Why Fleeing ISIS Fighters Are A Huge Problem for Europe and Turkey

In November 2017, the BBC ran a piece about how coalition commanders facilitated the escape of ISIS fighters with their families from Raqqa.

This was not a furtive move, the coalition rented 50 trucks, 13 busses and added to the 7 km long convoy more than a 100 of personal vehicles of ISIS militants.

More ominously, they allowed them to keep their weapons and personal belonging and let their families accompany them. It was a coalition sponsored orderly evacuation.

And most importantly, it was a secret operation.

Great pains were taken to hide it from the world. But the BBC has spoken to dozens of people who were either on the convoy, or observed it, and to the men who negotiated the deal. (...)

The Kurdish-led SDF cleared Raqqa of media. Islamic State’s escape from its base would not be televised.

British and American commanders of the coalition forces and their Kurdish allies in SDF were all in on it. Here is a clip made by SDF troops showing the escape.

When confronted by the BBC with evidence of orderly evacuation, the coalition folks claimed that they had no choice. It was all done by the locals.

“We didn’t want anyone to leave,” says Col Ryan Dillon, spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve, the Western coalition against IS. 

“But this goes to the heart of our strategy, ‘by, with and through’ local leaders on the ground. It comes down to Syrians – they are the ones fighting and dying, they get to make the decisions regarding operations,” he says. 

While a Western officer was present for the negotiations, they didn’t take an “active part” in the discussions.

Moreover, Col. Dillon claimed that only 4 fighters left and they were now in SDF custody.

And SDF maintained that "only a few dozen fighters had been able to leave, all of them locals."

But the actual number is 4,000 people, including families.

BBC could substantiate 250 fighters leaving in the convoy. But in February, the New York Times reported that over 1,000 ISIS militants left Raqqa.

Curiously, the same Col. Dillon who reluctantly acknowledged the operation but downplayed its scope in November 2017, denied in December that any evacuation took place and claimed that some might have slipped through Syrian defenses.

Youtube

In December, Col. Ryan Dillon, the chief spokesman for the American-led military campaign in Iraq and Syria, said in a briefing with Pentagon reporters: “Syrian regime commanders in eastern Syria suggest that ISIS fighters” from the Middle Euphrates River Valley “may have slipped through porous Syrian and Russian defenses to arrive in areas near Damascus.”

And when asked about the much higher number of militants escaping, he conveniently blamed Syrian forces.

Asked late last month by The New York Times about indications that as many as 1,000 fighters and family members had fled the Euphrates River area just in recent days, Colonel Dillon’s command replied in a statement: “We know that the Syrian regime has given ISIS the leeway to travel through their area of operations, but we cannot confirm any alleged incidents or operations that are taking place outside our area of operations.”

Why am I repeating these allegations? For two reasons.

The first one, as the New York Times underlined, these battle-hardened fighters are not running away defeated and spent. They are regrouping in various pockets to get ready for a true insurgency fight.

As many of the fighters flee unfettered to the south and west through Syrian Army lines, some have gone into hiding near Damascus, the Syrian capital, and in the country’s northwest, awaiting orders sent by insurgent leaders on encrypted communications channels.

That means ISIS is far from dead. In fact, their big problem was defending a territory and it never made much sense for a terrorist group to build a country other than my Pipelineistan theory.

Now, they will move around and strike soft targets to terrorize the civilian population.

“The group is transitioning into an underground organization that places more weight on asymmetric tactics, like suicide bombings against soft targets in government-secured areas like Baghdad,” said Otso Iho, a senior analyst at Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Center at IHS Markit in London. 

Mr. Iho cited an attack by two suicide bombers in Baghdad last month that killed three dozen people and injured 90 more. The attack took place in a busy Baghdad square where day laborers gather to look for work.

The second reason for concern is the fact that a lot of these cold-blooded killers are returning to their home countries.

To understand what that implies, let me remind the story of a returning Jihadist. Three and a half years ago, a Turkish man who gave his middle name as Can [pronounced as Jon] told the New York Times the process through which one becomes an ISIS fighter.

After 15 days at a training camp in the Syrian city of Raqqa, the de facto headquarters of the group, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the 27-year-old Can was assigned to a fighting unit. He said he shot two men and participated in a public execution. It was only after he buried a man alive that he was told he had become a full ISIS fighter.

So, in the span of two weeks, he shot two men, killed someone with his hand (possibly a beheading) and buried another one alive.

Think about that for a minute. This is the official regiment to become an ISIS fighter. It was not just him.

We don't even know what he did beyond those two weeks. Or what an ISIS soldier does regularly.

And now he is back in Turkey. Even if you assume that he is a repentant Jihadist (instead of a sleeper cell member) can you imagine him reintegrating into normal life without any issues?

Multiply this case by several thousand and you can see the enormity of the problem.

Of more than 5,000 Europeans who joined those ranks, as many as 1,500 have returned home, including many women and children, and most of the rest are dead or still fighting, according to Gilles de Kerchove, the European Union’s top counterterrorism official.

So far, Turkey leads the list of countries hosting former Jihadists with 900 returnees. And there are hundreds more from Western Europe hiding in the country.

I will make an easy prediction for Turkey. Some of these people will become suicide bombers at critical turns negatively affecting tourism and also the electoral process that is widely expected to take place in the next few months.

Yet, as far as I know no returning militant was placed in custody or checked for criminal activities.

As for Western Europe, I also predict that there will be more "lone wolf" attacks.

Now, some people claimed that all Western European countries need to do is to arrest and prosecute them upon their return. That's easier said than done.

The UK Home Office, for example, disclosed last year that of the 400 British foreign fighters who had returned from Syria and Iraq, only 54 were convicted.

Australia only prosecuted 2 returning fighters.

That's the same numbers for Canada, i.e. 2 fighters.

The Netherlands convicted one woman. "It then set her free."

Belgium also convicted 1 fighter. [Link in Dutch]

What about deradicalization centers you might ask?

Well, there aren't any.

The only one that is still working is the Aarhus institute in Denmark which I praised almost three years ago.

In 2016, France announced the opening of 12 deradicalization centers. The sole institution they opened closed in less than a year and there are no further plans.

Apparently, they thought daily lectures about philosophy and religion might be enough to change these people's mind.

It is as if no one wants to change the inevitable outcome.

Will Trump Use Nuclear Weapons in Non-Nuclear Conflicts: New NPR

Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) is a document that outlines America's policies and positions regarding the size and nature of its nuclear arsenal and conditions under which it could be used.

As you will remember from Cold War days, the overarching nuclear doctrine was Mutually Assured Destruction or MAD for short. The idea was to let both side know that a nuclear war was not winnable: it was just a suicide.

Consequently, both the US and Russian nuclear stockpiles largely consist of multiple hundreds of kiloton warheads (Little boy that was dropped on Hiroshima was a 15 kiloton). Every one of them would cause massive destruction and kill a huge number of people.

The MAD doctrine and the consequent NPR was in line with Bernard Brodie's famous dictum after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“Thus far the chief purpose of our military establishment has been to win wars. From now on its chief purpose must be to avert them.”

The new NPR prepared by the Trump administration is going back to winning wars purpose by introducing three changes.

Low Yield Warheads with Low Collateral Damage

The Trump NPR calls for the development of low yield nuclear weapons which are defined as 20 kiloton or less.

The underlying argument is that America's enemies might think that the US would not use its nuclear weapons in lower level conflicts because of their large scale destructive capacity.

This is intended to address the argument that adversaries might think the United States, out of concern for collateral damage, would hesitate to employ a high-yield nuclear weapon in response to a “lower level” conflict, in which an adversary used a low-yield nuclear device.

In other words, instead of MAD doctrine where the goal is to make sure no nuclear power under any conditions could rationally use nuclear weapons, the new NPR is aiming to facilitate their use in certain conflict situation.

And to do so to win non-nuclear conflicts.

Lower Threshold for Nuclear Weapon Use

Previous NPR are did not specifically address the use of nuclear weapons in a conventional war. Sure, the US never gave up its right to use nuclear weapons in a massive conventional attack but the scenarios previous NPRs envisaged were rather extreme like "Warsaw Pact blitzkrieg through the Fulda Gap during the Cold War or a biological or chemical weapons attack in more recent years."

But, given the military superiority of the US, employing nuclear weapons in a low level non-nuclear conflict would have been both unnecessary and indefensible.

That is no longer the case and the threshold for their use has been lowered and the scope expanded.

While the document strives to maintain “some ambiguity regarding the precise circumstances that might lead to a U.S. nuclear response,” it explicitly states that the United States could employ nuclear weapons in response to “significant non-nuclear strategic attacks.” This includes but is not limited to “attacks on U.S., allied, or partner civilian population or infrastructure.”

In fact, New York Times reported in January that the NPR allows the deployment of nuclear weapons in the case of a massive cyber attack.

But three current and former senior government officials said large cyberattacks against the United States and its interests would be included in the kinds of foreign aggression that could justify a nuclear response — though they stressed there would be other, more conventional options for retaliation.

To say that this is a very dangerous path would be a yuge understatement.

Imagine a scenario where intelligence agencies blame Iran for a large scale blackout. What might the Orange Man do?

There are already talks of a pre-emptive nuclear attack on North Korea, the so called "bloody nose" option.

Nuclear Sea-based Cruise Missiles

The Trump NPR calls for the development of modern sea-launched nuclear cruise missiles.

This marks a departure from the Obama administration’s 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, which announced the retirement of the previous nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile.

By itself, this might appear innocuous but when you view with with the other two changes, you realize that this is a belligerent and aggressive NPR.

Understandably, Russia is worried.

 Moscow is showing understandable concern over the lowering of the threshold for employing nuclear weapons to include retaliation for cyber-attacks, a change announced on Feb. 2 in the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review (NPR).

Explaining the shift in U.S. doctrine on first-use, the NPR cites the efforts of potential adversaries “to design and use cyber weapons” and explains the change as a “hedge” against non-nuclear threats. In response, Russia described the move as an “attempt to shift onto others one’s own responsibility” for the deteriorating security situation.

What is worrisome is the difficulty to trace cyber attacks to its origins. It is laughably easy for a state to launch a cyber attack while leaving the footprints of another state.

Netanyahu's bete noire is Iran. Can you not envisage a situation where Israeli hackers attack the US infrastructure and leave clues to implicate Iran?

Under the new doctrine Trump could simply nuke Iran to Stone Age.

Or an independent group of hackers could implicate Russia. Some people believe that the DNC hack was done by third parties who left clues to incriminate Russian hackers.

In any case we have an extremely dangerous combination here: a lower nuclear attack threshold and a volatile, irrational and perhaps senile president.

Yet, no one seems concerned about this major change.

Mueller Misdirection About Russia Collusion

Last Friday, Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted of 13 Russian nationals for attempting to change the outcome of the presidential election.

The indictment served two seemingly contradictory purposes.

On the one hand, it appeared to exonerate Trump campaign from wilful collusion with Russia.

"Some defendants, posing as US persons and without revealing their Russian association, communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump campaign and with other political activists to seek to co-ordinate political activities."

Rod Rosenstein added that there was no such allegation in the indictment.

On the other hand, it firmly established that Russia did intervene in the American electoral process. This disproved Trump's claim that Russian intervention was a hoax. The indictment detailed the efforts, the substantial sums of money spent (over a million dollars a month) and the names and activities of the individuals and organizations involved.

Trump can longer call this "fake news."

What is interesting about the indictment is the fact that the inquiry continues. Normally, it should have stopped here with Russia connection divulged and those responsible named.

But that is not the case. Mueller is moving full steam ahead.

That's why I think it is a misdirection.

What this does is to give both sides something to be happy about and relieves the pressure on the Special Counsel.

The calculation is that Trump will feel vindicated and stop plotting about how to fire Mueller.

I expect Trump to tweet about FBI's Florida school shooting blunder or other daily minutiae.

In fact, he might feel confident enough to be interviewed by Mueller.

But from the beginning what Mueller was investigating was money laundering and financial fraud. As Steve Bannon famously put it in Fire and Fury:

“This is about money laundering. Mueller chose Weissmann and he is a money-laundering guy. Their path to f***ing Trump goes right through Paul Manafort, Don Jr and Jared Kushner ... It’s as plain as a hair on your face ... They’re going to crack Don Jr like an egg on national TV.”

In other words, the indictment is a clever misdirection.

Wait for the other shoe to drop.

The Trump - Corporate Media Love Affair

Donald Trump's long-time attorney Michael Cohen made a statement a couple of days ago and acknowledged that he paid porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 out of his own pocket.

He claimed that no one reimbursed him. He just paid off Stormy Daniels out of the goodness of his heart.

Do you know what happened after Cohen's annoucement? Nothing.

Interestingly, this story was known before the election. No news outlet published it.

The adult-film actress was on the radar of a number of mainstream news outlets in the waning days of the presidential campaign. Reporters from ABC, Fox News, The Daily Beast and Slate.com were pursuing a potentially explosive story: that Daniels had allegedly had an affair with Donald Trump in 2006, only months after Trump's wife, Melania, had given birth to their son, Barron. 

Yet no one went with the story.

Moreover, 

The company that owns the National Enquirer, a backer of Donald Trump, agreed to pay $150,000 to a former Playboy centerfold model for her story of an affair a decade ago with the Republican presidential nominee, but then didn’t publish it, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and people familiar with the matter.
(...)
Quashing stories that way is known in the tabloid world as “catch and kill.”

That's your liberal media.

The same outlets Trumpkins believe are hyper-critical of their beloved Orange Man.

Next time someone asks you how could Trump be elected president tell them the corporate media gave the man almost $5 billion worth of free media with CNN providing $2 billion of it by itself.

The real estate magnate got $4.96 billion in free earned media in the year leading up to the presidential election, according to data from tracking firm mediaQuant. He received $5.6 billion throughout the entirety of his campaign, more than Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio combined.

 

Indeed, imagine.

On Fire and Fury and Trump's Reported Senility

I just finished reading Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury. It is a breezy, gossipy book.

Until I picked it up, I was convinced that Donald Trump was going senile before our own eyes. Now I am not so sure.

Don't get me wrong. the senility charge is a well substantiated one.

It is clear that Trump has a limited vocabulary, he uses a lot of placeholder words and keeps repeating himself.

Boston Globe used the Flesch-Kincaid readability to to determine that Trump's vocabulary was the same as a fourth grade student.

He also has behavioral problems like attacking people viciously, or defending contradictory positions consecutively. His aggression is compounded by overt signs of paranoia. All of which would be sufficient for a mental health professional to diagnose him with some form of dementia.

In fact, 35 mental health professionals overlooked the Goldwater Rule and published an open letter in New York Times arguing that Trump was "incapable of serving safely as president."

“Mr Trump’s speech and actions demonstrate an inability to tolerate views different from his own, leading to rage reactions. His words and behaviour suggest a profound inability to empathise. 

“Individuals with these traits distort reality to suit their psychological state, attacking facts and those who convey them [journalists, scientists]. 

“In a powerful leader, these attacks are likely to increase, as his personal myth of greatness appears to be confirmed. We believe that the grave emotional instability indicated by Mr. Trump’s speech and actions makes him incapable of serving safely as president.”

In the same vein, the great Charles Pearce ran a piece in Esquire in which he maintained that Trump's interview with the New York Times showed a man in cognitive decline. He used several rambling quotes to bolster his claim, one of which was this:

I’m always moving. I’m moving in both directions. We have to get rid of chainlike immigration, we have to get rid of the chain. The chain is the last guy that killed. … [Talking with guests.] … The last guy that killed the eight people. … [Inaudible.] … So badly wounded people. … Twenty-two people came in through chain migration. Chain migration and the lottery system. They have a lottery in these countries. They take the worst people in the country, they put ‘em into the lottery, then they have a handful of bad, worse ones, and they put them out. ‘Oh, these are the people the United States. …” … We’re gonna get rid of the lottery, and by the way, the Democrats agree with me on that. On chain migration, they pretty much agree with me. 

A group of mental health are experts formed an organization called "Duty to Warn" and published a book entitled "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President." It became a New York Times bestseller.

Health and medicine portal STATNews took a different approach. When Trump responded to a question with this 

“ … there is no collusion between certainly myself and my campaign, but I can always speak for myself — and the Russians, zero.”

they decided to undertake a comparative review.

STAT therefore asked experts in neurolinguistics and cognitive assessment, as well as psychologists and psychiatrists, to compare Trump’s speech from decades ago to that in 2017; they all agreed there had been a deterioration, and some said it could reflect changes in the health of Trump’s brain.

The experts found that Trump came across quite sophisticated in his previous interviews.

In interviews Trump gave in the 1980s and 1990s (with Tom Brokaw, David Letterman, Oprah Winfrey, Charlie Rose, and others), he spoke articulately, used sophisticated vocabulary, inserted dependent clauses into his sentences without losing his train of thought, and strung together sentences into a polished paragraph, which — and this is no mean feat — would have scanned just fine in print. 

Currently, this is how he talks:

“People want the border wall. My base definitely wants the border wall, my base really wants it — you’ve been to many of the rallies. OK, the thing they want more than anything is the wall. My base, which is a big base; I think my base is 45 percent. You know, it’s funny. The Democrats, they have a big advantage in the Electoral College. Big, big, big advantage. … The Electoral College is very difficult for a Republican to win, and I will tell you, the people want to see it. They want to see the wall.”

Solid arguments, all. So why you doubt the senility argument you may ask.

The incidents mentioned in the book opened up the possibility that Trump's senility might be just the bored stupidity of a spoiled rich guy who happens to have the attention span of a fruit fly.

There may be a cognitive decline but it is also possible that the man who went bankrupt six times while running casinos might just be simply stupid.

Wolff says that he never reads anything, he doesn't listen to people ("they are boring") and he is convinced he knows best and he is the most intelligent person in the room.

Source

He firmly believes that he can order the CIA and FBI around and fire as many agency heads as he pleases.

For instance, he was told in no uncertain terms -something I mentioned many times- that feuding with intelligence agencies is a death wish and he should bury the hatchet. To that effect he was sent to the CIA with a carefully crafted speech containing serious groveling and flattery.

Instead this is what he said to an astonished crowd of agents:

“I know a lot about West Point, I’m a person who very strongly believes in academics. Every time I say I had an uncle who was a great professor at MIT for 35 years, who did a fantastic job in so many ways academically—he was an academic genius—and then they say, Is Donald Trump an intellectual? Trust me, I’m like a smart person.”
“You know when I was young. Of course I feel young—I feel like I was 30 . . . 35 . . . 39 . . . . Somebody said, Are you young? I said, I think I’m young. I was stopping in the final months of the campaign, four stops, five stops, seven stops—speeches, speeches in front of twenty-five, thirty thousand people . . . fifteen, nineteen thousand. I feel young—I think we’re all so young. When I was young we were always winning things in this country. We’d win with trade, we’d win with wars—at a certain age I remembering hearing from one of my instructors, the United States has never lost a war. And then, after that, it’s like we haven’t won anything. You know the old expression, to the victor belongs the spoils? You remember I always say, keep the oil.”
“I wasn’t a fan of Iraq, I didn’t want to go into Iraq. But I will tell you when we were in we got out wrong and I always said in addition to that keep the oil. Now I said it for economic reasons, but if you think about it, Mike”—he called out across the room, addressing the soon-to-be director—“if we kept the oil we wouldn’t have ISIS because that’s where they made their money in the first place, so that’s why we should have kept the oil. But okay—maybe you’ll have another chance—but the fact is we should have kept the oil.”
“The reason you are my first stop, as you know I have a running war with the media, they are among the most dishonest human beings on earth, and they sort of made it sound like I had a feud with the intelligence community and I just want to let you know the reason you’re the number one stop is exactly the opposite, exactly, and they understand that. I was explaining about the numbers. We did, we did a thing yesterday at the speech. Did everybody like the speech? You had to like it. But we had a massive field of people. You saw them. Packed. I get up this morning, I turn on one of the networks, and they show an empty field and I say, Wait a minute, I made a speech. I looked out—the field was—it looked like a million, million and half people. They showed a field where there were practically nobody standing there. And they said Donald Trump did not draw well and I said it was almost raining, the rain should have scared them away, but God looked down and said we’re not going to let it rain on your speech and in fact when I first started I said, Oooh no, first line I got hit by a couple of drops, and I said, Oh this is too bad, but we’ll go right through it, the truth is it stopped immediately. . . .”
“. . . and then it became really sunny and I walked off and it poured right after I left. It poured but we have something amazing because—honestly it looked like a million, million and a half people, whatever it was it was, but it went all the way back to the Washington Monument and by mistake I get this network and it showed an empty field and it said we  drew two hundred fifty thousand people. Now that’s not bad, but it’s a lie. . . . And we had another one yesterday which was interesting. In the Oval Office there’s a beautiful statue of Dr. Martin Luther King and I also happen to like Churchill—Winston Churchill—I think most of us like Churchill, doesn’t come from our country but had a lot to do with it, helped us, real ally, and as you know the Churchill statue was taken out. . . . So a reporter for Time magazine and I have been on the cover like fourteen or fifteen times. I think I have the all-time record in the history of Time magazine. Like if Tom Brady is on the cover it’s one time because he won the Super Bowl or something. I’ve been on fifteen times this year. I don’t think, Mike, that’s a record that can ever be broken, do you agree with that . . . . What do you think?”
“But I will say that they said it was very interesting that ‘Donald Trump took down the bust, the statue, of Dr. Martin Luther King,’ and it was right there, there was a cameraman that was in front of it. So Zeke . . . Zeke . . . from Time magazine . . . writes a story that I took it down. I would never do that. I have great respect for Dr. Martin Luther King. But this is how dishonest the media is. Now big story, but the retraction was like this”—he indicated ever-so-small with his fingers. “Is it a line or do they even bother putting it in? I only like to say I love honesty, I like honest reporting. I will tell you, final time, although I will say it when you let in your thousands of other people who have been trying to come in, because I am coming back, we may have to get you a larger room, we may have to get you a larger room and maybe, maybe, it will be built by somebody that knows how to build and we won’t have columns. You understand that? We get rid of the columns, but you know I just wanted to say that I love you, I respect you, there’s nobody I respect more. You do a fantastic job and we’re going to start winning again, and you’re going to be leading the charge, so thank you all very much.”

Ever since then incriminating leaks never stopped.

To me that sounds more like arrogant stupidity than early onset Alzheimer's.

Though I am not a doctor, nor did I play one on TV.

The #MeToo Movement: IOKIYAR Edition

Apparently, Steve Bannon, the white nationalist and former "wet nurse for a seventy-one-year-old" is convinced that the #MeToo movement will bring the patriarchy to its knees.

While watching the Golden Globes he blurted out this:

“It’s a Cromwell moment!” Bannon said. “It’s even more powerful than populism. It’s deeper. It’s primal. It’s elemental. The long black dresses and all that—this is the Puritans. It’s anti-patriarchy.”

#MeToo is a very important and historic movement but I am convinced that it will not have the same effect on the right.

You can abuse and assault women and It's OK If You're A Republican (IOKIYAR).

Take the case of Rob Porter, the White House Staff Secretary. He physically assaulted both his ex wives, Colbie Holderness and Jennifer Willoughby, and they both mentioned it to the FBI during his security clearance investigations.

They reported the abuse contemporaneously to their church elders. They called the police.

Willoughby even filed for a protective order. She also wrote a blog post (under her name) detailing the abuse.

The first time he called me a "fucking bitch" was on our honeymoon. (I found out years later he had kicked his first wife on theirs.) A month later he physically prevented me from leaving the house. Less than two months after that, I filed a protective order with the police because he punched in the glass on our front door while I was locked inside. We bought a house to make up for it. Just after our one year anniversary, he pulled me, naked and dripping, from the shower to yell at me.

Source

That's a picture of his first wife Colbie Holderness, her black eye is courtesy of Rob Porter.

What is interesting is that most of the senior people at the White House knew.

According to Politico, John Kelly, Donald Trump’s chief of staff and Porter’s boss, also knew of the 2010 protective order against Porter. Don McGahn, the White House counsel, also knew, according to Politico, because in recent weeks a third woman, an ex-girlfriend of Porter’s who also works in the Trump administration, told him that Porter had abused her and his two ex-wives.         

In fact, the FBI, being unable to give him full security clearance because of these incidents, provided him with an interim one.

But what is even more telling is the reaction of White House senior figures once the story broke. Chief of Staff John Kelly issued this statement:

“Rob Porter is a man of true integrity and honor, and I can’t say enough good things about him. He is a friend, a confidant, and a trusted professional. I am proud to serve alongside him.”

When the Intercept published Holderness' black eye picture this was Kelly's reaction:

I was shocked by the new allegations released today against Rob Porter. There is no place for domestic violence in our society. I stand by my previous comments of the Rob Porter that I have come to know since becoming Chief of Staff, and believe every individual deserves the right to defend their reputation. I accepted his resignation earlier today, and will ensure a swift and orderly transition.

What he is saying is that those lying bitches destroyed a fine man's reputation and he has every right to defend himself.

And he is standing by his previous comments.

In case, you assume this was an isolated reaction, this is how Orrin Hatch, Porter's former boss, handled it.

It’s incredibly discouraging to see such a vile attack on such a decent man. Shame on any publication that would print this—and shame on the politically motivated, morally bankrupt character assassins that would attempt to sully a man’s good name.

Here, there is no longer an insinuation about lying and character assassination. It is a full frontal attack on these women.

When Porter resigned after Holderness' picture was published this is what Hatch said.

I am heartbroken by today's allegations. In every interaction I've had with Rob, he has been courteous, professional, and respectful. My staff loved him and he was a trusted advisor. I do not know the details of Rob's personal life. Domestic violence in any form is abhorrent. I am praying for Rob and those involved.

Dahlia Lithwick put it perfectly:

Note that the central moral issue was no longer the scurrilous women who must have lied to a slanderous press, but Hatch’s own heartbreak. He didn’t apologize to the women he had maligned hours earlier, and it’s not entirely clear if they are part of the group of people for whom Hatch is praying. 

Right after Porter's resignation, a White House speech writer by the name of David Sorensen had to quit as well as the Washington Post revealed his history of abuse with his ex-wife Jessica Corbett.

She said that on separate occasions her former husband ran a car over her foot, threw her against a wall and extinguished a cigarette on her hand.

Once again, the FBI knew because Corbett told them about the abuse during a background check. And no one cared once again.

Trump's reaction to all this, you ask?

Well, the man who called for the resignation of Al Franken and John Conyers and wanted Hillary Clinton locked up without due process suddenly discovered "due process."

What about female Trumpkins?

They stand by him one hundred percent. Read the whole interview.

Or better yet, watch the clip.


This is a man who was accused of sexual assault and misconduct by at least 22 women.

This is a man who bragged on tape about "grabbing pussy" as a way of introducing himself.

And this was the female Trumpkin reaction.

So I am all for #MeToo but I also know that IOKIYAR is too powerful a forcefield for conservative women.