Leonard Misonne Waterloo Place, London 1899
Vivek debate
Here’s why the Democrats suddenly let Biden debate Trump: it’s a set-up. It’s their final Hail Mary for Biden. If that fails, they still have enough time to swap Biden out for a new nominee. That’s why it’s in June, the *earliest-ever* presidential TV debate in history. It’s… pic.twitter.com/zCsyXkags9
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) May 17, 2024
Ogles
Rep. Andy Ogles just ROASTED Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen:
"If I started a story with a convicted felon and a hooker walk into a bar you would immediately know it's a joke. That's what we have here. A joke of a trial." pic.twitter.com/FD3P5y32Dh
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) May 16, 2024
Xi Putin
https://x.com/i/status/1791264681694556387
Videos are being transferred from twitter.com to X.com. It is not going seamless. Should improve as the day goes by.
Moose
https://x.com/i/status/1790990564646609003
tiktokers
https://x.com/i/status/1791220831252595119
Spectacle?!
• Why Trials Like Trump’s Must Be Televised (Alan M. Dershowitz)
If you were flipping between CNN and Fox News following the cross-examination of Stormy Daniels in the New York criminal case against former President Donald Trump, you would have had the impression that the CNN commentator, who professed to be reporting what happened in the courtroom, described a completely different event from what the Fox News reporter, who was also in the courtroom, described. It was as if they had seen two different witnesses and two different lawyers. The CNN commentator reported that Daniels had done a great job holding up against the incompetent cross-examination of Trump’s lawyer. The Fox News commentator reported that the extraordinarily effective Trump lawyer had totally destroyed Daniels’ credibility. Who were you to believe? The CNN commentator was an experienced lawyer who was purporting to describe accurately what had happened without bias or subjectivity.
The Fox News commentator was a former judge and prosecutor with vast experience, who also claimed to be describing the cross-examination without bias. Neither of the commentators even pretended to paint a gray picture. One was starkly black, the other unambiguously white. No nuance in either account. If the trial had been televised, the dominant color would have been gray. Perry Mason cross-examinations rarely occur in real life, and witnesses like Daniels rarely emerge unscathed from cross-examinations even by mediocre lawyers. We, the American public, however, have been denied the right to judge for ourselves how the case against the once and possibly future president is going. We cannot judge the credibility of witnesses, the fairness of the judge or the effectiveness of the lawyers. We must depend on the subjective and generally biased accounts of often partisan “reporters.”
Polls following the OJ Simpson case suggested that those who personally watched the trial on TV were less surprised by the not guilty verdict than those who only read about it in the media, which generally described it as an open and shut case and predicted a guilty verdict. They downplayed or omitted the gaps in the prosecution case and the mistakes made by prosecutors that may have led jurors to find reasonable doubt. The same may be true of the Trump case, except that everyone is seeing the case through the prism of the reporters, rather than with their own eyes. Those who get their “news” from anti-Trump sources will be surprised and outraged if there is an acquittal or hung jury in this “strong” case. Those who get their “news” from pro-Trump sources will be surprised and outraged by a conviction in this “weak” case.
The result of making us rely on partisan secondary sources rather than our own direct observations is inevitable distrust in the justice system. If “Sunlight is the best disinfectant,” lack of visibility is a major source of distrust. Every important trial involving public figures should be televised. Now the trial of Senator Robert Menendez is starting. It, too, should be publicized so that the public can see how the judiciary deals with an important case involving a member of the legislative branch. Even the Supreme Court now permits live audio broadcasts of important appellate cases. Hopefully, they will soon allow telecasting since there is little difference between listening and seeing the justices and the lawyers. The framers of the Constitution intended all judicial proceedings to be public – no secret trials. At the time of the framing, public meant open to print journalists. Today, public means audio and video publication.
The New York trial of Trump is a national scandal. There is no real crime. The judge has allowed testimony that is highly prejudicial and irrelevant. He has made numerous unfair rulings, of which the prosecution has taken advantage. The public has the right to see this abuse with their own eyes, so that we all can judge for ourselves and not allow possibly biased reporters to judge for us. Now the government’s star witness is testifying. Michael Cohen’s credibility promises to be a key factor in the jury’s deliberation. Every citizen should have a right to make his or her own assessment of his credibility or lack thereof. There is no good argument for allowing CNN to tell us whether he is believable, when we might come to a different conclusion based on direct observation with our own eyes.
Star witness, blindsided by prank calls from a 14-year old.
• Trump Lawyer “Dog Walks” Michael Cohen Through Lie After Lie (ZH)
President Donald Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen had his “knees chopped out” by Donald Trump’s defense attorneys in cross-examination during Trump’s ‘hush money’ trial. Cohen was grilled by Trump attorney Todd Blanche about a pivotal phone call that connected Trump to allegations that he approved reimbursements to pay porn star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election. In one exchange, Blanche accused Cohen of lying about speaking with Trump on the phone in October 2016 to reassure his boss that he was handling the payment to Daniels. Blanche then confronted Cohen with text messages that contradicted the lie – revealing that Cohen in fact spoke with Trump’s bodyguard, Keith Schiller. Trump attorney Todd Blanche grilled him about a pivotal phone call that had connected President Trump to the allegations at the center of the case.
He accused Mr. Cohen of calling the former president’s bodyguard, Keith Schiller, to complain about harassing phone calls—not to disclose an update on a plan to purchase the silence of Ms. Clifford. Mr. Cohen said that the prank calls were a part of the conversation with Mr. Schiller. “Now your memory is that you were testifying truthfully on Tuesday, and you had enough time to update Mr. Schiller about all the problems you were having with these harassing calls?” Mr. Blanche asked him. “I always run everything by the boss immediately,” Mr. Cohen said. “It could’ve just been me saying, ‘everything’s been taken care of, it’s been resolved.’” “That was a lie. You did not talk to President Trump that night,” Mr. Blanche said. “You can admit it.” “No sir, I can’t,” Mr. Cohen said. “Because I’m not sure that’s accurate.” “This jury doesn’t want to hear what you think happened,” Mr. Blanche said. -Epoch Times. Cohen appeared blindsided by the line of questioning, and wavered in his recollection of the phone call before blurting out “I believe I was telling the truth!”
Blanche then slapped Cohen around for telling Congress that he didn’t want to work in the Trump administration – only to be confronted with conversations in 2016 in which he expressed disappointment that he was overlooked for the role of Trump’s chief of staff. Cohen also lied about seeking a pardon from Trump, for which his attorneys later had to issue a statement to correct the record. After Cohen had his ass handed to him, CNN pundits were beside themselves. “It was incredible…lawyers want to build a box around the witness & slam it shut–that’s what Todd Blanche did to Cohen…it was an extraordinary cross…Cohen was cornered in…a lie,” said host Anderson Cooper. The network’s top legal analyst said “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a star witness get his knees chopped out quite as clearly and dramatically as what just happened with Michael Cohen.”
https://x.com/i/status/1791174382288765323
“It’s got to come down much more. That’s a lot of inflation, their number they announced.”
• Trump Believes a ‘Great Silent Majority’ Will Vote for Him in November (ET)
Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he believes he has a “great silent majority” who will vote for him during the 2024 election. While speaking to radio host Hugh Hewitt, the former president claimed that he may have the “biggest ever” silent majority, using a term that was popularized by former President Richard Nixon in 1969. He then made reference to the relatively large crowd turnout during last weekend’s rally in Wildwood, New Jersey. “I have a great silent majority … the term was very, very powerfully associated with Nixon, and I didn’t want to be copying the term actually, so it’s the great silent majority,” President Trump said, adding that he believes that 107,000 people attended the Wildwood rally. The Epoch Times could not immediately authenticate that figure. The former president in 2020 made similar claims about a silent majority turning out in droves for him during that year’s election.
But the term was famously used by President Nixon to refer to conservative voters who did not participate in the current political discourse at the time, later resurfacing in the campaigns of former President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. In his interview with Mr. Hewitt, the former president said that he believes inflation may cause some voters to cast ballots in favor of him, coming after the Labor Department released figures Wednesday showing that the consumer price index slightly eased in April. “It’s a lot of inflation when added to the inflation that we’ve suffered that’s been so bad,” President Trump said, likely referring to years of rising prices since the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. “It’s got to come down much more. That’s a lot of inflation, their number they announced.” The former president’s remarks on Wednesday come as a recent poll from Siena College shows that President Joe Biden is trialing the former president in five of six battleground states.
President Trump, notably, is ahead by 6 percentage points in Arizona, 11 points in Georgia, and 13 points in Nevada, the survey revealed. He’s ahead about 3 points in Pennsylvania and 1 point in Wisconsin, while is down by 1 point to President Biden in Michigan. In the 2020 election, races were called for President Biden in all of those states mentioned in the Siena College survey. In a Wall Street Journal poll conducted in April, President Trump garnered a lead of between 2 and 8 percentage points among voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and North Carolina on a ballot that included third-party and independent candidates. The results were similar in a one-on-one matchup with President Biden, it said.
The former president also was viewed as having better physical and mental fitness for the job by 48 percent of respondents, compared to 28 percent for President Biden, the poll showed. Meanwhile, a recent Reuters-Ipsos poll showed that more Americans believe President Trump would handle the economy better than President Biden. Some 41 percent of respondents in the three-day poll said the former president has the better approach, compared to 34 percent for the current president.
“Because of the President’s longstanding commitment to protecting the integrity, effectiveness, and independence of the Department of Justice and its law enforcement investigations….
…he won’t let us see any of it…”
• Joe Biden Invokes Executive Privilege Over Special Counsel Recordings (ZH)
After the DOJ stonewalled over surrendering an audio recording of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s interview with President Joe Biden over his handling of classified documents, the White House has invoked executive privilege to block House Republicans from obtaining it. On Wednesday, Attorney General Merrick Garland requested that Biden assert executive privilege over the recordings following a subpoena from the House Judiciary and Oversight committees. “Because of the President’s longstanding commitment to protecting the integrity, effectiveness, and independence of the Department of Justice and its law enforcement investigations, he has decided to assert executive privilege over the recordings,” said White House counsel Ed Siskel in a letter obtained by The Hill. The Feb. 27 subpoena requested copies of notes, audio files, video and transcripts related to Hur’s probe, and had a deadline of March 7.
“Americans expect equal justice under the law and DOJ is allowing the Bidens to operate above it,” House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) said in an April statement. “Special Counsel Hur’s report outlined that classified documents Joe Biden stashed for years relate to countries where his family cashed in on the Biden brand.” In response to a request for audio of what author Mark Zwonitzer recorded while interviewing Biden, whose two memoirs he wrote, Assistant AG Carlos Felipe Uriarte said there is no need for the department to hand it over because the committees also have transcripts of the interviews. “To go further by producing the audio files would compound the likelihood that future prosecutors will be unable to secure this level of cooperation,” Uriarte wrote.
“They might have a harder time obtaining consent to an interview at all. It is clearly not in the public interest to render such cooperation with prosecutors and investigators less likely in the future.” Uriarte then reiterated that the DOJ has provided ample evidence to the committees. Hur’s 345-page report concluded that no charges should be brought against Biden due to cognitive decline. “We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Hur wrote. Hur cited 2017 conversations between Biden and Zwontizer, which Hur described as “painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries.”
Hur
⚠️COVER UP⚠️
Biden is abusing executive privilege to prevent the public from hearing his interview with Special Counsel Hur!
AG Garland continues to deny Congressional Republicans access to these recordings, citing that the GOP will use them to smear Biden on the campaign… pic.twitter.com/X7fY1LP3O9
— Clandestine (@WarClandestine) May 16, 2024
“President Trump will not be our last president and what we leave in the wake of this scandal will shape our democracy for generations to come..”
• Freezing the Arms Shipment to Israel Not an Impeachable Offense (Turley)
Political analysts on the left and the right have acknowledged that Biden’s hardened stance toward Israel is due to his faltering poll numbers and the threat that he could lose Michigan and Minnesota in the upcoming election. A loss in Michigan, where the state’s large Muslim population has rejected Biden’s past support for Israel, would likely doom his chances for reelection. Even assuming that Biden’s recent changes were motivated by politics in Michigan (which I believe is a fair assessment), it would not be a high crime and misdemeanor. Presidents routinely act out of political interests. Indeed, a democracy involves using one’s voting power to influence politicians like Biden to change policy. The more than 100,000 “uncommitted” votes in Michigan’s Democratic primary clearly spooked the Biden White House.
To impeach presidents for such discretionary conduct would make impeachment a type of “vote of no confidence” device used in countries like the United Kingdom. That is not the purpose of impeachment, which was meant to be a rarely-used measure to address the most egregious forms of presidential misconduct. The recent resolution falls into a type of “just desserts” rationale for impeachment. I testified in the first Trump impeachment and opposed it on constitutional grounds. I warned Democrats that they would rue the day that they lowered the standard and short-circuited the process for impeachment. At the time, I told the House Judiciary Committee: “President Trump will not be our last president and what we leave in the wake of this scandal will shape our democracy for generations to come.
I am concerned about lowering impeachment standards to fit a paucity of evidence and an abundance of anger. If the House proceeds solely on the Ukrainian allegations, this impeachment would stand out among modern impeachments as the shortest proceeding, with the thinnest evidentiary record, and the narrowest grounds ever used to impeach a president. That does not bode well for future presidents who are working in a country often sharply and, at times, bitterly divided.” After ignoring that warning, Democrats went a step further in the second impeachment in 2021 and used what I called a “snap impeachment” in an attempt to punish Trump for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.It would be an easy thing to say “well, turnabout is fair play, so a pox upon their house.”
The problem is that this is the people’s house and we all are harmed by the destruction of the impeachment process. Democrats were wrong in 2019 and 2021 to impeach Trump, but yielding to the same political motives now is no virtue. Ironically, the new impeachment resolution does precisely what Biden is accused of doing: using constitutionally bestowed powers for raw political purposes. The White House has insisted that this latest effort is “ridiculous.” Except that isn’t ridiculous given Democrats’ past actions. But it is equally wrong.
“I named my computer model after Socrates because the oracle of Delphi had said that he was the smartest man in Greece.”
• Martin Armstrong: ‘West Governments Need War’ (SF)
Your predictive model is based on precise calculations. The cycles of history and the economy thus seem to chase each other along the time span of history. If I’m not mistaken, you compared the current context to the crisis and dissolution of the Roman Empire. Is it correct? History repeats because human nature never changes. The Roman Empire is but one example from history of its success and failures. It lasted longer than anyone because it did not impose cultural regulations. The Christians called them pagans because they had so many Gods. That was the product of their policy of freedom of religion. Athens had Athena, Northern Europe had Thor, so they did not try to change the culture of the lands they conquered. They created a common market where someone in Britain could sell products to someone in Rome. So the freedom of religion, low taxation, freedom of movement, and a common market combined to create the Pax Romana.
Is it still possible to avoid a large-scale world conflict? It is unlikely that we can avoid world war. Governments need war because their debts are no longer sustainable. They will use the war as the excuse for defaults – as was the case for WWII. They will create Bretton Woods II with the IMF digital currency as the reserve. [..] Is it correct to claim that your analysis succeed in covering the intersection of geopolitics, Global Markets and Economic Confidence? Can you explain to us in a simple way how your Socrates predictive model works? By the way, why did you name it just like the Greek philosopher? I named my computer model after Socrates because the oracle of Delphi had said that he was the smartest man in Greece. He tried to prove the oracle wrong and the process proved it to be correct. He was put on trial and sentenced to death because he knew too much. My computer has taught me a lot in geopolitics, we had a major bank in Lebanon in the 1980’s and they asked if I could create a model on the Lebanese pound.
I put the data in the computer and it came out and said their country would fall apart in 8 days. I thought something was wrong with the data. When I told the client, they asked me what currency would be best, and I said the Swiss Franc. Eight days later the civil war begn. Obviously they saw the movement of money themselves and came to me for the timing. The same thing happened with a client in Saudi Arabia who was a big shipper. He called me asking me what gold would do tomorrow because Iran was going to begin attacking shipping in the gulf. So once again, there was advanced information about war. By 1998, I understood how the computer was forcasting such events. I warned in June at our London conference that Russia was about to collapse. The London financial Times had snuck into the back of the room and reported that forecast on the front of their newspaper on June 27th 1998. Russia collapsed about 6 weeks later.
Are unpredictable events, such as the terrorist attack in Moscow, also considered among the parameters of your predictive model? A “black swan” type event can change the course of history and geopolitical relations?” Yes, we saw the capital flows shift a day in advance, up to a week in advance in the case of the attack in israel. The defense stocks began to rise even with 9/11 the government used our model to look at who bought puts on airlines in the days before. Someone always knows when they’re going to do these types of events. And they move their money either to profit or to avoid a loss. The computer is tracking everything. It cannot tell me which person has done it. Just that the move is about to take place.
The whole world except for himself.
• Zelensky Blames ‘Whole World’ For Ukraine’s Failures In Kharkov (RT)
The whole world is to blame for Ukraine’s failure to stop Russia’s recent advances in Kharkov Region and must now help Kiev to change the situation, President Vladimir Zelensky told ABC News in an interview on Thursday. It comes after Russian forces managed to capture several settlements near Ukraine’s second-largest city over the past week. Top military officials in Kiev have admitted that the situation is now “extremely difficult,” and that Ukrainian troops are struggling to hold ground due to being outgunned and outnumbered. Asked if he believes Ukraine’s failures on the battlefield to be the fault of the US, Zelensky told ABC reporters that “it’s the world’s fault,” and accused the international community of giving “the opportunity for Putin to occupy.” The Ukrainian leader said the country “cannot afford to lose Kharkov,” and that “the world can help” Kiev to hold on to the vital city in the country’s northeast.
“All we need are two Patriot systems,” Zelensky said, suggesting that “Russia will not be able to occupy Kharkov if we have those.”ng to source billion-dollar Patriot air defense systems for Ukraine. Last month, Zelensky insisted that Ukraine needs 25 such batteries but later revised that number to “at least seven.” The president also complained that funding that has been approved by the US for Kiev is not actually reaching the country and is instead being spent “in American factories, creating American jobs.” Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who visited Kiev this week, assured the Ukrainian leadership that Washington was “actively and urgently” trying.
Each Patriot battery comprises a power plant, radar and control stations, truck-mounted missile launchers, and support vehicles, and costs around $1 billion. Ukraine is currently believed to possess at least three Patriots, one of which is stationed near the capital. Last year, one of these batteries was reportedly damaged or destroyed in a Russian hypersonic missile strike. Moscow, meanwhile, has repeatedly stated that no amount of Western weapon systems can change the inevitable outcome of the conflict, and has warned that continuing to arm Ukraine will only prolong the bloodshed and increase the risk of a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO.
Alright for now.
• Slovakia Faces ‘Civil War’ – Interior Minister (RT)
Slovakia appears to be on the brink of a civil war, its interior minister has warned, following the attempted assassination of Prime Minister Robert Fico on Wednesday. The head of the Slovak government was shot in the eastern town of Handlova, where he had chaired a working meeting. The gunman, identified by the media as an opposition party supporter in his early 70s, acted on political motives, according to Deputy Prime Minister Robert Kalinak. Interior Minister Matus Sutaj Estok warned that the country was “on the edge of a civil war” over political tensions. Social media is full of “hateful comments” in the wake of the attack, he added. Meanwhile, according to Kalinak, who spoke to journalists outside the hospital in the city of Banska Bystrica, where Fico was rushed for emergency surgery, “the inability to accept the will of some part of the public, which some group does not like, is the result that they have worked towards today.”
Fico, a nationalist and euro-skeptic, assumed office last year, after his Smer-SD party won the parliamentary election in September. He promised to put Slovakia’s interests first, including in the highly-contentious issue of the Ukraine conflict. His refusal to provide more arms to Kiev stood in sharp contrast to the previous government. His victory was a defeat for Progressive Slovakia (PS), which suffered a second electoral upset in April. The presidential candidate endorsed by the pro-EU party was defeated by Peter Pellegrini. PS co-founder Zuzana Caputova is set to complete her term as president next month. Fico has lashed out at comments coming from supporters of the opposition, particularly those upset by the waning power of the Progressives. He has also accused some media outlets of fanning the flames.
Some Slovaks are denouncing supporters of political forces they do not like as “misguided blind folk” that they are ashamed to have as their neighbors, he lamented in a video statement last month. Politicians face obscenities in the streets, he added. ”I expect this frustration to turn so intense that it could lead to the murder of one of the leading government officials,” Fico warned. Many Slovak politicians and foreign leaders have condemned the attempt on Fico’s life. Russian President Vladimir Putin said the Slovak leader was a “courageous and strong-spirited man,” and that those qualities would hopefully help him overcome the crisis. Fico’s deputy, Tomas Taraba, said his surgery was a success and that the prime minister is expected to recover.
It’s alive!
• Hunter Biden Loses Bid to Halt Tax Evasion Court Proceedings (ET)
Hunter Biden lost his bid to halt his tax evasion district court proceedings in California on Wednesday after the Ninth Circuit declined to hear his appeal. District Judge Mark Scarsi denied Mr. Biden’s motion for a stay of proceedings in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California pending the outcome of his appeal. The stay had been requested on May 10 after Mr. Biden filed his interlocutory appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. On Wednesday, the Ninth Circuit panel ruled in favor of the special counsel and dismissed Mr. Biden’s appeal. This rendered moot a motion filed by Mr. Biden’s lawyers on Tuesday asking the judge for an expedited hearing on his motion to halt proceedings or, alternatively, for the judge to consider his written motion without hearing oral arguments.
“Because the panel’s order moots Mr. Biden’s motion, the Court grants the application to rule on shortened time and denies the motion,” Judge Scarsi wrote in his order on Wednesday Judge Scarsi’s order stated that his prior orders and the trial schedule would remain in place, and that the court would hear any further requests to modify the pre-trial schedule at a conference on May 29. Mr. Biden, who had argued that the district court’s jurisdiction had been divested once he filed his interlocutory appeal, filed his motion for a stay after the judge wrote in a May 9 order that failing to do so would be “at his own peril.”
Special Counsel David Weiss, who is prosecuting the case on behalf of the government, opposed Mr. Biden’s bid to halt proceedings while waiting to hear the outcome from the Ninth Circuit. He argued that any “problems” with scheduling conflicts in both Mr. Biden’s California tax evasion case and his Delaware gun charges case “are entirely of his own making. In his brief asking for an expedited hearing filed on Tuesday, Mr. Biden’s lawyers told Judge Scarsi that he wasn’t aware that failing to file a motion to stay pending appeal would be “at his own peril,” and that he promptly filed his motion to stay the next day after the judge’s order came down.
“..the AI boom is likely a “mega-trend like we’ve never seen,” with the potential to be bigger than the internet. ”
• “We’ve Had A Hell Of A Run”: Druckenmiller Sells 441,000 Shares Of Nvidia (ZH)
Billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller, head of the Duquesne Family Office, sees the artificial intelligence bubble as overextended. He has slashed some of his holdings in “Magnificent Seven” technology stocks, including Nvidia. He’s not alone. Other notable fund managers and company insiders are jumping ship and unloading their shares. A recent 13F filing reveals that Druckenmiller’s family office sold over 441,000 shares of Nvidia Corp. in the first quarter, reducing its stake to only 176,000 shares, or worth just about $158 million. Since 13F filings are backward-looking, the firm may have further divested or adjusted those holdings since the first quarter. We suspect Druckenmiller has not added to his Nvidia holdings.
Early last week, the billionaire investor appeared on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” explaining that his exposure to Nvidia was reduced after it went from $150 per share to $900 in just over a year. “I’m not Warren Buffett,” Druckenmiller emphasized, noting, “I don’t own things for 10 or 20 years. I wish I was Warren Buffett.” Druckenmiller said that when Microsoft-backed ChatGPT soared in popularity, he doubled down on his Nvidia position because it was an obvious no-brainer. “Even an old guy like me could figure out what that meant,” he said, adding the AI boom is likely a “mega-trend like we’ve never seen,” with the potential to be bigger than the internet.
Druckenmiller concluded: “I just need a break. We’ve had a hell of a run. A lot of what we recognized has become recognized by the marketplace now.” Besides Druckenmiller, 13F filings showed David Tepper slashed his holdings in Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta Platforms. David Bonderman’s Wildcat Capital Management sold Meta stock, bringing his position to $23.7 million. Michael Platt’s BlueCrest Capital Management dumped Nvidia and Amazon.
Would Trump have accepted?
• Biden Should Have Pardoned Trump – Romney (RT)
US Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah) has suggested that President Joe Biden blundered politically by allowing his administration to prosecute Donald Trump, his hated Republican rival. “Had I been President Biden, when the Justice Department brought on indictments, I would have immediately pardoned him,” Romney said in an MSNBC interview aired on Wednesday. “I’d have pardoned President Trump. Why? Well, because it makes me, President Biden, the big guy and the person I pardoned a little guy.” Romney, a former Republican presidential candidate who has clashed repeatedly with Trump, said Biden made an “enormous error” by allowing prosecutors to indict the ex-president last year for mishandling classified documents and trying to block the transfer of power after losing the 2020 election. The two federal cases are among four criminal indictments against Trump, who has accused Biden and his allies of using sham prosecutions to interfere in the 2024 presidential race.
“He should have fought like crazy to keep this prosecution from going forward,” Romney said. “It was a win-win for Donald Trump. Pressed on the principle of leaving prosecutorial decisions to the Justice Department, the senator said Biden should have led like former President Lyndon B. Johnson. “I’ve been around for a while. If LBJ had been president, and he didn’t want something like this to happen, he’d have been all over that prosecutor saying, ‘You better not bring that forward or I’m gonna drive you out of office.’” Romney, who was defeated by Barack Obama in the 2012 election, has announced plans to retire from the Senate in January 2025, when his term ends. He has criticized both Trump and Biden for running for the presidency again this year, saying they should instead make way for a younger generation of leaders.
Upon announcing his decision last September to leave the Senate, Romney scolded his own party’s voters for favoring Trump. “There’s no question that the Republican Party today is in the shadow of Donald Trump,” he said. “He is the leader of the greatest portion of the Republican Party. It’s a populist, demagogue portion of the party. Look, I represent a small wing of the party. I call it the wise wing of the Republican Party.” Romney, 77, is the son of a former Michigan Governor George Romney and made upward of $200 million during his career in the private-equity business. He was elected governor of Massachusetts in 2002. He has been a leading proponent of prolonging the Russia-Ukraine conflict, saying that using Kiev’s forces to weaken the Russian military “is about the best national defense spending I think we’ve ever done.”
A new world.
• ‘Big Blunder’ To Let China And Russia Get Close – US Strategist (RT)
US President Joe Biden’s cabinet has made a major policy mistake by driving Russia and China into a strategic partnership, Heritage Foundation fellow Michael Pillsbury said on Thursday. Pillsbury spoke to Fox and Friends as Russian President Vladimir Putin met with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Beijing on his first foreign trip since inauguration. “To draw, to push together two nuclear powers, Russia and China, it’s really a blunder of the highest order,” he told Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade. According to Pillsbury, China spent much of the past 75 years in conflict with the Soviet Union, “so to see them come together like this to me is just shocking.” It’s one of the biggest blunders we’ll see in my lifetime.”
Pillsbury has helped Washington formulate its China policy since the 1970s. He held a variety of posts at the Pentagon and as a staff member for the US Senate, before settling at China-centric desks at the Hudson Institute and later at Heritage. It has long been a policy objective of Washington to keep China and Russia apart, starting with President Richard Nixon’s detente with Beijing in the 1970s. This policy was in effect as late as 2020, with President Donald Trump trying to use tariffs to pressure China into working with the US, noted Pillsbury. “This would never happen under Trump,” he said. “This was one of Trump’s goals never to allow this to happen.” When Kilmeade suggested that China “needs” the US and EU markets, so the West has leverage over Beijing, Pillsbury pointed out that this “simply isn’t happening under Biden.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also commented on the US attempts to split China away from Russia. In an interview on Thursday, he said that China was “strong enough” to resist the “brazen” attempts at pressure. China and Russia both “defend the principles of fairness and the democratic world order based on the multipolar realities and international law,” Putin said on Thursday, adding that relations between the two countries “are not aimed against anyone.” Putin described the Russo-Chinese cooperation as “one of the main stabilizing factors on the international stage.” Xi agreed, arguing that ties between Beijing and Moscow are a “model of relations between large powers and neighboring states, characterized by mutual respect, trust, friendship and mutual benefit.”
Horse sculpt
https://twitter.com/i/status/1791077037496799692
Geert
THE HIDDEN CRIME: Expert Vaccine Virologist who worked for Bill Gates, GAVI and the WHO says if the world knew what these people did they would be stoned in the streets. Their only hope is that something will happen to distract the world from this crime, but that will not happen.… pic.twitter.com/BZuTjqqRvp
— Truth Justice ™ (@SpartaJustice) May 16, 2024
Flying cow
Flying Cow!! pic.twitter.com/LyupPGK1GZ
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) May 16, 2024
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