Pablo Picasso Face female study 1925
And So Castles Made of Sand – by Mr. Fish
Rogan 2024
https://twitter.com/i/status/1877190941909438598
Water
BREAKING: President Trump just announced that he will force Gavin Newsom to redirect water from the Klamath River into California cities instead of dumping it into the Pacific, which would stop all the fires.
"This is a true tragedy, and it's a mistake of the governor, and you… pic.twitter.com/NsiLZOXCXi
— George (@BehizyTweets) January 9, 2025
Sachs
⚡️Trump just reposted a video explaining that the wars in Iraq and Syria came from Netanyahu
Netanyahu “is STILL trying to get us to fight Iran to this day”
“He’s gotten us into endless wars and because of the power of all of this in the U.S. politics, he’s gotten his way”… pic.twitter.com/ZDAAOcwUa1
— ₭₳₲ ĐⱤØ₲Ø🇺🇸 (@KAGdrogo) January 8, 2025
The TRUTH is Coming Out and Nothing Can Stop It.
These are the most important minutes that you can listen to right now to understand what is happening.
America is waging war on behalf of Israel only to expand its regional ambitions to create a “Greater Israel”.
Syria was… pic.twitter.com/SYwilYljaC
— Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil (@ivan_8848) January 8, 2025
Reagan
Trump just posted wise words from Ronald Reagan:
“Our Constitution is a document in which we the people tell our government what it is allowed to do.” pic.twitter.com/UkQ1M4qjxP
— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) January 7, 2025
Watters Zuck
It’s official: Mark Zuckerberg is transitioning. After colluding with the FBI to spike the Hunter laptop story, “fact-checking” everything @realDonaldTrump said for years, and booting him off Facebook — Zuck’s now transitioning into a Conservative. He flew down to Mar-a-Lago and… pic.twitter.com/j3wvDlWptI
— Jesse Watters (@JesseBWatters) January 8, 2025
No. 1 priority in Britain today: block any attempt at an inquiry. What a sad place.
• Elon Musk Brands British PM ‘Evil’ (RT)
SpaceX CEO and X owner Elon Musk has hammered Prime Minister of Britain Keir Starmer for his refusal to prosecute Pakistani gangs involved in the mass rape of underage British girls, calling the PM “evil” incarnate. ”Starmer is evil,” Musk wrote on his social platform on Wednesday morning, above a meme condemning Starmer for demanding an investigation into former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s lockdown-breaching parties during the Covid-19 pandemic, but declining to prosecute “politically protected UK rape gangs.” Musk has spent much of the last two weeks drawing attention to the UK’s so-called “grooming gangs,” and to the police departments, politicians, and prosecutors who allegedly failed to protect children from them.
The gangs in question systematically raped and tortured tens of thousands of underage girls in towns across northern England over the last two decades, according to multiple government and media reports. Almost all of the perpetrators were Pakistani men, and the victims white British girls. Successive governments declined to investigate the scandal – which received mainstream media attention after a series of reports by The Times in 2011 – and several police departments covered up the existence of the gangs, inquiries later found. “What was done to thousands of defenseless little girls in Britain was vile beyond belief,” Musk wrote in another post on Wednesday. “When the fathers of the little girls tried to save them, the authorities arrested their fathers,” he continued, referring to at least one infamous case in the town of Rotherham.
Starmer led the Crown Prosecutorial Service (CPS) from 2008 to 2013, at the height of the scandal. Under his leadership, the CPS was heavily criticized for declining to prosecute a gang in Rochdale, and police in Rotherham told a 2015 inquiry that they considered the CPS unwilling to bring charges against alleged perpetrators. Speaking to reporters on Monday, Starmer accused Musk of spreading “lies and misinformation” about his handling of the scandal. The PM claimed that he changed the CPS’ “whole prosecution approach” to cases of child sexual abuse and left the agency with the highest number in history of such prosecutions.
However, a BBC investigation noted that “the prime minister referred only to the broad category of child sex abuse prosecution data” and that CPS records do not distinguish between sexual abuse perpetrated by gangs and abuse perpetrated by individuals. The broadcaster also found that prosecutions under Starmer peaked at 4,794 between April 2010 and March 2011 but rose to 7,200 per year in 2016-2017, after Starmer left the CPS. Starmer’s already dismal approval rating has sunk even further since last week when Musk began attacking his handling of the rape gangs. According to a YouGov poll published on Monday, 63% of voters disapprove of his government’s performance, while just 16% approve, a fall of two points since December.
In a debate in parliament on Wednesday, Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch demanded that an upcoming child protection bill include an amendment setting up a national inquiry into the gangs. Starmer rejected the proposition, arguing that a lengthy inquiry would stall the implementation of the rest of the bill. With Starmer’s Labour Party holding a 163-seat majority, the amendment is unlikely to pass “Now why would Keir Starmtrooper order his own party to block such an inquiry?” Musk wrote on X. “Because he is hiding terrible things. That is why.”
'Jess Phillips confirmed that she has yet to speak to a single victim about this scandal.'
Charlie Peters outlines the anger demonstrated over Jess Phillips' decision to turn down an independent investigation into grooming gangs in Oldham despite never meeting with survivors. pic.twitter.com/ODrHf5W6go
— GB News (@GBNEWS) January 8, 2025
Sure, ban X. Musk has his interview with AfD leader Alice Weidel later today. Can Germany ban it?
• France Calls For EU Action Against Elon Musk (RT)
France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot has urged the EU executive branch to use existing legislation to crack down on outside interference. His comment to French media on Wednesday is related to US-based billionaire Elon Musk weighing in on European politics on his platform X (formerly Twitter). His words come a day after French President Emmanuel Macron slammed the owner of X for interfering in EU matters. He accused the world’s richest man of intervening directly in elections across the continent, including next month’s snap federal polls in Germany. “Either the European Commission applies with the greatest firmness the laws that we have to protect our unique space, or it does not, and then it should think about giving the capacity to do so back to EU member states,” Barrot said in an interview with France Inter radio, urging the lawmakers to “wake up.”
Asked whether the X platform could be banned in the bloc, the minister replied that a mechanism allowing the move “is laid out in our laws.” The foreign minister’s comments came ahead of a livestream conversation on X with the co-leader of the right-wing AfD (Alternative for Germany) party, Alice Weidel, scheduled for Thursday, where the South African-born tech mogul is set to participate as a host. On Monday, an EC spokesperson said the institution will investigate whether the conversation is in breach of the bloc’s social media rules. In December, Musk provoked major controversy by claiming in a post on X that “only the AfD can save Germany.” The statement was followed by an op-ed piece posted by the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag later that month, in which the entrepreneur defended the party against accusations of extremism and praised its economic policies.
Additionally, Musk sparked indignation across the block with a wave of verbal attacks on various political leaders. Last month, following a tragic attack at a Christmas market in Magdeburg, the billionaire demanded the immediate resignation of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, calling him an “incompetent fool.” Last week, the tech mogul lambasted British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, accusing him of failing to tackle the Pakistani grooming gang issue and refusing to properly investigate the mass rape of underage girls while head of the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service from 2008 to 2013. He also urged Washington to step in and “liberate” the Brits from their “tyrannical government.”
World leaders that attack Musk for free speech are ‘proving his point,’ says TrendMacro CIO
"All I can say is you know you're over the target when you when they start shooting the flak at you. You know, for the president of France to say that Elon Musk is interfering directly in… pic.twitter.com/JhXOJU7yGL— Camus (@newstart_2024) January 8, 2025
They want to show unity where there is none.
Hopefully, Trump will invite Elon Musk into the room.
• EU Ministers Plan Joint Trip To US (RT)
The foreign ministers of France, Germany and Poland are planning a joint trip to the US as a show of unity, Politico EU has reported. While the visit is still at the planning stage and no date has been set, the trio wants to arrive shortly after the January 20 inauguration of President Donald Trump, three EU diplomats told the outlet on condition of anonymity on Wednesday. Jean-Noel Barrot of France, Annalena Baerbock of Germany and Radoslaw Sikorski of Poland might even be accompanied by EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, according to two of the diplomats. The idea behind the trip would be to make a “show of European unity,” one of the diplomats said. The EU has struggled to respond to Trump’s talk of the US taking over Greenland, an Arctic island that is currently an autonomous territory of Denmark.
The Danish government has ruled out selling the island and suggested it would be unacceptable of the US to take it from a fellow NATO member by force. “There is no question of the EU letting other nations in the world, whoever they may be, attack its sovereign borders,” Barrot has told France Inter radio. The European Commission, however, declined to take a position on the issue. French President Emmanuel Macron has argued that Trump won’t be able to resolve the Russia-Ukraine conflict quickly and that the role of Washington should be to bring Moscow to the table. Barrot, who has been France’s foreign minister since September, is a holdover from Michel Barnier’s cabinet that lost parliamentary confidence in early December. Germany’s ‘traffic light’ coalition that Baerbock is part of crumbled in November and faces a general election in February.
The current government of Poland took power in December 2023 through post-electoral coalition-building. While still in the opposition, Sikorski caused a minor scandal by posting “Thank you, USA” after the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines which had delivered Russian gas to Germany. Trump has also rattled the European NATO members by declaring this week that their levels of military spending were too low. As many as 15 members of the bloc have failed to reach the minimum target of 2% of their GDP by mid-2024. According to the US president-elect, even that is nowhere near enough and they ought to be spending at least 5%, which none of the members of the bloc are currently capable of.
Trump must put a leash on Bibi. And he knows it.
• Trump Envoy Will Join Gaza Ceasefire Talks in Qatar (Antiwar)
President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, said Tuesday that he was traveling to Qatar to take part in Gaza hostage and ceasefire negotiations with Biden administration officials. Chances of a deal seem slim as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made clear he has no intention of ending the genocidal war, and Hamas is saying any deal must lead to a permanent ceasefire, but Witkoff insisted progress was being made. “We’re making a lot of progress, and I don’t want to say too much because I think they’re doing a really good job back in Doha,” Witkoff, a real estate investor, said at a press conference with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Witkoff said he was “really hopeful that by the inaugural, we’ll have some good things to announce on behalf of the president.” When asked what has been impeding a deal, Witkoff declined to answer.
“I believe we’ve been on the verge of [a deal]. I don’t want to discuss what’s delayed it — no point to be negative in any way,” he said. Standing alongside Witkoff, Trump repeated his threat that there would be “all hell to pay” if Hamas doesn’t start releasing hostages by his inauguration on January 20. “If those hostages aren’t back — if they’re not back by the time I get into office — all hell will break out in the Middle East and it will not be good for Hamas and it will not be good, frankly, for anyone. All hell will break out. I don’t have to say anymore, but that’s what it is and they should have been back a long time ago,” Trump said. The president-elect has vowed to be a staunch supporter of Israel, as he was in his first term, and said on Monday that he was the “best friend that Israel ever had.”
According to media reports, Hamas has released a list of 34 hostages it is willing to release as part of the first phase of a ceasefire deal in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners. The Times of Israel reported that a potential deal that’s on the table would only involve a six to seven-week temporary ceasefire. Relatives of Israelis still held in Gaza are calling for the government to pursue a comprehensive deal that releases all the hostages and brings an end to the conflict. During previous rounds of negotiations, Netanyahu sabotaged the chances of a deal by constantly declaring that he wouldn’t agree to a permanent truce and adding new demands.
“President Biden and his loyalists, who were especially motivated to pretend that he wasn’t really doing what he was really doing.”
• Genocidal President, Genocidal Politics (Solomon)
When news broke over the weekend that President Biden just approved an $8 billion deal for shipping weapons to Israel, a nameless official vowed that “we will continue to provide the capabilities necessary for Israel’s defense.” Following the reports last month from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch concluding that Israeli actions in Gaza are genocide, Biden’s decision was a new low for his presidency. It’s logical to focus on Biden as an individual. His choices to keep sending huge quantities of weaponry to Israel have been pivotal and calamitous. But the presidential genocide and the active acquiescence of the vast majority of Congress are matched by the dominant media and overall politics of the United States.
Forty days after the Gaza war began, Anne Boyer announced her resignation as poetry editor of the New York Times Magazine. More than a year later, her statement illuminates why the moral credibility of so many liberal institutions has collapsed in the wake of Gaza’s destruction. While Boyer denounced “the Israeli state’s U.S.-backed war against the people of Gaza,” she emphatically chose to disassociate herself from the nation’s leading liberal news organization: “I can’t write about poetry amidst the ‘reasonable’ tones of those who aim to acclimatize us to this unreasonable suffering. No more ghoulish euphemisms. No more verbally sanitized hellscapes. No more warmongering lies.” The acclimatizing process soon became routine. It was most crucially abetted by President Biden and his loyalists, who were especially motivated to pretend that he wasn’t really doing what he was really doing.
For mainline journalists, the process required the willing suspension of belief in a consistent standard of language and humanity. When Boyer acutely grasped the dire significance of its Gaza coverage, she withdrew from “the newspaper of record.” Content analysis of the war’s first six weeks found that coverage by the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times had a steeply dehumanizing slant toward Palestinians. The three papers “disproportionately emphasized Israeli deaths in the conflict” and “used emotive language to describe the killings of Israelis, but not Palestinians,” a study by The Intercept showed. “The term ‘slaughter’ was used by editors and reporters to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 60 to 1, and ‘massacre’ was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 125 to 2. ‘Horrific’ was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 36 to 4.”
After a year of the Gaza war, Arab-American historian Rashid Khalidi said: “My objection to organs of opinion like the New York Times is that they see absolutely everything from an Israeli perspective. ‘How does it affect Israel, how do the Israelis see it?’ Israel is at the center of their worldview, and that’s true of our elites generally, all over the West. The Israelis have very shrewdly, by preventing direct reportage from Gaza, further enabled that Israelocentric perspective.” Khalidi summed up: “The mainstream media is as blind as it ever was, as willing to shill for any monstrous Israeli lie, to act as stenographers for power, repeating what is said in Washington.”
Some people will refuse pardons. That makes the rest look extra very bad.
• Biden Confirms He’s Considering Preemptive Pardons (ZH)
President Joe Biden in a Jan. 5 interview confirmed that he is considering whether to issue preemptive pardons. White House officials have said that Biden plans to issue additional pardons and commutations before his term ends. Preemptive pardons would differ from those Biden has already issued and those issued by other presidents in their final days in office. They would protect people from prosecution for charges that have not yet been brought, reports Zachary Stieber at The Epoch Times. “Some of your supporters have encouraged you to issue preemptive pardons to people like Liz Cheney and Anthony Fauci … will you do that?” USA TODAY’s Susan Page asked Biden during the interview. The individuals suggested have drawn criticism from President-elect Donald Trump, who is set to take office again on Jan. 20.
Biden referenced a meeting with Trump at the White House in November 2024. “I tried to make it clear that there was no need, and it was counterintuitive for his interest to go back and try to settle scores,” Biden said, recounting the conversation they had. Trump did not respond directly to that advice, according to the president. “He didn’t. But he didn’t say, ‘No, I’m going to…’ You know. He didn’t reinforce it. He just basically listened,” Biden said. “So you haven’t decided yet. You’re still assessing this issue?” Page asked. “No, I haven’t,” Biden responded. “A little bit of it depends on who he puts in what positions,” Biden said. The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment. Inquiries sent to the employers of Cheney and Fauci were not returned.
Biden in late 2024 pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, whom a jury convicted of federal gun charges and who pleaded guilty to intentionally failing to pay taxes. Biden later pardoned another 39 people and commuted the sentences of some 1,500 others, including 37 death row prisoners. One individual floated as a possible preemptive pardon candidate is Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state. Clinton, who mishandled confidential emails and whose campaign funded opposition research against Trump, was included in a list compiled by Kash Patel, Trump’s nominee for FBI director. The list, Patel has said, are participants in the so-called deep state.
Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, has said that he does not think Biden should preemptively pardon his wife. “I hope he won’t do that,” he said during a recent television appearance on Dec. 11. A Clinton Foundation spokesperson did not return a request for comment. Biden this month awarded Cheney, who was mentioned during the interview, a Presidential Citizens Medal for her work as vice chair of a House panel that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol. Biden said Cheney and other former officials who received the medal in the ceremony had “dedicated their careers to serving our democracy” and “served in difficult times with honor, decency and ensure our democracy delivers.”
100 days is more than 24 hours.
• Trump’s Ukraine Aide Sets 100-Day Timeline To End Conflict (RT)
US President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming special envoy has said he hopes to mediate a resolution to the Russia-Ukraine conflict within 100 days, starting on Inauguration Day on January 20. “I know I’m on the clock,” retired US Army lieutenant general Keith Kellogg told Fox News on Wednesday. “I would like to set a goal on a personal level, on a professional level. I would say let’s set it at 100 days and move your way back.” Kellogg stressed that Trump remains committed to restarting negotiations between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky to find a settlement to the fighting, which has claimed “enormous” casualties on both sides. “He’s not trying to give something to Putin or to the Russians. He’s actually trying to save Ukraine and save their sovereignty. And he’s going to make sure that it’s equitable and that it’s fair,” Kellogg said.
He argued that “the biggest mistake President [Joe] Biden made is the fact that he’s never engaged in any conversations with Putin.” “He hasn’t talked to him in over two years,” Kellogg said, adding that Trump “does talk to adversaries and allies alike.” Trump has repeatedly vowed to quickly mediate a successful peace deal, but offered little specifics. According to media reports, his team is considering freezing the conflict along the current front line. Negotiations between Moscow and Kiev broke down in spring 2022, with both sides accusing each other of making unrealistic demands. Putin stated that for any settlement to work, Ukraine must abandon its plans to join NATO and renounce its claims on Crimea and four other former Ukrainian territories that have joined Russia.
“They’re afraid that if they were Donald Trump and they had suffered what they did to him, they would be very frightened..”
• Victor Davis Hanson: FBI “Afraid” Trump Will “Re-Examine” Conduct (ZH)
Victor Davis Hanson said on Monday that he thinks the FBI is “afraid” of the incoming Trump administration over the possibility that their shady dealings will be ‘re-examined.’ Speaking with Fox News on Monday about new evidence released of a suspect in the DC pipe bomb case, the Hoover Institution Senior Fellow told host Laura Ingraham; “I think they’re afraid the narrative changed over the four years, and they were afraid to release any information during the election. Now they feel that there’s a new administration and there might be some exposure or culpability. They’re afraid that if they were Donald Trump and they had suffered what they did to him, they would be very frightened the way they think,” adding “So they think Donald Trump is going to re-examine a lot of this.”
A new video published by the FBI’s DC Field Office shows a suspect appearing to plant a bomb near the Democratic National Committee. Hanson went on to call out what he said were the FBI’s “lies,” highlighting the neglect to immediately release Lt. Michael Byrd’s identity after fatally shooting Ashli Babbitt during the Jan. 6 riot. The senior fellow additionally cited the number of charges brought against attendees of the Jan. 6 attack compared to those not charged during the 2020 Black Lives Matter (BLM) riots. -Daily Caller. “A lot of the things they said, Laura, were abject lies,” Hanson continued. “There were not four officers killed. There were not 10 people killed. There was only one violent death, we think, and that was a Trump supporter, Ashli Babbitt. Then there was no need to hide Officer Byrd’s identity. Anytime an officer lethally shoots an unarmed person in this country, they’re identified. For some reason, they wanted to suppress that.”
“They wanted to suppress the FBI video. They wanted to suppress the information about Lynn [sic] Cheney, maybe witness tampering, that’s alleged,” Hanson continued. “They wanted to suppress some of the erosion of the evidence. They didn’t tell us how many people were charged. It ended up [with] 1,500 felony charges. It was [an] almost 75% conviction rate. That never happens. Compare that with the 14,000 people that were arrested in 2020. Almost 90% of them were never charged or indicted. They were released. So there was a lot of things that they want to suppress.”
How lies survive.
• Klobuchar Repeats Common False Claim About January 6th (Turley)
Minnesota Democrat Sen. Amy Klobuchar this week was hit by a “community note” flagging a common false statement made about January 6th and how multiple officers were killed that day. Democratic leaders routinely refer to multiple deaths of officers when the only person to die on January 6th was Ashli Babbitt, a killing of an unarmed protester that remains controversial after a whitewashing by the Capitol Police. Klobuchar, who has been a vocal supporter of censorship to quell “disinformation” on social media, repeated the false narrative and declared that “Police officers were injured and killed.” Klobuchar joined other Democrats in repeating the claim in her post on X: “Four years ago, the electoral vote certification was interrupted by a violent mob. Police officers were injured and killed. Our democracy hung in the balance. I knew we had to do our duty and complete the count – and in the early hours of January 7th, we did.”
That posting quickly led to a “Community Note” by X that said, “No officers were killed.” Immediately after the riot, Democrats started to repeat this claim, particularly concerning the later death of U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick. The New York Times helped spread the false claim that he died as a result of being hit with a fire extinguisher. In reality, Sicknick suffered two strokes and died of natural causes the day after the riot. As the note states, “The medical examiner found Sicknick died of natural causes which means ‘a disease alone causes death. If death is hastened by an injury, the manner of death is not considered natural.’ Four other officers committed suicide days to months later.” While repeating this claim, Democrats also downplay the riot around the White House in the previous summer, including some like Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md), who has bizarrely insisted that the protests were “peaceful.”
While many today still claim that the protests were “entirely peaceful” and there was no “attack on the White House,” that claim is demonstrably false. It is only plausible if one looks at the level of violence at the start of the clearing operation as opposed to the prior 48 hours. There was, in fact, an exceptionally high number of officers injured during the protests. In addition to a reported 150 officers injured (including at least 49 Park Police officers around the White House), protesters caused extensive property damage including the torching of a historic structure and the attempted arson of St. John’s. The threat was so great that Trump had to be moved into the bunker because the Secret Service feared a breach of security around the White House.
Of course, January 6th was bad enough—it does not need embellishment. Many of us immediately condemned it at the time as a desecration of our traditions and values. It was a disgraceful riot that interrupted the constitutionally mandated transition of power. However, the repeated use of this false claim is a disservice to the public and a misuse of this national tragedy. This repetition is referred to by psychologists as creating the “illusion of truth.” If repeated enough times, the lie becomes the truth, and those who object are then attacked as “deniers” or “insurrectionist sympathizers.” On “misinformation,” Klobuchar has pushed social media companies to “take this crap off.” She has sponsored legislation to support censorship, particularly when it comes to the pandemic and COVID-19. She has stressed “how lethal misinformation can be and it is our responsibility to take action.” In this case, the lethality was the misinformation.
“The Supreme Court requested a response from New York prosecutors by Thursday.”
• Trump Asks Supreme Court To Halt Sentencing In Hush Money Case (ZH)
Donald Trump petitioned the US Supreme Court to postpone his sentencing in the Stormy Daniels/hush money case, scheduled for Friday, Jan. 10. This move comes after a New York appeals courts rejected his requests for a delay, including a recent denial from the state’s appeals court, the Epoch Times reported. This move comes after New York courts rejected his requests for a delay, including a recent denial from the state’s appeals court. Trump’s legal team filed an emergency request with the nation’s highest court on Wednesday, arguing that proceeding with the sentencing could cause “grave injustice and harm to the institution of the Presidency and the operations of the federal government,” according to The Associated Press.
The Supreme Court requested a response from New York prosecutors by Thursday. The case, presided over by New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, resulted in Trump’s conviction in May 2024 on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Merchan has indicated that he does not intend to impose jail time, fines, or probation at the sentencing, and in fact the only reason for the sentencing is so CNN/MSNBC can officially claim that Trump is a convicted felon.
Can’t miss.
• Guess Who Is Already Talking About Impeaching Trump Again (Margolis)
Donald Trump is set to make history on January 20, becoming the 47th president of the United States. After winning both the Electoral College and the popular vote, he enters this term with a stronger mandate than his first. Yet as sure as the sun rises, Democrats are gearing up for their favorite pastime: impeaching Trump. Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has already signaled as much. During an interview on CNN, Dana Bash pressed him on balancing governance with his previous focus on investigations into Trump’s conduct, and Schiff vowed to “push back” against Trump for any perceived “abuse of power.” Schiff responded hesitantly, initially stumbling over his words. “Well, I — look, I think we hope for the best. We keep a focus on trying to get positive, affirmative things done for the country,” he said.
However, he quickly pivoted, adding, “But a lot will depend on how he chooses to govern. If he violates the law, if he violates the Constitution, if he abuses his office, we will vigorously push back, fight back, stand up to him, as we had to do during his first term in office.” Schiff added, “My priority is to try to get things done for my California constituents.” Still, he noted that his constituents also “expect me to stand up to him when he attacks the Constitution or their freedom.” Despite claiming to focus on policy, Schiff’s rhetoric suggests that he is really gearing up for another round of battles with Trump, just as he did during Trump’s first term. This is the same man who lied about having seen evidence of Trump colluding with Russia. So obviously, the issue isn’t whether Trump violates the law; it’s whether Democrats can frame him for some violation of the law.
Remember, before Trump even stepped into the Oval Office, left-wing activists and their media allies were already speculating about his removal. Politico broached the topic of impeachment in April 2016, months before he won the presidency. Articles like “The Case for Donald Trump’s Impeachability” popped up before he was even sworn in. Vanity Fair explicitly reported on Dec. 15, 2016, that Democrats were “paving the way” to impeach him. The Washington Post didn’t even wait a full hour after Trump’s first inauguration, declaring less than 20 minutes into his presidency that the impeachment campaign had begun. For Democrats, impeachment has never been about legitimate concerns. Their motives have always been political: to stop Trump and appease their donor base. Despite their best efforts — including two failed impeachment attempts and numerous legal maneuvers to prevent him from being able to return to office — Trump’s support has endured, and his momentum has grown.
Their relentless attacks on him have only fatigued the public, including many on the left. You would think they’d try a new tactic for a change. For Democrats, simply holding the office of president seems to qualify as an “abuse of power” in Trump’s case. Unlike his first term, however, this time Trump has a Republican-controlled Senate to act as a firewall against such antics, ensuring that his agenda can proceed with fewer roadblocks. Trump’s victory isn’t just a win for his supporters; it’s a repudiation of the Left’s years-long campaign of lawfare and political gamesmanship. With the country increasingly weary of futile anti-Trump hysteria, Democrats might find that their impeachment rhetoric falls flat this time around. But don’t expect that to stop them — they’ve been plotting this for years, and they’re not about to stop now.
No, they should all decrease it.
• NATO Members Should Increase Defense Spending – Trump (RT)
NATO countries should start spending 5% of their GDP on defense, US President-elect Donald Trump said on Tuesday. European members of the US-led military bloc, he told a press conference, continue to spend “only a tiny fraction” of what Washington spends on defense, even though they are more affected by the ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kiev. “It should be 5%, not 2%,” Trump told journalists at his Florida estate, referring to the spending threshold set by the bloc for its members. Some countries in the organization “have taken advantage of us,” the US president-elect said, repeating the statements he made during his first presidential term, when he pushed fellow NATO states to spend more on defense, arguing that the US would not protect them in case of a foreign aggression otherwise.
On Tuesday, Trump also spoke about a disparity in defense spending between various member countries. According to him, Washington was spending “billions and billions of dollars more … than Europe.” The president-elect then argued that the economy of the European NATO members combined is of a “similar size” to that of the US, adding that “they can all afford” an increase in defense spending. The US-led bloc simply “can’t do it at [a 2% threshold],” the president-elect said, without going into details about his reasoning behind that statement. He even warned that European NATO member states are currently “in a dangerous territory” and also claimed his previous insistence on fellow members’ defense-spend increases “saved” the bloc. According to a NATO report into defense spending published last June, none of the bloc’s members, including the US itself, currently spends 5% of their GDP on defense.
Poland was the NATO member with the largest relative level of defense spending, having allocated over 4% of its GDP to this concern. The US occupied third place in relative terms, behind Poland and Estonia, with just under 3.5% of its GDP spent on defense. As many as 15 members of the bloc, including Canada, Italy and France, continued to fall behind the organization’s 2% spending threshold as of June 2024, according to its own data. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has also spoken about bloc members’ need to increase this allocation in their budgets. “It is true that we spend more on defense now than we did a decade ago,” he said last month in Brussels, adding that the bloc nonetheless spends less on defense then during the Cold War, when “Europeans spent far more than 3% of their GDP” on it.
Asked about what new threshold he would consider sufficient, Rutte said “you have to go to at least 4%,” adding that “even with 4% you can’t defend yourselves, because then you would not have the latest technologies implemented… in your armies.” Trump’s latest reiterations come as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz sharply criticized a proposal by his Economy Minister Robert Habeck to drastically increase the nation’s defense budget. According to Scholz, the proposed increase would only end up as additional burden for the German taxpayers.
Trump can’t afford to lose her.
• Senate Democrats Attempt To Delay Tulsi Gabbard Confirmation Hearings (ZH)
Just days after the new members of the United States Senate were sworn into office, Democrats in the upper chamber have already taken steps to delay the confirmation hearings of one major nominee for President-elect Donald Trump’s second Cabinet. As reported by Axios, Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.), who serves as the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is delaying Republican efforts to hold confirmation hearings as early as next week for former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (R-Hawaii), President-elect Trump’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence (DNI). Warner’s excuse for the delay is that the committee has allegedly not yet received certain materials from Gabbard, including her FBI background check, ethics disclosure, and her pre-hearing questionnaire. The background check, as per committee rules, must be submitted at least one week before the hearing is to take place.
However, Gabbard had in fact completed her background check last week. Furthermore, her confirmation could be much smoother than most due to her already possessing a security clearance. She also already submitted her pre-hearing questionnaire, but will submit a second one by Thursday due to Warner’s demands. As for the ethics report, logistical issues have prevented the timely delivery of such information due to the Washington D.C. area being struck by a heavy snowstorm on Monday, which has caused similar delays for other nominees. Despite Warner’s efforts to block the hearing, Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) reaffirmed that the Senate “intends to hold these hearings before Inauguration Day,” according to a spokesman. “The Intelligence Committee, the nominees, and the transition are diligently working toward that goal.”
“After the terrorist attacks on New Year’s Eve and New Years Day, it’s sad to see Sen. Warner and Democrats playing politics with Americans’ safety and our national security,” said Alexa Henning, a spokeswoman for the Trump-Vance transition. Gabbard has generally been considered one of President-elect Trump’s most controversial nominees. Originally a Democrat who rose to the rank of vice chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Gabbard came to be at odds with her own party over its deliberate suppression of the presidential campaigns of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in 2016 and 2020. She left the House to run for President herself in 2020, then left the Democratic Party and switched to Independent. She became a vocal supporter of President Trump’s comeback bid in 2024, and switched her party affiliation to Republican shortly after his victory in November.
Fetterman
BREAKING: Senator John Fetterman announces he will vote YES on several of Trump’s cabinet picks.
This includes Marco Rubio, Elise Stefanik, Sean Duffy, Brooke Rollins, and potentially nominees like RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard.
“I’m open to hear from everyone, and I don’t know why… pic.twitter.com/oXNIEYd3qq
— The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) January 8, 2025
Senator John Fetterman tells Fox News he is considering voting to CONFIRM Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr.
“I’m happy to meet with all of them, I don’t know why that was controversial.”
“I got a lot of blowback just to meet with them. To me, that is just doing my job.”
“Some of these… pic.twitter.com/q5ZZS2VLuJ
— Holden Culotta (@Holden_Culotta) January 8, 2025
Some logic:
“DOJ lawyers said in the new filing that whether Smith was unconstitutionally appointed is irrelevant because the issue at hand is how Garland handles Smith’s report..”
You mean the report that the Constitution says shouldn’t have existed?
• DOJ Confirms It Will Release Jack Smith’s Report On Trump, But… (ZH)
Attorney General Merrick Garland plans to release only the volume of special counsel Jack Smith’s report dealing with Donald Trump’s plans to subvert the transfer of power after his loss in the 2020 election, holding back on sharing the Mar-a-Lago report while the president-elect’s two co-defendants still face trial. Garland’s decision all but assures the public will never see Smith’s report reviewing Trump’s mishandling of classified records at his Palm Beach, Fla., resort. However, the filing says the top members of the House and Senate Judiciary committees will be able to review the Mar-a-Lago report at the Department of Justice (DOJ)… so don’t be surprised when the leaks start.
As Zachary Stieber reports for The Epoch Times, DOJ officials said in a court filing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit that AG Garland intends to release part one of the report, which deals with Trump, “in furtherance of the public interest in informing a co-equal branch and the public regarding this significant matter.” Smith has already transmitted the report to Garland, officials said. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon on Tuesday had ordered the department not to release the report until the 11th Circuit reviewed a motion by Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, Trump’s co-defendants in a federal case. While prosecutors dropped charges against Trump following his November 2024 election win, they are still pursuing Nauta, a former Trump aide, and De Oliveira, a manager at Trump’s resort in Florida.
Nauta and De Oliveira say Smith should be fired and that his report should not be released to the public, given he was found by Cannon to be unconstitutionally appointed. DOJ lawyers said in the new filing that whether Smith was unconstitutionally appointed is irrelevant because the issue at hand is how Garland handles Smith’s report. They also argued that Nauta and De Oliveira have no interest in part one, and do not have standing to block the publication of that part. “There is also no valid basis for this Court to pretermit the Attorney General’s discretion with respect to Volume One,” they wrote. Officials said that while part two of the report will not be made available to the public, a redacted version will be available for certain lawmakers to view in camera as long as the lawmakers agree not to publicly release any of the report’s contents.
Enter Kash Patel.
• FBI Is Still Hiding Details Of Russiagate (Maté)
Just two days before McCabe opened the May 2017 probe, the FBI, via Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, renewed contact with dossier author Christopher Steele despite having terminated him as a source back in November 2016. As RCI’s Paul Sperry has previously reported, this sudden outreach to Steele right before the opening of a new Trump-Russia conspiracy investigation indicated that the FBI was seeking to re-engage the Clinton-funded British operative to help it build a case against the president for espionage and obstruction of justice. At the time, the FBI was still relying on Steele’s fabrications for its surveillance warrants against Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page. The following month, the FBI filed the last of its four FISA court warrants based on Steele’s material. The Justice Department has since invalidated two of those warrants on the grounds that they were based on “material misstatements.”
The FBI re-enlisted Steele despite possessing information that thoroughly discredited him. Five months before it newly sought Steele’s help to investigate the sitting president, the FBI interviewed Igor Danchenko, whom Steele had used as his dossier’s key “sub-source.” In that January 2017 meeting, Danchenko told FBI agents that corroboration for the dossier’s claims was “zero”; that he had “no idea” where claims sourced to him came from; and that the Russia-Trump rumors he passed along to Steele came from alcohol-fueled “word of mouth and hearsay.” The FBI had also been unable to corroborate any of Steele’s incendiary claims.
A previously disclosed document also shows that former CIA Director John Brennan – who insistently advanced the Trump/Russia conspiracy theory – informed then-president Barack Obama in July 2016 that the Clinton campaign was planning to tie Trump to Russia in order to distract attention from the controversy over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while serving as secretary of state. By that point, the Clinton campaign was already paying for the fabricated reports produced by Steele, who made contact with the FBI as early as July 5.
Although the newly declassified document attempts to suggest that the FBI had actionable intelligence to suspect Trump of being a Russian agent, McCabe’s subsequent comments indicate that there was no such evidence on offer. Instead, McCabe has said his counterintelligence probe of Trump was primarily motivated by the president’s firing of Comey. In a February 2019 interview with CBS News, McCabe explained his thinking as follows: “[T]he idea is, if the president committed obstruction of justice, fired the director of the of the FBI to negatively impact or to shut down our investigation of Russia’s malign activity and possibly in support of his campaign, as a counter intelligence investigator you have to ask yourself, ‘Why would a president of the United States do that?’ So all those same sorts of facts cause us to wonder is there an inappropriate relationship, a connection between this president and our most fearsome enemy, the government of Russia.”
McCabe therefore had no evidence that Trump had a “connection” to Russia, and in fact could only “wonder” if there was one. Yet because Trump had fired Comey, whose FBI was already investigating Trump’s campaign for Russia ties and relying on the Clinton-funded Steele dossier in the process, McCabe decided that he had grounds to order an espionage investigation of the commander in chief. With the official predicate for that May 2017 investigation still redacted by the FBI, McCabe’s public statements offer the only insider window into why it was opened. In all of the investigations related to alleged Russian interference to date, the Justice Department has pointedly avoided the question.
Despite inheriting McCabe’s probe – and debunking claims of a Trump-Russia conspiracy related to the 2016 election – Special Counsel Mueller made no mention of the Trump as Russian agent theory in his final report of March 2019. Without informing the public, the FBI closed down the Trump counterintelligence investigation the following month. The case’s closing Electronic Communication, which has previously been declassified in redacted form, states that the McCabe probe “was transferred to FBI personnel assisting” the Mueller team, and entailed the use of “a variety of investigative techniques.” An inquiry led by Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz of the FBI’s conduct during Crossfire Hurricane also ignored McCabe’s decision to investigate Trump as an agent of Russia.
And in a footnote in his final report of May 2023, John Durham – the Special Counsel appointed to launch a sweeping review of the Russia investigation – claimed that McCabe’s May 2017 probe was outside of his purview. By contrast, when it comes to Crossfire Hurricane, Durham’s report concluded that the FBI did not have a legitimate basis to launch that investigation, repeatedly ignored exculpatory evidence, and buried warnings that Clinton’s campaign was trying to frame Trump as a Russian conspirator. While the original Trump-Russia investigation has been discredited, the public remains in the dark about why the FBI launched a follow-up counterintelligence probe that targeted Trump while he was newly in the White House – and what ends it took to pursue it.
Panama
https://twitter.com/i/status/1876988453205746021
Stay at home dog
https://twitter.com/i/status/1876904648981831764
Eagle
The way of the Eagle is necessary for growth pic.twitter.com/jcHqVOMcgM
— De Christian Life (@DeChristianLife) January 7, 2025
Parrots
Man Raises Parrots From Birth, They Are Extremely Imprinted to Him pic.twitter.com/3aKSKokEUv
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) January 8, 2025
Street art
I love this pic.twitter.com/fLD3dbsbWr
— NO CONTEXT HUMANS (@HumansNoContext) January 7, 2025
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