Scott Morrison should ignore fake news and play his Trump card
The US is showing the West the way forward but the ingrained anti-Americanism of the ABC and the remnants of the once-powerful Fairfax media, now Nine, mean that greater leadership must be shown by the federal Coalition, Piers Akerman writes.
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Talk of impeaching Donald Trump for anything is the ultimate fake news. That’s the word from a New York Uber driver who delivered a non-stop verdict from the city’s La Guardia Airport to a mid-town address.
Cabbies are the first source for correspondents but the Hispanic at the helm of a new Jeep Wrangler offered his verdict without prompting and his world view was supported by others.
His option was certainly tempered by the fact the former special counsel Robert Mueller who Democrats and like-minded Trump haters globally had spent a humiliating day giving testimony to two hearings in Washington.
He appeared confused, at times totally befuddled, disorientated and contradictory. Yet this was the man who wrote the report that the Democratic leadership had pinned its hopes of bringing impeachment proceedings against President Trump.
This was the man whose work had been held up as the gold standard by the New York Times and CNN in the US, and the ABC, and the Channel 9 newspapers, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in Australia.
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This was the man whose aides and assistants have repeatedly been approvingly interviewed and quoted in those organs and on whose accounting President Trump has been roundly condemned by the Left.
And he came across as a bewildered old man though he’s only 74, and left the impression that he wasn’t across the detail of his own report and that in all likelihood it had been cobbled together by his eager young aides in the hope of subsequent preferment in the Democratic Party.
More than 20 times he asked congressmen to repeat their questions, more than 30 times he referred them to his report and nearly 60 times he refused to get into the substance of his findings saying he “can’t” or “won’t”.
So the driver was on top of Washington but he was raring to talk about the nation and the new energy that President Trump has injected into the system that was so moribund when President Barack Obama left office.
With unemployment at just under 5 per cent, he said that anyone who wanted a job could find one.
But he saved his most fulsome remarks for the mayors of the major cities that have been providing sanctuary to illegal immigrants — New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Washington and San Jose.
Almost spitting the word “illegals”, he focused on NYC’s Mayor Bill De Blasio, saying the Left-wing mayor was concentrating on border issues and ignoring basic city needs such as power and potholes.
So bad is Mayor de Blasio that NY police officers are willing to give complete strangers their readings of his character. Mayor de Blasio is under attack for not supporting his men. In his view, the victims are the perpetrators of crime, not those they leave dead or crippled.
His posturing and gamesmanship provide fuel for the worst kind of conspiracy theories and hate speech against officers. Never has a mayor been more disdained by his police.
Politically astute and articulate drivers may be a rarity in Australia but if the handful encountered here is any indication they are not so rare and they have plenty to opine about.
Potholes, police and power is a constant theme and with the city and its five boroughs suffering from blackouts this summer its understandable.
Typically, Mayor de Blasio blames the power company but as realists note if the Greenies in New York State, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Maine permitted new power lines to be run from hydro-electric plants in Canada, there wouldn’t be a power issue. If fracking were permitted in these snowflake states there would be an abundance of natural gas to keep Gotham powered-up.
It’s all depressingly familiar ideological territory.
The US is showing the West the way forward but the ingrained anti-Americanism of the ABC and the remnants of the once-powerful Fairfax media, now Nine, mean that greater leadership must be shown by the federal Coalition.
Donald Trump has shown that ignoring the wealthy elites who can afford air-conditioning, who use taxis and Uber and avoid public transport, and concentrating on Americans who want to work and to support their families pays off politically.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison is enjoying a political honeymoon courtesy of the dysfunctional Labor Party and the hypocritical Greens.
He should cement his government’s lead by paying attention to power and defence and telling the states to take care of their potholes.
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