by Lloyd Billingsley
The Supreme Court’s 6-3 takedown of Roe v. Wade on Friday set off a Krakatoa of hatred not seen from the Left since the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States in 2016. As California’s Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis demonstrates, Trump Derangement Syndrome now joins forces with Thomas Derangement Syndrome.
“Who is Clarence Thomas? Is he my Saudi Arabian father who’s going to tell me what I can and cannot do with my body, with my life?” said Kounalakis in a television appearance. “Be prepared to live in defiance of these six people,” Kounalakis added, “who think that they have the right to tell you what you can do with their [sic] bodies.”
As the California Globe noted, of the six justices voting in the majority, Kounalakis named only Clarence Thomas, the only African American, and the only one suddenly branded a “Saudi Arabian father.” All across America, people of all faiths and races might wonder what California’s lieutenant governor is all about.
Eleni Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis, is the daughter of real-estate tycoon Angelo Tsakopoulos. According to Greek USA Reporter, Tsakopoulos is a “top political donor to the Clintons as well as the Democratic Party,” whose “donations to former President Bill Clinton were rewarded with a night in the prestigious Lincoln Bedroom.” Tsakopoulos in 2013 “confirmed that Hillary Clinton will seek the Democratic nomination in the next presidential election.”
Angelo’s daughter Eleni, a protégé of Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer, raised more than $1 million for Hillary Clinton in 2008, and that money found its reward. On January 7, 2010, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton swore in Kounalakis as U.S. ambassador to Hungary. Kounalakis served as ambassador until 2013 but continued as a key Clinton supporter doing her best to beat back a presidential run by Joe Biden.
In a June 11, 2015 email, Kounalakis told John Podesta that a Bay Area bagman “swears Biden is running.” She emailed Clinton confidant Jake Sullivan that “HRC indicated her view that it would be best to avoid Grexit” [the Greek version of Brexit], and in a July 9, 2015 email to Sullivan, John Podesta, and Huma Abedin, she supported “terms that will allow Greece to stay in the Eurozone.”
On October 11, 2015, Kounalakis emailed Podesta that “there is a Greek American love fest going on with Joe Biden, very boy-club.” The same day she emailed Podesta and Abedin that “we had a David Brock dinner with Annie Karni from Politico. She asked to use four quotes from me (see attached). I told her the first two could be with attribution, and the second two without.”
As the emails to John Podesta and Humba Abedin reveal, “Ambassador Eleni Kounalakis,” as she styled herself, remains part of Hillary Clinton’s inner circle. Like Hillary, she is part of a two-for-one package with her husband, Markos Kounalakis.
According to the lt. governor’s website, Dr. Kounalakis is “an award-winning, nationally syndicated foreign affairs columnist, author, and scholar.” A political scientist, “Markos is currently a Visiting Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. Markos earned his Ph.D. from Central European University.” That’s the outfit that was founded by billionaire George Soros in 1991.
According to the Hoover Institution website, Markos Kounalakis is a “Senior Fellow at the Center on Media, Data, and Society at Central European University in Budapest, Hungary.” So Markos is still involved with the Big Guy. Eleni’s husband also wrote “Putin’s powerful playbook: Hack, steal, disrupt, mislead, confuse,” in the October 30, 2016 Sacramento Bee, published two days after FBI boss James Comey reopened the probe on Hillary Clinton’s emails.
As Dr. Markos explained, “Presidential debates between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton included a third participant: Vladimir Putin, standing in the background, stealthily inserting himself in the process.” Putin’s Russia “uses deniable cyber-hooliganism to actively prank the American political system. And it’s taking a toll . . . This is the Putin Playbook. Steal, cheat, attack, disrupt, mislead, confuse. If caught, lie and deny.”
And so on, a faithful rehash of Russia hoax boilerplate, all proven false to the chagrin of Robert Mueller and his team of partisan Democrats. It’s hard to find any second thoughts from Dr. Markos Kounalakis, but the award-winning columnist wasn’t about to give up.
In October 2019, U.S. Special Forces, accompanied by military working dog (MWD) Conan, a Belgian Malinois, took down Islamic State master terrorist Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Kounalakis didn’t see it as a victory over terrorism. “Humans may use animals for war, but we mustn’t abuse them,” wrote Dr. Markos, who quickly identified his true target.
“The Trump administration accepts the killing of journalists as the strategic cost of doing business. Given this indifference to human suffering, perhaps U.S. lawmakers should condemn Jeddah’s animal cruelty to focus the American public’s mind on how the kingdom mistreats not only its domestic animals but its humans too.” And so on, in classic style.
In some publications, Markos Kounalakis was identified as someone who “grew up with farm dogs.” Nothing about his work as a Soros project, a Clinton propagandist, and the husband of the outspoken Eleni. When the Clinton crony wants to emanate, she doesn’t do it in the penumbras.
As the California Globe noted, with her rant against Clarence Thomas, Kounalakis “veered into weird racist territory.” Even in the San Francisco Bay Area, people wondered if the “Saudi Arabian father” tag might be Islamophobic. On the racial side, Justice Samuel Alito wrote the 6-3 majority opinion, but white California Lt. Governor Eleni Kounalakis chose to target the court’s only African American.
For Thomas, that might recall the “high tech lynching” at the hands of Democrats in 1991. With the White House occupied by Joe Biden, longtime fan of emeritus Ku Klucker Senator Robert Byrd, it could well get worse.
Maybe the erudite Dr. Markos Kounalakis, who earned his Ph.D. at Central European University, will tackle Thomas Derangement Syndrome in one of his brilliant columns. The next time Eleni runs for office, maybe TDS will become an issue.
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Lloyd Billingsley is the author of Hollywood Party and other books including Bill of Writes and Barack ‘em Up: A Literary Investigation. His journalism has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Spectator (London) and many other publications. Billingsley serves as a policy fellow with the Independent Institute.
