W. Niederhut

I should mention that one of the things in JFK Revisited that really shocked my wife was the material about the Chicago assassination plot. She had a sort of "Aha!" moment when she heard the details about the Chicago patsy and the snipers (which I had, apparently, never told her about.) In fact, I think that sequence may have helped her to suddenly realize for the first time that I haven't been entirely delusional in recent years about the CIA, the FBI, and the JFK assassination plot. The way the Chicago material was juxtaposed with Dallas and Oswald was quite compelling.

Steve, If I had to slide down chimneys on Christmas Ever in arch-conservative, gun-toting El Paso County, Colorado, I'd probably get a concealed carry gun permit too. Landing on roofs with reindeer must be dangerous down there. 🤥 As for the 60 Minutes story about Reality Winner last night, I should mention that one of the most disturbing revelations was the part about the Trump administration's NSA failing to inform the FEC in 2017 about their intelligence on Russian hacking. If I heard the 60 Minutes story correctly, the FEC didn't even know about the Russian hacking of voter data bases in the U.S. until Reality Winner leaked the NSA intel to The Intercept! Winner's leak may have helped secure our 2018 mid-term elections from Russian hackers. Regardless, the Trump administration threw the book at Reality Winner for exposing Trump's lies about the 2016 Russian hack. James Risen wrote about this issue at The Intercept in February of 2019. The Leaks That Trump’s Justice Department Prosecutes Are Mostly About Trump, His Cronies, and Russia https://theintercept.com/2019/02/27/trump-russia-leaks-mueller-investigation/

This is a must see 60 Minutes story about how Trump and Putin lied in 2017 about Russian hacking of our 2016 U.S. election, and how a decorated U.S. military veteran spent four years in prison for exposing Trump's lies to the American people about the Russian hack job. It's especially galling to consider that Reality Winner spent four years in prison for true patriotism, while Trump's Russiagate accomplices-- Michael Flynn, Manafort, and Roger Stone-- were pardoned for betraying the country.

Jeff, Can you give us some examples of "principled" politicians and media supporting violent right wing mobs? 🤥

And the Trump/Fox GOP will continue to spin the investigation of the singular, historic January 6th insurrection as mere partisan politics. Trump's habitual criminal conduct has been normalized. Americans are numb -- like boiling frogs. It's another sign of how far the GOP has fallen since the days of Watergate, when Nixon knew that Congressional Republicans intended to hold him accountable for Presidential misconduct. And the crimes Trump has committed are 100 times worse than Nixon's Watergate peccadilloes.

I don't know enough about law to offer an informed opinion on that, Paul. Trump's attorneys always seem find a way to help him beat the rap, and/or tie things up in endless appeals. I noticed that Michael Cohen mentioned recently that the prosecutors in NY will have to go after Weisselberg's son to circumvent his stonewalling in the tax fraud investigation. I'm curious as to why a Special Prosecutor hasn't already been appointed by the DOJ to investigate Trump's role in the January 6th insurrection.

Paul, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that Donald Trump has spent half of his life scamming people and the other half trying to avoid consequences for his scams. In fact, one of his biographers said a few years ago that Trump has always taken a perverse delight in scamming people and getting away with it. Of course, Trump's biggest scam was convincing the white working class in 2016 that he represented their interests and was not beholden to the Koch plutocrats who bought the GOP ten years ago. Most of his white working class base still haven't even figured out that they got scammed. It's false consciousness on steroids.

Yep. And the Orange Psychopath is already frantically trying to deny and distort the facts in this damning story, as he has done in the cases of all of his many crimes and scandals through the years. Mark Meadows has a bizarre response when Trump calls the story about his early COVID diagnosis 'fake news' https://www.rawstory.com/mark-meadows-trump/

LOL. No wonder Stahl's essays aren't published in the mainstream media. I think the point he was making about JFK Revisited is that some of the complex forensic material may be a bit difficult for those who haven't studied the JFKA research to follow. I think he's right. Roger Ebert and my wife both said as much after watching the film. (BTW, it took me two or three attempts to finally read Joyce's novel Ulysses cover-to-cover.)

Ben, I'd call it another nail in the "January-6th-Was-a-Deep-State-Plot" coffin. The evidence seems to indicate that January 6th was a Donald Trump plot to steal the election. The Trump/Fox attempt to fob Trump's January 6th coup attempt off on the "Deep State" is formally similar to their protracted attempt to fob Trump's Russiagate scandal off on the "Deep State." It was all deflective bunk-- a smokescreen to cover up Trump's crimes against the United States.

There's a good review of JFK Revisited this week by Colorado physicist/astronomer P.A. Stahl at his excellent blog site, Brane Space. (It's one of my favorite blogs, especially for current events related to science.) Why don't they publish this kind of intelligent, informed commentary in the U.S. mainstream media? 'JFK Through The Looking Glass' - A Superb Oliver Stone Documentary (But Perhaps Too Much For Casual Viewers) https://brane-space.blogspot.com/2021/11/jfk-through-looking-glass-superb-oliver.html

Ben, Speaking of January 6th... 😨 Trump called aides hours before Capitol riot to discuss how to stop Biden victory www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-called-aides-hours-before-capitol-riot-to-discuss-how-to-stop-biden-victory/ar-AARhMDe?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531 November 30, 2021

Jake, The Black Lives Matter protesters in the U.S. have been mostly peaceful, (>93% in one official estimate) but the protests have been marred, in part, by right wing agent provocateurs posing as BLM protesters. You may not have heard about these cases, but a number of apparent "woke middle class students" who attacked the police during the George Floyd riots in the U.S. turned out to be right wing Boogaloo Boy types disguised as "woke middle class students." * I'm going out on a limb here to guess that you also know nothing about the numerous documented cases of un-woke Americans driving their cars and trucks into crowds of BLM protesters here in the U.S. since May of 2020. In fact, driving vehicles into crowds of protesters is now legal in some red states in the U.S.! *Boogaloo Bois fired on Minneapolis police precinct, shouted 'Justice for Floyd' Feds say Ivan Harrison Hunter helped burn and loot the Third Precinct building as part of a coordinated attack from the far-right group trying to ignite an American civil war www.startribune.com/charges-boogaloo-bois-fired-on-mpls-precinct-shouted-justice-for-floyd/572843802/ Keith Ellison: White Supremacists Suspected of Sabotaging George Floyd Protests With Violence And Arson Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison called for an investigation into the “real legitimate evidence” that the crimes committed during Minneapolis’ George Floyd protests have been committed by white men who are part of “a very serious operation.” crooksandliars.com/2020/05/keith-ellison-white-supremacists-may-be

Parnell El Cid

Jeff, You've, obviously, mastered the "Firehose of Falsehoods" propaganda technique. I'll try to mop up your Russiagate Denial mess, once again, but this is getting old. Herewith. My responses in red. Frum , at best, has assembled a laundry list of “talking points” rather than “facts”. He explicitly bemoans that professional journalists are now carving up the basic premises of “Russiagate”, particularly as new information regarding its origins is uncovered. Looks like the final redoubt - the Alamo of the true believers - is the Senate Subcommittee Report which, as noted at the time of its release, is an extremely poor product characterized by unsupported allegations and weak speculations. Bunk. Frum is calling foul on the latest right wing propaganda about Bill Barr's Durham investigation nothing burger. And he is, specifically, referring to the documented facts from the Senate Intel Committee Report about Trump's enmeshment with Russian oligarchs, and Kremlin/GRU meddling in the 2016 U.S. election on behalf of their Orange Asset, Donald Trump. Frum’s “indisputable facts” wither on examination: 1-3. Entirely irrelevant. It was not illegal for Americans to have contact or business with citizens from the Russian Federation. The Trump Tower deal was almost entirely the initiative of Felix Sater - nothing was built, no money was exchanged. Felix Sater was a long-term business associate of Trump, who said in 2015 that Putin intended to put Trump in the White House. And, yes, Trump lied publicly about his Moscow Trump Tower plans in 2016. That, alone, created significant kompromat for Putin-- which could be leveraged for strategic foreign policy concessions by his Orange Asset. He had Trump over several barrels. 4 - The Committee do not possess any kind of intercept revealing any kind of Putin directive authorizing any kind of operation directed at US politicians. They instead utilize backward reasoning i.e. the emails were purloined by a “GRU hack” (a contentious supposition to begin with), therefore Putin “must have” ordered it. More bunk. Let's recall that the Republicans in control of that committee were doing everything in their power to deny and minimize the evidence of Kremlin meddling in the 2016 election-- and they still concluded that it happened. BTW, how do you know what classified intel they relied on? Explain. 6 - The offer of “harmful information” was a pretence to arrange a meeting about other matters. The Trump campaign may have desired “dirt” on their opponent, but clearly so did their opponent want dirt on them, and was much more successful in obtaining it. The Russian lawyer also dined with associates of Clinton (Fusion GPS) at the same time. Is it illegal for a U.S. Presidential campaign to seek foreign assistance? Geez... even Steve Bannon said that the Trump Tower meeting with Veselnitskaya was treasonous. 8 - Roger Stone had at best extremely limited communications with Wikileaks representatives, and his “predictions” were merely the repetition of publicly available open source information. Nice sleight of hand, Jeff. You managed to dodge the fact that Roger Stone bragged about dining with Assange in London-- around the time that he boasted about Hillary soon being in a barrel. 10 - Manafort’s longtime right-hand man Kilimnik worked over a decade for an offshoot of the NED in Moscow, and was a valued information source for the US Embassy in Kiev. Neither Mueller or the Senate Subcommittee has been able to actually explain what they think he did, not has it been revealed what exactly led to his designation of “Russian intelligence officer”. Kilimnik, as well as most persons who knew or worked with him, denies the allegation. You're still pushing the canard that Kilimnik is not a GRU agent, eh, Jeff? If Manafort had nothing to hide about his collusion with Kilimnik, why did he lie about it repeatedly during the Mueller investigation-- even after he agreed to cooperate with Mueller, as part of his plea bargain? Here, you're trying to argue that Manafort stonewalling the investigation of his contacts with Kilimnik is evidence of Kilimnik's innocence! It's an absurd argument. 11 - Policies associated with the Trump campaign “supporting Putin” were based on a notion of turning the Russians towards the US and away from China, so as to better pursue a Cold War against the latter - as was clearly articulated by those involved in promoting these notions in the weeks ahead of the Republican convention. The Manafort-led Trump Campaign altered the RNC platform (in Cleveland) on U.S. policy in Ukraine. Talk about your quid pro quo! And Trump, repeatedly, kow-towed to Putin during his tenure in the White House-- most notoriously in Helsinki, where he denied before a worldwide audience that Putin had meddled in the U.S. election. Even before taking office in December of 2016, Michael Flynn conferred with Sergei Lavrov about undermining U.S. sanctions imposed on Putin for meddling in our 2016 election...

Ben, You conveniently left out the subsequent, damning facts that Frum listed-- from the Senate Intelligence Report on Trump's involvement with Russian officials, and Russian meddling in the 2016 election to put Trump in the White House. (At the time, the Committee was controlled by Trump supporter, Senator Richard Burr (R-NC.)) Here they are for your careful consideration. And, in reviewing these FACTS, let's try to stay focused on your claim that Russiagate was a hoax, shall we? Trump continued to pursue the Tower deal for a year after he declared himself a candidate for president. “By early November 2015, Trump and a Russia-based developer signed a Letter of Intent laying out the main terms of a licensing deal,” the Senate Intelligence Committee found. Trump’s representatives directly lobbied aides to Russian President Vladimir Putin in January 2016. Yet repeatedly during the 2016 campaign, Trump falsely stated that he had no business with Russia—perhaps most notably in his second presidential debate against Hillary Clinton, in October 2016. Early in 2016, President Putin ordered an influence operation to “harm the Clinton Campaign, tarnish an expected Clinton presidential administration, help the Trump Campaign after Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee, and undermine the U.S. democratic process.” Again, that’s from the Senate Intelligence Committee report. The Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos “likely learned about the Russian active measures campaign as early as April 2016,” the Senate Intelligence Committee wrote. In May 2016, Papadopoulos indiscreetly talked with Alexander Downer, then the Australian high commissioner to the United Kingdom, about Russia’s plot to intervene in the U.S. election to hurt Clinton and help Trump. Downer described the conversation in a report to his government. By long-standing agreement, Australia shares intelligence with the U.S. government. It was Papadopoulos’s blurt to Downer that set in motion the FBI investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election, a revelation authoritatively reported more than three years ago. In June 2016, the Trump campaign received a request for a meeting from a Russian lawyer offering harmful information on Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump Jr. and other senior Trump advisers accepted the meeting. The Trump team did not obtain the dirt they’d hoped for. But the very fact of the meeting confirmed to the Russian side the Trump campaign’s eagerness to accept Russian assistance. Shortly after, Trump delivered his “Russia, if you’re listening” invitation at his last press conference of the campaign. WikiLeaks released two big caches of hacked Democratic emails in July and October 2016. In the words of the Senate Intelligence Committee: “WikiLeaks actively sought, and played, a key role in the Russian intelligence campaign and very likely knew it was assisting a Russian intelligence influence effort.” Through its ally Roger Stone, the Trump campaign team assiduously tried to communicate with WikiLeaks. Before the second WikiLeaks release, “Trump and the Campaign believed that Stone had inside information and expressed satisfaction that Stone’s information suggested more releases would be forthcoming,” according to the Senate Intelligence Committee. In late summer and early fall 2016, Stone repeatedly predicted that WikiLeaks would publish an “October surprise” that would harm the Clinton campaign. At the same time as it welcomed Russian help, the Trump campaign denied and covered up Russian involvement: “The Trump Campaign publicly undermined the attribution of the hack-and-leak campaign to Russia and was indifferent to whether it and WikiLeaks were furthering a Russian election interference effort,” the Intelligence Committee found. In March 2016, the Trump campaign accepted the unpaid services of Paul Manafort, deeply beholden to deeply shady Russian business and political figures. “On numerous occasions, Manafort sought to secretly share internal Campaign information” with a man the Intelligence Committee identified as a Russian intelligence officer. “Taken as a whole, Manafort’s high-level access and willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence services … represented a grave counterintelligence threat,” the committee found. Through 2016, the Russian state launched a massive Facebook disinformation program that aligned with the Trump campaign strategy. At crucial moments in the 2016 election, Trump publicly took positions that broke with past Republican policy and served no apparent domestic political purpose, but that supported Putin’s foreign-policy goals: scoffing at NATO support for Estonia, denigrating allies such as Germany, and endorsing Britain’s exit from the European Union. Throughout the 2016 election and after, people close to Trump got themselves into serious legal and political trouble by lying to the public, to Congress, and even to the FBI about their Russian connections.

Jeff, Arguing about the M$M here is a bit of a straw man. I'm the last person around here who would trust M$M coverage of intel or military black ops. But let's recall that the M$M actually excoriated Buzz Feed for having the audacity to publish the unverified Steele Dossier in (?) January of 2017. The publication of the Dossier was widely denounced as a journalistic scandal. Secondly, let's recall that Dean Baquet put the kibosh on any 2016 NYT news stories about Trump's ties to Russia, while publishing weekly front page articles-- usually based on anonymous FBI sources-- about Hillary's Emails. Instead of trying to simply kill the messenger here, David Frum, how about addressing the specific facts from the Senate Intelligence Report on Russiagate which Frum has outlined in his recent Atlantic article? I would ask Ben Cole the same question.

It Wasn’t a Hoax https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/11/trump-russia-senate-intelligence-report/620815/ November 25, 2021 Excerpt The factual record on Trump-Russia has been set forth most authoritatively by the report of the Senate Intelligence Committee, then chaired by Richard Burr, a Republican from North Carolina. I’ll reduce the complex details to a very few agreed upon by virtually everybody outside the core Trump-propaganda group. Dating back to at least 2006, Trump and his companies did tens of millions of dollars of business with Russian individuals and other buyers whose profiles raised the possibility of money laundering. More than one-fifth of all the condominiums sold by Trump over his career were purchased in all-cash transactions by shell companies, a 2018 BuzzFeed News investigation found. In 2013, Trump’s pursuit of Russian business intensified. That year, he staged the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. Around that time, Trump opened discussions on the construction of a Trump Tower in Moscow, from which he hoped to earn “hundreds of millions of dollars, if the project advanced to completion,” in the words of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Trump continued to pursue the Tower deal for a year after he declared himself a candidate for president. “By early November 2015, Trump and a Russia-based developer signed a Letter of Intent laying out the main terms of a licensing deal,” the Senate Intelligence Committee found. Trump’s representatives directly lobbied aides to Russian President Vladimir Putin in January 2016. Yet repeatedly during the 2016 campaign, Trump falsely stated that he had no business with Russia—perhaps most notably in his second presidential debate against Hillary Clinton, in October 2016. Early in 2016, President Putin ordered an influence operation to “harm the Clinton Campaign, tarnish an expected Clinton presidential administration, help the Trump Campaign after Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee, and undermine the U.S. democratic process.” Again, that’s from the Senate Intelligence Committee report. The Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos “likely learned about the Russian active measures campaign as early as April 2016,” the Senate Intelligence Committee wrote. In May 2016, Papadopoulos indiscreetly talked with Alexander Downer, then the Australian high commissioner to the United Kingdom, about Russia’s plot to intervene in the U.S. election to hurt Clinton and help Trump. Downer described the conversation in a report to his government. By long-standing agreement, Australia shares intelligence with the U.S. government. It was Papadopoulos’s blurt to Downer that set in motion the FBI investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election, a revelation authoritatively reported more than three years ago. In June 2016, the Trump campaign received a request for a meeting from a Russian lawyer offering harmful information on Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump Jr. and other senior Trump advisers accepted the meeting. The Trump team did not obtain the dirt they’d hoped for. But the very fact of the meeting confirmed to the Russian side the Trump campaign’s eagerness to accept Russian assistance. Shortly after, Trump delivered his “Russia, if you’re listening” invitation at his last press conference of the campaign. WikiLeaks released two big caches of hacked Democratic emails in July and October 2016. In the words of the Senate Intelligence Committee: “WikiLeaks actively sought, and played, a key role in the Russian intelligence campaign and very likely knew it was assisting a Russian intelligence influence effort.” Through its ally Roger Stone, the Trump campaign team assiduously tried to communicate with WikiLeaks. Before the second WikiLeaks release, “Trump and the Campaign believed that Stone had inside information and expressed satisfaction that Stone’s information suggested more releases would be forthcoming,” according to the Senate Intelligence Committee. In late summer and early fall 2016, Stone repeatedly predicted that WikiLeaks would publish an “October surprise” that would harm the Clinton campaign. At the same time as it welcomed Russian help, the Trump campaign denied and covered up Russian involvement: “The Trump Campaign publicly undermined the attribution of the hack-and-leak campaign to Russia and was indifferent to whether it and WikiLeaks were furthering a Russian election interference effort,” the Intelligence Committee found. In March 2016, the Trump campaign accepted the unpaid services of Paul Manafort, deeply beholden to deeply shady Russian business and political figures. “On numerous occasions, Manafort sought to secretly share internal Campaign information” with a man the Intelligence Committee identified as a Russian intelligence officer. “Taken as a whole, Manafort’s high-level access and willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence services … represented a grave counterintelligence threat,” the committee found. Through 2016, the Russian state launched a massive Facebook disinformation program that aligned with the Trump campaign strategy. At crucial moments in the 2016 election, Trump publicly took positions that broke with past Republican policy and served no apparent domestic political purpose, but that supported Putin’s foreign-policy goals: scoffing at NATO support for Estonia, denigrating allies such as Germany, and endorsing Britain’s exit from the European Union. Throughout the 2016 election and after, people close to Trump got themselves into serious legal and political trouble by lying to the public, to Congress, and even to the FBI about their Russian connections. All of these are facts that would be agreed upon even by the latter-day “Russia hoax” revisionists and, for that matter, anybody this side of Breitbart or One America News Network.

Ben, IMO, you're overgeneralizing here by positing some equivalence between genuine Deep State black ops and Trump's Russiagate and 1/6 scandals. To date, all of the evidence in Russiagate and 1/6 points to Donald Trump, notwithstanding the M$M propaganda minimizing Trump's documented ties to Russia and the 1/6 attack on Congress. Also, you never answered my old question about how the 1/6 attack on Congress could have conceivably benefited anyone but Trump, himself. Cui bono?

Outstanding analysis. I don't want to hijack this important thread about the JFK assassination, but want to mention that a similar pseudo-scientific, "academic" methodology has been used to obscure the facts about the explosive demolitions of the WTC buildings on 9/11. It's the propaganda technique of argument from "authority."

Spot on, Kirk. I would add that Jake's description of our recent forum discussion of the Rittenhouse case is also inaccurate. My recollection is that Bob Ness gave a very clear summary of why Rittenhouse was acquitted. I agreed with Bob's legal analysis, but simply mentioned the larger social problem of right wing vigilantes with guns on America's streets (and even in our Capitol buildings!) Perhaps some people, including Jake, believe this kind of vigilantism is acceptable, but I wonder how Jake would feel if there were teen vigilantes with AR-15s murdering Labor Party supporters on the streets of merry old England... 🤥

Jake, What I posted (above) about the "rightward shift" in the American political spectrum during the past forty years is not rhetoric. It's history. (And I didn't even mention the rightward shift of the Republican Party on voting rights. You may recall that the GOP largely supported the Voting Rights Act of 1965!) And, BTW, this forum is the opposite of an "echo chamber." The members here are generally well read and quite knowledgeable about history and current events. Nor do we always agree. In fact, we have some interesting, lively disagreements about history and current events.

Speaking of journalism schools, I noticed that Tim Weiner graduated from the prestigious Columbia School of Journalism, after earning his B.A. at Columbia. He then went on to win a Pulitzer Prize for his investigative journalism about Pentagon "black" budgets, and a National Book Award for his 2007 book, Legacy of Ashes-- A History of the CIA, (which was ostensibly condemned by the CIA.) I can't judge Legacy of Ashes, because I haven't read the book, but why would a guy with such, apparently, respectable journalistic credentials stoop to publishing such a ridiculous hit piece about JFK Revisited this week? To say the least, it, certainly, reflects poorly on Weiner's reputation as a credible investigative journalist.

Jake, In reality, there has been a dramatic rightward shift in the American political spectrum during the past 40 years. Democratic centrists today are, essentially, analogous to Eisenhower Republicans of the 1950s. As an example, Eisenhower pushed spending on infrastructure, (e.g., the Interstate highway system) and believed that unnecessary military spending undermined funding for socially beneficial expenditures on education. And top income tax rates under Eisenhower were 90%! Simultaneously, the Koch-owned GOP today is pushing policies associated with the extreme right wing of the Republican Party of the 1950s-- including Fred Koch's John Birchers. The Kochs have always aimed at rolling back the New Deal, including Social Security, along with abolishing Medicare and Medicaid. It's somewhat surprising that so few people seem to realize that Paul Ryan and the Koch-controlled GOP "Tea Party" House actually passed two budget bills after 2010 which would have abolished Medicare, converting it into Ryan's "Voucher Care" program for future beneficiaries! Another obvious example of the modern rightward shift in the American political spectrum is the fact that the GOP today has been adamantly opposed to environmental protection, whereas Richard Nixon presided over the establishment of the EPA. The false equivalence/both sider-ist rhetoric nowadays equating essential Republican and Democratic domestic policies is not only inaccurate, but toxic. There are dramatic, important differences between the policy positions of the Koch-owned (Trump) GOP and the Democratic Party on matters pertaining to tax policy, healthcare, education, infrastructure, environmental protection, and climate change mitigation. If you're interested in this subject, you should read Duke University Professor Nancy MacLean's landmark history of the modern Koch GOP, Democracy in Chains.

My wife and I finally signed up for Showtime and watched JFK Revisited last night. I thought it was terrific, but my wife thought it was somewhat difficult to follow. (She hasn't really studied any of the JFKA research literature.) There is, obviously, a lot of forensic detail that was compressed into the two hour feature film format. It's a film that needs to be watched more than once and, naturally, I'm looking forward to studying the extended version. Stylistically, I noticed that Donald Sutherland's narration was a bit faint and feeble. I think Oliver Stone should have narrated the entire thing, as he did so well in his Untold History of the United States series. BTW, speaking of narrative, is Robert Kennedy, Jr. suffering from some form of speech disorder? I had difficulty understanding some of his comments.