NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The GOP’s Path Out of the Doldrums: Govern The cure for Democratic nonsense is Republican substance. By Deroy Murdock

Posted By on May 20th, 2017

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s appointment on Wednesday likely marks the nadir in the spring of the Republicans’ discontent. The GOP has failed to repel the Democrats’ relentless, evidence-free insistence that President Donald J. Trump is Vladimir Putin’s puppet. Left-wing journalists and activists constantly bemoan Trump’s every statement and action, including — literally — his ice-cream consumption. Rather than resist, self-enfeebled Republicans are adrift at sea.

How can Republicans escape these doldrums? Govern.

Among any president’s greatest strengths is the power to change the subject. President Trump should change the subject daily, from the Left’s obsession du jour back to his agenda. He should rally Americans across the country to pressure Congress to approve his program. Trump will need to spend time in Washington to corral Republicans behind key legislation and to welcome foreign leaders to the White House, in all its majesty. Beyond that, however, policy-driven road trips will benefit Trump, his priorities, and the nation.

After he returns from his first overseas presidential voyage on May 27, Trump should escape the Potomac’s fever swamp, early and often.

He should visit Obamacare’s victims and let them tell their stories as White House correspondents capture their pain.

He should tour businesses and work sites and let entrepreneurs forecast how many more jobs they could create with a 15 percent corporate tax.

He should inspect the southern “border” and let locals describe the horror of illegal aliens, drug smugglers, and unidentified Middle Easterners trespassing across their property and heading north into the American homeland without permission.

Trump should call on the coal patch, where Americans whom Obama and Hillary disdain are returning to work now that Trump has ended the War on Coal. Let miners who are enjoying signing bonuses tell traveling network news crews what it’s like to regain their dignity rather than endure Democratic scorn.

Trump also should remember that personnel is policy. He needs to get much busier naming energetic conservatives and free-marketeers to fill almost 4,000 federal sub-cabinet and agency-level vacancies. Also, he recently nominated ten well-received candidates for federal judgeships. Great start! That leaves just 119 judicial slots to fill.

Trump needs to get much busier naming energetic conservatives and free-marketeers to fill almost 4,000 federal sub-cabinet and agency-level vacancies.

For its part, Congress should cancel its intense vacation schedule and spend this summer enacting Trump’s agenda.

The Senate must shift out of first gear and confirm Trump’s executive-branch and judicial nominees. It should work morning, noon, and night to do so. Fill the Senate water coolers with Red Bull!

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The President’s Power to End a Criminal Investigation It is not prosecutable obstruction, but it can be abused. By Andrew C. McCarthy —

Posted By on May 20th, 2017

According to a portion of a memorandum the New York Times has reported on but not seen, President Trump told then–FBI director James Comey, “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go” — an apparent reference to the FBI’s criminal investigation of retired general Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national-security adviser. The president is said to have made this remark in a private meeting with Comey at the White House on February 14 — the day after Flynn resigned under pressure.

The Times report has the predominantly anti-Trump media in whirling-dervish mode, leaping to the conclusion that the president is guilty of obstructing justice. As I’ve countered, this is not just premature, it is wrong.

The president has denied appealing to Comey on Flynn’s behalf. Trump denials have a way of, um, evolving, but even if we assume that this snippet of conversation happened just as the Times alleges, there would be no prosecutable obstruction case. On its face, the statement is an expression of hope; it does not amount to a corrupt undermining of the truth-seeking function of an FBI investigation. Comey, a highly experienced former prosecutor and investigator, knows the law of obstruction cold. He clearly did not perceive himself to have been impeded — he neither resigned nor reported a crime up or down his chain of command. In Senate testimony on May 3 — i.e., nearly three months after the St. Valentine’s Day chat with Trump — Comey averred that never in his experience had the FBI been instructed to drop an investigation for political reasons. Trump, ever his own worst enemy, has stirred the pot with the timing and conflicting explanations of his May 9 firing of Comey, but a president does not need a reason to fire an FBI director. Trump’s rationale may have had both worthy and unworthy elements, but the decision was his to make, and even ardent Russia-conspiracy theorists are apt to doubt that he did it over Flynn. More to the point, neither Trump’s alleged remark nor Comey’s firing has had any apparent effect on the Flynn investigation, which has continued (a grand jury in Virginia has issued subpoenas).

So, what we currently know falls woefully short of a prosecutable obstruction offense, even if we stipulate that Trump created a situation that was awkward and inappropriate.

But should we so stipulate?

I ask because I have been highlighting the fact that, on its face, Trump’s statement was not an order that the Flynn investigation be closed. Yet, to assert this fact is to raise an important question: If Trump had ordered Comey to close the investigation, would that have amounted to obstruction of justice?

To hear Democrats and other Trump detractors tell it, there are only two possible answers: “Of course” and “How could you ask such a stupid question?” In reality, it is not so cut and dried.

In our constitutional system, police powers are executive powers. They may not be wielded by any other branch of the federal government. This is why, to take a topical example, Robert Mueller, the newly appointed “special counsel” who has taken over the so-called Russia investigation (which includes the Flynn probe), is not an “independent counsel” — he answers to the president and reports to Justice Department leadership.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Gender Obsessed West Sets Itself Up for the Rise of Islam by Giulio Meotti

Posted By on May 20th, 2017

French authorities imposed on students ridiculous books such as Daddy Wears a Dress. It would have been comical if the following years would not have been so tragic. What, in fact, wrecked these French illusions was Islamic terrorism.

The only enemy these French élites knew were patriarchal privileges, since for them “domination” comes only from the white male Europeans.

Obsession with gender is a convenient distraction to avoid facing matters that are more difficult and less pleasant. If the West will not commit itself to preserving Western societies and values, it will fall. And its extraordinary progress will be blanketed over by darkness, along with all those gender rights.

Welcome to the progressive “next frontier of ‘liberation'”, where the most urgent question in Western democracies is “genderism”.

North Carolina was subjected to a year of being boycotted, until it withdrew its transgender bathroom law. Last month, the National Union of Teachers in Great Britain asked the government to teach children as young as two new transgender theories. New York recently presented the first “trans-doll”. American universities are wracked with hysteria over the correct use of neutral pronouns. Even National Geographic, instead of writing about lions and elephants, started covering the “Gender Revolution”. One of the first announcements of Emmanuel Macron, as the French President-elect, was that he would appoint officials from a “gender equal” list.

(Image source: Sara D. Davis/Getty Images)

What does it mean that this gender mania is permeating every corner of Western societies and culture? According to Camille Paglia, the contrarian feminist, it is a sign of the decline of Western civilization. In her new book, Free Women, Free Men, she writes:

“Civilizations have gone through recurrent cycles. Extravaganzas of gender experimentation sometimes precede cultural collapse, as they certainly did in Weimar Germany. Now as then, there are forces aligning outside the borders, scattered fanatical hordes where the cult of heroic masculinity still has tremendous force”.

She then asks:

“How has it happened that so many of today’s most daring and radical young people now define themselves by sexual identity alone? There has been a collapse of perspective here that will surely have mixed consequences for our art and culture and that may perhaps undermine the ability of Western societies to understand or react to the vehemently contrary beliefs of others who do not wish us well. Transgender phenomena multiply and spread in ‘late’ phases of culture, as religious, political, and family traditions weaken and civilizations begin to decline”.

It is not a coincidence that this obsession with gender grew out of Western culture during the 1990s, the decade of peace and prosperity before 9/11. The decade was free of any existential angst, consumed by the Monica Lewinski scandal and dominated by Francis Fukuyama’s “End of History”. According to Rusty Reno, editor of First Things, gender ideology is a symbol of our epoch of “weakening”, pointing to a globalized future “governed by the hearth gods of health, wealth, and pleasure”. The high priests of this ideology, however, did not take into account the rise of radical Islam.

Before the French cities of Paris, Nice and Rouen came under the assault of jihadist groups, the French Socialist government had just one cultural priority: the “ABC of gender equality”. The name came from a controversial program that France’s women’s rights minister, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, had launched in 500 schools.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Should America Underwrite Palestinian Terror? By Abe Katsman

Posted By on May 20th, 2017

It is bad enough that the blood of American and Israeli victims of Palestinian terror is so cheap; it is outrageous that it is subsidized.

But it is unconscionable that the shedding of American and Israeli blood through Palestinian terror is subsidized with U.S. tax dollars. Yet, unbelievably, the Congressional attempt to rectify this situation through the Taylor Force Act has run into opposition.

If that sounds implausible, consider some context. Under the 1993 Oslo Accords, Israel made stunning concessions to the Palestine Liberation Organization, then led by Yasser Arafat. Israel allowed the PLO to establish the Palestinian Authority, governing the vast majority of Palestinians. In exchange, Israel was to receive peace: the Palestinians committed to permanently abandon the goal of destroying Israel, and to fight terrorism.

The world (including the U.S.) has since showered the PA with billions of aid dollars. But rather than pursue actual peace or build a functioning economy, the PA has invested heavily in systemic demonization of Israel and of Jews. For 24 years, the PA has bombarded its population with anti-Semitic, anti-coexistence, pro-“liberation”, and pro-terror propaganda and incitement. It is everywhere, infecting children’s books and TV programming, schoolrooms, textbooks, summer camps, mosques, broadcasts, and newspapers. Terrorists are heroes and role models. Streets, parks, schools and even soccer tournaments are named in honor of the most murderous of them.

It also infects bank accounts. The most explicit form that the PA’s pro-terror policy takes is payment to terrorists and their families. The PA has codified laws granting regular payments to “anyone incarcerated in [Israel’s] prisons for his participation in the struggle against the occupation.” Under PA law, terrorists are “a fighting sector and an integral part of the fabric of Arab Palestinian society.”

In this so-called “pay-to-slay” system, the PA provides convicted terrorists and their families with substantial salary and health benefits, free tuition, and, for those sentenced to five or more years, a guaranteed government job upon release from prison. Murderers “earn” over $40,000 per year. Longer terror sentences and greater crimes qualify for higher salaries and positions. The families of “martyrs” receive additional large payments and benefits.

These payments amount to over $300 million per year — nearly 10% of the entire PA budget. As it happens, U.S. payments to the Palestinians during the Obama era averaged $400 million per year ($363 million last year). Is there a more obscene use of American tax dollars?

The PA may not know how to increase GDP, but it has been wildly successful at cultivating a rabidly anti-Israel/anti-Jewish population. (Not to mention anti-American: Palestinians danced in the streets on 9/11.) The “peace” that Israel actually received from the peace process has included a never-ending stream of thousands of attempted Palestinian terror attacks against Israeli targets. Since Oslo, Palestinian attacks have killed over 1,600 Israelis, and wounded some 9,000. (As a fraction of the population, that would be the equivalent of approximately 64,000 American dead — equal to suffering a 9/11 attack every year — and 360,000 wounded.)

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Dilbert’s Perspective on the Muslim Invasion By Eileen F. Toplansky

Posted By on May 20th, 2017

In 1963, President Kennedy spoke to members of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. Kennedy asserted that “what makes editorial cartooning such a wonder” is the ability to “entertain and instruct us … and … place in one picture a story and a message and do it with impact and conviction and humor and passion – all that … makes [editorial cartoonists] the most exceptional commentators on the American scene.”

According to Randall P. Harrison, “there are a handful of basic techniques which the cartoonist manipulates to create a symbolic world of make-believe.” The first process, known as leveling, is when “the cartoonist radically ‘levels’ what we usually see in our perceptual field thus creating a cartoon which is 2-dimensional rather than 3-dimensional.” Then there is “sharpening,” where “some items drop out so that the remaining items gather in importance.” Thus, “[a]s a cartoon body shrinks, the head expands. As wrinkles and minor features drop out, the expressive features of eyes, mouth and brows (features that move and are therefore the most informative in the human face) become more prominent.” And, finally, “the cartoonist assimilates through exaggeration and interpolation so that the fantasy, while still make-believe, ‘makes sense’ for the reader.”

But the true art of the cartoon figure is centered on the “thought balloon and the speech balloon.”

This is why Dilbert’s creator, Scott Adams, is a refreshing rebuke to those who cannot abide common sense and logic. James Delingpole explains how the latest Dilbert strip is “causing liberal heads to explode.” Concerning global warming, Adams “invites a climate scientist to explain the risk of climate change to the company.” The expert (in a white coat, of course) patiently explains how scientists “put that data into dozens of different climate models and ignore the ones that look wrong[.]” And “then [the scientists] take that output and run it through long-term economic models of the sort that have never been right.” Dilbert innocently asks, “What if I don’t trust the economic models” and is instantly reproached with “[w]ho hired the science denier?”

At his own blog, Adams asks, “[I]f scientists can make climate prediction models that are reliable (or so they tell us), why can’t they do the same with Muslim immigration predictions?” Thus:

Predicting the average temperature on Earth ten years from now is hard. There are too many variables. But predicting the outcome of immigration policies probably involves far fewer variables. All we need to do is look at other countries that experienced lots of Muslim immigration and subtract out the countries that reversed the trend with military force[.]

A good immigration prediction model would find the ‘tipping point’ where the percentage of Islamic population nearly guarantees the entire country will become Muslim in the long run. Is that 10% or 65%? I have no idea.

Suppose I said to you that 20% Islamic population will guarantee that eventually – perhaps in a hundred years or more – the country will have a dominant Islamic culture, with all that implies for women and the LGBTQ community.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

A Republican Survival Strategy The best defense against Trump scandals is to pile up policy victories.

Posted By on May 20th, 2017

Republicans in Congress can’t control President Trump’s rolling controversies, but they are getting plenty of bad advice on how to handle them. Democrats and Never Trumpers agree that the GOP should denounce Mr. Trump, try to remove him from office, and if that fails wait for the Pelosi Democratic Congress to arrive in 2018. This is supposed to be requisite punishment for trying to work with a duly elected if deeply flawed President.

We trust Republicans will reject this counsel of suicide, because there is a better way: Get on with passing the agenda they campaigned on. The Trump investigations will proceed at the same time, and Republicans can respond to new facts as they develop. Whatever happens on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, Republicans have an obligation to fulfill their reform mandate while they still have the political power to do so.
***This has the added advantage of being good for the country. The U.S. has struggled with subpar economic growth for more than a decade, and Republicans won in part because they said they’d do better.
Tax reform and deregulation are prime opportunities to unlock the growth and business investment that increase middle-class incomes. On Obama Care, the GOP can provide relief from surging insurance premiums and diminished choices by replacing the failing entitlement with a more market-based system.

Confirming conservative judges would correct for President Obama’s progressive tilt on the federal bench and perhaps restrain the runaway administrative state. And rebuilding the military is crucial to U.S. security in a world of increasing threats.

Going on policy offense is also the best defensive politics. Democrats want to talk about Mr. Trump all the time because they know this gives the public the impression that nothing else is happening in Washington. Paralysis is their strategy.

If Republicans start to move on policy, they automatically change at least some of the political conversation away from Mr. Trump. Debating tax cuts sure beats discussing Michael Flynn. Democrats would have no choice but to respond on the issues, and even the media would have to cover the tax and health debates. OK, maybe not the media, but that would also mean less relentless opposition on policy.

Speed is also increasingly vital as Mr. Trump’s difficulties mount. Perhaps he’ll recover if the Russia charges are overblown, but the news could also get worse and the media will play up every detail as potential impeachment fodder. Republicans can’t wait for Mr. Trump’s approval rating to rise.

Health care and tax reform would ideally both pass this year so their impact will be visible in 2018. The tax cut should be effective immediately so it doesn’t delay investment decisions as businesses wait for lower rates to kick in later; no phase-ins as with the 2001 George W. Bush tax cut.

Republicans also have to assume they’ll contest next year’s midterms with an unpopular President and a Democratic base eager to repudiate him by retaking Congress. Republicans are bound to suffer some collateral damage if the Trump scandals are still florid, but that’s all the more reason to have something else to talk about. The best defense against scandal by association with Mr. Trump is to point to accomplishments that Republicans and independents will support. That’s also the only way to get enough GOP voters to the polls.

Democrats and the Never Trumpers will continue to berate Republicans for not being sufficiently anti-Trump, but Republicans shouldn’t apologize for trying to work with a GOP President on shared goals. His character flaws aren’t theirs. Republicans in Congress ran on their own agenda, and House Republicans won millions of more votes than Mr. Trump did. They have every right to follow through on that agenda.

It would certainly help if Mr. Trump behaved better and controlled himself, but Republicans can’t count on that. Their best option is to plow ahead anyway and present Mr. Trump with legislation to sign. That’s what Democrats did when they controlled Congress while they investigated Richard Nixon, and they piled up significant policy wins.

No one knows how the various Trump investigations will play out, but Republicans can adapt and criticize or defend as new facts arise. Whatever happens, they’ll be in a stronger position if they don’t squander their current majorities as Democrats hope they will.

FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

U.S. Embassy Relocation Law does not recognize Jerusalem as part of Israel by David Bedein –

Posted By on May 20th, 2017

There is a fundamental misunderstanding, which is that if the US recognizes Jerusalem as capital of Israel, that would mean that the US recognizes Jerusalem as part of Israel.

However, the US embassy relocation legislation does not negate the status of Jerusalem’s status as a Corpus Separatum (Latin for “separated body”) as a term used to describe Jerusalem area in the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine. According to that plan, still supported by the US, the city would be placed under international rule as part of any final resolution of the Middle East state of affairs..

As a journalist, I covered events in the US capitol when Congress passed the US embassy Jerusalem relocation bill in October 1995, also known as the “Jerusalem Embassy and Recognition Act”.

There were expectations at the time that the embassy move would mean hat the US would renounce its position, adopted in 1948, that Jerusalem was not to be recognized as a part of Israel and that Jerusalem must be an international zone.

However, the final version of the Jerusalem Embassy and Recognition Act removed all explicit references to Jerusalem as “part of Israel” , without mention that Jerusalem would remain the exclusive capital of Israel.

The late Faisal Husseini , who then headed the PLO Jerusalem committee, was present in Washington at the time , as was Yossi Beilin, then deputy foreign minister of Israel –

Both Husseini and Beilin endorsed the wording of Jerusalem Embassy and Recognition Act in 1995, as it was passed into law, which , as enacted, stated:

(1) Jerusalem should remain an undivided city in which the rights of every ethnic and religious group are protected.

(2) Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of Israel.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Professor Banned Republican Club from Public Women’s History Month Event The professor cited an ‘expectation that this is a safe space event.’ By Katherine Timpf

Posted By on May 19th, 2017

A professor at Orange Coast College in California banned the school’s Republican Club from attending a public African American/Women’s roundtable discussion in March — apparently over “safe space” concerns.

Jessica Alabi, a sociology professor, apparently e-mailed three campus officials announcing that she would not allow the students to attend. The e-mail, a copy of which was obtained by the Washington Examiner, stated:

Hi Kevin. I just told the Republican club that they could not come to the Curl Talk event. This event is an African American / Women’s round table discussion. I asked Vincent why was he doing this and I was very upset. He brought five people who kept saying that they were told that they could come to women’s history month events.

I just want everyone to be advised that the African American female students had and still have an expectation that this is a safe space event. If the college will not stand up to the Republican club, I have decided to stand up for myself and other students. Just wanted to keep you informed.

Yes, that’s right. Alabi considers banning students from a public event to be “standing up” for herself. Sorry, Alibi, but that’s not called “standing up for yourself;” it’s called “being a totalitarian nightmare.”

Thankfully, OCC agrees with this logic — the Washington Examiner reports that OCC president Dennis Harkins spoke with Alabi and informed her that she had no right to ban students from the event.

The club members, though, said that they didn’t think this conversation would do any good — that Alabi had done this kind of thing in the past and would probably continue to do it again in the future, regardless of what the college president told her. The members issued a letter with the following demands to stop such “discrimination” in the future:

1. That an investigation be opened, or reopened, into Jessica Alibi discriminating against Republican club members, and conservative students as self-reported by her via public email to you.


2. That upon the completion of the investigation if it’s proven that Professor Alabi discriminated against students on the basis of their ideological viewpoint and party affiliation that, at the least, she be suspended from teaching for two non-intersession semesters at Orange Coast College, and if possible as well as the Coast Community College District, and be permitted to return after that suspension once she’s attended an in-depth training on student’s rights and preventing viewpoint discrimination, as well as be required to write a one page long apology letter to the OCC Republicans and the members effected [sic] by her actions.


3. That President Harkins write a letter to the Board of Trustees supporting the revision and ratification of board policy changes proposed by our club in early April to the Board of Trustees that would amend current district policies to protect students from discrimination on the basis of political affiliations and ideological beliefs .


4. That Orange Coast College will take measures to start, or improve, training for faculty and staff on how to respect students’ rights, viewpoints, and be trained on what viewpoint discrimination is to prevent future instances.

Now, I don’t know anyone involved in this situation personally, but I’d have to say that I certainly understand the students’ concerns that talking to Alabi won’t do any good. Why? Because I have enough faith in Alabi’s basic intelligence to believe that she already knew that what she was doing was against the rules. After all, the idea that public events are supposed to be open to the public is not exactly a hard concept to understand. In all likelihood, it wasn’t that she didn’t understand what the rules were, it’s that she thought she was above them.

What’s more, the fact that Alabi apparently did this under the guise of protecting “safety” is completely ridiculous. Having the Republican Club at the event may have made some people uncomfortable, but it would not have made anyone unsafe. And there’s a huge difference: We do have a right to be safe in public spaces; we don’t have a right to be comfortable.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Who Will Stand up for Civil Liberties? by Alan M. Dershowitz

Posted By on May 19th, 2017

At a moment in history when the ACLU is quickly becoming a partisan left wing advocacy group that cares more about getting President Trump than protecting due process (see my recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal,) who is standing up for civil liberties?

The short answer is no one. Not the Democrats, who see an opportunity to reap partisan benefit from the appointment of a special counsel to investigate any ties between the Trump campaign/ administration and Russia. Not Republican elected officials who view the appointment as giving them cover. Certainly not the media who are revelling in 24/7 “bombshells.” Not even the White House, which is too busy denying everything to focus on “legal technicalities” that may sound like “guilty man arguments.” Legal technicalities are of course the difference between the rule of law and the iron fist of tyranny. Civil liberties protect us all. As H.L. Mencken used to say: “The trouble about fighting for human freedom is that you have to spend much of your life defending sons of bitches: for oppressive laws are always aimed at them originally, and oppression must be stopped in the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.” History demonstrates that the first casualty of hyper-partisan politics is often civil liberties.

Consider the appointment of the special counsel to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump.” Even if there were such direct links that would not constitute a crime under current federal law. Maybe it should, but prosecutors have no right to investigate matters that should be criminal but are not.

This investigation will be conducted in secret behind closed doors; witnesses will be denied the right to have counsel present during grand jury questioning; they will have no right to offer exculpatory testimony or evidence to the grand jury; inculpatory hearsay evidence will be presented and considered by the grand jury; there will be no presumption of innocence; no requirement of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, only proof sufficient to establish the minimal standard of probable cause. The prosecutor alone will tell the jury what the law is and why they should indict; and the grand jury will do his bidding. As lawyers quip: they will indict a ham sandwich if the prosecutor tells them to. This sounds more like Star Chamber injustice than American justice.

And there is nothing in the constitution that mandates such a kangaroo proceeding. All the Fifth Amendment says is: “no person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury.” The denials of due process come from prosecutorially advocated legislative actions. The founding fathers would be turning over in their graves if they saw what they intended as a shield to protect defendants, turned into a rusty sword designed to place the heavy thumb of the law on the prosecution side of the scale.

FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

McMaster’s Western Wall evasion :Ruthie Blum

Posted By on May 19th, 2017

In a press briefing at the White House on Tuesday — ahead of U.S. President Donald Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia, Israel and Europe — National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster stammered when asked by a journalist if his boss believes that the Western Wall in Jerusalem is “part of Israel.”

“Part of what? I’m sorry,” McMaster replied, leaning forward, as if he had not heard the question. He did, however, answer the first half of the query: about whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be accompanying Trump on his visit to the Jewish holy site in the Israeli capital.

“No … I don’t … no Israel leaders will join President Trump to the Western Wall. He’s going to the Western Wall mainly in connection with the theme to connect with three of the world’s great religions. And to advance, to pay homage to these religious sites that he’s visiting, but also to highlight the theme that we all have to be united against what are really the enemies of all civilized people. And that we have to be joined together in a … in a … with an agenda of, of tolerance and moderation.”

This was his first evasion. His second came a few minutes later, when a different reporter pressed him to answer the original question about whether the U.S. administration considers the Western Wall part of Israel.

“Oh, that sounds like a policy decision, for, for … and you know, uh,” he said, laughing uncomfortably. “And that’s the president’s intention. … The president’s intention is to visit these sites to highlight the need for unity amongst three of the world’s great religions.”

McMaster’s refusal to state that the Western Wall is Israeli was highly significant, as it came in the wake of a scandal surrounding the issue. A day earlier, two officials from the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem — later named as Obama administration leftovers David Berns and Jonathan Shrier — snapped at the Israeli team assisting in the preparations for Trump’s visit for asking about the possibility of Netanyahu and/or local film crews accompanying the president to the holy site, saying: “It’s none of your business. It’s not even part of your responsibility. It’s not your territory. It’s part of the West Bank.”

The outcry from Netanyahu’s office was quick to follow, as was a swift denial from the White House. “The comments about the Western Wall were not authorized communication and they do not represent the position of the United States and certainly not of the president,” a senior administration official told The Times of Israel.