[Cross-posted from European Tribune – where dissent is NOT troll rated!]
[Update-1] Appreciated at the ET community – see comments to my diary there!
What more do we need to say or analyze … woefully disturbed and far off the mark for moral standing. America got its president to destroy the planet … America First! Corrupt … corrupt … corrupt …
Dinesh D’Souza: Why did Trump pardon the provocateur? | BBC News |
Donald Trump announced that he would use his presidential powers to pardon Dinesh D’Souza, who had pleaded guilty in 2014 for campaign finance law violations.
It marks the latest twist in the rise, fall and Trump-facilitated rehabilitation of the Indian-born conservative author, lecturer and all-around political provocateur.
It also is only the latest example of Mr Trump flexing his presidential powers in a way that is markedly different from his predecessors – and could have serious implications for US politics.
Will be giving a Full Pardon to Dinesh D’Souza today. He was treated very unfairly by our government!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 31, 2018
Continued below the fold …
A conservative rising star
D’Souza first gained national prominence in the early 1980s as editor of the Dartmouth Review, a student-run conservative publication at the Ivy League university that was known for sometimes controversial, inflammatory or racially tinged articles and commentary.
After a stint in the Ronald Reagan Administration, D’Souza took a job in 1988 at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, where he wrote a series of best-selling books condemning “political correctness” in academics, offering a somewhat sympathetic view of slavery and racial segregation in the US, and touting the benefits of free-market economics and American exceptionalism.
Obama & his stooges tried to extinguish my American dream & destroy my faith in America. Thank you @realDonaldTrump for fully restoring both
— Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) May 31, 2018
A conviction and a sharper edge
It was the Obama film, he claims, that led Manhattan-based US Attorney Preet Bharara to target him for prosecution in order to curry favour with the Obama administration. He said Bharara, and US Attorney General Eric Holder, were part of an Obama “team of goons” unleashed on him.
Mr Bharara, in a September 2014 statement, said D’Souza had wilfully undermined “the integrity of the campaign finance process” and “had to answer for this crime”.
Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced today that DINESH D’SOUZA was sentenced in Manhattan federal court to five years of probation, with eight months during the first year to be served in a community confinement center, after having pled guilty to violating the federal campaign election law by making illegal contributions to a United States Senate campaign in the names of others. D’SOUZA was sentenced today before U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman.
Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara stated: “Dinesh D’Souza attempted to illegally contribute over $10,000 to a Senate campaign, wilfully undermining the integrity of the campaign finance process. Like many others before him, of all political stripes, he has had to answer for this crime – here with a felony conviction.”
In recent years D’Souza has occasionally attracted attention – and scorn – for controversial statements and tweets.
YOU CAN TAKE THE BOY OUT OF THE GHETTO…Watch this vulgar man show his stuff, while America cowers in embarrassment pic.twitter.com/C9yLG4QoOK
— Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) February 18, 2015
RACIAL AMERICA – SLAVERY IN ANY FORM IS PART OF ITS DNA, ITS FOUNDING! RELIGION PLAYS A ROLE!
○ Founding Fathers and Slaveholders | Smitsonian Institute |
Know your history: Understanding racism in the US | Al Jazeera |
The Pendulum
The history of people of African descent in America – which is to say the history of America – is a pendulum of progress and setbacks, of resilience and retaliation, of protest and backlash. There have been allies and there have been opponents. There have been demagogues, who would divide Americans on the basis of colour and class, and visionaries who would seek to lead us to common ground.
The quest for “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” has been an American aspiration since the Declaration of Independence, but black Americans, Native Americans and women were not at the table in 1776. Forty of the 56 signers owned other people.
A colour-coded map illustrates the 'Free States,' 'Slave Holding States,' and 'Territories Open To Slavery Under The Principle Of Popular Sovereignty,'. It was published in 1898 [Getty Images]
America please stop wrecking other nations, work to make America a better place for ALL of its citizens.
○ US Foreign Policy from Crisis to Crisis