No — the GOP's not playing the Trump-psych game and other comments
Foreign desk: Helping Iran’s People Against Kleptocrats
Iranian protesters so quickly turned their ire on Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, writes Bret Stephens at The New York Times, because “they know better than most how thoroughly he’s fleecing them.” Example: Setad, a supposedly charitable organization run by Khamenei, was revealed by a Reuters investigation to have amassed its $95 billion empire by seizing Iranians’ property. And it’s not the only such slush fund. America, then, should publish the details about the mullahs’ stolen assets and ensure “ordinary Iranians learn about them, one scandalous disclosure at a time.” That idea comes from the Hudson Institute’s Kenneth Weinstein. Another idea, Stephens says, is one proposed by Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies: “Put Setad, along with its scores of front companies and subsidiaries, under U.S. sanctions for corruption.”
From the right: GOP Not Playing Dems’ ‘Psych’ Game
Politico dropped a bombshell report last week that more than a dozen senators “attended private briefings in early December with a Yale psychiatry professor to discuss [President] Trump’s mental health,” notes Haley Byrd at The Weekly Standard. But the most interesting detail was that one of the senators was a Republican, according to the prof, Bandy Lee. Who was it? Byrd investigated and found out that, essentially, it was no one — Lee bumped into a GOP senator at some point while walking the halls of the Capitol and tried to make her case against the president’s mental fitness, but was rebuffed. “It was accidental,” Lee told Byrd, putting an end to Politico’s salacious insinuation of a bipartisan rebellion against Trump over his sanity.
Culture file: ‘Star Wars’ Changed Toy Industry Forever
At the Daily Beast, Melissa Leon reports on the revelations in a new Netflix documentary about how “Star Wars” toys “revolutionized” the industry. Until George Lucas came along, “a movie had never successfully launched a toy line.” Yet Lucas wanted the toys to be nearly ready for the release of the first film. Toymakers all turned down the studio except “Kenner Products, a scrappy toy company” which “happened to employ a few sci-fi fans.” The deal was a massive coup for Kenner: “For every dollar sold on Kenner’s Star Wars toys, Lucas and Fox split only a nickel.” A year after “Star Wars” was released and became insanely popular, “industry-wide toy sales went up eight percent in the frenzy; Kenner sales skyrocketed by forty.” Toys were never the same.
Conservative take: Did Steele Lie to the FBI?
GOP Sens. Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham sent a letter referring Christopher Steele — the ex-spy behind the anti-Trump dossier — to the Justice Department for investigation over possible false statements. Confusion reigned over what this meant. At the Washington Examiner, Byron York sorts it out. Steele hasn’t talked to the congressional committees investigating collusion, so this can’t be about possible false statements under oath. Nor will Grassley and Graham know what Steele told Bob Mueller’s prosecutorial team, so it’s not about that. “The answer is that Steele talked — and talked a lot — to the FBI,” starting in summer 2016. He was also working for the oppo research firm Fusion GPS, briefing reporters on his findings. Did his statements conflict? Because “it’s simply a criminal act to knowingly make a false statement to the FBI.”
Campaign trail: Dems Claim Collusion in Fear of Base
Democrats’ collusion obsession is their party’s version of the GOP’s Benghazi mania, argues Ed Rogers at The Washington Post: “Vladimir Putin is now baked into the Democratic psyche. No matter what special counsel Robert S. Mueller III finds, Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media will never accept that Trump didn’t collude with the Russians.” Evidence is irrelevant, Rogers says: The electeds don’t dare challenge their voters’ faith: “Just as it would have been heresy for a Republican to admit that Hillary was not to blame for Benghazi, Democrats are now in a position where they will draw the ire of the party’s most zealous members and risk primary challenges from the left if they question the certainty of Trump’s collusion with Russia.”
— Compiled by Seth Mandel
https://nypost.com/2018/01/07/no-the-gops-not-playing-the-trump-psych-game-and-other-comments/
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