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Debt Rattle September 5 2026

Sep 052026
 
 September 5, 2026  Posted by at 8:54 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  No Responses »


Jean-Michel Basquiat Untitled 1982


• HUGE Jobs Report for August! Democrats Most Hurt. (Matt Margolis)
• Outstanding U.S. Jobs Report Stuns Expectations (CTH)
• Zelenskyy Heading to Canada (CTH)
• Trump Ambassador Vows NATO-Like Reforms To UN: ‘Clean This Place Up’ (JTN)
• Finnish President Comments on Russia (Andrew Korybko)
• Insurrection for Real (James Howard Kunstler)
• Bad News, Abdul. Tucker Carlson Wants to Be Your Bestie (Tim O’Brien)
• Now We Know Why Fox News Fired Maria Bartiromo (Matt Margolis)
• Volkswagen Agrees to 100,000 Job Cuts and Streamlined Model Production (CTH)
• Transcript – Secretary Rubio Extemporaneous Remarks (CTH)

 


 

 


 


Even CNN likes it. But the Dems need bad jobs reports to make a chance at the midterms.

• HUGE Jobs Report for August! Democrats Most Hurt. (Matt Margolis)

America’s economy just handed Democrats their worst Friday of the year, mere weeks before the midterms. The Labor Department’s August 2026 jobs report dropped Friday morning, and it left the doom-and-gloom crowd on the Left with nothing to say. Employers added 162,000 jobs last month, crushing what economists were predicting and delivering exactly the kind of number Democrats have spent all summer insisting Donald Trump’s economy couldn’t produce. The new jobs were actually triple the expectations. It gets worse for the left.


The report didn’t just beat expectations for August; it rewrote the story of the entire summer. The Labor Department revised July’s initial estimate of a 23,000-job loss up to a 21,000-job gain, and it revised June’s payroll numbers higher, too. The “stalling economy” narrative Democrats have been pushing for months just collapsed under its own weight.

Unemployment held steady at 4.1% in August after falling in both June and July. The labor force participation rate climbed to 61.6% in August, up from 61.4% in July, proof that more Americans are entering the job market Democrats swore was dying under Trump.

The White House wasted no time taking a victory lap. “America added 162,000 jobs in August — triple economists’ expectations,” White House Senior Deputy Press Secretary Kush Desai said in a post on X. “The private sector has now created over one million jobs under President Trump, whose reindustrialization agenda continues to drive manufacturing and factory construction job growth. America is in the middle of a historic investment boom, and the August jobs report is the latest data point showing how Americans are benefitting from the Trump administration’s pro-growth policies. The best is yet to come with even more job, wage, and economic growth in store for everyday Americans.”

“Senate Republicans are fighting to ensure Americans keep more of every paycheck. Meanwhile, Democrats want to raise taxes on tips and overtime, squeezing waiters, hairstylists, bartenders, and other hardworking Americans trying to make ends meet,” said National Republican Senatorial Committee National Press Secretary Bernadette Breslin.

Economists with no reason to flatter Trump were stunned, too. “Wow. A huge August jobs report,” Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, wrote on X. “The US economy added +162,000 jobs in August. On top of that June and July were revised higher by a total of +55k.” Even CNN is admitting the obvious.

“We’re seeing that this rollercoaster job market, it bounced back and raced back to life in a big way last month,” CNN’s Matt Egan reported. “And this should ease some of those concerns about the labor markets. So the U.S. economy adding 162,000 jobs last month — that more than doubled the consensus forecast, which was for a gain of just 65,000. In fact, this is the most jobs that the economy has added in a month since March.”

Democrats built their entire economic message around the idea that Trump’s policies were failing everyday Americans. This jobs report just blew a hole straight through it. Wages are up. Participation is up. Job creation tripled what economists projected. And now even CNN can’t pretend otherwise. This is exactly the kind of economic news Democrats didn’t want anyone to see, especially right before the midterms. The best is yet to come, and they know it.

Read more …

162,000 Job Gains with All Upward Revisions

• Outstanding U.S. Jobs Report Stuns Expectations (CTH)

The U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) has released the August jobs report . The pundits and analysts are stunned as the results of +162,ooo jobs added is three times their expectations. The prior months also had strong upward revisions as June was revised up by 11,000, from +20,000 to +31,000, and the change for July was revised up by 44,000, from -23,000 to +21,000. With these revisions, employment in June and July combined is 55,000 higher than previously reported.

PRESIDENT TRUMP – Great jobs number just announced, breaking all estimates (except mine!) by double and triple – And you haven’t seen anything yet! EMPLOYERS ADDED 162,000 JOB IN AUGUST. Lower the interest rates because the U.S.A. is a much stronger credit than it was just a short time ago! A STRONG COUNTRY MEANS A LOWER INTEREST RATE – IT’S A BETTER CREDIT…Very simple! We should have the LOWEST RATE of any country in the World, like “the old days.”


Without the United States agreeing to allow them their big surpluses, and we could stop that immediately, they would no longer be considered financially ELITE! LOWER THE RATE OR I’LL STOP TRADING WITH COUNTRIES WITH WHICH WE HAVE A DEFICIT, which the U.S. Supreme Court, in its ridiculous and very costly Tariff decision, strongly acknowledged “the President” has an absolute right to do. IT’S BETTER THAN TARIFFS! The Fed Board, with its great new leader, must get smart – BE PATRIOTS for a change. High interest rates put the U.S.A. at a very unfair disadvantage, and I won’t allow that to happen! President DONALD J. TRUMP

Manufacturing jobs gained 16,000, while information systems (AI impact?) saw drops in computing infrastructure providers, data processing, web hosting, and related services (-8,000), in publishing industries (-7,000), and in broadcasting and content providers (-5,000).

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Good question: “Why move gold out of Canada in March?”

The moves are mostly on paper, BTW.

• Zelenskyy Heading to Canada (CTH)

My dear friends, I don’t want you to share this outline because it is very deep in the weeds; but sometimes you can get so far into the rabbit hole that you just need to transmit the signal and let others figure it out. So, here’s some sketchy stuff that doesn’t make sense, but then again… You might remember my mentioning that something was odd after Zelenskyy visited London in early June and then a series of unexplained events started happening. Well, maybe what I am about to share connects to that, or maybe it’s just my imagination.


It all started when I took the announcement of De Nederlandsche Bank transferring gold from Canada and the USA, then overlaid their reported timeline with other stuff I have been tracking. According to the announcement: “Between March and August 2026, approximately 86 tonnes of gold were transferred from the combined total of approximately 313 tonnes held in the United States and Canada to London.” {source}

Now, mind you the official public notice just happened yesterday, Sept 2nd. Between March and August 2026? A very interesting set of dates, considering the Dutch claim their move was due to uncertainty with the USA and Canada economic and trade positions, yet those economic/trade positions were not tenuous until very late August. Why move gold out of Canada in March?

Here’s the interesting timing. Do you remember when Canada reported a 0.0% GDP growth in the first quarter, and technically that put them into a defined recession. That narrative was not in the interests of Mark Carney who was -perhaps not coincidentally- repeatedly visiting the EU after taking up the leadership position for the “new, middle-power world order.” In fact, the Canadian GDP result was widely reported and a sore spot for Carney’s govt.

March -when this Dutch gold movement began- just happens to be the end of the first quarter, and when the first quarter data was revised the GDP result went up ever-so-slightly from 0.0 to 0.1%. {source} The second quarter (Apr, May, June) the Canadian GDP was then reported as 0.8% {source} which was enough to erase the ‘recession‘ talking points and give Mark Carney some political breathing room.

The total Canadian economy is not that large at approximately $2.51 trillion. [For Comparison, Texas is $2.9 trillion.] As best as I can determine, the amount of gold moved out of Canada was 7.6 metric tonnes {source} and {source}. Again, this movement took place in March – August. The value of the 7.6 metric tonnes is roughly $1.1 billion dollars.

Here’s where it gets interesting. Normally, a gold reserve shift from one country to the next doesn’t affect nominal GDP of the exporting country because technically the Canadians don’t own it, the Dutch bank owns it (central bank of Netherlands). However, depending on how the central bank of Canada and the Central bank of the Netherlands handles it, there are ways to position the transfer as an export; a central banking scheme.

Mark Carney was previously the head of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England where De Nederlandsche Bank transferred the gold. Mark Rutte is from the Netherlands. He previously served as the Prime Minister of the Netherlands before becoming NATO’s General Secretary. We have all watched Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney proclaim his devotion to the European NATO alliance, and we’ve watched the EU-NATO alliance embrace him as their foil against the geopolitical reset underway by U.S. President Donald Trump.

All of the timing, the events, the moves and statements, the visible appearances and the odd shifts in narrative all seem to align in one direction. Is it just a coincidence that at the exact time when Carney is feeling the economic heat from Canadian economic outcomes, the central bank from the home country of the NATO head Mark Rutte, De Nederlandsche Bank, shifts gold from Canada to London, and that coincides with just the right amount of value ($1.1 billion) to shift Canadian GDP statistics, and give Carney political breathing room domestically?…

…. a timing that coincides with Zelenskyy traveling to London and then mysteriously showing up at the G7 in Paris, only to follow the group to the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, while Ukraine is not a G7 or NATO member?

…. that coincidentally is followed by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announcing a newly formed Defence, Security and Resilience Bank (DSRB), a new multilateral financial institution {source}, that essentially serves as another form of a central bank that he can control?

…. which is soon followed by a London announcement {source} for the U.K to build the mechanics of the war machine that will supply Zelenskyy?

I’ll leave it up to you to decide if this summary sounds remotely plausible.

SUMMARY: After taking the position as the lead against Donald Trump, former central banker Mark Carney embraces the EU-NATO alliance who are challenged with diminished EU economic outcomes; while EU Commission head Ursula von der Leyen proclaims EU citizen savings in banks must be put to better use; while gaining economic breathing room from allied interests of Dutch NATO head Mark Rutte as the De Nederlandsche Bank shifts gold from Canada to London; giving Carney the domestic political capital to confront NATO nemesis Donald Trump; while the rest of the enterprise assembles the war machine for the EU-NATO alliance -sans Trump- to support Zelenskyy by expanding conflict with Russia; thereby avoiding their own domestic political vulnerabilities.

TODAY – OTTAWA — “Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is planning to visit Canada as soon as next week. A non-government source says the exact timing of the visit is being adjusted, possibly due to the funeral of Norway’s King Harald, scheduled for Sept. 9 in Oslo. […] Prime Minister Mark Carney visited Kyiv a year ago, while Zelenskyy last visited Canada in Halifax last December amid ongoing efforts to end Russia’s full-scale invasion.”

There are Trillions at Stake

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Is there anything more woke than the UN?

“.. one of its relief agencies in Gaza funded employees who participated in the 2023 terrorist attack in Israel.”

“This is going to fund groups that hate America and everything America stands for. So, the Democrats don’t think there’s one penny of fraud in the federal government, and there’s significant fraud.“

• Trump Ambassador Vows NATO-Like Reforms To UN: ‘Clean This Place Up’ (JTN)


Mike Waltz
The U.N. ambassador outlined a major push to overhaul U.S. funding and structure of the U.N., including workforce cuts, peacekeeping reductions, and defunding UNRWA over its ties to Hamas, which could reshape how American tax dollars support international institutions going forward. President Donald Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations is vowing to force a massive reform at the global agency, pledging to slim it down through privatization and create more accountability in the wake of revelations that one of its relief agencies in Gaza funded employees who participated in the 2023 terrorist attack in Israel.


“The charge from the president is to clean this place up and get it working for the American people,” U.N. Ambassador Mike Waltz said Thursday night in a wide-ranging interview on the Just the News, No Noise television show that focused on ending abuses and fraud in American foreign aid. “What President Trump has done with NATO, we’re looking to do to the United Nations,” he added. Waltz sharply criticized the Biden administration for turning a blind eye to fraud across America’s multibillion foreign aid system and specifically for re-funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) despite evidence of close ties to the terror group Hamas.

Trump ended funding for UNRWA after taking office in 2025, and the USAID inspector general revealed last month that more than 100 workers funded by UNRWA have been identified as having participated in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas atrocities in Israel. Waltz said those revelations are a wakeup call for the world that the U.N. is not serving its charter, and the Trump administration has already forced significant changes in recent months.

“We forced them to take their first budget cut ever in their 80-year history. They are going to fire 3,000 U.N. bureaucrats out of the headquarters building in New York. We’re going to get more of our aid dollars,” he said. “…And then there’s 90,000 U.N. peacekeepers around the world. We’ve cut 25% of them. So we put the U.N. on a diet.” Waltz said the next round of reforms that the U.S. will force as the largest contributor to the U.N. will be modeled after Trump’s effort to make European allies pick up a greater share of the NATO burden.

“The American people are generous people when it comes to tsunamis or earthquakes, like we just had in Venezuela, or other types of famine. But we need to know that it’s not filtering through a bloated bureaucracy; that it’s actually getting to people in need,” he said. “We’re making it leaner and more focused.”

“I think people rightly ask why we’re even involved at all. I say two things. Number one, you need one place in the world where everyone can talk, and if we just walk out, I don’t want to see the U.N. in Beijing or Brussels or somewhere else, we need to get in there and fight and win for American interests,” Waltz added. “And then number two, there’s a burden sharing component to it. I don’t want to see U.S. troops in places like Gaza or, you know, dealing with the gangs in Haiti when the U.N. is willing to go in there and we can push that agenda. I think that’s something that’s in line with the president’s America First foreign policy.”

Waltz succinctly summarized Trump’s policy toward the U.N. “So, diplomacy first, words before bullets, and burden sharing are two of the reasons we’re still trying to keep this place up. But ultimately, that’s the charge from President Trump: Help it realize its potential, and the U.N. should be helping him craft these peace deals around the world,” he said. House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer agreed during the show on Thursday that the U.S. should continue to cut funding for the U.N., particularly as it relates to USAID funding, which has already seen cuts under the Trump administration.

“That was the first thing they cut when [Elon] Musk started DOGE [the Department of Government Efficiency]. That was the very first entity,” Comer said. “And remember how bad the Democrats and the media acted. They clutched their pearls and went on MSNBC and screamed bloody murder. But now we’re seeing that this was going to fund, you know, terrorist activity. This is going to fund groups that hate America and everything America stands for. So, the Democrats don’t think there’s one penny of fraud in the federal government, and there’s significant fraud.” Comer went on to say that in addition to cutting the U.N. workforce, the Trump administration has also cut “left-wing activists” from the federal government workforce.

“A lot of your deep state actors are left-wing activists. A lot of the employees in the EPA and other government agencies are left-wing activists,” he said. “One of the greatest accomplishments, I think, of this administration and this Congress is that there are 350,000 less federal employees today than there were when Donald Trump took office the second term. And if you look at the federal government, you look at spending, the biggest expense in just about every government agency and every division of every cabinet is personnel. So, we have shrank the government, even though I don’t think a lot of people realize that, and that’s a step in the right direction. We’ve got a long way to go, but there has been progress in the last two years.”

Former USAID Inspector General Jonathan Schofield, who spent 25 years working to root out fraud in the federal government, said his agency would actually travel to investigate fraud stemming from USAID funding. “They’re not sitting in the embassy. They’re going out. They’re doing field visits and interviews and conducting investigations that have had tremendous results,” he said. “So, that is something that I think is a very, very important first step to remember in terms of how it is that foreign assistance can be protected moving forward. We have the answer. You have a really solid, experienced cadre of professionals who know how to address it.”

And fraud is still being found across government spending. Most recently, the Health and Human Services department is investigating more than $80 million spent in California on refugee programs and other public disbursements that went to supporting terror organizations, according to Gregg Roman, executive director of the Middle East Forum.

“The theme of this was that there was so much money being granted to overseas assistance without any oversight, without any audit, without any forensic review of what was going on,” Roman said. “Contractors were just trying to cough the money up from the U.S. government and spend it willy-nilly before their fiscal year ended, and this culture of largess, of no accountability, ended up being given to individuals and organizations which were contrary to what I think would be where America would want to spend its funds.”

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Finland-Russia border is 1,340 kilometers (830 miles) long.

• Finnish President Comments on Russia (Andrew Korybko)

He argued that it’s not plotting to test NATO’s resolve, its resilience to immense hardships “should never be underestimated”, suggested that the conflict will end without Ukraine recovering its lost territories, praised the CIA chief for visiting Russia, and called for “someone in Europe” to follow suit.


Finnish President Alexander Stubb bucked the trend of fearmongering about Russia in his interview with Bild. Instead of claiming that it’s plotting to test NATO’s resolve like American media reported was the reason why the CIA chief recently paid an unannounced visit to Moscow, he described such talk as part of Russia’s “information warfare” against Europe. Stubb insisted that his intelligence doesn’t indicate any such plans and argued that Russia wouldn’t attack the world’s most powerful military bloc anyhow.

He also pointed to the unlikelihood of Russia “suddenly mobilizing” forces for a two-front conflict with Ukraine and NATO even though he still believes that a mobilization directed towards Ukraine will occur this fall despite United Russia Chairman Dmitry Medvedev recently denying that there’s any need to. Another of the surprisingly solid points that Stubb made about Russia had to do with its resilience to immense hardships and warned that this “should never be underestimated” by its foes.

He also suggested that Ukraine won’t recover its lost territories upon describing victory for it as simply “surviving, remaining independent, and remaining a sovereign state” but still urged its allies to continue supporting it for their unspecified sake of their own security. Wrapping everything up, Stubb praised the CIA chief’s recent unannounced visit to Moscow for expanding bilateral dialogue in “different formats”, which led to his clarion call for “someone in Europe” to “resume dialogue with Russia” too.

Stubb’s last point echoes what he intriguingly told local media a week prior about how “At some point, dialogue will have to be established on the European side, and perhaps the most important role in this will be played by countries that share a border with Russia.” This followed reports that Britain, France, and Germany – collectively known as the E3 – are preparing to resume dialogue with Russia. It was thus analyzed here that the E3 and the Intermarium might open up rival dialogues with Russia.

The Intermarium refers to the modern-day revival of interwar Poland’s vision of an anti-Soviet alliance between their country, the Baltic States, and Finland, all of which border Russia in the present. Therefore, the abovementioned analysis concluded that Stubb might lead the Intermarium’s dialogue with Russia since regional leader Poland’s government is irreparably divided between the conservative president and the liberal prime minister, which makes it unlikely to agree on this ultra-sensitive issue.

Stubb also expressed interest earlier this year in serving as the EU’s envoy for talks with Russia back when this role was first discussed among the bloc’s members, but the problem is that Putin suggested shortly thereafter that this should be “someone who has not badmouthed us”. As it turns out, Stubb was recently condemned by Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as a terrorist for justifying Ukraine’s attacks against civilian infrastructure, which might disqualify him from this role.

At the same time, Putin might calculate that it’s better for dialogue to occur with Stubb if he initiates it on behalf of Finland, the Intermarium, or the EU as a whole than to rebuff him in that scenario, so the possibility of him entering into some sort of talks with Russia in the future can’t confidently be ruled out. While all EU leaders apart from Slovakia’s Robert Fico are adversarial to Russia, Stubb is the most pragmatic among them, so he might ultimately be tasked with this role or play it on his own initiative.

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“The Democrat agenda is to legalize crime and criminalize the middle class.” —Stephen Miller

• Insurrection for Real (James Howard Kunstler)


Norm Eisen, Democratic Party Lawfare Ninja Supreme

Not to put too fine a point on it: but whenever a lawfare ninja of the Democratic Party utters the phrase “our democracy,” you must know that they are completely full of shit. For sure, they do not mean anything remotely related to an American commonweal, as understood by people of sound mind and good faith. What they mean by “our democracy” is the state as a racketeering operation run for the sole benefit of their party members, along with the ruthless power to annihilate their opponents and critics.


The war-cry “our democracy” only signifies how degenerate they have become. Though they yearn to win control of Congress in these midterm elections by any means necessary, the party’s actual prospects are not so great, having nominated a pack of obvious morons and reprobates such as Abdul el-Sayed (MI), James Talarico (TX), Angie Nixon (FL), Troy Jackson (ME), and Peggy Flanagan (MN) for the US Senate.

Now, it appears that President Donald Trump is determined to clean up our fraud-ridden election process this year, one way or another. Hopes are nearly dead for Congress passing a comprehensive election reform law, the SAVE Act, so he has looked to other measures. One is a procedure for the US Postal Service to match and track mail-in ballots to real persons with actual addresses listed on state voter rolls. The matter is still working through courts. The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has pledged to send about 1000 election monitors to polling places around the country as “observers,” which could obviate arrant shenanigans like the broken toilet ploy in Fulton County, GA, 2020.

Mr. Trump could go further, as discussed here recently, and declare a National Security Executive Order with more exacting rules such as requiring proof of citizenship and photo ID at the polls, and reporting election results no later than the day following the election. The Democratic Party is fighting desperately to prevent any changes to current procedure with so much room for fraud. The effort is led by chief lawfare ninja Norm Eisen, who is associated with several activist NGOs: the States United Democracy Center (founder); State Democracy Defenders PAC; Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW); the Brookings Institution; plus his own pro bono litigation practice, Norma Eisen PLLC.

Eisen enjoys many millions of dollars in backing that have enabled him to file hundreds of court cases against Trump administration actions, including the recent suits against the US Postal Service mail-in ballot plan. His own NGOs are backed by hundreds of other NGOs both here and globally, many of which have been involved in color revolutions in foreign countries. Eisen himself has played a part in many episodes of the long-running color revolution here in the USA, including RussiaGate, the 2020 fake impeachment, and the Jan-6 House Committee. All that could be described in totality as a seditious coup attempt — and it’s all currently under investigation by several federal grand juries.

Likewise, lawfare ninja Marc Elias, who operates his election activities through Democracy Docket (founder); the Free election Fund; the Democracy Forward Foundation (board chair); We the Action; plus his own firm, the Elias Law Group. He was formerly a lawyer with the DC law firm Perkins Coie, through which he served as general counsel to the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016. He shepherded the Steele Dossier into the Intel apparatus and around the news media.

All that is a prelude to a disturbing roll-out of events that anyone paying attention can see coming this fall. The Democratic Party has massive resources not just to stall and obstruct pre-election reform, but to mount a vicious resistance after the fact if it doesn’t produce their desired result. They could go as far as to repudiate the election, refuse to accept its results. If the president does issue that NatSec EO prior to the election, blue state officials could refuse to hold elections under new rules. Thirty states have already refused to comply with DOJ demands to submit their official voter rolls for evaluation. Some of the aforementioned activist NGOs have promised post-election street actions (demonstrations that could easily turn into riots).

In the face of that, you can foresee the necessity of the president having to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1878 (10 U.S.C. §§ 251–255). The act provides an exception to the Posse Commitatus Act, also 1878, which forbids the use of the US military to act as police inside the USA. Under the Insurrection Act, the president can federalize states’ national guard units to enforce federal law or protect constitutional rights when ordinary civilian means are not enough.

The Act has been used before in our history about thirty times by fifteen presidents, including the Great Railway Strike of 1877 (Pres. Hayes); the Pullman Strike of 1894 (Pres. Cleveland); the Little Rock School Desegregation resistance of 1957 (Pres. Eisenhower sent in the 82nd Airborne). Pres. Lyndon Johnson invoked it three times: the Selma to Montgomery March of 1965; the Detroit riots of 1967; and the riots that followed the Assassination of Martin Luther King, 1968. Pres. George H. W. Bush used it in 1994 to quell the Rodney King Riots in Los Angeles.

If Mr. Trump invokes the Insurrection Act around any violence or organized election rebellion this year, he will invite the Democrats to label him an autocrat, a tyrant, a wannabe king, as they have been taunting him and goading him with for years. Let’s suppose that will be enough to inflame the party’s activists. I think you can see how this lays the groundwork for something that looks like a new civil war. The repudiation of election results by blue states would be enough.

Know this: it won’t work. It will result in charges of sedition and many Democratic officials will be arrested and charged, probably some governors. It will be a really ugly episode in our history, but we’ll get through it. Of course, it will be the end of the Democratic Party.

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Becoming so anti-Israel that you’re pro-Muslim. It’s a trap that’s been set for you too.

• Bad News, Abdul. Tucker Carlson Wants to Be Your Bestie (Tim O’Brien)

It would be a mistake to call Tucker Carlson a man without a country. I think he has a country. It just doesn’t appear to be the U.S., and it’s definitely not Israel. As a once-loyal listener of his podcast after Fox News canned him, it would be an understatement to say I was disappointed in the strange turns that he and others I used to like have taken in recent times.


Seemingly overnight, there is a whole clique of former “child stars” of the MAGA movement who abandoned any pretense of conservatism and what MAGA continues to stand for. Carlson and Candace Owens are two of the most obvious, but there are also Megyn Kelly, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). I once felt comforted that all of them were largely on the same team as me. That was until I learned they were never on my team in the first place. That was until I learned they are nothing more than posers and opportunists.

They are always on the lookout for the next big thing (NBT), and for Carlson, it would seem the NBT is being anti-Israel, anti-Trump, anti-MAGA, anti-conservatism, and, given who he aligns himself with these days, anti-American. You can’t support Abdul El-Sayed and expect people to believe that you have America’s best interests at heart.El-Sayed hates America, and he clearly has no use for Christianity and Christians, at least after they’ve voted for him. Carlson still professes to be a Christian, doesn’t he?

Still, there’s something very high schoolish about El-Sayed that some people find attractive. He can’t really grow a nice beard, he’s kinda short (but he’s always in the gym to compensate for that), he dances to Taylor Swift, and he resents traditional American values, which is juvenile when you see it in him. It would seem Carlson is into that sort of political bad boy, which may explain why he now wants to be El-Sayed’s new BFF, now that Hasan Piker and El-Sayed were forced to break up by the Democrat establishment.

Though, when I was in the hallway talking to Jennifer at her locker, she told me that Ashley’s sister heard from Brittany’s brother Zach that he heard that Hasan and Abdul plan to get back together after the general election. Zach told Brittany, who told Ashley, who told Jennifer that Hasan is Abdul’s one true love, and that Abdul might be just using Tucker for the time being. At least that’s what Jennifer told me, but you have to promise not to tell anyone. And don’t tell anyone I told you.

Meanwhile, on his podcast, Carlson heaped high praise on El-Sayed. In an interview Carlson was conducting with Saagar Enjeti, the two talked about the El-Sayed campaign for the Senate in Michigan. Carlson and Enjeti were talking about how El-Sayed has very obviously and very disingenuously moved to the middle to run in the general election against Republican Mike Rogers. You can bet your last dollar that he will revert back to his Islamic socialist roots if elected. But that’s not how Carlson framed it.

Enjeti said the quiet part out loud when he pointed out that El-Sayed is doing a bit of “shape shifting.” Anyone with an eye for politics can see that should El-Sayed win in November, he’d enter the Senate to the left of Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.), and he’d be just as radical an Islamist politician as Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.). Carlson is not dumb. He sees everything you’re seeing, so when his take doesn’t seem grounded in the same reality you see, it’s not because he can’t see it. It’s most likely because he either doesn’t want you to see it or, more than likely, he wants you to question it. He wants to establish reasonable doubt in your own mind about whatever it is he chooses to talk about.

And so, when Carlson praises El-Sayed, it’s not to help the duplicitous Senate candidate get more Democrat votes; it’s to take a bite out of the Republican and independent voting blocs in Michigan. Carlson is nothing if not strategic. Enjeti commented to Carlson about the El-Sayed campaign, “I watch his campaign now, it’s America First…. When he talks about Israel, he says, ‘Israel is committing a genocide, but ultimately I want to make sure that you don’t pay more for healthcare. I don’t want your tax dollars going abroad to fund this barbaric military.’ He stands in front of a giant American flag. It’s almost Trumpian in terms of a lot of those problems.”

Carlson chimed in on cue, “Well, it is literally Trumpian.” It’s probably no coincidence that since Rogers is a well-known supporter of Israel, Carlson would not vote for the Republican candidate if he lived in Michigan. “I wouldn’t vote for Mike Rogers at gunpoint,” Carlson said to Enjeti. So, there you have it. Carlson appears to, at least for now, be on Team Democrat, Team Radical Islam, Team Anti-Israel, Team Socialist, and Team “We’re Pretending to Distance Ourselves From Hasan Piker for Now but Not for Long.”

One thing he seems not to be is on Team America. We can only speculate as to why, but to do so at this point is a waste of time. There are roughly two months before Election Day. That’s just about how long I expect Carlson’s crush on El-Sayed to last. You have to know this about Carlson: He’ll be all-in with you before the election, but afterward, he’ll change colors in a millisecond. That’s just what he does. Why would he change now?

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She wants to look at fraud. They don’t (dare).

• Now We Know Why Fox News Fired Maria Bartiromo (Matt Margolis)

Thursday afternoon, PJ Media reported that Maria Bartiromo was no longer employed at Fox News after more than 12 years on the air. The network’s statement gave no hint as to why she and Fox parted ways. “Effective today, Maria Bartiromo is no longer with Fox News Media,” the statement read. “We thank Maria for her work over the last 12 1/2 years and wish her all the best on her next chapter.” Vague corporate language like that usually means somebody’s hiding something. And now subsequent reporting reveals not only that Fox did indeed fire Bartiromo, but also the reason why.


According to a report from the media newsletter Status, Fox dismissed the longtime anchor after learning she had secretly told the White House that network bosses ordered staff not to cover President Donald Trump’s July speech on election interference in the 2020 election.Dylan Byers of Puck News reports the same thing, citing multiple sources.

“NEW: The Maria Bartiromo backstory, per multiple sources familiar…. Maria Bartiromo wanted to pursue a story related to China and 2020 election voting conspiracies… a major sensitivity for the network given its Dominion and Smartmatic lawsuits. A Fox Business executive sent…
— Dylan Byers (@DylanByers) September 3, 2026

He also reveals that Bartiromo was fired on August 9 and has since retained Bryan Freedman as her lawyer. In the speech, Trump laid out a case that China had compromised voting machines, bribed American journalists, and run a fake ballot scheme designed to inflate Joe Biden’s vote total in 2020. Trump also said the intelligence community had evidence the meddling was coming, then evidence that it happened, and buried both Apparently, Fox News had other plans for how much of that story would get coverage. The network privately issued written guidance telling senior employees to steer coverage away from Trump’s claims, and most of the staff fell in line.

Bartiromo didn’t fall in line. According to the story, when Trump or a White House aide asked her why Fox wasn’t covering the story, she admitted her bosses had blocked it, then forwarded them the internal text message proving it. According to Status, handing over that confidential communication violated the terms of her employment agreement with Fox. I’m sure we’ll hear more on this in the coming days.

Democrats have spent years treating any Republican who questions the 2020 election as an enemy of democracy, despite the documented irregularities in the battleground states that year. They gave themselves a pass for disputing Bush’s 2000 win and Trump’s 2016 win. But 2020’s results could not be questioned, and anyone who did paid a price. The only acceptable narrative surrounding 2020 was that it was the safest and most secure election in history, and anyone who questioned that was undermining our democracy. Ironically, even Joe Biden has acknowledged foreign interference in the 2020 election. But the only election interference he would admit to was the kind in which it was implied that it was done to help Trump.

“The Biden administration targeted Russia with sweeping sanctions and diplomatic expulsions Thursday, punishing Moscow for its interference in the 2020 US election, its SolarWinds cyberattack and its ongoing occupation and ‘severe human rights abuses’ in Crimea,” CNN reported at the time. The idea that Putin wanted to help Trump never made sense. Still, Biden continued to promote it, gave no real evidence, and did not mention China. Now, China wanting to help Biden? That made sense, yet the media refuses to entertain the idea that the 2020 election was anything but secure.

Update:

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Suicide? Euthanasia? Europe kills its own car industry. And we ask why.

• Volkswagen Agrees to 100,000 Job Cuts and Streamlined Model Production (CTH)

Volkswagen is a case study in self-destruction as a result of EU ‘climate’ politics and German auto company decision-making. The decision to chase climate policy created European legislation that set quotas, limits and fines on automakers who did not shift to electric vehicles. German automakers then chose to purchase carbon credits from China, who then use those sales to further discount exported EVs into the German market.


Simultaneously, Volkswagen opened up operation in China allowing their technology to be captured by Chinese auto makers who turned around and duplicated the technology at a much lower price. Once the manufacturing was at full speed, China stopped purchasing Volkswagen autos. The partly state-owned German automaker Volkswagen announced today their survival as a company now requires the elimination of 100,000 jobs in Germany with the closure of plants in Emden, Zwickau, Hanover and the Audi site in Neckarsulm.

Volkswagen will not be the last German company to suffer this fate as Mercedes is now 20% owned by Chinese EV company Geely. The German auto workers do not have a choice. They no longer have a solid consumer base for their vehicles, and China continues to export low price EVs into the European market. Every euro in tariffs against Beijing is offset by the euros the auto companies spend purchasing Chinese carbon credits to avoid European fines. They cannot get out of the spiral.

GERMANY – The car company Volkswagen has approved controversial plans to shed 100,000 jobs in a battle for survival as it faces fierce competition from Chinese rivals. After the latest round of talks this week, the company announced a further 50,000 job cuts and agreed a staggered end to current production at four German plants: Emden, Zwickau, Hanover and the Audi site in Neckarsulm between 2031 to 2034. There are no specific plans beyond that.

The agreement came as a surprise after a meeting of shareholders, unions, and state representatives on the supervisory board in what was seen as a considerable test for the German carmaker’s chief executive, Oliver Blume. He had gone as far as to arrange an emergency meeting if the package was rejected in preparation for a potential showdown with unions. (more) In a directly related report, U.S. auto manufacturers are now urging congress to outright ban Chinese cars from the American market. There are a few auto consumers who don’t like this approach, but it is entirely appropriate.

One of the things Europe will find out is that as soon as China has dominated their auto market, those cheap EVs will no longer be cheap. Once Beijing captures the market, they will slowly start to increase the price extracting the maximum profit in the long-term strategy. China would do this in North America if we do not protect the auto sector. Ultimately, this is why Prime Minister Mark Carney is going to create a serious problem by allowing the import of Chinese EVs and letting them set up a manufacturing base in Canada.

It’s not just about cars. If you lose your auto industry you erode your manufacturing base, your steel and aluminum production, your capacity to retain industrial engineering skills and many other ancillary aspects – including military. The auto industry represents much more than just the production of consumer cars. Europe, Southeast Asia, Africa and Australian markets have already fallen victim within this geopolitical scheme. Canada is on the cusp of the problem. Readers here are well aware of the scheme {GO DEEP}, and yes, it will take some form of legislative action to protect North America from this problem.

WASHINGTON DC – DETROIT — Major automakers operating in the U.S. are increasing pressure on Congress to permanently ban the domestic sale, import and manufacturing of Chinese connected vehicles, hardware and software. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents the vast majority of companies selling vehicles in the U.S., urged congressional leaders in a Thursday letter to make a move before the end of Congress’ current session on Jan. 3.

“Right now, Chinese automakers are dumping subsidized vehicles with connected software and hardware around the world,” John Bozzella, CEO of the group, said in the letter seen by CNBC. “This hasn’t happened inside the U.S. yet, but given the scale and urgency of this threat, we urge you to enact a Chinese vehicle, software and hardware ban before adjourning this year and make this policy the law of the land.” Midterm elections are also coming up in November, which could affect Congress’ momentum.

Bozzella’s comments come amid bipartisan efforts in the House and Senate to address Chinese vehicles, including legislation advanced by the Senate Commerce Committee that could bar Mercedes-Benz from the U.S. market because Chinese investors hold nearly 20% of the German automaker. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which includes Mercedes-Benz, said in the Thursday letter that it wants to work with lawmakers to “achieve a balanced policy so all our member companies continue to succeed and thrive inside the U.S.” (read more)

“Not on my watch”…

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“.. we are suddenly, as a nation, dangerously dependent – dangerously dependent – on other nations for all sorts of things that we need..”

• Transcript – Secretary Rubio Extemporaneous Remarks (CTH)

Speaking without a prepared script or teleprompter, here is the transcript from Secretary of State Marco Rubio speech to the Foundry School.


“We either reindustrialize our national economy, moving completely away from the ‘service driven’ narrative of years past, or we will forever consign ourselves to economic servitude. This is also the American ideological perspective that undeniably affirms our baseline reason for cutting ties with Canada.”

[TRANSCRIPT] – SECRETARY RUBIO: “Thank you. Thank you, all of you, first of all, for being here today. Thank you – Jacob Helberg’s doing a phenomenal job. Everybody at our department is doing a great job, and I’m very proud of the work the State Department is putting in into these and other initiatives.

One of the things we really wanted to do in our time here, and one of the reasons behind many of the reforms we undertook, is to allow us to have a State Department that could move at the speed of relevance, which is something we used to say all the time. Now it’s become almost a cliche, but it really is important – because world affairs are moving so quickly, economic developments are moving so quickly, and so much of that is internationalized, and it involves what we do around the world as well.

And so, I’m very proud of everybody at the Department of State and all the work that they’re doing to be a part of this initiative, along with our partners in the other agencies, because this truly is an interagency challenge that we’re facing.

What is the challenge that we’re here to talk about today? Let me put it to you this way: I think we made a terrible mistake in this country – not – many years ago, under people that were in charge at the time, especially at the end of the Cold War. And that was the idea that the ability to make things no longer mattered. And no matter – it didn’t matter any longer where things were made. They were to be made in the most efficient place at the lowest possible cost. That meant more profits for the company, lower costs for the consumers, and that was the way the world would work. There was this fantasy, really, that the whole world would become a free enterprise, democracies, and that everyone would look us.”

“That ran into reality – the reality that that is not how human events have ever worked, that the nation-state still does matter, nationalism is still real, national borders still matter, and that countries are going to always act in their best interest. But the result of it is that it deindustrialized America. We lost our ability and our capacity to make things, and not just big things – not just the kinds of big machinery and things that we normally identify with industry – but even some of the most basic components that are necessary, that underpin economic life, especially in the 21st century.

And we woke up to the reality just a few years ago that we are suddenly, as a nation, dangerously dependent – dangerously dependent – on other nations for all sorts of things that we need, not simply for our economic vibrancy but, in many cases, for our national security and our very survival as a prosperous nation-state. And so now we are involved in this endeavor across the board to try to reverse those mistakes. And it will be the work of multiple administrations, but it starts here and it starts now with this one that is receiving attention at its highest level.

One way is just the basic ingredients that go into all this, and it’s why you’ve seen such a focus on access to not just critical minerals as raw material but also to the ability to process them. But the other is – has to be the ability to actually make things once again. And we have to understand that re-industrialization, that 21st century industrial activity is going to look different than it did in the 20th century. It’s going to involve far more skills. It’s going to involve – not just are our workers going to have to be better educated in what they’re doing, but in many cases, given the evolution and the rapidly changing dynamics of the modern world, they may have to be retrained multiple times in their career.

One of the crown jewels that have powered American innovation and, ultimately, powered American economic influence and power around the world has been our system of higher education. It has produced extraordinary research; it has produced extraordinary breakthroughs. I think the sad part about it is the number of things we have innovated or created, but then they’re made somewhere else. And so, I think in the 21st century, this partnership with higher education is important, and it’s important for two reasons.

First of all, why build it when – why build a new wheel when we already have a wheel? We just need to repurpose that wheel to become the place where 21st century American workers go to become empowered with the skills they need to succeed. But I also think it’s important for higher education, and we’ve got some great partners here today that are already part of this initiative, and, of course, we want this partnership to grow to include other schools as well.

But I think it’s also important for higher education because, increasingly, young Americans are asking: Is the college degree worth it? Is the college route worth it? Because we have to borrow money or we have to spend money or we have to do all these sorts of things and, in the end, I get a degree, and all that degree does is either a) qualify me to get another degree or b) it may not even really lead to a job necessarily that’s different from the one I could have gotten otherwise.

And I think this speaks to that, because it also – in addition to being good for our country – is an opportunity to say to students: If you come here and you go to school and you follow this curriculum, you will leave here not just with a paper credential but with the skills that make you immediately employable in a high-paying job, in a good-paying job with long-term stability. And so this partnership is critical because what I hope it means, what I hope it symbolizes – and not just symbolizes but what I hope it is evidence of – [..]

[..] is how government partnering with non-government entities like our higher education system and the private sector, the combination of those three pillars – the private sector that needs the workers and knows what they need from the workers; the higher education system that can equip young Americans with the skills they need to fill those jobs; and government that ensures not just that it’s acting as a convening body, but ensures that our national policies reflect these priorities. These three pillars working together drive us towards this outcome that we want, and it’s very important.

So, I think today is a great way to kick this off. We have great partners on board already. We hope to attract more. I want to thank all of you for being a part of it. And I – the last thing I want to say about this is that we understand that for this to work, this is not a two-year project. This is not a two-and-a-half-year project. This is a project that will involve sustainment for the long term. Multiple American administrations are going to have to make this a priority, which is why it’s so important that you see evidence that, at the highest levels of our government, now and for the future, you have that commitment.

And it’s why it’s exciting for us to have the Vice President here today to speak about it, because I think the evidence is not just the importance this administration gives it, but our acknowledgement that this is an issue that’s going to require long-term and sustained attention. This has to be an endeavor that goes on beyond the next two years. It has to go on for a generation. And I think having the Vice President here today with us is evidence of that commitment.

And so now I want to introduce and welcome to the stage here at the Institute of Peace, a beautiful building that the State Department’s using a lot – and we thank you all for coming – the Vice President of the United States of America, JD Vance.” (Applause.)

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