, warned that withdrawal from Syria could hurt national security. The left-leaning news channel has even made common cause with Bill Kristol and other neoconservatives in its shared opposition to all things Trump. 

Maddow herself has not only vocally opposed the president’s decision, but has become arguably more popular than ever with liberal viewers by peddling wild-eyed anti-Trump conspiracy theories worthy of Alex Jones. Reacting to one of her cockamamie theories, progressive journalist Glenn Greenwald tweeted, “She is Glenn Beck standing at the chalkboard. Liberals celebrate her (relatively) high ratings as proof that she’s right, but Beck himself proved that nothing produces higher cable ratings than feeding deranged partisans unhinged conspiracy theories that flatter their beliefs.”

The Trump derangement that has so enveloped the Left on everything, including foreign policy, is precisely what makes Democratic presidential candidate Warren’s Syria withdrawal position so noteworthy. One can safely assume that Sanders, O’Rourke, Dean, MSNBC, Maddow, and many of their fellow progressive travelers’ silence on or resistance to troop withdrawal is simply them gauging what their liberal audiences currently want or will accept. Warren could have easily gone either way, succumbing to the emotive demands of the Never Trump mob. She instead opted to stick to the traditional progressive position on undeclared war, even if it meant siding with the president.

Fortunately, she wasn’t alone. A number of liberal Democrats backed Trump’s decision, some almost immediately. Consistent antiwar Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna of California tweeted, “I am glad Donald Trump is withdrawing troops from Syria. Congress never authorized the intervention.” Khanna took flack from Howard Dean for siding with the president.

Congressman and Air Force veteran Ted Lieu of Hawaii said Trump’s decision was “absolutely right” and that he was “pleased that this unauthorized and failed executive branch war in Syria will finally come to an end. Congress never authorized the U.S. to go to war there.” Lieu added, “It was wrong when the Obama Administration took part in unauthorized war actions in Syria without a strategy. It was wrong for the Trump Administration to continue it.” Apparently annoyed with progressives who opposed withdrawal, Lieu even tweeted (emphasis his), “Note to liberals who now support military force in Syria because of the Kurds or Russia or Iran or Turkey or humanitarian reasons: NONE OF THOSE WAR ACTIONS WERE AUTHORIZED BY CONGRESS.”

Among 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls, both potential and announced, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York arguably gave Trump’s Syria decision the most robust endorsement, even saying he should go further. “I think we should be drawing down our troops, not only in Afghanistan but the remainder in Iraq and in Syria,” Gillibrand said on MSNBC. “Then give Congress the opportunity that if they believe we should be in combat missions in any of these countries that we actually file a new authorization for the military use of force.”

Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii initially gave hesitant praise, but then followed with a more full-throated endorsement of Trump’s withdrawal decision. “The hysterical reaction to the decision to withdraw troops from Syria is astonishing & shows just how attached to war some are,” Gabbard tweeted. “Lindsey Graham & others want us to continue our regime change war in Syria and to go to war with Iran. That’s why they’re so upset.”

But there were just as many Democratic presidential contenders who went to bat for forever war. Senators Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, and Kamala Harris have all basically said Trump is reckless in hastily withdrawing from Syria and even Afghanistan, and were relatively quiet when the president made his original announcement in December. In February, as the 2020 primaries began to take shape, Booker and Harris voted against a Senate bill rebuking Trump’s withdrawal plans, while Klobuchar still voted against the president. 

This was less of an open question for Democrats under President Barack Obama. In 2011, the Pew Research Center found that a majority of Americans (56 percent) and an even larger majority of Democrats (67 percent) believed it was time to bring home U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

Former vice president Joe Biden, also a potential 2020 candidate, has said nothing about Trump’s withdrawal decision, but he is known for having even more hawkish impulses than his former boss regarding Syria. Biden’s foreign policy instincts are likely closer to fellow centrist and 2016 neocon favorite Hillary Clinton, who unsurprisingly denounced Trump’s decision as “putting our national security at grave risk.” 

This progressive-centrist split on foreign policy is not unlike the gap seen among Republicans. Just as more conservative and libertarian elements with the Republican Party regularly stake out more antiwar positions than the enduringly hawkish establishment center, it is stauncher progressives like Warren and Gabbard who take traditional left-wing foreign policy stances while the mainstream Democratic establishment grows more hawkish under Trump.

This divide is easy to see in left-wing media. 

Unlike MSNBC and Maddow, there were liberal journalists who supported the U.S. leaving Syria. “For Once, Trump isn’t Wrong,” declared The Nation’s James Carden. “In the end, the years-long US intervention in Syria was illegal under international law, unconstitutional, counterproductive, expensive, and damaging to US national-security interests in the region,” Carden wrote. “On this, Trump is right. His critics are wrong.” 

“Withdrawing Troops from Syria is the Right Thing to Do—Even if Trump Does It,” insisted The Nation’s John Nichols. Targeting hawks of all stripes and particularly Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, Nichols opined, “These guys want congressional oversight for the decision to withdraw troops from a conflict to which those troops were dispatched without the formal congressional authorization that is required by the Constitution?”

Progressive online outlet The Young Turks (TYT) took no prisoners in supporting Trump’s decision. “This is one of the rare situations where I agree with Donald Trump,” TYT host Ana Kasparian said, blasting CNN’s pro-war coverage of the president’s withdrawal decision as more opinion than hard news. TYT’s Cenk Uygur pondered what nefarious reasons might have motivated Trump to withdraw troops, but still concluded, “Having said that, I’m thrilled with the decision. So I don’t care if you call it a ‘loss’ or ‘win’ for Trump…I think we should withdraw from Syria…bottom line on the policy—fantastic, let’s get the hell out of there.”

TYT also took direct aim at MSNBC with a video titled “Trump’s Syria Move EXPOSES Media’s Pro-War Bias.” “In 99 out of 100 cases, I vehemently disagree with and despise the actions of President Trump, but this week he actually did a good thing,” said TYT’s Emma Vigeland in the clip, which showed former Republican strategist and current MSNBC host Nicole Wallace framing Trump’s decision as a boost to ISIS and Russia. That was “from MSNBC,” Vigeland mocked, “not a paragraph from Ann Coulter’s book, because hey—MSNBC viewers watch their programs to get vitriolic, substanceless, hysterical criticisms of Donald Trump, and by God, they’re gonna get it!” 

A few veterans of the Bush-era antiwar movement Left also chimed in. Peace activist group Code Pink reacted to Trump’s decision with, “Interesting how liberals and folks on right gang up on Trump for doing something smart: pulling US troops out of Syria. While pundits don’t like it, polls show most Americans oppose US involvement in Middle East wars.” Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin tweeted, “MSNBC and CNN sound like Republican hawks under Obama. ‘How irresponsible to propose something other than endless war!’ they cry.” Progressive group Peace Action’s Paul Martin said, “The US should not have been in Syria without constitutional authorization by Congress.” 

How this intra-party debate plays out in the Democratic primary and perhaps even the general election will be an important gauge of where the party stands on foreign policy. A Morning Consult/Politico poll from January showed that while a plurality of Americans supported the decision to withdraw from Syria, 59 percent of those who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 opposed it, with 26 percent supporting. Compare this to a whopping 76 percent of Trump voters who support withdrawal. Only 14 percent oppose.

This is an astounding role reversal regarding the stance of both major parties on war and peace. 

This is why prominent Democratic presidential contenders who are antiwar could be crucial in determining the direction of the party. It wouldn’t have been surprising if Elizabeth Warren had showed up on MSNBC to strike a hawkish tone to distinguish herself from Trump. According to more than one poll, the Democratic base is more in line right now with MSNBC and Maddow than old time antiwar progressives.

“Progressives should vigorously oppose efforts by discredited elites to resuscitate their reputations by savaging Trump when he scorns conventional wisdom,” warnsRobert L. Borosage in The Nation, targeting MSNBC for trying to resuscitate Bush-era hawks. But will the Left vigorously oppose? MSNBC and Maddow are apparently too Trump deranged to see their own hypocrisy under this president. How many of today’s liberals, particularly the majority of Clinton voters who oppose Trump’s withdrawal, have their idea of what a good Democrat should believe formed by outlets like MSNBC?

Glenn Greenwald sees the same danger. “All of this has resulted in a new generation of Democrats, politically engaged for the first time as a result of fears over Trump, being inculcated with values of militarism and imperialism, trained to view once-discredited, war-loving neocons such as Bill Kristol, Max Boot, and David Frum, and former CIA and FBI leaders as noble experts and trusted voices of conscience,” Greenwald writes, citing recent polling data on Republicans’ and Democrats’ antiwar flip-flop. “It’s inevitable that all of these trends would produce a party that is increasingly pro-war and militaristic, and polling data now leaves little doubt that this transformation—which will endure long after Trump is gone—is well under way.”

Will this endure? A 2020 victory by a Democratic president who runs against Trump’s troop withdrawals could possibly lead to an even more hawkish party. If Trump is re-elected, a demoralized and increasingly pro-war MSNBC could go nuclear. Then again, a more progressive Democratic nominee could feasibly lead the party in a more antiwar direction, closer to what energized liberals a decade ago during Barack Obama’s ascent. A second-term President Trump could start listening to advisers John Bolton and Mike Pompeo more than Rand Paul, become even more hawkish, and drive the Left to become more dovish in pure partisan reaction.

There is one thing we can count on: the Left’s blind rage toward Trump isn’t going anywhere. That abiding hatred will continue to play an outsized and often illogical role in determining what most Democrats believe about foreign policy.

Jack Hunter is the former political editor of Rare.us and co-authored the 2011 book The Tea Party Goes to Washington with Senator Rand Paul.

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