My new column at Real Clear Politics explains why I and the rest of the Deplorables are sticking with Trump no matter what! It’s not a cult; it’s just self-interest, common sense and love of America.

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By Frank Miele

Everyone knows I support Donald Trump, and have since the day I saw him ride down the escalator to announce his presidential bid in 2015. What convinced me? I heard Trump willing to confront the hypocrisy of the ruling class when so many other politicians lacked the guts. No matter what else Trump did, as long as he kept speaking his mind and fighting corrupt Washington insiders, he was assured of my support.

Which is a roundabout way of saying that I’m a card-carrying member of what the mainstream media, the Democrat Party, and Joe Biden call “the Trump cult.”

As a cult member, I never believed the concoctions of the Department of Justice and the FBI that Trump was a Putin puppet. I never believed that Trump did anything wrong when he asked the president of Ukraine to investigate reported corruption by Joe Biden and his son Hunter. I never believed that Trump was guilty of anything on Jan. 6, 2021, except protesting an election result that he and millions of others considered fraudulent. I never believed any of those claims or others promoted by the mainstream media, because it has long been obvious that Trump is being persecuted by his political enemies, not prosecuted for legitimate crimes.

But now I’m supposed to renounce my cult membership and my Trump fealty because he had classified documents at his home in Mar-a-Lago. I heard the television talking heads proclaim that if Trump cultists like me were to read the federal indictment brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith in the Mar-a-Lago documents case, then we would be convinced to turn our backs on the only president in my 67-year lifetime who put the American people first.

Sorry, not gonna happen. I read the 44-page indictment (yes, I know it’s surprising for “Morning Joe” and the other radical left pundits that a MAGA supporter can read!) and it didn’t change my mind. I already knew Trump had presidential papers at Mar-a-Lago, and I already didn’t care. Did I expect him to have classified documents or national secrets there? Sure, but frankly, Jack Smith, I don’t give a damn. Do you think I would rather have those secrets in the hands of Trump or the weaponized FBI that has spent the last seven years trying to destroy him? That’s an easy one.

After all, Trump already knows all kinds of secrets. It’s like a twist on the macabre old joke, I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you. Biden and the FBI and the DOJ already know Trump can’t be trusted with secrets – with their secrets – so they want to kill him like JFK, or next best thing, lock him up for 100 years.

Heck, Trump already tried to publicize some of the Biden family’s secrets back in 2019 when he asked then new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to check up on some rumors he’d heard about Joe Biden taking bribes. When that happened, Joe and the Democrats in the Deep State pulled the panic alarm and convinced the corrupt lazy media that Trump was delusional. Nope, just too close to the truth.

We learned on June 8, the same day that Trump confirmed he had been indicted by a Miami grand jury for what he called the “boxes hoax,” that Joe Biden had been fingered by an FBI informant for taking a $5 million bribe from a Ukrainian oligarch who also hired his son. Coincidence? My educated guess is that it’s just one more case of the FBI providing cover for Biden. As you can imagine, the Biden story was buried or ignored altogether by the mainstream media as they salivated over the Trump indictment. (A later reviewfound that the three legacy networks had spent 291 minutes of airtime on the Trump indictment and exactly zeroseconds on the Biden bribery allegation.)

And with Trump at least 30 points aheadof his nearest rival for the 2024 Republican nomination, and even ahead of Biden in many general election surveys, there’s no doubt that the ruling cabal is terrified. So this time, they are taking no chances. Trump must be eliminated, and people like me are just supposed to nod our heads and go along with the rigged evidence.

But that’s not gonna happen. I kind of like Trump having all those boxes at Mar-a-Lago. It’s much more likely that Trump will level with the public about the hidden secrets of the Deep State than any professional politician ever will.

Supposedly the most damning evidence in the indictment is a taped conversation Trump had with two authors regarding an idiotic plan for invading Iran that was supposedly drawn up by unindicted traitor (in my opinion) Gen. Mark Milley.

“In July 2021, at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, (“The Bedminster Club”), during an audio-recorded meeting with a writer, a publisher, and two members of his staff, none of whom possessed a security clearance, TRUMP showed and described a “plan of attack” that TRUMP said was prepared for him by the Department of Defense and a senior military official. TRUMP told the individuals that the plan was “highly confidential” and “secret.” TRUMP also said, “As president I could have declassified it,” and, “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”

In the prosecutors’ telling, this proves Trump never declassified the documents in his possession, but that’s not what it says. Pay attention. According to the indictment, Trump doesn’t say the document is classified.

Of course, I’m not a lawyer but neither are most members of a jury. Neither, most importantly, is Trump. But the lawyers defending Trump should have no trouble throwing doubt on the state’s case that this audio recording proves Trump couldn’t have declassified the documents in his possession.

Prosecutor Jack Smith says that Trump shows awareness that the document he is bragging about to the authors is classified, but that is not what he says. He calls it “highly confidential” and “secret.” Although those are terms of art used by the Deep State to classify documents, they are also everyday words used by everyday Americans to suggest the need for stealth and caution. They are, in other words, accurate descriptions the average juror probably has used in his or her own life without having to ask permission from Jack Smith or the DOJ. Secrecy is not the sole possession of the intelligence community.

Trump is also quoted as saying that “as president I could have declassified it.” This is an accurate description of the presidential prerogative to declassify, but unless there is more to the quote, it is silent on whether or not Trump did in fact declassify the document in question. Trump accurately says that as an ex-president he no longer has the power to declassify documents, but he warns his audience that the document in question is “still a secret.” Smith wants you to believe that secret and classified documents are the same thing, but they aren’t. Trump warning that the document is still secret shows that he is not being careless, but rather cautious in his discussion of the invasion plan.

If jurors needed any more convincing, it wouldn’t hurt to call Prosecutor Smith as a defense witness and ask him to read the public description of the “highly confidential” invasion plan as it appears in the indictment and then read the CNN article about the invasion plan. Nowhere does the indictment say what country is being invaded or which “senior military official” wrote the invasion plan. Yet CNN obtained a transcript of the conversation and says it was Gen. Milley writing about Iran. That network and multiple newspapers seem to have obtained classified documents and briefings to try to put the ex-president in a bad light.

Somebody really needs to ask Jack Smith about why those classified documents in the possession of news reporters are less dangerous than the ones at Mar-a-Lago. A good defense lawyer with a love for the game Clue might even be able to get Smith to admit, “It was Milley in the Pentagon with an Iran invasion.” It wasn’t Trump who told CNN those details, so who was it? Maybe somebody in the special counsel’s office? Just how high up does the double standard go? To the White House?

One last question: When will we learn what classified documents Biden had in his possession in his garage, at the Penn Biden Center, and elsewhere? I don’t necessarily need the details. Just provide the same summary as you do in this indictment of Trump. Because if Trump can be indicted for having “documents relating to the national defense” in his possession, then somebody better prove to me that Biden, Mike Pence, Hillary Clinton, and the rest of the unindicted liars didn’t do the same thing.

Otherwise, you can say whatever you want about Donald Trump, and I just won’t give a damn.

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About Heartland Diary USA

Heartland Diary is solely operated by Frank Miele, the retired editor of the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Montana. If you enjoy reading these daily essays, I hope you will SUBSCRIBE to www.HeartlandDiaryUSA.com by leaving your email address on the home page. Also please consider purchasing one of my books. They are available through the following Amazon links. My new book is “What Matters Most: God, Country, Family and Friends” and is a collection of personal essays that transcend politics. My earlier books include “How We Got Here: The Left’s Assault on the Constitution,”“The Media Matrix: What if everything you know is fake?” and the “Why We Needed Trump” trilogy. Part 1 is subtitled “Bush’s Global Failure: Half Right.” Part 2 is “Obama’s Fundamental Transformation: Far Left.” Part 3 is “Trump’s American Vision: Just Right.” As an Amazon Associate, I may earn referral fees for qualifying purchases through links on my website.