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Debt Rattle May 18 2026

May 182026
 
 May 18, 2026  Posted by at 9:45 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  31 Responses »


Carl Frederik Aagaard View to the Amalfi Coast c1860 (woodblock)


• Trump Tells Iran ‘Clock Is Ticking, Move Fast’ After New Peace Proposal (ZH)
• Uranium Transfer, Nuclear Limits: US Issues 5 Peace Ultimatums To Iran (ZH)
• Removing Iran’s Uranium Mostly About ‘PR’ – Trump (RT)
• The Spoiled Prince of Kiev: Zelensky Has Deceived and Ruined His Country (Amar)
• Trump’s Deportation Push Meets Small-Town Plumbing (David Manney)
• Democrats Refuse To Even Talk To the American People Anymore (Derek Hunter)
• Russia Hoax Figures May Want Lawyers Handy After Blanche’s Latest (Clark)
• Todd Blanche Discusses Conspiracy and 2020 Election Investigations (CTH)
• Mercedes Willing to Enter Military Production Sector (CTH)
• Texas Never Surrendered Its Right to Defend Its Borders (Andy Hopper)
• Sadiq Khan: Claims London Devolving Into A Sh*thole Is Just AI Driven (MN)
• EU ‘Not Very Relevant’ On Global Stage – Borrell (RT)

 


 

 


 


“Short but Intense… and Costly.”

• Trump Tells Iran ‘Clock Is Ticking, Move Fast’ After New Peace Proposal (ZH)

Update(1410ET): President Trump has warned Iran on Sunday that the “clock is ticking” as Pakistani-mediated talks have not only stalled, but show no signs at all of restarting anytime soon. “They better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them,” he wrote on Truth Social. “TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!” He spoke the same day with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who along with Lindsey Graham has been calling for resumption of robust anti-Tehran action to ensure Iran can never go nuclear. Trump’s words have been somewhat of a familiar refrain going back several weeks.


As we detailed below, Iran says it received a counter proposal of ‘5 conditions’ for peace from the White House. In many ways they are directly opposite the 5 conditions Iran sent to the US last week, which Trump had rejected as “garbage”.

But as yet there’s been no indicator that the US side has attached a timeline to its latest demands. Trump is perhaps pushing this new “clock is ticking” as a timeline threat of sorts. But again, there was no specific date included in the fresh warning. Last week Bloomberg Intelligence circulated a report titled, Iran Rejects Trump’s Offer – Return to War Likely. It concluded: “The diplomatic dance continues: the US and Iran exchanged offers yet again. But they remain far apart, shooting maximalist demands at each other. A comprehensive peace deal is unlikely to materialize. We think the US and Iran will likely return to strikes. But we expect an intense exchange of fire to be temporary and reduce to lower-levels of fighting – what we call the new normal in this protracted conflict. ”

More from the Bloomberg Intelligence analysis: “Short but Intense… and Costly. Trump doesn’t want long war. His popularity is taking a hit as its economic impact is being felt. We think Trump will likely revert to a short air and missile strike campaign on Iranian infrastructure, military positions, and energy assets while simultaneously continuing the blockade. Tehran will likely respond with strikes of its own, both on US military assets and America’s regional partners. But we expect this to be a short bombardment, rather than the sustained, high-intensity strike campaign that marked the beginning of the war.

The war has already imposed a heavy economic cost. Oil markets flipped from an expected record surplus to historic supply disruption. Major central banks, facing fresh inflation risks, are turning more hawkish. Consumers now pay more for energy, while their borrowing costs also rise, and the future grows more uncertain. The longer the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, the more it will drain the oil stockpiles cushioning governments, companies, and consumers today. Once inventories run thin, prices need to do the hard work: rising high enough to curb demand back in line with available supply.

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“..as the seemingly unbridgeable gulf remains, also as Iran is digging in its heels.”

• Uranium Transfer, Nuclear Limits: US Issues 5 Peace Ultimatums To Iran (ZH)

According to a Sunday report from Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency, the United States has laid down a firm, take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum to Tehran. Both sides are still trying to patiently wait out the Hormuz crisis, hoping to inflict more economic pain on the other until they blink. At the top of the list, the US is demanding a near-total dismantling of Iran’s atomic ambitions, “allowing only one Iranian nuclear facility to remain operational.” The list includes direct rejections in response to Iran’s own five conditions from a week ago, which President Trump said were “unacceptable” and “garbage”.


For example the US is refusing to pay compensation for damage caused during strikes on Iranian territory – a ‘maximalist’ sticking point which Tehran had demanded previously. Washington is also reportedly insists that 400 kilograms of enriched uranium be transferred from Iran to the US, while only one active nuclear facility would remain operational inside the Islamic Republic. Iran for its part has recently vowed to never transfer its nuclear material out of the Islamic Republic, calling the issue a matter of national sovereignty and energy security which it alone has say over. This after even Russia offered to take it.

The newly reported five conditions by the US side further states that the US does not intend to release more than 25% of frozen Iranian assets. Tehran has demanded the dropping of all US sanctions as a key basis for lasting settlement. Here are the five newly proposed Washington conditions, which some pundits have called ‘wishful thinking’:

  1. No war compensation from US
  2. Give up 400kg of Highly Enriched Uranium to US
  3. Iran can only have on nuclear facility to remain active
  4. Not more than 25% of frozen assets to be unfreezed
  5. Halting war on all fronts depends on negotiations

So this leaves a huge distance between the Washington list and Tehran’s list, as the seemingly unbridgeable gulf remains, also as Iran is digging in its heels. As a reminder, the below is the Islamic Republic’s list, which it hasn’t backed down from. It has offered the following as the only basis on which to restart talks:

  1. Ending the war on all fronts, including Lebanon
  2. Lifting all sanctions
  3. Releasing frozen Iranian assets
  4. Compensation for war damages and losses
  5. Recognition of Iran’s sovereign rights over the Strait of Hormuz

While a Pakistani-mediated ceasefire managed to take effect on April 8, subsequent talks in Islamabad completely collapsed, but then President Trump later extended the truce indefinitely, likely to buy time and to figure out “what’s next” – while seeking a complete blockade of Iranian oil exports, and of all vessels entering or exiting Iranian ports. With Washington demanding total disarmament and Iran demanding control over the world’s most critical oil transit choke point, the stage is set for a likely coming renewal of direct clashes, given the zero sum demands of each side now on the table.

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The US knows where it is, they got 9 cameras on it. Iran can’t touch it without the US knowing.

• Removing Iran’s Uranium Mostly About ‘PR’ – Trump (RT)

US President Donald Trump has said recovering Iran’s highly enriched uranium is “more for public relations” than anything else, downplaying what remains one of the key sticking points in negotiations aimed at ending the Middle East war. Following the US-Israeli bombing campaign against Iran last year, Trump claimed the strikes had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities and severely limited Tehran’s ability to continue enrichment. However, an estimated 400 kg of uranium enriched to 60% purity – a short technical step from weapons-grade level – is believed to be buried beneath the rubble of bombed nuclear sites.


In an interview with Fox News on Thursday, Trump suggested removing the material was not urgent because the US maintained round-the-clock surveillance over the facilities, but added he would still “feel better” if the uranium was removed. “We have nine cameras on that site, on those three sites, 24 hours a day. We know exactly what’s happening. Nobody’s even gotten close to it,” he said. “I think it’s more for public relations than it is for anything else. The other thing we could do is bomb it again, just make it absolute. But I just, I would just feel better getting it.”

Trump, who has repeatedly warned he could resume strikes on Iran, also signaled his patience with negotiations is running out. “I am not going to be much more patient. They should make a deal,” he said. While active fighting triggered by US-Israeli strikes on Iran in late February paused under a fragile ceasefire reached in early April, negotiations on a broader peace deal remain deadlocked over Tehran’s nuclear program. The US and Israel, which accuse Iran of seeking nuclear weapons, are demanding “zero enrichment” and the removal of all enriched uranium from Iranian soil. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told CBS News this week the conflict could not fully end while the material remained in Iran, calling its removal a “terrifically important mission.”

Iran insists its nuclear program is solely for peaceful purposes, arguing that abandoning enrichment would undermine its sovereignty and technological independence. Tehran has repeatedly rejected demands to dismantle the program or surrender its uranium stockpile – including proposals to store it in Russia – though it has reportedly offered to downblend it to lower civilian-grade levels. However, Iranian parliamentary spokesman Ebrahim Rezaei warned earlier this week that Tehran could enrich uranium to 90% purity – considered weapons-grade – if attacked again.

Despite accusations of pursuing nuclear weapons, US intelligence agencies assessed before the conflict that Tehran was not actively developing a bomb, according to former National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent. IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi has also said the nuclear watchdog found no evidence of a “structured program to manufacture nuclear weapons” in Iran.

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Good article.

“Deceived and Ruined His Country ..with Western help..”

“..shows of the Tucker Carlson Network (TCN) are watched by, on average, over 55 million viewers, dwarfing, for instance, Fox News (Carlson’s former employer) with its prime time rating of 3.2 million “

“Indeed, TCN is on such a roll that Carlson is now rumored to be a contender for the presidency, and he has not ruled out a run “

• The Spoiled Prince of Kiev: Zelensky Has Deceived and Ruined His Country (Amar)

Rudyard Kipling, a modern classic of the Western literary canon, was both a champion of British imperialism and too honest not to know its very sordid underpinnings of greed, lies, and sheer selfishness. That’s why the same man who extolled the “white man’s burden” also wrote ‘The Man Who Would Be King,’ a story of two lowlife, ambitious adventurers who manage to swindle their way to becoming kings as well as rich in a remote country on the fringes of the empire, then at its late-nineteenth-century zenith of global primacy. Until, that is, one of them makes the mistake of messing with the wrong woman, who ends up biting him in public. Seeing him bleed, his subjects realize he is a mere mortal and mercilessly dispense with the two imposters.


Ukraine’s ruler – and de facto king (of the old-fashioned, non-constitutional kind) – Vladimir Zelensky is a social climber, too. In his formative years, his native Krivoy Rog was a provincial post-Soviet rustbelt town with a lively gangster scene, a “bandit city” in his own words. Zelensky is also an expert in make-believe by profession, a cynically profane showman of the ‘give-them-whatever-they-want-as-long-as-it-pays’ variety, the cruder and smuttier the better. Indeed, Zelensky even has a sidekick, who, as in Kipling’s dark story, has shared in the scheme of power-grabbing and plunder: Andrey Yermak, his former chief of staff and very intimate friend, making headlines (again) for being so corrupt and sinister that he stands out, even in Kiev.

And now Zelensky, the man who, it seems, would be Ukraine’s president forever, has just been bitten in public by a woman. Judging by the fierce, clearly orchestrated reaction of his media propagandists in Ukraine and the fact that the Western mainstream media are largely pretending not to have noticed, he must be bleeding, too. The woman is his former press secretary Yulia Mendel. And she has been able to draw (metaphorical) blood because Tucker Carlson, American alternative-media heavyweight and conservative dissident from Trumpism, has interviewed her for his show.

That has made it a very public bloodletting indeed. What Mendel has had to say is one thing, her ability to reach breathtaking numbers of Americans and other inhabitants of the West is at least as important and, from Kiev’s point of view, frustrating: Across various platforms, shows of the Tucker Carlson Network (TCN) are watched by, on average, over 55 million viewers, dwarfing, for instance, Fox News (Carlson’s former employer) with its prime time rating of 3.2 million. Recently, the Israeli-US war against Iran has further undermined public confidence in the mainstream media and boosted TCN. “Explosive growth” in the two first months of the war has produced over 1.5 billion “views across social media and podcast platforms.”

Indeed, TCN is on such a roll that Carlson is now rumored to be a contender for the presidency, and he has not ruled out a run. This is the amplifier for Mendel’s harsh memo to the US and the West. It is hard to think of a bigger one. And what a message she had to deliver. Consider a few highlights: Speaking, she underlined, as “an insider,” from her own close experience with Zelensky and the inner circle of his regime, Mendel has told us all that she believes Zelensky personally “stands behind many schemes of money laundering” and that he has always remained an “amazing actor” whose image “on camera” is “very different” from his real self.

For instance, while he is posturing as not merely some democrat but a shining epitome of democracy as well as everything else that is good and beautiful, such as rule of law, freedom of speech, civil society, and national unity, his real view, relentlessly repeated behind closed doors, is, as we learn from Mendel, that “Ukraine is not ready for democracy” and “dictatorship is an order,” too.So much, by the way, for those Zelensky propagandists in Ukraine and the West who habitually smear every critic of his devastating regime as diminishing Ukraine or not trusting ordinary Ukrainians with “agency.” The one really despising his compatriots as too backward to rule themselves and in need of a strong – namely, his – hand, is, it turns out, Vladimir Zelensky.

And as Mendel rightly points out, that also means that he does not symbolize or provide unity; he abuses it. Zelensky’s profound hypocrisy permeates his private life and politics. Mendel reveals, for instance, that he was still going on trips to Crimea – to have fun with friends and drugs – while it was already under Russian control. In December 2019, he privately told Russian President Vladimir Putin that Ukraine would never join NATO. While Zelensky’s public poll ratings are steadily declining, the polls produced for internal use are so bad that even some of his fixers privately admit that he is “unelectable.”

With no respect for the truth, Zelensky’s attitude to reality itself seems broken, even deranged. From her own conversations with him, Mendel reports that Ukraine’s leader believes that “it doesn’t matter what is [actually] happening.” Things, he has argued behind closed doors, become real when they are said often enough by enough propagandists or, as she quotes him, by “thousands of talking heads.” Considering this bizarre outlook, it is revealing and revolting but also somehow, sadly consistent that Zelensky, who is Jewish, has literally demanded “Goebbels”-type “propaganda” from his communications team.

Beyond a ruthless and deliberate regime of lying and manipulation, there also is pressure and compulsion. Again, Mendel’s catalogue of Zelensky’s dictatorial strong-arm methods is depressing and plausible: from threats to perfectly illegal “sanctions” imposed via Zelensky’s personal fiat, to lawfare and process-as-punishment to long and open-ended jail terms to sending critics to the frontline as a punishment to very odd lethal accidents – Zelensky and his regime have, as Mendel puts it, “no limits.” Their rule has established a situation that is “inhuman.”

Mendel is believable. Zelensky regime propagandists, in Ukraine and the West, have, unsurprisingly, smeared her as, in effect, a Russian asset, as reproducing “Russian narratives” and, worst sin of them all, sharing Kiev’s very dirty secrets with the West. Because – this seems to be the underlying logic – the West must share hundreds of billions with Zelensky and his ultra-corrupt cronies, but no one has a right to share the truth about them with the West.

In reality, Mendel’s biography proves that she is what she claims to be: an insider who has had enough. She has had an exemplary “national” career and if she had not broken with Zelensky a few years ago, she would still be part of the eager cadre who once caused scandals for physically shoving away journalists to protect her former boss. Even in the interview with Tucker Carlson, Mendel has made a point of carefully distinguishing between what she has seen herself and what she knows from – extremely strong – circumstantial evidence, for instance, that Zelensky has a long-standing cocaine habit.

And yet, by now Mendel – who displays no favor at all to Russia – considers Zelensky an evil and the key obstacle to peace for Ukraine. This peace, she warns, is the only alternative to what she calls being “on the verge of extinction.” She means it quite literally: There are far fewer Ukrainians left in the country than official statistics admit, perhaps 25 million, including 11 million impoverished pensioners. The only way to really support Ukraine, Mendel insists, is to “push for peace.”

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Infrastructure for illegal immigrants. Even if only for a short time..

• Trump’s Deportation Push Meets Small-Town Plumbing (David Manney)

President Donald Trump keeps delivering the border-security promise that helped return him to the White House. However, when the previous occupant of the Oval Office held the door open for millions, it created several problems. One of them is where to put ’em? The DHS wants more detention space because illegal immigrants can’t be processed, held, and quickly removed without beds, staff, transportation, and secure facilities. Transforming empty warehouses into detention centers sounds efficient on paper, especially after years of Biden-era border chaos. Then the plan reaches a small town with a water system, sewer capacity, and residents who still expect the faucet to work when they turn the knob.


One Trump-supporting community is dealing with the fight between enforcement and infrastructure. Social Circle, Ga., now sits in the middle of the fight. The federal government bought a 1 million square foot warehouse for nearly $129 million and plans to convert it into a massive immigration detention center. The proposal could house up to 10,000 detainees and require about 2,500 staff members in a city of roughly 5,000 people. Social Circle Mayor David Keener and City Manager Eric Taylor have made the obvious point that Washington skipped while measuring floor space: detainees drink water, toilets flush, kitchens run, showers drain, and small-town pipes don’t magically triple because federal lawyers say so.

The city has filed a federal lawsuit against the DHS and ICE, arguing the organizations moved ahead without the required environmental, health, and procedural reviews. Taylor previously locked the water meter at the site, and the City Council unanimously backed him. The detention center could house as many as 8,500 immigrants awaiting deportation to their home countries as part of a massive initiative by the administration of President Donald J. Trump. Social Circle is among the numerous cities across the country that have been targeted as detention center sites. At full capacity, the converted warehouse would nearly triple the population of Social Circle, outstripping its water, sewer and emergency services capabilities.

“We understand the reason why the water is off,” said Councilman Tyson Jackson at the Tuesday, March 17 city council meeting. “It’s not a political stunt. It’s just the fact of the matter that we do not have enough water. I just want to come to a vote saying that we are behind you [Taylor] on this, so it’s not Eric making the decision of having the water turned off. We’re looking out for the citizens of Social Circle right now, to make sure we have enough water for them.”

Taylor announced his unilateral decision on Thursday, March 12. He told a crowd of dozens of people at a community meeting—including a number of city and area residents and progressive activists opposed to the detention center plan—that the lock would remain in place until either the city council told him to remove it or a federal court order, in the event that ICE challenges the move, mandated that the lock be removed. As 95.5 WSB reported, their lawsuit brings up some points never considered. According to the lawsuit, DHS plans to convert the warehouse into a detention facility that would hold 10,000 detainees and employ up to 2,500 staff members.

The city says the proposal would strain Social Circle’s infrastructure beyond capacity, threatening the city’s water supply and risking sewage overflows. The lawsuit also accuses the agencies of violating federal laws and creating a nuisance under Georgia law. Social Circle says the planned “mega center” was part of what the lawsuit describes as an ICE director’s goal to operate “like (Amazon) Prime, but with human beings.” The lawsuit says the proposed facility’s plan to open in June and house 10,000 detainees would overwhelm the city’s fresh water supply and sewage treatment capabilities, potentially resulting in dry taps and raw sewage spills. By comparison, city leaders say Social Circle has about 5,000 residents.

None of that looks like a Berkeley-style fit over immigration enforcement; it looks like a small Georgia town saying its water and sewer systems already run near capacity, and no serious government should pretend 10,000 detainees plus thousands of staff can arrive without consequences. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, recently confirmed by the U.S. Senate, has reportedly paused parts of the larger warehouse-conversion program while reviewing DHS operations. The Social Circle site already belongs to the federal government, so the dispute now centers on whether Washington can force a project of this size forward before basic infrastructure questions get answered..

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“Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes speaks exclusively to friendly outlets.”

• Democrats Refuse To Even Talk To the American People Anymore (Derek Hunter)

Of all the problems Democrats have created and unleashed on the country, the unwillingness and inability to speak to anyone who disagrees with them is among the worst. They don’t even try anymore, liberals only engage with each other in an agreement-festival that rivals a row of bobblehead dolls double-sided taped to the dashboard of the family truckster all nodding with each other as they ramble down a bumpy dirt road.


When was the last time you heard a dissenting voice on MS Now? Anyone who dares disagree with the “progressive” narrative on CNN is spoken over, shouted down or cut off for a “correction” from the host or a quick commercial break. The left has gone from terrified of being called out for their lies to operating in a cocoon so that possibility becomes impossible. Joe Biden used to yell about how he wanted to be “the President of all Americans,” but he never gave an interview to Fox News. How can you be the President of everyone when you won’t talk to half the country for four years? He even passed on a softball Super Bowl interview – the biggest audience he’d ever have access to and he declined.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes speaks exclusively to friendly outlets. Even the “spontaneous” questions she takes when “tracked down” in the halls of Congress are more choreographed than a Broadway musical. How do you think it is that she just so happens to be “cornered” by the anti-American, Soror-funded Meidas Touch activist group that pretends to do news? She’s always by herself, always stops, and is more scripted than an Aaron Sorkin movie. How many times have you seen her running away from reporters asking basic questions, but somehow she manages to have time for this one outlet?

They’re likely feeding her the questions, coordinating with staff to get video of her relevant to the news cycle onto the Internet to try to improve her image with people not insane. There’s no other reason the few staffers in the video don’t run interference like they do with others or how they always manage to “find” her in cordoned off areas of the Capitol Building. When Katie Porter, the Democrat domestic abuser running for Governor of California, was asked how she planned to appeal to 40 percent of voters in the state who’d voted for Donald Trump the very concept seemed confusing to her. Why would she need to appeal to them, she could win without them. In other words, “screw those people creatures.”

Porter was confused by the question, then angered by her confusion, she ended the interview. Can you imagine a conservative politician saying people who aren’t in lockstep with them weren’t even worth talking to? Tennessee Democratic Congressman Steve Cohen announced this week that he was not going to seek reelection because the Supreme Court declared districts like his in Memphis, in accordance with the Civil Rights Act, to be illegal because they were gerrymandered based on race. Cohen is white and Jewish, the district he represents is majority black, designed to elect a Democrat, regardless of skin color. Now it’s designed to exist with about three-quarters of a million Americans in it, of all configurations of humans. The district now leans to the right, and Cohen is out.

Steve Cohen has been representing the area at the state and local level since 1982, and for the first time his district is not slanted 70+ percent Democrat, so he quit. He could have tried campaigning, he could have tried making a case to people who, while he may not have been their Member of Congress, he was certainly known by them through the media, but he didn’t. He quit. Cohen quit while insisting “I’m not a quitter.” He’s actually the very definition of the word. More importantly, and more telling, is how he didn’t try. The prospect of having to sell himself and his party’s ideas to people who do not immediately acquiesce to all of it was so daunting of a task that quitting was the more viable option.

College campuses across the country are overrun with leftists who would rather shout down speakers or physically attack people rather than allow them to speak to people who actively choose to hear them. School administrators indulge these little fascists in the hope that they mob doesn’t turn on them, but it always does. College Presidents are now targets of goon squads demanding a policy of Jew hatred and anti-Americanism. And they’ll likely get it.

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Todd Blanche appears to be a step up from Pam Bondi.

• Russia Hoax Figures May Want Lawyers Handy After Blanche’s Latest (Clark)

On Sunday morning, Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche appeared on Fox News Sunday Morning Futures opposite host Maria Bartiromo. The Acting AG was there to discuss ongoing investigations into the Russia collusion hoax around the 2016 presidential election, as well as election rigging in the 2020 presidential election. He had some very pointed comments, as well as some reasons as to why these investigations are taking as long as they are. First, on the Russia hoax:


The post reads: “JUST IN: AG Todd Blanche confirms it’s ABOUT TO COME OUT as the DOJ probes the deep state coup against President Trump based on the Russia hoax “We’re finding out some incredibly troubling things, and at some point at the right time, that will be made public, and the American people will see exactly what happened to this administration and President Trump over the past decade!” “The Southern district of Florida has an open criminal investigation. That involves hundreds of subpoenas, it involves hundreds of witnesses, and so, as far as time and one we can expect it, we are working hard and we are working efficiently, but we are going to do it right.”

Here’s that conversation:

Todd Blanche: We’re finding out some incredibly troubling things, and at some point, at the right time, that will be made public, and the American people will see exactly what happened to this administration and President Trump over the past decade.

Maria Bartiromo: Well, I mean, the country was ripped apart. We all know that. Half the country said he colluded with Russia; the other half said no, it didn’t. It ripped the country apart. But you say, when the time is right. When is the time right? When should we expect these charges of conspiracy?

Todd Blanche: Well, I mean, look, as has been publicly reported, the Southern District of Florida has an open criminal investigation. That involves hundreds of subpoenas. It involves hundreds of witnesses. And so, as far as timing, when we can expect it, we are working hard, and we are working efficiently, but we are going to do it right. We are not gonna rush something that isn’t ready. We’re not gonna reach a conclusion before our investigation is over. But I assure you, the American people, that we are completely focused on it.

Maria Bartiromo: OK, well, again, I don’t know… What is not ready? I mean, we’ve been watching this play out for a long time. And viewers and people watching are frustrated, because it just keeps happening. Weaponization keeps happening because it’s not corrected the time before.

Maria Bartiromo makes a good point here. While the GOP didn’t have the upper hand for some of that time, hampering efforts at the federal level, we’ve been waiting for answers on this matter for a decade now. The shouts of “Russia, Russia, Russia” started, it seems, within moments of then-candidate Trump’s famous descent on the golden escalator, and now it’s been ten years. If this investigation doesn’t result in some indictments and trials, then exactly these kinds of tactics will be tried by the Democrats, again and again.

Granted, it’s better to do a thing right than it is to do a thing fast, and possibly carelessly. But some indictments in the weeks leading up to the midterms would do the GOP a lot of good; mind you, these decisions, any possible indictments, shouldn’t be made for political reasons, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be cognizant of the possibilities. In another segment, Acting AG Blanche talked about rigging in the 2020 presidential election:

Here’s how that conversation went:

Todd Blanche: Well, there’s a ton of evidence that the election was rigged. That’s not something the DOJ needs to tell you about. There’s been evidence about that for many, many years. What I can tell you is that we have multiple investigations going on in Arizona and in Georgia, in Fulton County, Georgia. And that’s exactly what we’re looking at. By the way, this is very difficult because they’re very good, they’re very good at hiding misconduct and hiding what they’re doing. And so that’s why we’re very focused on finding out whether the right people voted, whether they were supposed to vote voted, or if there was one cast per voter. That is what we are doing in multiple states, and I expect…

And again you’ll say to me: ‘How long has it taken? Why is this taking so long?’ The reality of the answer to that is it takes a lot of work to uncover what happened in 2020. A lot of good old-fashioned law enforcement police work, which is what we’re doing. And we have great prosecutors working on it as well. And I expect that, and I assure you, I assure the American people that as soon as we have something to say for it, whether it’s charges, whether it’s a report or results of an investigation, the American people will learn about what was uncovered.”

If there is, this will make Watergate look like a parking ticket. The GOP spent years in the political doghouse after Watergate, and this one, if the DOJ can establish that there was active interference in the conduct of an American presidential election, that could be earth-shattering. Depending on how high the conspiracy goes – and my personal opinion is that it likely goes pretty dang high – this could consign the Democratic Party to the political hinterlands for a decade or more, and they will have had it coming. We do live in interesting times. Stay tuned. This ain’t over; not by a long shot.

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“Washington DC is a narcissist’s playground.”

• Todd Blanche Discusses Conspiracy and 2020 Election Investigations (CTH)

Appearing with Maria Bartiromo, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche answers questions about the ongoing conspiracy case against former government officials for targeting Donald Trump as well as investigations into the 2020 election outcome.


In this interview it appears Ms. Bartiromo realizes she needs to convey a sense of frustration on behalf of her viewership who followed the arc of the targeting of Donald Trump for the past nine years, through the Horowitz investigation(s), through the Mueller investigation, through the John Durham investigation and into the Jack Smith investigation, yet none of the preceding investigations ever focused on the real problem: the government officials who conducted the targeting. Corruption and unlawful conduct within Washington DC is a self-protecting enterprise. WATCH:

I can tell you from first-hand experience that one of the primary reasons we have not seen accountability is that most of the people with the authority to do something about it don’t know where to look to find the evidence, and when they do, they don’t know what it means in context.

Washington DC is a system of self-absorbed stakeholders who use isolating silos to preserve their interests. Within the game everything has a political currency, including leverage and information – and everyone wants proprietary credit for their inventory. Washington DC is a narcissist’s playground.

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That famed car industry sure went down fast.

• Mercedes Willing to Enter Military Production Sector (CTH)

Mercedes is willing to begin military and weapons production. Historically speaking, this did not work out so well for Europe the last time; however, as with all things German, the expanded backstory is a little more complicated. Due to a combination of terrible political decisions related to the German and EU energy sector, the German industrial economy is contracting rapidly. Germany is the heart of the EU economic engine. At the same time as the German economy is contracting, the economic footprint of China in the EU is growing. The core issue centers around a declining auto sector but extends to all ancillary manufacturing outputs.


By following the WEF’s “Build Back Better” program, Europe as a whole has ended up making itself energy-dependent and vulnerable. The Gulf oil and gas crisis, the looming 25% Trump tariffs on EU cars, and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from German NATO bases only add to their growing economic troubles. Around the same time as this economic convergence, Germany began ramping up its commitments, support, and spending for Ukraine in the conflict with Russia. Subsidy outflows rose just as GDP was falling, a clear example of an economic spiral that can easily spin out of control.

German Chancellor Freidrich Merz is trying to deal with the consequences of exceptionally short-sighted and damaging policy, but reversing the trend would require Germany to focus all policy operations inwardly away from Brussels and the demands of the collective European Union. This is now the core issue in German politics driving bold dividing lines between political power structures.nOne of the problems for Germany is the United States presence in the country historically meant they did not need to spend on their national defense. Instead, for decades they spent that money on subsidy programs and expanded German benefits. All was okay until President Trump started to pressure the German government to be self-sufficient. That means Germany had to change government policy.

President Trump has refused to put Tomahawk cruise missiles into U.S/NATO bases within Germany, and Germany has no medium to long-range missile systems. Now, they need to either purchase them or develop their own. At the same time President Trump is drawing down U.S. military troop levels in Germany, and Germany has changed their conscription laws while requiring all fighting age men to register any extended external travel.

SUMMARY: The economy within Germany is shrinking, revenues to the government are less, the energy crisis means German citizens need subsidies, the promised payments to Ukraine are more painful, and at the same time the “coalition of the willing” are more confrontational toward Russia yet they realize they can no longer hide behind America’s apron. A hot mess. Now, before getting to the point of this latest development, remind yourself that China owns a ten percent stake in Mercedes and the vehicles produced by the Chinese auto brand Geely are essentially the outcome of China extracting technology from that stakeholder share. This brand specific datapoint sits on the sidelines of Europe’s shrinking market share of automobiles as the Chinese share of the market grows.

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And it never would.

• Texas Never Surrendered Its Right to Defend Its Borders (Andy Hopper)

Texas stands at a rare and narrow window of opportunity. With an America-First administration still in the White House, Texas has a partner in the fight to secure our land from those who seek to invade, infiltrate, and corrupt her. For the first time in years, federal courts are receptive to originalist arguments, clawing back decades of liberal case law.


This is not the time for half-measures, polite requests, or waiting on federal permission slips. It is the moment for Texas to pass legislation that forever enshrines our sovereign right, rooted in the original understanding of the Constitution, to defend our borders and protect our people from hostile invaders. Whether they come waving cartel flags, smuggling death across the Rio Grande, or carrying ideologies that seek to replace Texas law with foreign doctrines, the threat is the same.

Cartels have long considered our border an open highway for crime, fentanyl, and human trafficking. Foreign terrorist organizations have exploited the same gaps that decades of federal policies have left wide open. And because of a half-century of extremely permissive immigration policies that have brought millions from anti-Western Muslim countries, there are now growing enclaves within our state working to impose Sharia law and parallel societies that directly contradict the Texas Constitution and the American way of life.

These are not benign “immigration” issues. They are invasions that undermine our security, our culture, our rule of law, and our constitutional republic. Texans who have followed the fight against political Islam and groups pushing for enclaves that reject American law understand exactly what is at stake. The Tenth Amendment was written precisely so states would not be forced to stand idle while their people and their way of life are undermined from within.

The Republic of Texas would never have tolerated this, and she never agreed to surrender the tools needed to stop it. From 1836 to 1845, Texas stood as a fully sovereign nation forged in blood. For nine years, we fought Mexico for our independence. We maintained our own army and navy. We controlled our own borders. We decided who could enter, who could settle, and who had to leave. The Republic’s 1836 Constitution and early laws reflected this reality: land grants went to settlers who swore loyalty to Texas; citizenship could be earned after six months’ residence and an oath. Border defense was not some abstract federal concern; it was daily survival against a hostile neighbor that refused to accept our independence.

Mexican forces hammered that lesson home with shocking regularity in 1842 alone. In March, General Rafael Vásquez marched 700 troops into San Antonio, raised the Mexican flag, and declared Mexican law in effect. Just six months later, General Adrián Woll struck again, capturing the city a second time and seizing the courthouse while the district court was in session. Among the prisoners marched to Mexico was Samuel A. Maverick, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. These were not pinprick raids. San Antonio was occupied twice in one year. Every Texan understood that controlling who crossed the Rio Grande was a matter of life and death.

When statehood was on the table in 1845, Texans knew exactly what type of Union they were joining. The Joint Resolution of Annexation, passed by Congress on March 1, 1845, and approved by the Texas Convention on July 4, is crystal clear. Texas entered the Union “on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever.” We kept our public lands. We kept responsibility for our public debt. We retained the right to divide into as many as five states later if we chose. The United States agreed to settle boundary disputes with Mexico and to assume responsibility for external military threats. That was the deal: federal help against invading armies, not federal monopoly over who walks across our soil or settles in our communities.

Read more …

Blame AI?

• Sadiq Khan: Claims London Devolving Into A Sh*thole Is Just AI Driven (MN)

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has claimed that the decline of the city is a myth and that it’s all just lies being spread by MAGA supporters, Russia, and China through AI-generated content. In a fresh escalation of his war on inconvenient truths, Khan pointed to a surge in online posts highlighting anti-immigration realities, claiming foreign actors and Trump backers are behind it. He insists the dystopian image of lawless streets and cultural erosion is purely fabricated. “You’ve got state actors,” Khan said, pointing to supposed evidence of Russian and Chinese involvement (there is none) alongside Make America Great Again backers in the US. He warned that “decent people” might start believing these narratives of a dangerous city with no law and order.


“Secondly, we’ve seen individuals and companies trying to monetise and make profit from division,” Khan further claimed.

He appears to be referring to joke AI videos being circulated showing London strewn with rubbish and rats. Of course these videos are fake, everyone realises that. However, they’re being made as a response to the fact that London is strewn with rubbish and rats, public services are woefully underfunded, and mass migration is causing further social breakdown and an explosion in crime. Instead of taking responsibility and attempting to fix the problems, Khan is continuing his gaslighting campaign to dismiss London’s very real problems as foreign propaganda or American disinformation.

In April, Khan began a push for a government-backed social media “disinformation” unit, demanding Big Tech and the state crack down on criticism of his record, claiming an “outrage economy” is eroding trust. He told the Cambridge Disinformation Summit that platforms must do better—or regulators like Ofcom should hit them hard. Khan positioned London as the “canary in the coal mine” for global fights against online dissent. Critics note he often disables replies on his posts, shutting down Londoners who could share firsthand experiences.

While Khan obsesses over algorithms and foreign bots, official figures from his own tenure paint a grim picture. As highlighted in our April report on his disinformation unit push, Metropolitan Police data since Khan took office in 2016 shows:

Knife crime: +27%
Robbery: +57%
Theft from the person: +37%
Shoplifting: +109%
Sexual offences: +64%

Violence against the person: Significant rises in multiple categories. Recent reminders underscore the pattern: Every hour in London, a rape is reported. Every 34 minutes, knife crime. Every 4.5 minutes, a phone theft. Every 1.8 minutes, a theft overall. There has been a broad collapse in everyday safety, theft epidemics and gang violence is plaguing the city. In addition to completely ignoring reality and pretending London is a utopia, Khan is calling for more state tools to police speech, label AI content, and tweak algorithms against “poison and division.” Civil liberties voices like Big Brother Watch have warned this risks political exploitation—labeling criticism of crime, migration, and multiculturalism as “disinformation” to protect the narrative.

Instead of addressing root causes—open borders policies flooding the city with incompatible elements, straining resources, and importing crime—Khan prefers to shoot the messenger. nThe mayor’s record speaks louder than any conspiracy: a capital where shoplifting exploded over 100%, knives dominate headlines, and public trust erodes daily. Blaming MAGA, Putin, or Xi won’t fix failing multiculturalism or restore law and order. Londoners deserve accountability, not gaslighting and speech police. Britain’s elites continue importing problems then censoring the massive backlash.

Read more …

“The bloc must drop its unanimity principle and forge a new core group for decision making, Josep Borrell has said..”

• EU ‘Not Very Relevant’ On Global Stage – Borrell (RT)

Sloppy decision-making and an inability to agree on key issues have rendered the EU effectively irrelevant on the global stage, the bloc’s former foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has argued. The former top diplomat made the remarks in an interview with Belgian broadcaster RTBF on Friday, somewhat echoing the stance of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. The top official, who has been in power since 2019, has repeatedly urged the bloc to remove individual member states’ veto powers and move to qualified majority voting on foreign policy and defense issues. The bloc’s decision-making process has become inadequate in its ability to react to the ever-shifting global situation, Borrell has said, arguing the EU “was not designed for the world in which we live today” in the first place.


“The decision-making rules are not compatible with the acceleration of history. We continue to want to decide unanimously on events that are happening too fast and are very important, and we almost never reach an agreement,” he said, adding that the current system makes the bloc “not very relevant to international politics.” Unlike von der Leyen with her majority voting approach, Borrell called for the creation of a new core group within the bloc to advance the EU’s positions on the global stage. “We need to build a union within the union. A union within the union means that with 27 members, even with unanimity, we won’t go any further. We’re held back. With 27, we won’t accomplish much. So we need to find another core group. Not the 27,” he said.

The former top diplomat, however, did not outline the exact criteria for the potential members of said group, stating it should be composed of the “few who truly want to move forward with political, economic, and military integration” and those “who want to go further, faster.” Last week, the idea to abandon the EU’s unanimity principle was backed by Berlin, with German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul arguing that a switch to a qualified majority voting would “make the EU capable of acting in areas where it currently has to remain at a standstill.” The initiative has already been backed by at least 12 EU member states, according to Wadephul.

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Debt Rattle May 5 2026

May 052026
 
 May 5, 2026  Posted by at 9:52 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  22 Responses »


Ivan Aivazovsky Creation of the World 1864


• Trump’s Strait of Hormuz Move Blends Power and Mercy (David Manney)
• Obama’s Iran Tale Trips Over Its Own Halo (David Manney)
• Trump Disapproval Rate Hits Career-High – War And Rising Costs Take Toll (ZH)
• Trump Sends Rubio to Calm Tensions with Italy and the Pope (Anderson)
• All’s Not So Quiet on Any Front (James Howard Kunstler)
• NATO Holds Secret Meetings With Movie, TV Makers – Guardian (RT)
• EU to Begin Censoring Emojis on Social Media — For ‘Safety’ (Bartee)
• Erika Kirk Brilliantly Dismantles White House Correspondents’ Hypocrisy (Salgado)
• Extensive Interview with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (CTH)
• Interesting Reversal in Position by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CTH)
• Acting AG Todd Blanche On Legal Aspects of Iran, James Comey and More (CTH)
• Greece Rejects Ukraine’s Terms For Naval Drone Deal – Media (RT)
• Epstein Inheritor Kills Himself (RT)
• Volkswagen to Let Chinese Automaker Build in Shuttered Volkswagen Plants (CTH)

 


 

https://twitter.com/BoLoudon/status/2051012329362317518?s=20 https://twitter.com/Tironianae/status/2050939495596347494?s=20 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/2050822211947356494?s=20 https://twitter.com/ToscaAusten/status/2051013132970017132?s=20

 


 


“Trump threatened that any interference with the U.S. operation would “have to be dealt with forcefully.”

Two things are not up for negotiation:

1) No nukes for Iran.

2) Free passage in Street of Hormuz.

So far, Iran refuses to acknowledge this.

The guys who play the leadership now may not be the leaders.

• Trump’s Strait of Hormuz Move Blends Power and Mercy (David Manney)

President Donald Trump announced Sunday that the United States will begin helping ships from “neutral and innocent” countries leave the Strait of Hormuz starting Monday morning. He called the effort Project Freedom and framed it as a humanitarian move for ships trapped by the Iran war. Plenty of politicians mention compassion when cameras are rolling, but Trump continues to demonstrate how removed he is from “regular” politicians, tying the decision to action, sea power, and safe passage through one of the most dangerous waterways on Earth.


The Strait of Hormuz carries enormous weight in global commerce, and energy markets still watch it like a man watches smoke near a dry field. Hundreds of ships and roughly 20,000 seafarers have been stranded as the conflict involving Iran disrupts traffic through the region. Iran has been blocking nearly all shipping from the Gulf apart from its own for more than two months. Last month, the U.S. imposed its own blockade of ships from Iranian ports. It was not immediately clear which countries the U.S. operation would aid or how the operation would work. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the matter and the Pentagon declined to comment.

Trump threatened that any interference with the U.S. operation would “have to be dealt with forcefully.” Iran said on Sunday it had received a U.S. response to its latest offer for peace talks a day after Trump said he would probably reject the Iranian proposal because “they have not paid a big enough price.” Many crew members come from South and Southeast Asia; they had nothing to do with the war. They didn’t start it, write Iran’s threats, or choose to become bargaining chips in a dangerous waterway. Ships and seafarers, many on oil and gas tankers and cargo ships, have been stuck in the Persian Gulf since the war began.

Crew members have described to The Associated Press watching intercepted drones and missiles explode over the waters, and running low on drinking water, food and other supplies. Many sailors come from India and other countries in south and southeast Asia. Those people were doing ordinary work when an extraordinary crisis fell on them like an ex-Iranian cleric cannonballing in a pool. Trump’s statement cut through the usual fog, saying the United States had told those countries that America would guide their ships safely out of restricted waterways so they could “freely and ably get on with their business.”

The wording set the mission’s tone: America isn’t rescuing hostile actors; it’s notifying neutral nations that lawful commerce and helpless crews won’t be abandoned because Iran turned a vital shipping corridor into a danger zone. The market noticed. Oil prices fell after Trump’s announcement. Brent crude dropped $1.83 to $106.34 per barrel — it’s not much, but better than a stick in the eye — while the U.S. West Texas Intermediate fell $1.72 to $100.22. Markets don’t reward speeches because the words sound cool; they move when a president signals that chaos won’t be allowed to spread.

Nobody should pretend Project Freedom will be simple; public details remain limited, and follow-up from the White House and Pentagon hadn’t filled in every operational blank by Sunday afternoon. I’m not a CNN reporter; I’m smart enough to avoid asking the president his military plans. Trump’s posture is clear; he’s telling Iran, shipowners, seafarers, and energy markets that the United States sees what’s going on and intends to move. In a region where hesitation often gets read as weakness—or, as in the case of U.S. mainstream media, thinking Trump is overmatched—the announcement gives America’s allies and neutral partners something firmer than diplomatic shrugging.

The compassion angle deserves notice because strength doesn’t only count when it punishes. American power protects supply lines, calms markets, and helps stranded crews get home or get moving again. The same Navy that deters enemies also clears a path for working sailors who just want to leave a dangerous place alive. People on the left will find reasons to complain because some people find a scandal when the rest of us call it Monday. They’ll argue over timing, tone, risk, wording, tie color, head angle, and whatever else can be fed into the outrage machine before breakfast. Mike seems to get hangry before breakfast.

Meanwhile, the ships still need passage, crews still need safety, and oil prices still affect American families filling their tanks and paying their bills. Trump is acting in the space where leadership has to live, between danger and delay. Or between the space of $4.25 gas and the Biden-era genius of calling paralysis a policy. Project Freedom gives the country a clean view of Trump’s governing style in a crisis; he didn’t offer sympathy cards to the gay, comatose Iranian leader; he’s offering safe passage to neutral nations trapped near Iran. Trump’s not treating energy markets as abstract numbers on a screen: he understands that every barrel eventually touches a household budget somewhere. Strength and mercy don’t have to be enemies; sometimes they work best when they sail together.

Read more …

Was Obama right about laughing off Bibi’s threats? We’ll never know. Trump thinks even if it is an empty threat, Iran still has terrorized the Middle East for 50 years.

• Obama’s Iran Tale Trips Over Its Own Halo (David Manney)

And now for something completely different. Picture an old Shakespearean theater (or, as the snobs would say, thee-aa-taaa-hh), right when the fidgety crowd grows silent because the holy curtain, resplendent with images of the miraculous Obama, slowly rises. Barack Obama, former president of these here United States, appears on the stage of world events wearing the invisible crown of moral superiority. Entering stage right is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who carries ill tidings about Iran, nuclear danger, and the small matter of a regime that’s spent decades threatening Israel and chanting “DEATH TO AMERICA!”


Obama looks up, with a face appearing to be pulled out at the chin, leaving a pair of substantial ears to anchor him in place. He raises one hand, pausing for applause only he can hear (it’s the ears, you know), and announces that he alone resisted the madness. “Drag me into war? Never,” he seems to say from his very tall stool of virtue. Out of nowhere, a fake medieval trumpet wheezes, dust blowing out the bell, a giant foot drops from the sky, covering the stage, and the sketch abruptly ends. Okay, it’s not the best Monty Python parody to use for satire, but hopefully some symbolism pulled through.

In a recently published interview, Obama claimed that Netanyahu used the same arguments with him that the Israeli leader later used with President Donald Trump. Obama cast himself as the steady man who refused military action and, instead, opted for diplomacy. He also said he still believes his approach was right. In Barack Obama’s final days in office, he found himself in the painful position of trying to console his staff, the Democratic Party, and millions of supporters. He attempted to convince them—even if he could not entirely convince himself—that the looming Presidency of Donald Trump was not a national calamity. In the past, he would say, the country had endured slavery, the Civil War, the Great Depression, Jim Crow, assassinations.

And, though Trump was alarming in many ways, America was blessed by the strength of its institutions and the resilience of its people. The word “guardrails” was uttered constantly. In Obama’s estimation, Trump would not erase all his achievements. As he put it, “Maybe fifteen per cent of that gets rolled back.” This kind of calm was pure Obama. His appeal had as much to do with character and temperament as it did with his center-left ideology. Although Obama believed that Trump’s ugliest slurs against him, particularly his deployment of the birther theory, were a racist outrage that heightened the threats against him and his family, he now took pains to set aside his contempt. Insuring that there was another orderly transition of power—that, too, was part of his rhetoric of consolation.

Such poise was not easy to sustain. When Obama met Trump for a ritual pre-Inauguration visit to the Oval Office, he was struck by how unschooled and incurious the President-elect was. Trump, Obama told people, seemed indifferent to hearing about potential national-security perils—North Korea, Russia—preferring to brag about the size of the crowds at his campaign rallies. Obama pitched Trump on preserving several of his signature achievements, including the Affordable Care Act and the Iran nuclear deal. Trump responded that he would consider the request, and Obama thought it was not impossible that he meant it. Naturally, the tale arrives with Obama placed at the center of wisdom, restraint, and good lighting—lighting tips learned at the knees of Beyoncé and Jay-Z.

The timing isn’t subtle: Trump authorized Operation Epic Fury against Iran after months of pressure, intelligence sharing, and escalating danger involving Israel and Iran. Obama’s story lets him suggest that Netanyahu used the same pitch for years and that Trump finally went where Obama refused to go. In an interview with The New Yorker, Obama said Netanyahu had tried to convince him to pursue war with Iran, adding that the Israeli leader “got what he wanted” in more recent developments. However, Obama questioned whether such an outcome ultimately benefits either Israel or the United States.

Beyond the immediate issue of Iran, Obama warned that current geopolitical shifts could have long-term consequences for global stability. He pointed to strains in traditional alliances and cautioned that the international system built after World War II, anchored by institutions like NATO, is under pressure. Obama also discussed the broader challenges facing US global leadership, arguing that rebuilding trust with allies may be more difficult than addressing domestic issues. If you think about it, it’s really a neat little performance: Netanyahu becomes the pushy salesman, Trump becomes the buyer, and Obama becomes the only adult in the room who read the fine print.

Netanyahu has long warned that Iran’s nuclear program poses an existential danger to Israel. Obama knows that history, and he also knows many Americans remember his Iran posture as weak, naive, and too eager to treat Tehran like a difficult negotiating partner instead of a hostile regime with innocent blood on its hands. Instead of pursuing joint strikes with Israel, Obama said he prioritized diplomacy with Iran. Those efforts led to the 2015 nuclear agreement, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which imposed limits on Iran’s nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief. Netanyahu strongly opposed the agreement, warning it would fail to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and would strengthen the country economically and militarily.

Trump later withdrew the United States from the deal in 2018, reimposing sanctions on Iran and aligning more closely with Netanyahu’s position. Barry’s new version tries sanding down all of that to leave one shiny statue standing: Obama, the restrained, austere scholar, nobly blinking while everybody else reaches for a sword. The real purpose looks obvious: Obama wants to reopen an old argument and drive a wedge between Trump supporters who disagree over foreign policy. Barry is implying that Trump got handled by Netanyahu while Obama stayed too wise to be moved. It’s less foreign policy analysis than reputation repair with better upholstery.

There’s something missing that I just can’t place my finger on. Please help me remember something about a plane, pallets, tons of cash … ah! Yes, even after paying a several billion dollar bribe to the mullahs, Obama removes the part where Iran didn’t become less dangerous because of his preference for green diplomacy. Tehran, with help from brand-new U.S. dollars, kept funding terror, threatening Israel, and expanding its reach while Western leaders congratulated themselves for managing the problem. Obama’s defenders call his approach patient, while plenty of Americans would call it wishful thinking — at best — in a tailored suit.

Let’s return to our stage. Obama takes his final bow, still certain of his intestinal fortitude to resist the warmongering fever. Netanyahu remains Israel’s prime minister, dealing with Iran as a legitimate threat, not a TED Talk topic. President Trump remains president of the United States, making decisions in a world Obama (and, with Susan Rice’s work, Biden) helped create. The curtain falls. The giant foot lands again, but in a way that a set of ears sits on either side of the heel, looking like a giant Temu version of Mercury’s foot, about to send a message from the Roman gods.

The audience is asked to admire the former president’s restraint, but the joke lingers because Obama is speaking without a script, so the man keeps talking and talking and talking. Barry never sees what happened; he didn’t stop the danger out of Iran. He just wrote himself inside a narrative where he never belonged, where he never succeeded, and into a reset of a history that never happened. In short, Obama has long since become a president losing hold of his carefully crafted narrative, one polished for years until reality started showing through the shine.

Read more …

WaPo-ABC poll.

At the same time, CNN came with a poll that said 100% of 2024 MAGA voters still would vote MAGA.

• Trump Disapproval Rate Hits Career-High – War And Rising Costs Take Toll (ZH)

Though tempered by the prospect of additional GOP gerrymandering of House districts in the wake of a pivotal Supreme Court decision, Democrats’ hopes for a rout of Republicans in the approaching midterm elections are rising after a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll found that President Trump’s disapproval rating is now the highest of either of his two terms in office. Trump’s decision to launch a war on Iran is taking a toll — voters are not only dismayed by his handling of Iran, but also dissatisfied with his work on the economy, which is itself being harmed by the war.


In a survey of US adults taken in the last week of April, 62% said they disapprove of his general performance in the Oval Office. A whopping 76% disapprove of his handling of the cost of living and 66% disapprove of what he’s done with Iran. A majority of Americans surveyed expressed disapproval of his handling of every issue covered by the survey.


While 85% of Republicans approve of his performance, the share who strongly approve fell to 45% — that’s down 8% since September and is a new Trump low. Perhaps more importantly, his approval among Republican-leaning independents is also at a new low of 56%. Overall, just 25% of independents approve of his performance. Trump also scored terribly on some personal attributes. For example, 71% said the descriptors “honest and trustworthy” are not applicable to Trump, while 67% said Trump does not “carefully consider important decisions.” Meanwhile, 59% said he lacks the “mental sharpness” required of his position.

The poll provides a little insight into the upcoming midterm races. Today, Republicans have a slim, 3-seat margin of control of the House of Representatives. Asked if they would vote for a Democrat or Republican candidate if the House election were held today, 49% said they would for a Democrat, compared to 44% who would choose a Republican. At the same point in the 2022 midterms, that question yielded a 42-42 tie, with the GOP proceeding to win the House when votes were cast six months later, securing a 222 – 213 margin in seats (a 9-seat pickup for the Republicans). As for intended turnout, 79% of registered Democrats say they are “absolutely certain” they’ll vote, compared to 72% of Republicans — a 7-point improvement on the GOP turnout expectation recorded in a February survey.

Vance had higher approval and disapproval ratings than Rubio — as more survey participants shrugged at the Rubio performance question. Looking at the big picture, 67% of Americans said the country is moving in the wrong direction. Here, there’s a vast difference among parties: 94% of Democrats felt that way, compared to 25% of Republicans. As a general caveat, we’ll note that — since more and more Americans identify as independent — party results are growing less meaningful. A hefty 78% of independents say the country is heading south.

Finally, the poll had some incidental insights for those looking ahead to the 2028 presidential race. While participants weren’t asked about that contest, they were asked to rate the job performance of various Trump administration officials, including two potential GOP contenders: Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. They came out with similar approval ratings — 35% for Vance and 33% for Rubio — but Vance had a 48% disapproval rating, compared to 40% for Rubio. The remainder of respondents had no opinion.

Read more …

No longer “little” Marco.

• Trump Sends Rubio to Calm Tensions with Italy and the Pope (Anderson)

Relations between the United States and Italy and between Donald Trump and Pope Leo XIV have been delicate lately to say the least. So, the Trump administration is sending in the one man to the Vatican who can possibly help them recalibrate them this week: Marco Rubio. The State Department announced on Monday that the secretary of State will travel to Rome on Wednesday “to advance bilateral relations with Italy and the Vatican.” “Secretary Rubio will meet with Holy See leadership to discuss the situation in the Middle East and mutual interests in the Western Hemisphere,” the statement continued. “Meetings with Italian counterparts will be focused on shared security interests and strategic alignment.”


Several MSM outlets are saying that he will meet with the pope and Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s foreign minister, on Thursday. He’ll most likely also meet with Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani and Defense Minister Guido Crosetto, and possibly even Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni herself, but the State Department didn’t specify that information. We all know the background. The pope has repeatedly criticized the United States and Israel’s conflict in Iran, calling for more dialogue and peace talks — you know, the sort of thing that hasn’t worked for decades. “Faced with the possibility of a tragedy of enormous proportions,” he said in March, shortly after the conflict began. “I address to the parties involved a heartfelt appeal to assume the moral responsibility to stop the spiral of violence before it becomes an irreparable abyss!”

While this is standard Vatican peace talk, he’s also criticized Trump’s rhetoric regarding Iran, particularly calling the infamous “a whole civilization will die tonight” line “truly unacceptable.” Trump didn’t take too kindly to that and has responded via social media and interviews with various outlets, calling the pope “weak on crime,” “very liberal,” and “terrible for foreign policy.” On Truth Social on April 12, the president wrote: “I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon…I don’t want a Pope who thinks U.S. action against Venezuela was wrong.” (I can’t speak for the Iranians, but I can tell you that the Venezuelans are firmly in favor of the U.S. action against Venezuela.)

The president added, “And I don’t want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States because I’m doing exactly what I was elected, IN A LANDSLIDE, to do…” He concluded that the pontiff needed to “get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician. It’s hurting him very badly and, more importantly, it’s hurting the Catholic Church!” When talking to reporters later, the president said, “I’m not a big fan of Pope Leo. He’s a very liberal person, and he’s a man that doesn’t believe in stopping crime. He’s a man that doesn’t think that we should be toying with a country that wants a nuclear weapon so they can blow up the world. I’m not a fan of Pope Leo.”

Eventually, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni — someone who is typically a pretty staunch Trump ally — got into the spat and criticized Trump’s words against the pope, calling them “unacceptable.” She said it was normal for the head of the Catholic Church to condemn “every form for war.” Trump didn’t take too kindly to this either and said that “she’s the one who’s unacceptable” and claims she’s “no longer the same person.” The two have been distancing themselves from each other ever since.

Meloni has also been critical of military action in Iran herself, and “sided with France, Spain, the U.K., and Germany in declining to participate in mine sweeping and other military operations to reopen the Strait of Hormuz during Iran’s initial blockade of the strategic waterway.”So, can DJ Rubio Secretary Rubio save the day? He is our country’s top diplomat after all, but more importantly, Trump knows that Rubio’s got the personality to handle these types of situations when the president himself… well, let’s just say he’s a bit more blunt. And he admits it too. Earlier this year, he confessed that Rubio, who has become one of this most trusted advisors, was teaching him.

“I became a diplomat for the first time. Well, you know, taught me that? Marco Rubio. He said, ‘Let me teach you about diplomacy,’” the president said at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January. The president has also admitted on several occasions that Rubio is “a bit more diplomatic” than Vice President JD Vance, who has Trump’s knack for telling it like it is. But that doesn’t mean Rubio is soft. We all saw the speech he gave at the Munich Security Conference earlier this year, telling European leaders that “we in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline.” Let’s just hope he carries that energy into his trip this week. And maybe a little of this energy too. I mean, who can resist it?:

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“CENTCOM confirms Iran has NOT successfully struck ANY Navy ships this morning, despite claiming they’ve done so.” —Eric Daugherty on X

• All’s Not So Quiet on Any Front (James Howard Kunstler)

Project Freedom. Cute move! Notice that it’s not Operation Freedom. That would frame it as a military move. The President is tactically framing this as a humanitarian action. Mr. Trump has advised Congress as of May 1 that hostilities with Iran (Operation Epic Fury) are terminated, at the 60-day limit of the War Powers Resolution. Commercial ships from countries not involved in the Iran / US dispute will now get escorted safely through the Strait of Hormuz by US naval vessels.


Any attack on these ships by Iran would prompt a forceful response and trigger a re-wind of the clock on the War Powers Resolution (WPR), meaning, another sixty days to conduct military operations, such as the destruction of key bridges and electric power plants promised earlier. Iran’s leadership — whoever that is — thought it could juke Mr. Trump on the 60-day deadline by stalling negotiations while it reorganized its remaining missile launchers. Tactical fail. Incidentally, the Supreme Court has never directly ruled on the WPR’s constitutionality or enforced the 60-day limit.

Also, by the way, the “neutral and innocent bystanders” designation means that oil tankers from Kuwait, the Emirate states, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia will be given safe escorts out of the Persian Gulf. That will have two effects: 1) avert the “shutting-in” of their productive oil wells (and the prospective geological damage to the oil fields); and 2) alleviate the price pressure on oil generally with new supply reentering the global oil market.

You can conclude that this “project” will bring new pressure on the “whoevers” running Iran to stop shucking and jiving about how this thing ends — which is them surrendering the 1000-pounds of 60-percent enriched uranium stashed somewhere on their premises. Of course, coming to terms on the nuclear bomb-making issue would allow Iran the possibility of becoming, once more, a normal advanced industrial modern nation, should it also decide to eschew the rule of the mullahs and their psychotic minions in the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC). But that remains to be seen.

The other major project underway is on the domestic US scene: the much-needed severe beat-down of the so-called Democratic Party that has become captive to seditionists, overt communists, racketeers, and jihadis. DOJ prosecutions of color revolutionaries accelerate under Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. James Comey finally has to account for his “86 / 47” seashell prank in a Carolina federal court while a long-dormant case was revived in the Eastern District of Virginia of Comey having used Columbia prof Daniel Richman as a cut-out to leak classified information to the press at the inception of RussiaGate, 2017.

Nobody knows exactly what’s going down in the Southern District of Florida these days (no leaks) where a grand Jury was convened in January to hear evidence in the RussiaGate matter including the years’ long train of organized seditions aimed at bum-rushing Mr. Trump out of the Oval Office in his first term, plus the mounting of various other operations (2020 election-rigging, the J-6 “Fedsurrection,” and maliciously fake serial prosecutions) aimed at stuffing him in prison at the end of that term.

All this is being treated as a “grand conspiracy” involving scores of agency officials and lawfare ninjas operating in the penumbra at the edge of government. Do not be surprised when rafts of indictments come out of the Fort Pierce, Florida, grand jury, probably in bunches, each bunch dedicated to a particular phase or operation.

Characters such as former President Barack Obama, FBI Director Christopher Wray, Senator Adam Schiff (D-CS), CIA-agent Eric Ciaramella, legal tacticians Norm Eisen, Marc Elias, and Mary McCord, Andrew Weissmann, crooked member of the Senate Intel Committee Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), and former CIA Directors Brennan with former DNI James Clapper, were involved in multiple seditions and possible treasons. Supporting actors such as the tag-team of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, former Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein, former AG Merrick Garland, former Deputy AG Lisa Monaco, former Sec’y of State Hillary Clinton, “Joe Biden” autopen operators Jake Sullivan, Mike Donlon, Steve Richetti, Anita Dunn, Neera Tanden, former Sec’y of State Antony Blinken, and Domestic Policy Advisor Susan Rice, are probably in the mix somewhere, too.

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“The greatest threat the bloc currently faces emanates not from “external enemies,” but rather its “ongoing disintegration..”

• NATO Holds Secret Meetings With Movie, TV Makers – Guardian (RT)

Creatives reportedly fear that the US-led military bloc is moving to influence TV and film industry professionals. NATO is holding closed-door consultations with TV and film industry professionals across Europe and the US, The Guardian reported on Sunday. The move has prompted accusations that the bloc is working to leverage the arts for “fear mongering” and “propaganda,” it added. The military bloc has held three private meetings with directors, producers and screenwriters in Los Angeles, Brussels and Paris, and is planning to convene with members of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain (WGGB) in London next month, the newspaper wrote.


The upcoming meeting will be overseen by the British think tank Chatham House and will discuss the “evolving security situation in Europe and beyond,” according to the report. NATO cyber and innovation technology deputy head James Appathurai is expected to attend, among other officials, the newspaper added. So far, the conversations have partly “inspired” at least “three separate projects,” The Guardian wrote, citing an internal WGGB e-mail.

The military bloc’s move has reportedly sparked concern in the film and TV industry. The planned meeting is “clearly propaganda,” Irish film writer Alan O’Gorman said, as cited by The Guardian. “I think there’s fearmongering throughout Europe at the moment that our defenses are down,” he reportedly said, adding that he has seen a media and government push in Ireland “to present NATO in a positive light and align ourselves with them.” Other screenwriters were “pretty offended that art would be used in a way that was supporting war” and believed they were being asked to “contribute towards propaganda for NATO,” he said, according to the newspaper.

The Washington-led military bloc has been undergoing a growing internal rift, with US President Donald Trump again describing NATO as a “paper tiger” after multiple member states refused to join his war on Iran in recent months. Tensions between European NATO countries and the US had already been heightened by Trump’s threats in preceding months to annex Denmark’s autonomous territory of Greenland. The greatest threat the bloc currently faces emanates not from “external enemies,” but rather its “ongoing disintegration,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Saturday.

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It’s not the people who had a happy childhood who do these things, decide for you what you can see.

• EU to Begin Censoring Emojis on Social Media — For ‘Safety’ (Bartee)

The European Commission apparently finds itself no longer satiated with controlling what combinations of letters it permits the serfs on its techno-planation to spell out on social media and has now expanded the scope of its Orwellian censorship regime to emojis.


Via European Commission: \”European regulators, the European Commission and the Board of the Digital Services Coordinators, enforcing the Digital Service Act published a world-wide first report on the landscape of prominent and recurrent risks on very large online platforms and search engines in the European Union. The report (pdf) identifies systemic risks such as, among others, the spread of illegal content or threats to fundamental rights, occurring on very large online platforms. It also gives a first overview of the mitigation measures taken by platforms, based on the transparency requirements under the DSA.

Key findings cover risks to mental health and to the protection of minors online*; the impact of emerging technologies, such as generative AI, on online platforms; and challenges to intellectual property protection on online marketplaces. Among the notable mitigation measures highlighted are, for example, the use of automated systems to detect emojis used as code for illegal activities online, such as the sale of illegal drugs.

*Always “for the children” — the eternal excuse of the nanny state gynocrats to trample on fundamental civil liberties.

https://twitter.com/DigitalEU/status/2046872384649478568

Who is going to decide which emojis have to go?Probably some unelected bureaucrat behind a screen in some Brussels lair — or else AI; I’m not sure which is more dystopian. Via Hungarian Conservative: “Beyond mockery, critics have also raised concerns about the implications for free speech and digital governance. A frequently cited argument is that identifying ‘coded language’ requires platforms to interpret context and intent—moving beyond clearly illegal content into more subjective territory.

This concern ties into broader scepticism surrounding the DSA, which obliges large platforms to assess and mitigate so-called ‘systemic risks’, including illegal content and threats to public security. Critics argue that this framework increasingly incentivizes proactive and interpretive moderation, rather than responses limited to clearly unlawful material, and in doing so risks encroaching on online free speech. The debate also highlights the technical challenges involved. Emojis are inherently ambiguous and context-dependent, making accurate detection difficult and increasing the likelihood of false positives. Experts have long noted that content moderation already operates in ‘grey areas’,** where meaning is fluid and difficult to define, particularly as platforms rely more heavily on automated systems.”

“Of course, in such cases of “grey areas,” the censor will always and reflexively err on the side of maximum censorship, which is what’s surely going to happen here. Was any of this what the European states signed up for with the 1950 establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the promise being a limited economic cooperative agreement between a handful of Western European states that has now somehow ballooned into a sprawling bureaucracy dictating what emojis some Pole is permitted to use on Facebook?

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“The problem is, Cole Allen did believe the rhetoric to the point of allegedly attempting to murder Trump administration officials at the dinner on April 25.”

• Erika Kirk Brilliantly Dismantles White House Correspondents’ Hypocrisy (Salgado)

Erika Kirk slammed attendees at the White House correspondents’ dinner who inspired the shooter’s hate but had intended to enjoy a luxury dinner with Donald Trump undisturbed, calling it the “ultimate hypocrisy” to “manufacture the hate and then profit off the results.” The crazies were “willing to have dinner with ‘Hitler’” if it meant free champagne.


Leftists believe in hurling the most inflammatory and vile rhetoric at their opponents, ginning up as much violence and chaos as possible, but never personally experiencing the negative results of any of their own lies. The same journalists and media anchors who spent years calling Donald Trump the greatest threat to democracy were cheerfully attending a dinner with him as the featured speaker, illustrating they didn’t really believe their own extreme rhetoric, as Erika highlighted. The problem is, Cole Allen did believe the rhetoric to the point of allegedly attempting to murder Trump administration officials at the dinner on April 25.

“We may have big problems with illegal immigration in this country,” Erika said. “I have to tell you, we have an even bigger problem when it comes to the systemic indoctrination and radicalization of our own citizens. This is what got my husband killed.” It’s what inspired Cole Allen.

Charlie Kirk wanted his wife Erika to take over as head of his organization, Turning Point USA, if anything ever happened to him. Since her husband’s tragic assassination, she has managed to deal simultaneously with her own grief and that of her young children while also zealously carrying on Charlie’s legacy — all while sickos vilify her. She was understandably very traumatized by the assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, but that did not stop her from continuing to tell the truth afterward with courage.

She emphasized, “Many of the left-wing journalists that attended the WHCD have spent years consistently calling President Trump a ‘Nazi’, a ‘threat to democracy’, and ‘Hitler’,yet they still joyfully attended the evening’s event.” But if “they truly believed their own rhetoric, they’re either joyfully willing to have dinner with ‘Hitler’ or they’re lying to radicalize American citizens with narratives they know are grossly exaggerated.”

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Sunday -weekend- interviews.

• Extensive Interview with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (CTH)

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent appears on Fox News with Maria Bartiromo to discuss current geopolitical events and the ramifications for the U.S. economy. It is a rather lengthy interview and discussion that touches on numerous key points. Bessent notes the upcoming meeting between President Trump and Chairman Xi of China is still on schedule and U.S. Operation Financial Fury against Iran is yielding good results. I had no idea the U.S. government has made $30 to $40 billion from the Intel backstop.


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“..when people argue that it’s not about the economics of the thing – remind them, it’s always about the economics of the thing.”

• Interesting Reversal in Position by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CTH)

Six days ago, in Marsberg, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz criticized the U.S. approach to Iran, saying Washington was being “humiliated by the Iranian leadership” and demanding the conflict end “as quickly as possible.” Three days ago, President Trump responded with an announcement that U.S. troops in Germany would be drawn down, and there would be a 25% tariff on all imported European autos. {GO DEEP} Suddenly, Friedrich Merz reverses his position:


Imagine that.

But seriously folks, when people argue that it’s not about the economics of the thing – remind them, it’s always about the economics of the thing. Germany is facing a perfect storm of economic consequences following their decision to chase the climate change agenda (Build Back Better) and eliminate their coal and nuclear power plants. Combine the German/EU policy to stop purchasing cheap LNG and oil from Russia, in addition to skyrocketing energy costs from oil/gas flows from the Middle East, and the outcome is rising manufacturing costs leading to massive layoffs.

The German industrial economy is the heart of the EU economy, and President Trump is now hitting them both right where it hurts.Chancellor Friedrich Merz is already facing serious political issues within Germany as the economy continues to contract. The political opposition parties are on the rise and Merz is in a very precarious position. President Trump is exploiting this vulnerability by apply further economic pressure on Germany.

Just yesterday….

Via Bloomberg – “Germany’s automotive industry pleaded for an urgent de-escalation in the tariff dispute between the US and the European Union and called for immediate talks between the two sides after President Donald Trump said he would increase auto tariffs on the bloc next week.”

Let him cook.

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“..there has been nothing going on, no hostilities, no exchange of fire since – in almost a month, in almost a month. And how do you end a conflict? How do you end this? You have a ceasefire. ”

• Acting AG Todd Blanche On Legal Aspects of Iran, James Comey and More (CTH)

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche appears on NBC News to discuss the legal framework for the Iran conflict and push back against the media’s defense of James Comey.


[Transcript] – KRISTEN WELKER: And joining me now is acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. Mr. Blanche, welcome back to Meet the Press.

ACTING ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE: Good morning.

KRISTEN WELKER: Good morning. Thank you for being here in person.

ACTING ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE: Of course.

KRISTEN WELKER: We really appreciate it. Let’s start right there with the war. As you know, the War Powers Act requires Congress to authorize military action beyond 60 days, which the U.S. passed on Friday. The president did send a letter to Congress, just to recap, saying that hostilities have been terminated, given the ceasefire that was put in place on April 7th. And yet, the U.S. is actively engaged in a naval blockade of Iranian ports as part of this conflict. Is the United States at war with Iran?

ACTING ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE: No. I mean, what President Trump said this weekend is absolutely true. My job as the acting attorney general is to make sure that the president, that we all are doing the right thing legally. And we absolutely are. As we said to Congress last week, there has been nothing going on, no hostilities, no exchange of fire since – in almost a month, in almost a month. And how do you end a conflict? How do you end this? You have a ceasefire. And that’s exactly what we have, and Congress knows that and the leadership knows that. And there’s a lot of drama. I’m sure that Senator Schiff will come on here and say something different. This has been done repeatedly for many, many years, with many, many presidents. And there’s nothing inconsistent about what we’re doing and what’s been done in the past.

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-Orthodox- Greece was occupied by the -muslim- Ottoman empire for a very long time. That’s the background.

• Greece Rejects Ukraine’s Terms For Naval Drone Deal – Media (RT)

Negotiations between Ukraine and Greece over the joint production of naval drones have stalled because Kiev wants to retain control over how Athens can use the technology, local media have reported. According to Greek Reporter, the countries agreed last November that Ukraine would supply components for drones to be built at shipyards in Greece, while Greek companies would manufacture electronic and optical systems. The end result would have been an improved version of the Magura-type attack drones which Kiev uses against Russia.


The newspaper Kathimerini reported on Thursday, however, that Ukrainian officials had demanded that Kiev retain a say over how the Greek military would use the drones, a condition Athens rejected. Greece believes Ukraine set these terms to “maintain a balance” with its longtime rival Türkiye, the newspaper said.

Greece and Türkiye have long accused each other of fueling tensions, with Athens reportedly opposing Ankara’s bid to join the EU’s Drone Wall program aimed at improving the bloc’s ability to detect and intercept hostile UAVs. Türkiye hosted Russian-Ukrainian peace talks in 2022 and 2025, presenting itself as a neutral mediator in the conflict. Ankara also condemned Ukrainian attacks on Russian-linked tankers near the Turkish coast last year.

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“Edward Juul Rod-Larsen, 25, was found dead in Oslo days after French and Norwegian police reportedly launched a joint investigation into his parents,”

• Epstein Inheritor Kills Himself (RT)

The son of two senior Norwegian diplomats under investigation over ties to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has taken his own life, Norwegian newspaper VG reported earlier this week, citing lawyers for the family. Edward Juul Rod-Larsen, 25, was found dead in Oslo days after French and Norwegian police reportedly launched a joint investigation into his parents, Mona Juul and Terje Rod-Larsen. The probe is centered around allegations that the disgraced US financier had helped the couple purchase an apartment, and left $5 million to each of their two children in his will.


The probe is part of widening international fallout from the latest release of millions of Epstein documents, which have triggered criminal investigations, arrests, and resignations across politics, business, and even royalty. Epstein, who pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting sex from a minor and served 13 months of an 18-month sentence, was arrested again in 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges. He died by suicide in his jail cell ahead of his trial. The US Department of Justice has gradually released materials related to the case under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, signed into law by US President Donald Trump.

The released documents mention numerous high-profile figures, linking some to Epstein’s network or questionable financial dealings. The disclosures have triggered resignations, probes, and reviews worldwide, with many acknowledging contact but denying wrongdoing, with some charges brought in a limited number of cases. Last month, Former Norwegian Prime Minister Thorbjorn Jagland was hospitalized after a reported suicide attempt, days after being charged with gross corruption over accepting Epstein’s hospitality. World Economic Forum CEO Borge Brende stepped down over dinners and communications with the disgraced financier.

In the US, the release has placed renewed scrutiny on former President Bill Clinton and his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Both have been deposed about their associations with Epstein, but have denied knowledge of his trafficking operation.

Commenting on the disclosures, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova described the scandal as exposing the “pure Satanism” at the heart of the collective West, accusing Western elites of inventing threats from Russia to distract from their own “monstrous crimes.”

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“Now, replace [Germany] with [Canada]

• Volkswagen to Let Chinese Automaker Build in Shuttered Volkswagen Plants (CTH)

How do you sum up the economic forecast for Europe? This story highlights one of the craziest stories in a long time. This is so blindingly suicidal, it cannot be stupidity. This is intentional. BACKGROUND – You might remember last year due to climate/carbon emission regulations inside Europe EU automakers had to pay fines to the EU Commission if they did not meet electric vehicle targets. In order to avoid the penalties many EU automakers began purchasing ‘carbon credit’ offsets from Chinese EV automakers.


European car makers were paying China for carbon credits, and Chinese car companies began using the payments to lower prices. Europe was, essentially, paying China to undercut their own auto market. The result was European car makers, specifically those in Germany, losing market share to lower price EVs from China. German industry began shrinking. If that wasn’t crazy enough, what comes next is beyond laughable. As a result of lost sales and diminished volumes, Volkswagen had shut down auto plants. Now, Volkswagen is announcing that Chinese automakers, their China “partners,” will take over the underutilized facilities and start building Chinese cars in Germany.

GERMANY – Volkswagen Group is facing increased pressure from its board to further cut costs despite already announcing radical measures, such as axing around 50,000 jobs in Germany by 2030 and reducing production capacity by up to 3 million units per year to 9 million, which would make it very difficult to avoid plant closures or sales. Overall, Europe’s largest automaker aims to reduce costs by 20% by the end of 2028. bIn an attempt to mitigate the effect of these measures, the automaker appears ready to do what not too long ago would have seemed unthinkable, namely selling China-developed cars in Europe and even sharing its underutilized plants in the region with its Chinese partners.

That’s what CEO Oliver Blume told investors and analysts on April 30 after presenting the company’s first-quarter 2026 results, which saw the automaker’s profit drop 14% to $2.92 billion amid higher U.S. tariffs and intense competition from Chinese carmakers. In order to deal with excess capacity in Europe and rising competition from Chinese brands in Europe in the coming years, Blume said VW Group is considering selling China-built cars in Europe. It’s the first time that Volkswagen has acknowledged it is contemplating such a move. (read more)

SUMMARY: Volkswagen went to China to sell cars. Volkswagen opened EV auto plants in China bringing in German industrial technology and equipment. China learned from Volkswagen and started their own EV auto companies to compete. Volkswagen EV sales in China started dropping dramatically, and the Chinese EV brands took over. Due to internal climate regulations in Europe, Volkswagen in the EU then begins giving money to China that subsidizes their competition. China exports their EVs to Europe. Volkswagen EV auto plants start closing. China now takes control of the Volkswagen EV auto plants to build Chinese EVs in Germany.

With operations now inside the house, the Chinese government extract European wealth and pump subsidies into their EV operations in Germany, flooding the European market with cheap EVs that will undercut the German auto manufacturing sector. You cannot make steel with windmills and solar panel energy. Germany has destroyed much of their coal and nuclear power plants. German energy prices have skyrocketed. German steel is expensive. German cars are expensive as a result. Where do you think the inexpensive steel for the ultra-cheap Chinese EVs will come from?

Now, replace [Germany] with [Canada].

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https://twitter.com/MikeBales/status/2050884796725788721?s=20

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle April 23 2026

Apr 232026
 
 April 23, 2026  Posted by at 9:44 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  47 Responses »


Edward Hopper Railroad sunset 1929


• Trump Extends Ceasefire with Iran Pending Internal Regime Discussions (CTH)
• Trump Extends Iran Ceasefire and Forces Tehran to Make the Next Move (Manney)
• IRGC Leader Takes Control of Iran’s Military As US Tensions Rise (Fox)
• President Trump Didn’t Just Win. He Revived the Warrior Poet (David Manney)
• Trump Spooked Over Iran War Crimes – Larry Klayman (USAW)
• Trump’s “Sock Puppet” (Philip Marey)
• Bongino’s Ominous Warning About the Kash Patel Smear (Margolis)
• A Crazy Lefty Lady Learns What Kamala and Hillary Said About Iran (Green)
• Southern Poverty Law Center Charged With Fraud Over Hate Ratings (JTN)
• Democrats Lose A Vital Propaganda Machine With The Fall Of The SPLC (ZH)
• There Is Simply Too Much Schadenfreude in This New York Times Profile (Thorne)
• The California Bar Bags a Trump Lawyer and Leaves Troubling Questions (Turley)

 


 

https://twitter.com/GuntherEagleman/status/2046747498576765157?s=20 https://twitter.com/mrddmia/status/2046596691374010460?s=20

 


 


“50,000 extremist clerics and IRGC members are holding 90 million people as hostages ..”

• Trump Extends Ceasefire with Iran Pending Internal Regime Discussions (CTH)

The issue inside Iran is essentially: 50,000 extremist clerics and IRGC members are holding 90 million people as hostages to a fanatical religious regime. Hopefully the economic oil embargo will eventually begin to fray this Gordian Knot.


In the last two weeks, President Trump has forcefully and publicly been pushing back against the aggressive posture of Israel. While the Arab partners in the region are aligned with Trump on the issue of “extremism” and radicalism, thereby supporting the confrontation with Iranian religious extremists – those same regional partners also consider Israeli conduct in Gaza and Lebanon as religious “extremism.”

STATEMENT OF PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP:

“Based on the fact that the Government of Iran is seriously fractured, not unexpectedly so and, upon the request of Field Marshal Asim Munir, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, of Pakistan, we have been asked to hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal. I have therefore directed our Military to continue the Blockade and, in all other respects, remain ready and able, and will therefore extend the Ceasefire until such time as their proposal is submitted, and discussions are concluded, one way or the other.” ~ President DONALD J. TRUMP

The totality of the intelligence chatter must be overwhelming.

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Only now do we find out who’s in charge there. That in itself is a negotiating tactic.

• Trump Extends Iran Ceasefire and Forces Tehran to Make the Next Move (Manney)

President Donald Trump extended the ceasefire with Iran as the original two-week truce neared its end. He made the decision after a request from Pakistani officials while he waits for a unified proposal from Tehran. U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday he is extending the ceasefire with Iran at Pakistan’s request while awaiting a “unified proposal” from Tehran, even as the U.S. military maintains its blockade of Iranian ports. The move comes as the White House put on hold Vice President JD Vance’s planned trip to Pakistan for a second round of truce talks with Iran, which has balked at further discussions. The extension keeps negotiations alive and avoids further loss of life on both sides.


Trump made clear that the United States will maintain its blockade of Iranian ports, stating that the military remains ready to act if Iran rejects a fair agreement. The extension doesn’t signal weakness; it reflects a deliberate choice to keep pressure in place while giving negotiations time to produce results. Trump explained that the pause allows a path toward a lasting resolution without immediate resolution. Iranian leaders rejected earlier ceasefire terms and demanded permanent guarantees. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi leads that response and continues to push for concessions that favor Tehran. Iran has also warned of a swift reaction to any new U.S. action. Trump declined to rush into additional conflict, using the extension to force Iran to decide between continued resistance and meaningful negotiation.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz addressed Iran’s claim that it controls the Strait of Hormuz, rejecting that position and stating that no country holds exclusive authority over that waterway. Waltz said, “Well, you saw real confusion on the Iranian’s part. I think that shows the discord within their ranks after devastating attacks on their leadership. The foreign minister says it’s open, the IRGC says that it’s closed. Regardless, it’s the U.S. Navy and President Trump as the commander in chief that decides what ultimately comes in and comes out, and I think the bigger picture here is that the Iranian regime cannot hold the entire world’s economy hostage.

They cannot mete out collective punishment because of a dispute over its nuclear program. It’s something that will not stand. It’s something in the United Nations that record 135 countries joined us and joined our gulf Arab allies in condemning including Iran’s attacks on ports, airport, roads, bridges, hotels, you name it. Even civilian neighborhoods with their drones and with their missiles. So Iran is increasingly isolated diplomatically. It’s struggling economically with its currency and foreign currency reserves tanking and at the end of the day they do not have the cards and they’re coming back to the table for a deal.”

He added, “The Strait of Hormuz is an international waterway unlike what the Iranians are trying to claim. They moved the goalpost and they’re claiming it is a waterway of theirs which is a violation of international law. Ultimately it’s the U.S. navy and President Trump that decides what comes in and what comes out.”

Read more …

Support for iGRC is not very broad.

• IRGC Leader Takes Control of Iran’s Military As US Tensions Rise (Fox)

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the elite branch of the Iranian armed forces, has blocked President Masoud Pezeshkian’s presidential appointments and erected what sources described as a security cordon around Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, a report published Tuesday by Iran International said. The IRGC effectively has assumed control over key state functions, the report claimed. “It was always a matter of when, not if, the IRGC was going to step forward even more than it has in the last three decades,” Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of the Iran program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital.


Pezeshkian has reached a “complete political deadlock” as tensions between his administration and the military leadership deepen, according to the report. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the elite branch of the Iranian Armed Forces, has blocked President Masoud Pezeshkian’s presidential appointments, a new report says. (John Lamparski/Getty Images) The reported shift could have major consequences far beyond Iran. Analysts say a more powerful IRGC likely would mean a more confrontational Iran, less willing to compromise in talks with Washington and more inclined to continue military escalation across the region.

With U.S.-Iran negotiations already faltering and uncertainty growing over whether Tehran will even send negotiators to the next round of talks, the rise of the Revolutionary Guard raises fresh doubts about who actually is making decisions in Iran and whether any civilian official can still speak for the regime. “But it’s a mistake to assume this is some sort of coup,” Ben Taleblu said. “This has been the process in Iran for years now, as the regime has chosen conflict over cooperation and emboldened its security forces at every juncture.”

Pezeshkian’s recent effort to appoint a new intelligence minister collapsed after direct pressure from IRGC commander Ahmad Vahidi, sources told Iran International, arguing that all proposed candidates, including former Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan, were rejected. Vahidi reportedly insisted that under wartime conditions, all critical and sensitive positions must be chosen and managed directly by the Revolutionary Guard until further notice.

“By any standard, Vahidi is considered a radical even within the regime’s hardline elite, and his rise is a warning that Tehran’s war machine now calls the shots,” Lisa Daftari, foreign policy analyst and journalist, told Fox News Digital. Under Iran’s system, the president traditionally nominates an intelligence minister only after securing approval from the supreme leader. But with the condition and whereabouts of Mojtaba Khamenei unclear in recent weeks, the IRGC appears to be increasingly acting without civilian oversight.

Read more …

I want what he’s smoking.

• President Trump Didn’t Just Win. He Revived the Warrior Poet (David Manney)

A warrior poet fights with courage and speaks with lasting truth, an idea that stretches back through history. Warriors defend their people with strength, while poets shape words that move hearts and clarify purpose. When those traits come together, action and vision reinforce each other. King David embodied that union by defeating Goliath in battle and later wrote the Psalms that still guide millions. Samurai in feudal Japan trained with the sword and composed haiku that reflected discipline and honor. Medieval knights followed codes of chivalry while studying philosophy and faith. History shows that strength and expression can live in the same man.


President Donald Trump reflects that tradition in a modern setting as he fights for American workers and national security with a direct approach. He imposed tariffs to rebalance trade and bring leverage back to the United States.nHe authorized strikes when threats emerged in key waterways, pushed military readiness, and demanded clear outcomes from allies and adversaries, and he doesn’t step back when pressure builds. That posture mirrors the role of a warrior who protects what belongs to his people.

Trump also communicates with clarity that reaches beyond policy language, using short, direct phrases that people remember and repeat. “Make America Great Again” became a national message that carries emotion and direction. His rallies draw large crowds and create a shared sense of purpose. His speeches simplify complex issues without losing focus, a style that connects with people who want leaders to speak in terms they can understand. It echoes the role of a poet who turns ideas into language that lasts.

Trump’s tone has been criticized as blunt, but critics miss the function behind it. Warrior poets never softened every edge. King David wrote about conflict and victory in the same breath. Samurai poets described the cost of battle alongside moments of reflection. Trump addresses border security, trade imbalance, and national defense in terms that leave no ambiguity. He states the problem and moves forward toward action, a pattern that aligns with leaders who combine force with message.

The United States benefits when leadership blends resolve with vision. Trump has faced elections, investigations, and constant opposition while remaining focused on policy goals and public messaging at the same time. Trump’s administration reduced taxes, expanded domestic production, and reinforced border enforcement as he engaged foreign adversaries from a position of strength and pursued agreements that shifted regional dynamics.

Alongside those actions, he offered a consistent message about national pride and shared identity, a balance that reflects the core of the warrior poet idea.Opponents challenge his methods and dismiss his language, overlooking how that language reaches people who feel unheard. His speeches energize audiences and translate policy into a clear direction, speaking to workers, families, and communities that want protection and opportunity. That connection resembles the historical role of leaders who defended their people and gave voice to their experience.

Americans recognize the combination. Trump leads with determination and communicates with impact, protecting national interests and framing that effort in words that stay with the public. King David secured his nation and wrote songs that endured. Trump secures American priorities and delivers a message that resonates across the country. The warrior poet tradition continues through that blend of action and expression.

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Love Larry, but he’s wrong here. Trump does not fear the International Criminal Court.

• Trump Spooked Over Iran War Crimes – Larry Klayman (USAW)

Renowned Attorney Larry Klayman, founder of Judicial Watch and later Freedom Watch USA, weighs in on a variety of legal subjects. Top on the list is Iran cancels peace talks in Pakistan, and then President Trump “unilaterally extends ceasefire” until Iran can “come up with a unified proposal.” Trump says the Iran government is “seriously fractured.” What happened to Trump’s threat of bombing power plants and bridges if the talks broke down? The last time talks failed, Iran put women and children around power plants and on bridges. Would a country that reportedly murdered more than 40,000 of its own citizens a few months ago do that again?


Klayman says, “First of all, I have a lot of experience with Iran. I have represented many families who have had their sons tortured and killed by the Iranian regime. I have represented Gold Star families of special ops (military) that died in a helicopter crash in the Tangi Valley (Afghanistan) that was caused by the Taliban because of bounties on their heads by Iran. . .. President Trump has lost his credibility because he has said time and again, if you don’t do X, I’ll do Y. It looks like he’s getting down on his knees and begging for peace. The reason he’s doing that is he’s worried he’s going to cost the Republicans the Mid-term elections. . .. He should have bit the bullet and taken out the regime. You can’t leave them there. . .. The President now looks weak. He had victory in his grasp, and now he’s getting down on his knees, and I am really sad about that.”

There is another thing that Klayman says might be holding President Trump back. Klayman says, “The threat of war crimes at the International Criminal Court (ICC) scared Trump. It’s not a war crime when you have to bomb something that has a dual use as in military and civilian. We did it in World War II, and others have done it elsewhere. . .. It’s not a war crime, but I think the President is spooked, and that’s the bottom line. . .. Pinochet (President of Chile from 1973 to 1990) was indicted and convicted by the ICC. If he had not died, they would have arrested him. Netanyahu (PM Israel) can’t travel to Europe or any place the ICC has jurisdiction. He will be arrested. If Trump was to go to Europe and he was indicted and convicted (for war crimes), they would arrest him.”

Klayman adds, “What I am saying here is tough love. If you really care about somebody, you tell them the truth. You don’t pussyfoot around. If the President is going to get himself out of this and if there is any chance of him winning the Mid-terms and keeping control of Congress and stop him from being subjected to all this lawfare, which will be vicious, then he needs to end this war quickly on our terms with unconditional surrender like Winston Churchill, not Neville Chamberlain. . .. I love the President, don’t get me wrong. I am trying to get him to do the right thing for his own good.”

Klayman also weighs in on the fight over voter fraud and the Department of Justice suing 29 states to get access to the voter rolls. The DOJ wants to enforce voter integrity. With the states complying and not fighting the DOJ, they found 350,000 dead people still on the voter rolls. Klayman says, “The American people have a right to know about the fraud that goes on, and it’s not just dead people, it’s illegal aliens. . .. this is a very serous matter. This will end up in the Supreme Court. The question is will this go up soon enough to help in the Mid-term elections in November?”


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It’s not hard to do a better job than Jay Powell.

• Trump’s “Sock Puppet” (Philip Marey)

The confirmation hearing of Fed Chair nominee Kevin Warsh by the Senate Banking Committee was a very partisan affair. In his prepared remarks, Warsh stressed that monetary policy independence is essential, but he does not believe that the operational independence of monetary policy is particularly threatened when elected officials state their views on interest rates. Warsh thinks the Fed must stay in its lane and avoid straying into fiscal and social policies. Warsh was walking a tightrope between convincing the Senate Banking Committee that he is going to be an independent Fed Chair and staying loyal to President Trump.


Meanwhile, there was as much interest in Warsh’s personal balance sheet as in the Fed’s balance sheet. Obviously, there were several questions about Fed independence and whether Warsh had promised President Trump to cut rates in order to get the nomination. Of course, he denied. Warsh repeatedly said that interest rates rather than the balance sheet should be the dominant tool of monetary policy. He did not have a specific target for the balance sheet in mind, and eased fears of a rapid change. Warsh wants a robust reform of the inflation framework and improve the data to assess the underlying inflation trend.

First Democratic senator Warren called nominee Warsh president Trump’s sock puppet. Then Republican senator Kennedy tried to settle the issue by asking: “Mr Warsh, are you going to be the president’s human sock puppet?” “Absolutely not,” said Warsh. This was clearly a very partisan confirmation hearing for Kevin Warsh and near the end of the 2.5 hour session one of the more empathetic senators asked him why he would want this job. This was a big change from 20 years ago when Warsh was confirmed as Fed Governor with bipartisan support. Warren gave him a couple of litmus tests of his independence by asking whether Trump lost the election of 2021 and if Warsh could name one aspect of Trump’s policies that he disagreed with. Warsh gave evasive answers and the tone for the hearing was set. Warsh was walking a tightrope between convincing the Senate Banking Committee that he is going to be an independent Fed Chair and staying loyal to President Trump.

Meanwhile, there was as much interest in Warsh’s personal balance sheet as in the Fed’s balance sheet. Warsh said he had made an agreement with relevant authorities to divest his assets before sworn in (or within 90 days of his confirmation), but that answer did not seem satisfactory to several (Democratic) senators. Ironically, Senator Tillis (Rep) – who wants to hold up the confirmation until the case against Powell is dropped – had to come to the rescue by stressing that Warsh was not out of compliance.

Warsh wants the Fed to stay in its lane
Warsh did not read the full text of his prepared remarks that were published a day before the hearing, as Chairman Scott tried to keep the meeting on schedule. In his speech, he stressed that monetary policy independence is essential, but he does not believe that the operational independence of monetary policy is particularly threatened when elected officials – presidents, senators, or member of the House – state their views on interest rates. He said that Fed independence is largely up to the Fed. He highlighted three important implications.

First, Congress has tasked the Fed with price stability and that means that low inflation is the Fed’s plot armor (against criticism). Second, Fed independence is at its peak in the operational conduct of monetary policy, but that does not mean that the central bank has the same degree of independence in other areas, such as regulation and supervision. Third, the Fed must stay in its lane and avoid straying into fiscal and social policies. In response to the opening question by Chairman Tim Scott (Rep), Warsh said that he wanted a new inflation framework, that he preferred the interest rate tool over the balance sheet tool, and that he wanted a new communications approach. For a more detailed discussion of the nominee’s ideas, we refer to The Warsh Regime

Rates and independence
Obviously, there were several questions about Fed independence and whether Warsh had promised President Trump to cut rates in order to get the nomination. When Senator Reed (Dem) asked him about Fed independence, Warsh said that presidents (in general, not just Trump) want lower rates, but that independence is up to the Fed. In an answer to Senator Kennedy (Rep), Warsh said that the president never asked him to pre-commit on any interest rate decision. It got really heated when Senator Gallego asked Warsh whether it was his sworn testimony that the President had not asked him to commit to cutting rates. When Warsh confirmed, Gallego (Dem) concluded that either Warsh or Trump was lying, referring to an article in the Wall Street Journal on December 12. In response, Warsh said that these reporters needed better sources and that he took independence very seriously: “the President never asked me and I would never do so.”

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“You’re gonna find out, as they say in the South, right quick about why they need him out..”

• Bongino’s Ominous Warning About the Kash Patel Smear (Margolis)

Something is coming. That’s the message Dan Bongino delivered to his audience this week, and if you’ve been paying attention, the pieces are already falling into place. As PJ Media previously reported, The Atlantic dropped a lengthy smear job against FBI Director Kash Patel last week, painting him as an erratic, hard-drinking paranoid who allegedly “panicked” and “freaked out” after a routine computer login glitch — convinced, supposedly, that he’d been fired. According to the story, the access issue turned out to be a technical error that was quickly resolved.


Patel’s attorney sent a letter to the magazine before publication, warning that the allegations it planned to run were false and that printing them would trigger a defamation lawsuit. The Atlantic ran the piece anyway. Now Patel is suing for $250 million, calling it a “sweeping, malicious, and defamatory hit piece” designed to “destroy Director Patel’s reputation and drive him from office.” And right on cue, the left-wing machinery started moving the moment the Atlantic piece went live.

Democrats started calling for investigations, and left-wing groups went all in, too. Democracy Forward — a progressive lawfare outfit that spends its days litigating against DEI rollbacks, immigration enforcement, and abortion restrictions — fired off a 16-page FOIA request to the Justice Department. They want Patel’s calendars, schedules, text messages, communications with staff, and — get this — any records related to a request for “breaching equipment” allegedly made by his security detail. The Atlantic hit piece planted that allegation. Democracy Forward immediately took the bait.

But Bongino isn’t just calling it a mere hit piece. He’s saying there’s something much bigger going on here, and the reason why will become clear very soon.”The hit on Kash Patel, the bullshit hit by The Atlantic, which I addressed yesterday, is gonna make a lot more sense in the coming weeks and months,” Bongino explained. “I can’t give you a definitive timeline. I’m on the outside now. However, I can tell you what I know is going on because I started a lot of it.” He didn’t stop there.

“Look me in the eye, and I’m telling you, I promise this thing is gonna make a whole lot of sense. You’re gonna find out, as they say in the South, right quick about why they need him out, like, now. It’s got nothing to do with that story being even remotely true. Remember this. Bookmark it.” Make no mistake about it, he’s not speculating. He’s someone who knows something, and we should believe him. This is what the left does: they manufacture a narrative, find a publication to run with it, and then use it as the pretext for discovery-style records requests aimed at forcing Patel out.

Now, ask yourself why Democrats want to force him out so badly. The Atlantic published a lie. Democrats pounced on it immediately. The entire response feels bizarrely coordinated. Now, Bongino is telling you point-blank that the left is doing this for a reason. It’s panic. And we’ll all understand why soon.

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“Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.” Except that, you know, up until that moment, Oceania had been allied with Eastasia in a war against Eurasia. Things change.”

• A Crazy Lefty Lady Learns What Kamala and Hillary Said About Iran (Green)

“The past was alterable. The past never had been altered,” George Orwell wrote in 1984. “Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.” Except that, you know, up until that moment, Oceania had been allied with Eastasia in a war against Eurasia. Things change. So does the propaganda — so smoothly that you wonder if Orwell got his ideas for Big Brother from time-traveling modern-day Democrats. Case in point: The crazy lady in the video below.


If the U.S. hasn’t exactly always been at war with the Islamic Republic, the Islamic Republic has always been at war with the U.S. The regime was born in an act of war against us — storming sovereign U.S. territory and taking 52 hostages for 444 days. In the 47 years since, the regime has directly committed or financed countless acts of terrorism against the U.S. and our interests. During the Iraq War, it was largely Tehran that waged the IED campaign that killed and wounded so many of our troops. The Islamic Republic is responsible for the deaths of more than 1,200 Americans. And by its own boast to Trump administration negotiators, it was on the verge of having nearly a dozen nuclear bombs.

So after nearly five decades, 1,200 deaths, and a lot of tough talk from every American president since Ronald Reagan, President Donald Trump took action — action that would have been applauded by previous incarnations of Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, and American lefties. In an epic (and justifiably expletive-filled) X rant, L.H. Grey noted that Reagan called out the Islamic Republic as “the epicenter of terrorism,” and that “Bush, Clinton, Bush II, Obama… all of them, without exception, treated the mullahs as a strategic cancer requiring sanctions, isolation, or the occasional kinetic reminder that [effing] with America has consequences.

“”Kamala Harris herself, as Vice President, stood in front of microphones and labeled Iran the United States’ greatest adversary.” The consensus against the Islamic Republic is both decades old and bipartisan — until the Bad Orange Man took the first meaningful action against it. Which brings us to the lefty activist in Monday’s delightful gotcha video.

https://twitter.com/LangmanVince/status/2046574522367696991?s=20

Watching the “nice lady” grasp at one straw after another… that’s exactly the schadenfreude I enjoy with my morning coffee. She isn’t the only one, of course. “Donald Trump is dragging the United States into a war the American people do not want,” is what Harris said at the start of Epic Fury, and then called it “a dangerous and unnecessary gamble.” This month, Harris escalated her criticism, claiming that Trump had been “pulled into” the war by Bibi Netanyahu and that Epic Fury was “a feeble attempt to distract from the Epstein files.”

The needs of the Party are subject to change, comrades. But Orwell’s deeper warning wasn’t that the Party could rewrite history at a moment’s notice — it was that the people would eagerly go along. “There was, of course, no admission that any change had taken place. Merely it became known, with extreme suddenness and everywhere at once, that Eastasia and not Eurasia was the enemy… Without words said, a wave of understanding rippled through the crowd. Oceania was at war with Eastasia!” And always had been.

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USAID is long gone, and now the SPLC. No coincidence in sight. Both are (were) Democratic money dispensers.

• Southern Poverty Law Center Charged With Fraud Over Hate Ratings (JTN)

A federal grand jury in Alabama on Tuesday indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center on 11 counts of wire and bank fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering, as the Justice Department accused the group that rose to fame during the 1960s Civil Rights movement of paying members of 21st century extremist groups to stoke hatred. “The SPLC is a nonprofit entity that purports to fight white supremacy and racial hatred by reporting on extremist groups and conducting research to inform law enforcement groups with the goal of dismantling these groups,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told a news conference attended by CBS News. “The SPLC was not dismantling these groups. It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.”


Blanche said the group was charged with six counts of wire fraud, four counts of bank fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. He said that the SPLC had paid at least $3 million to eight members of these extremist groups. Among the groups whose members received funds were the Ku Klux Klan, United Klans of America, Aryan Nations, and the Nationalist Socialist Party of American Nazis. The SPLC is a nonprofit that tracks white supremacist and other hate groups across the U.S., and has been a frequent target of President Donald Trump’s allies. It is best known for its work investigating the Ku Klux Klan.

The group has acknowledged using such informants to infiltrate extremist groups and gather intelligence on their operations, which it shared with local and federal law enforcement, according to the Associated Press. The Justice Department had no immediate comment, the wire service also said.Bryan Fair, CEO of the SPLC, said that the organization doesn’t know all the details, but the Trump administration has launched an investigation, which may lead to charges. Fair said the SPLC worked with informants during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, when violence against activists was running high. He said the SPLC will “vigorously defend” themselves.

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As in: “yet another” Vital Propaganda Machine..

• Democrats Lose A Vital Propaganda Machine With The Fall Of The SPLC (ZH)

When creating a short list of nefarious NGOs that manipulate government policy and socially engineer public opinion, the Southern Poverty Law Center is usually near the top. The group has been fading in influence due to excessive exposure, with new and less visible left wing NGOs taking it’s place. However, it remains a key pillar of the Democratic Party’s propaganda machine and a poisonous cloud looming over grassroots conservative organization. News from the Trump FBI and DOJ indicates that this reign of political terror may finally be coming to an end. The Southern Poverty Law Center has been indicted on federal fraud charges that accuse it of illegally raising millions of dollars to pay informants in white supremacist and other extremist groups.


Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the SPLC used paid operatives within extremist circles to incite and intensify racial tensions, arguing the group fostered the very threats it claimed to fight. But why was an NGO allowed to operate like a covert federal agency for so long? These operations were essentially endorsed by the Democratic Party (as well as some Neo-Cons). One could say that the SPLC had two missions: First, to drum up hysteria among weak minded liberals and make them believe that there are malicious “hate groups” under every rock and behind every tree. Second, to make conservatives paranoid about informants when seeking to build political opposition movements.

Sadly, to this day, the SPLC was rather successful in achieving both goals. The NGO’s efforts to create a false model of “hate networks” (especially during the Obama years) was a primary impetus for the eventual rise of the woke activist movement from around 2012 onward. In other words, the insane cult obsessed with race and identity that plagues America today found its roots within the SPLC and their alliance with the Democratic Party. SPLC “informants” were a constant nuisance among conservative activist and protest groups as well as preparedness groups. Nothing these conservatives did was actually illegal, but, the SPLC had a knack for making it sound as if they were engaging in criminality.

Far too many right wingers were frightened into refusing to engage in basic meetings and public discussions, simply on the possibility that SPLC informants might be present. No such infiltration was used to target left wing extremist groups like Antifa, which have carried out numerous criminal attacks, riots, sabotage and acts of intimidation against their political opponents. But, times change and the truth cannot be suppressed forever. Conservative and nationalist movements grew exponentially, even if they still suck at organizing formally. And today, the SPLC is a widely known and rightfully despised entity.

The SPLC was specifically integral to the Obama and Biden Administrations, including a direct information sharing relationship with the DHS and FBI. The majority of anti-conservative policy papers published by the federal government during this time were crafted using SPLC propaganda. The 2009 DHS Rightwing Extremism Report, a unclassified assessment warning of potential “surges” in right-wing extremism, drew input extensively from SPLC info. The report targeted militia groups as potential homegrown terrorists and was partially withdrawn because of political backlash.

A separate 2009 state-level fusion center report – the Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC) “Modern Militia Movement” report – linked supposedly dangerous militia members to “3rd party political groups” and “supporters of Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin, and Bob Barr.” The report flagged symbols like the Gadsden Flag, as well as anti-government, anti-new world order and anti-martial law discussion as potential indicators of homegrown terrorism. The SPLC was a key participant in the formation of the MIAC report.

SPLC President Richard Cohen served on Secretary Janet Napolitano’s CVE Working Group in 2010. Cohen and an SPLC colleague acted as subject-matter experts on right-wing extremism in the DHS Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Working Group. Their purpose was to shift federal law enforcement focus almost entirely from Islamic-based terrorism over to right wing extremism.

Under Biden, the SPLC was highly active in shaping public narratives surrounding the J6 trials. SPLC staff provided training to DOJ prosecutors and SPLC leaders/staff visited the White House at least 11 times. President Biden personally met with SPLC representatives at least 6 times.

With the fall of the SPLC, the Democrats lose a vital tool in their social engineering arsenal. If the accusations turn out to be true and SPLC leaders are convicted, their activities should be considered as treason against the American people. Any and all NGOs participating in social engineering operations against the US populace must eventually be indicted and erased if the country is ever going to rebuild the public trust, but bringing down the SPLC is a good start.

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Typical example: “She made $175,000 a year. That was Jan. 28, 2025. Today Amy Uccello and her husband, who also lost his job when U.S.A.I.D. funding for his nonprofit dried up, rely on food stamps ..”

• There Is Simply Too Much Schadenfreude in This New York Times Profile (Thorne)

I am 100% for sure going to hell for enjoying this New York Times article as much as I am. There but for the grace of God go I, I remind myself. But then, I would never have put myself in that position, devoting my professional life to making six figures off the taxpayer to work on “nice-to-haves” rather than creating actual, useful products that must survive in the marketplace. Anyhoo, the article that is bringing me so much guilty pleasure is entitled “A Year After U.S.A.I.D.’s Death, Fired Workers Find Few Jobs and Much Loss.” The subtitle tells the tale: “People have plowed through savings, cashed out retirement funds and moved in with relatives. Former U.S.A.I.D. workers estimate that less than half have found full-time work.”


Why, it’s almost as if no one would hire them to ply their trade, so they must force taxpayers to subsidize it. There follow over 2,000 words of dignified profiles of the victims of DOGE, punctuated by beautifully photographed portraiture of the stolid world-savers as they cope with the loss of their raison d’être. Sadly, this masterpiece of turned tables is behind a paywall, but fear not: I can provide some tasty quotes here (although the entire piece is almost worth subscribing to the NY Times for). As you read, perhaps you, like me, will recall the bad old days of the Obama regime, when this very variety of elitist Ivy League do-gooders swarmed the capital and NOVA to turn traditional energy workers out of their jobs.

“Learn to code,” they sneered at the coal miners and rig workers and their families whose lives they upended. To them, I say, Sucks when it’s you, don’t it? Let’s dive into the first profile: She was fired by email while on maternity leave, given 24 hours to clear out her desk and left with three days of health insurance and no severance pay. She had worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development or related groups for more than two decades. She made $175,000 a year. That was Jan. 28, 2025. Today Amy Uccello and her husband, who also lost his job when U.S.A.I.D. funding for his nonprofit dried up, rely on food stamps, Medicaid and a supplemental nutrition program for women and children that helps with their now 19-month-old daughter.

The mortgage on their home in Washington was until recently in forbearance, meaning they negotiated to pay less than they owed each month. But the bank has now cut them off and suggested they apply for a low-income mortgage program. “We don’t know if we’ll qualify,” Ms. Uccello said. She and her husband have applied for more than 100 jobs with no luck. Most of their friends don’t have jobs either. And, look, I feel awful when that happens to anyone. But this couple was raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars, much of it paid by Americans poorer than they, to go meddle in the lives of people in other parts of the world. And we all know how leftist USAID and related NGOs — “soft power” — worked in developing nations:

They only granted aid to countries that agreed to import the entire suite of first-world progressive virtues, such as abortion-on-demand, same-sex “marriage,” and forgoing effective, reliable fossil fuel in favor of “green” energy contraptions that came nowhere close to facilitating a modern lifestyle. These are the same people who denied effective mosquito control methods to poor nations, leaving tens of millions of black and brown babies to die of malaria, while raising their own precious child in the pinnacle of Western healthcare.

“When the Trump administration dismantled the sprawling global aid agency last year, it wiped out virtually an entire industry — international development — that had been based in Washington since U.S.A.I.D.’s creation in 1961 under President John F. Kennedy,” the Times reminds us. “Nearly all of the agency’s 16,000 employees were laid off. An estimated 280,000 contractors, partners and local hires worldwide lost their jobs as well.”

And, “Former U.S.A.I.D. workers who have done informal surveys estimate that less than half have found full-time work, with many making less than before. An estimated third are unemployed. Others are in part-time work.” That’s rough. I left my corporate life behind because I couldn’t betray my conscience and my faith, and pretend the man with whom I had worked for two years was suddenly a woman on Monday. I couldn’t stomach the corporate cop-bashing; I live in a law enforcement family. I didn’t want to spend my entire life under soul-crushing pressure to stifle myself. Did I take a pay cut and part-time work? You bet I did. So whatever, wokesters.

“The District of Columbia currently has the highest unemployment rate in the nation, at 6.7 percent, in large part because of major reductions in the federal work force, including U.S.A.I.D., and cuts to government grants and contracts,” the Times mourns. To this, I say, Thank you, President Trump! Countries whose governments grow too big and employ too large a percentage of the population tend to fail. The few former U.S.A.I.D. workers who have landed similar or better jobs don’t like to talk about it in front of unemployed friends.

“I feel guilty, honestly, that of all my colleagues who I know are still unemployed, I’m the one who found something,” said Sara Miner, 42, who was a senior adviser in the agency’s H.I.V.-AIDS office and previously ran health programs in Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Now she helps manage health and human service programs for Fairfax County, Va.

Jobs are also gone at the many nonprofits and partner agencies once funded by U.S.A.I.D. “Everyone I know is also up the creek, all my bosses, my mentors, the people you would normally go to, the people providing me references,” said Catherine Baker, 36, who, as a contractor, made $127,000 a year recruiting staff and helping to start up U.S.A.I.D. projects. Ms. Baker now volunteers as a manager for OneAid, which helps former U.S.A.I.D. workers, and works nine hours a week as a companion for two elderly women.

And yet, there are still enough of them in the NOVA area to vote the otherwise conservative state of Virginia into gerrymandered left-wing tyranny. (And for the record, I have plenty of friends who work as aides to the elderly. It is honorable and worthwhile work, and it can provide a decent living, too — maybe not what these taxpayer-funded fancy folk are used to, but not impoverishment, either.)

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“.. Eastman is being punished for a different reason: He helped to develop Trump’s legal argument for blocking the election certification.”

If Eastman were a Democrat lawyer, he’d still have a job.

• The California Bar Bags a Trump Lawyer and Leaves Troubling Questions (Turley)

Last week, the California Supreme Court upheld the disbarment of John Eastman. It is a decision that will prevent Eastman from practicing law – the most serious punishment the California State Bar can deliver. Eastman is the former dean of the law school at Chapman University in California. He represented President Donald Trump in some of his election challenges in 2020. In 2020, I publicly disagreed with Eastman’s legal theory that Congress could block the certification of President Joe Biden. However, Eastman’s disbarment should be a concern for everyone who values the rule of law and free speech. After the election, various legal advisers told Trump that there wasn’t enough evidence of fraud to overturn the election –– as some of us in the media also said.


But Eastman and other lawyers believed there were still arguable grounds to challenge the certification. In the past, Democrats in Congress had moved to block the certification of Republican presidents, and Eastman believed that their playbook was legal, or at least defensible.nElection disputes are often difficult to resolve in court because time is quite limited. As the date for the 2020 certification approached, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and others made sensational claims about voting machines and other conspiracies that they later admitted were not supported by evidence.bThe courts uniformly rejected these challenges.

Eastman is being punished for a different reason: He helped to develop Trump’s legal argument for blocking the election certification. He admitted that there were few cases to cite as precedent, and acknowledged that he and the Trump legal team were advancing novel theories. But that is not unusual in controversial cases. Public interest attorneys often advance novel legal arguments, challenging existing precedent and the status quo. Even longstanding precedents, like Roe v. Wade, have been overturned after years of litigation.California State Bar officials failed to address the implications that disbarring Eastman would have on other cases in which new legal theories are tested.

The animus of the California State Bar was also evident in the original charges against Eastman. He was ultimately found guilty on 10 of 11 charges of egregious and deceitful conduct. The lower court’s decision placed great emphasis on Eastman’s public remarks on Jan. 6, 2021, at Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally. The court dismissed his claims that his speech was protected by the First Amendment. Democratic Party election lawyers have been punished by courts and accused of meritless or unsupported claims. However, bar associations in “blue” states have not moved to disbar them, and I would not support such an effort. Take Democrat attorney Marc Elias. He was a critical player in the infamous Steele dossier on “Russia collusion,” and helped push the false Alfa Bank conspiracy.

The animus of the California State Bar was also evident in the original charges against Eastman. He was ultimately found guilty on 10 of 11 charges of egregious and deceitful conduct. In Maryland, Elias’s team filed in support of an abusive gerrymandering of the election districts that a court found not only violated Maryland law, but also the state constitution’s equal protection, free speech and free elections clauses. The court found that the map “subverts the will of those governed.” In 2024, the chief judge of the Western District of Wisconsin not only rejected but ridiculed the Elias Law Group for one of its challenges. Judge James Peterson (an Obama appointee) said that the argument “simply does not make any sense.”

Elias has been sanctioned in court. However, neither he nor associates were, of course, disbarred over prior challenges. The California Bar and the California Supreme Court insist that they are merely imposing minimal standards of conduct in disbarring Eastman. However, the record in this matter shows more distemper than deliberation on critical points. The California State Bar has created new problems, rather than clarifying standards. Even as someone who disagreed with John Eastman, I am not sure what the standard is for zealous advocacy by attorneys. While Eastman was giving bad advice, he was not committing a crime or, in my view, committing an offense that deserved disbarment.= There cannot be a different standard for different candidates, or different clients.

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https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/2046588679611621449?s=20

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle April 21 2026

Apr 212026
 
 April 21, 2026  Posted by at 9:58 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  43 Responses »


George Bellows The Lone Tenement 1909


• Iran Pushes Too Far in Hormuz, and the U.S. Pushes Back (David Manney)
• US Navy Fires At and Boards Iranian-flagged Cargo Ship (RT)
• Xi Urges Immediate Opening Of Hormuz Strait For First Time (ZH)
• From Leverage To Liability: Hormuz Is Now Iran’s Biggest Weakness (Lacalle)
• Things Get Interesting-er (James Howard Kunstler)
• Kash Patel: Arrests Due In 2016 Russia Probe: Never Going To Let This Go (JTN)
• Kash Patel Makes Promise: Arrests Are Coming Over 2020 Election (Margolis)
• Maria Bartiromo Questions FBI Director Kash Patel About Ongoing Issues (CTH)
• The Atlantic’s Kash Patel Hit Piece Is Backfiring – Badly (Brad Slager)
• DOJ Moves In Florida Signals Major Escalation In Russiagate Criminal Probe (ZH)
• AAG Todd Blanche Moves diGenova and DeLorenz to South Florida Group (CTH)
• 5 Stories Democrats Told During Trump’s 2019 Impeachment Have Crumbled (JTN)
• ‘Pandemic of Fascism’ Looming Over West – Moscow (RT)
• ‘Proud To Stand Alongside Elon Musk’ – Telegram’s Durov (RT)
• The EU Moves to Destroy the Last Vestiges of National Sovereignty (Turley)
• Europe Faces Summer Jet Fuel Crisis As Iran War Slashes Supply (Paraskova)

 


 

It takes forever because it’s so complex. and it’s the FBI probing the FBI. But they’re not sitting still. Not Trump either. https://twitter.com/TheStormRedux/status/2045880028181721583?s=20 https://twitter.com/MAGAVoice/status/2045810958048846076?s=20 https://twitter.com/Real_RobN/status/2045962900716884011?s=20 https://twitter.com/mcucolo57/status/2045962325866234117?s=20 https://twitter.com/TRUMP_ARMY_/status/2046175677360328853?s=20 https://twitter.com/robertdunlap947/status/2046186828462477568?s=20

 


 


“It’s a pattern that Iran has long perfected: probe, push, and see how far the other side tolerates their actions. That approach worked until it didn’t after Epic Fury ..”

• Iran Pushes Too Far in Hormuz, and the U.S. Pushes Back (David Manney)

President Donald Trump authorized a direct response after an Iranian-flagged vessel moved into a restricted pattern of activity in the Strait of Hormuz.U.S. Navy forces intercepted and disabled the vessel after it failed to comply with repeated warnings. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth supported the operation, and the U.S. Central Command coordinated the response, stopping the vessel before it could continue its course through one of the world’s most contentious shipping lanes.It was the first interception since the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports began last week. Iran’s joint military command called the armed boarding an act of piracy and a ceasefire violation, the state broadcaster said.


With the U.S.-Iran standoff over the strait sharpening and the ceasefire expiring by Wednesday, it was not clear where President Donald Trump ’s earlier announcement on new talks with Iran now stood. He had said U.S. negotiators would head to Pakistan on Monday. The ship drew attention after it moved in a way that raised immediate concern among U.S. naval observers. The USS Spruance, an Arleigh-Burke-class destroyer, closed distance, issued warnings, and took action when the ship didn’t comply. Iran didn’t waste time pushing back. Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani accused the United States of violating international law and warned of a response.

U.S. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz pointed to Iran’s own behavior in the Straits of Hormuz, making clear that no single country controls that passage. Any attempt to treat it like private territory runs against established maritime law. That waterway accounts for the passage of roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil; it moves through that very narrow stretch between Iran and Oman. Until Operation Epic Fury, tankers passed through it daily, and as we’re finding out, disruptions send shockwaves through energy markets and shipping routes. The Strait of Hormuz isn’t some abstract geopolitical talking point; it’s a choke point that affects fuel prices, supply chains, and economic stability worldwide.

Iran has played games in that corridor before, where patrol boats crowded tankers, drones shadowed ships, and crews were pushed just far enough to test limits without crossing into open conflict. It’s a pattern that Iran has long perfected: probe, push, and see how far the other side tolerates their actions. That approach worked until it didn’t after Epic Fury. The U.S. response came fast and without hesitation: warnings went out, the ship didn’t adjust, and the U.S. Navy acted. That sequence shows a clear line that the United States isn’t guessing or reacting late; it’s setting expectations and enforcing them when challenged.

You’d figure that by now opponents of President Trump would’ve learned the lesson that he doesn’t leave room for misinterpretation when it comes to his America First belief, especially now in a region containing such an important strategic waterway. The United States has made it abundantly clear: the Strait of Hormuz stays open, traffic moves, and anybody trying to interfere finds out quickly where the boundary sits. That boundary claim goes even further than Iran’s routine posturing. Tehran doesn’t see the Strait of Hormuz as a neutral passage, arguing that the era of outside powers securing major waterways is over.

“Never.” That’s when a senior Iranian lawmaker says they’ll be ready to give up their control of the Strait of Hormuz. “It’s our inalienable right,” Ebrahim Azizi, a former commander in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), tells the BBC in Tehran. “Iran will decide the right of passage, including permissions for vessels to pass through the Strait.” And he says that’s about to become enshrined in law. “We are introducing a bill in parliament, based on article 110 of the constitution, which includes the environment, maritime safety and national security – and the armed forces will implement the law,” says this member of parliament who heads the Committee for National Security and Foreign Policy.

He said Iran and its allies now hold that responsibility. He didn’t leave much room for interpretation. In his view, control of key routes like Hormuz belongs to regional forces, not international agreements. Iran is left with a decision to make: either keep testing that boundary and risk more confrontation or pull back and avoid escalating a tense situation that already drew a firm response. Either way, the tone has shifted.The message isn’t confusing: The United States will protect critical routes and won’t sit back while Iran tries controlling them by pressure or intimidation.

Read more …

“US Central Command (CENTCOM) has released a video showing a US warship firing at an Iranian-flagged cargo vessel that was later seized by US Marines.”

• US Navy Fires At and Boards Iranian-flagged Cargo Ship (RT)

US Central Command (CENTCOM) has released a video showing a US warship firing at an Iranian-flagged cargo vessel that was later seized by US Marines. According to CENTCOM, the guided-missile destroyer USS Spruance intercepted the M/V Touska in the Gulf of Oman as it attempted to breach the US naval blockade and reach the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas through the Strait of Hormuz. “After Touska’s crew failed to comply with repeated warnings over a six-hour period, Spruance directed the vessel to evacuate its engine room. Spruance disabled Touska’s propulsion by firing several rounds from the destroyer’s 5-inch Mk 45 gun into the engine room,” CENTCOM said, adding that a team from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit later boarded the vessel.


The Touska was traveling from a Chinese chemical-storage port and was laden with cargo, the Washington Post reports, citing tracking data. The port is often used for transporting chemicals, including sodium perchlorate, a key precursor for producing solid rocket fuel, it added, noting that it is unclear what cargo the Touska was carrying. Later, CENTCOM also released a video of US forces boarding the disabled ship from a helicopter. Iranian officials denounced the blockade as illegal under international law, saying it violates the terms of a two-week ceasefire set to expire on Wednesday.

The Iranian military has vowed to retaliate for the seizure of the vessel. Iran’s Tasnim news agency later reported that the Iranian military launched a drone at US ships. The US has not confirmed whether any of its vessels came under attack.

Read more …

80% of Iran oil goes to China. Trump has weaponized that.

• Xi Urges Immediate Opening Of Hormuz Strait For First Time (ZH)

China’s President Xi Jinping on Monday demanded the uninterrupted passage of vessels through the Strait of Hormuz in a phone call with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, state news agency Xinhua reports. He urged the normalization of shipping traffic after about 50 days of disruption which obviously and significantly impacts Chinese oil imports. “Normal navigation through the Strait of Hormuz should be maintained, this is in the shared interests of regional countries and the international community,” Xi said, in the statement also carried by AFP. He called for an immediate, comprehensive ceasefire and insisted disputes be resolved through political and diplomatic means. He added that China will deepen strategic mutual trust with Saudi Arabia and expand practical cooperation.


South China Morning Post observes that it was “the first time the Chinese leader had called for the reopening of the strategically vital waterway, which has been repeatedly blockaded since US-Israeli strikes on Iran began on February 28.” China imported 5.86 million tons of crude oil from Saudi Arabia, down 10% from February, according to customs data released Monday. As for where things stand on the negotiations front, Iran hesitated over sending diplomats to Pakistan for a second round of peace talks after the US maintained a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and seized an Iranian vessel, after apparently firing on it, undermining prospects for a breakthrough to end the war. Initially it appeared to shut the door on second talks, however per Associated Press Monday morning:

Iranian authorities have expressed willingness to send a delegation for a second round of talks in Islamabad this week, two Pakistani officials said Monday. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media, said there is cautious optimism that delegations from both Iran and the United States could travel to Islamabad. The US side would reportedly once again be headed up by Vice President JD Vance – who during the first round cut out early after a serious impasse was reached on the nuclear issue.

The tumultuous weekend events followed Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi having posted on X on Friday that the Strait of Hormuz was “completely open”. By Sunday morning, Bloomberg ship tracking data had showed tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz was largely ground to a halt. Also, the prior 24 hours had seen multiple incidents of tankers making U-turns, and added to all this a senior Iranian official renewed threats to close the Bab al-Mandeb Strait.

According to a quick review of some other developments Monday morning and per emerging market data, China will import a record volume of US ethane this month as petrochemical producers switch feedstocks after the Middle East war disrupted critical supplies. Recall that by mid-March Trump was actually asking for China’s help to get the blocked Strait of Hormuz reopened…

And in the broader region, Singapore is securing additional liquefied natural gas from outside the Middle East as the conflict in Iran constrains regional supply, according to a government body. India authorized more Russian insurers to cover vessels calling at its ports and extended permits for others as the closure of the Strait of Hormuz disrupts energy shipments from the Persian Gulf. The International Energy Agency has meanwhile said that global power consumption rose 3% last year, driven in part by rapid demand growth from electric vehicles and data centers, according to the International Energy Agency.

Read more …

“The world is very different from what the Iran regime thought. In 2025, U.S. crude oil production hit a new annual record of 13.6 million barrels per day, making the United States the world’s largest producer but also the biggest exporter..“

• From Leverage To Liability: Hormuz Is Now Iran’s Biggest Weakness (Lacalle)

For half a century, the Strait of Hormuz was Iran’s weapon. Today, it is its noose. The mathematics of energy have flipped, and with them the balance of coercive power in the Persian Gulf. Iran’s implicit deterrent was geographic, spanning from the tanker wars of the 1980s to the sanctions standoffs of the 2010s. Almost 20% of global seaborne oil, and a similar share of liquefied natural gas, passes through the Strait. The formula was simple: any military confrontation that threatened the Tehran regime risked a closure that would halt trade supplies, spike crude prices, bleed Western consumers, and, above all, inflict pain on the United States, who was the world’s largest oil importer.


The strait served as Tehran’s insurance policy and its most powerful bargaining tool. The threat was predicated on the regime’s belief that it could block everyone except its exports. The Iranian regime revealed its biggest weakness by constantly threatening to damage the global economy through a shutdown of the Strait. In reality, a total shutdown has the most severe impact on Iran. Almost 90 per cent of Iran’s crude exports, and about 80 per cent of its total exports, depend on the transit through Hormuz. Around 25 per cent of Iranian GDP and 60 per cent of government revenues depend completely on having the Strait open.

Before the war, Iran was exporting roughly 1.7 million barrels per day, receiving around $160 million in daily revenue from exports via the Strait. Thus, Trump’s full closure of the Strait costs Tehran hundreds of millions of dollars a day in losses, not accounting for the additional fiscal and currency consequences in a country already facing an economic disaster with 40–50% inflation. The complete dependence on the Strait of Hormuz also adds to another weakness: 95% of Iranian crude at sea is sold to a single buyer, China. Tehran is not selling into a diversified and open market. Its exports are sold to a monopsony that demands large discounts, between 10 and 11 dollars per barrel.

These weaknesses were visible long before the war. Capital flight reached $15 billion in the first half of 2025 alone; the rial collapsed against the dollar, and the government’s budget, which allocates 51 per cent of oil revenues to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, became even more dependent on a single export route it could not afford to close. When the war began, Iranian crude shipments collapsed by 94%. Then, the United States’ decision to block all Iran export vessels showed that Iran’s chokepoint had become self-choking. In the past 30 days, 80% of the essential volumes that moved through the Strait have been rerouted or offset by other oil producers, including US record exports.

The world is very different from what the Iran regime thought. In 2025, U.S. crude oil production hit a new annual record of 13.6 million barrels per day, making the United States the world’s largest producer but also the biggest exporter. The United States shipped 5.2 million barrels per day of crude and 7.2 million barrels per day of petroleum products in March 2026, both global records. For the first time, America exported more petroleum than it imported, by a net margin of almost 2.8 million barrels per day, according to the EIA. Total US liquids production now exceeds that of Saudi Arabia and Russia combined.

On the natural gas side, U.S. LNG exports reached well over 15 billion cubic feet per day, surpassing Qatar and Australia to make the United States the world’s largest liquefied natural gas exporter, while U.S. dry gas production exceeds the combined output of Russia, Iran, and China. Furthermore, the United States is also the world’s largest producer of nuclear electricity, at roughly 30 per cent of global generation, and a global leader in renewable energy.

When President Trump could say in April 2026 that the United States was “clearing the Strait as a favour to countries around the world, including China, Japan, Korea, and Germany,” the framing was an accurate description of who needs Hormuz open and who does not. Only 4% of the traffic through the Strait goes to the United States, according to SP Global. According to the International Energy Agency, throughput at Hormuz collapsed from its long-run average of about 20 million barrels per day to 3.8 million since the beginning of the war through the second week of April. Daily ship transits fell roughly 95 per cent. The Tehran regime, in a gesture more theatrical than realistic, attempted to levy a $2 million toll on each vessel crossing the strait, without understanding that the move showed desperation instead of leverage.

The US response has been the most important measure deployed against Iran in two decades of standoffs. Operation Economic Fury established a full naval blockade of Iranian ports. Iranian naval losses in the first 38 days of combat exceeded 150 vessels. The ceasefire framework under negotiation requires Iran to reopen Hormuz, but the US maintains control. Thus, negotiations revolve around Iranian dismantlement, not American concessions.

The lesson is not just that Iran miscalculated but that it massively underestimated its obvious weaknesses. The United States is not a hostage of the Gulf; it is the guarantee of its safe sea lanes. Europe is tied to U.S. LNG while keeping a substantial Russian dependence, which complicates its energy security and makes it vulnerable to fluctuations in supply and price from both sources. Asia’s largest economies, particularly China, are suffering the marginal cost of a Hormuz disruption, which has led to increased energy prices and supply chain uncertainties that further exacerbate their economic challenges. Iran’s economic nightmare has only started.

Three important factors must be considered. First, the traditional Hormuz risk premium in Brent, which refers to the additional cost added to oil prices due to geopolitical tensions in the Strait of Hormuz, is structurally smaller than in the 2010s because U.S. supply can absorb shocks that previously had no substitute. The Brent price is lower in real and nominal terms than in the 2008, 2018, or 2022 peaks. Second, the strength of American energy, including economics, export infrastructure, and LNG capacity, has become a key global geopolitical variable, influencing global energy prices and the strategic decisions of other nations.

Third, Iran’s economy has not only suffered damage; it has also been demolished, and its extremely weak fiscal position indicates that it cannot sustain the threat posture in Hormuz. The Strait of Hormuz remains the world’s most important chokepoint. However, a chokepoint hurts whoever depends on it most, and Iran relies on it completely. The United States does not. The geopolitical advantage that Tehran once held has now become its greatest weakness, likely leading to the disappearance of the regime’s effective bargaining power.

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“It is one thing for the people (of Iran) to be ruled by globally feared autocrats armed to the teeth, but quite another to be governed by humiliated, now impotent incompetents and buffoons.” —VDH

• Things Get Interesting-er (James Howard Kunstler)

Wednesday the US / Iran ceasefire expires. It has been an interesting two weeks. The US used it to negotiate an end to hostilities, resupply our ships in the Arabian Sea, do maintenance on our ships and warplanes, dismantle Iran’s banking conduits, and blockade Hormuz to shut down the regime’s remaining income flow. The Iranians used it to jump up and down and go woo-woo-woo. They also tried to dig out the entrances of their bombed caves and tunnels to unearth whatever’s left of their hidden missile launchers. Our satellites watched everything they did and mapped the coordinates.


Negotiations? So far, not fruitful, if termination of hostilities and surrender of Iran’s uranium is the goal. We’re not even sure the Iranians we’re negotiating with have any real authority to make a deal. Iran’s government at this point is a hash of conflicting factions: the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC), which is a large Jihadi mafia that happens to own half of Iran’s economy and controls its advanced missile and drone weaponry; the regular Army (Artesh) which would theoretically defend against a ground invasion, but otherwise just stands by; and the civilian government represented by President Masoud Pezeshkian, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, and Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibef — none of whom seem to hold any real decision-making power.

America’s negotiators, led by Veep Vance along with Messrs. Witkoff and Kushner, will land back in Islamabad, Pakistan, today (Monday, April 20). Our deal is still on the table. It’s pretty straightforward: the aforementioned uranium plus a twenty-year halt of nuclear activities with no path toward a weapon; full reopening of the Strait of Hormuz; an end to Iranian support for Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis; phased-out sanctions and access to frozen assets; and cessation of hostilities.

Events over the weekend argue that Iran is not finished playing stupid games and winning stupid prizes. They tried to run the Hormuz blockade on Sunday with an incoming cargo ship, the Iranian-flagged M/V Touska. The USS destroyer Spruance, an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, blew a hole clean through its engine room and then seized the vessel. Its cargo remains undisclosed for now.

Iran claims that it has closed the Strait of Hormuz. The US said it was already closed via the US blockade (we closed it harder). Iran can’t surreptitiously move any oil out to sell to China or run supplies into the country. Iran will lose about $500-million a day and China will lose the majority of its oil imports. China will jump up and down and go woo-woo-woo over that, while the IRGC will lose its last remaining income stream, meaning no pay for anyone. Let’s see if that prompts an attitude change.

If Iran can’t move its oil, it will soon reach the limit of its oil storage capacity, meaning it will have to shut down its oil wells. If that happens, the hydrology is such that water invasion of the underground strata will permanently damage the oil fields. Iran is between a rock and a squishy place.

That might be enough to force a deal in the hours ahead. President Trump has made it clear that the time for Iran jerking-around the US is over. So then, it’s back to Power Station and Bridge Day (blowing them up). That would be extremely unfortunate for the ordinary Iranian people. They are unarmed and helpless to resist the maniacs of the IRGC who would allow Power Station and Bridge Day to happen, who, in effect, don’t really care about the ordinary people of Iran.

However, the regular Iranian army, the Artesh, does have weapons (they are the army and armies are generally armed). Perhaps they will use them to put the insane jihadi IRGC out of business. After all, the Artesh’s mission is defense on-the-ground of the Iranian homeland, and just now the biggest threat to Iran is the IRGC. I guess we’ll have to wait on that and watch..

Read more …

All the (well, 6) articles that follow can be put under the same topic: TDS.

While Trump is hardly mentioned in them.

“Maria Bartiromo asked Patel if the FBI has evidence of election fraud in 2020.”

FBI director says arrests are coming related to 2016 Russia probe: ‘Never going to let this go’

• Kash Patel: Arrests Due In 2016 Russia Probe: Never Going To Let This Go (JTN)

FBI Director Kash Patel said on Sunday that “arrests” are coming related to the Russia investigation of potential collusion between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign. “I am never going to let this go,” Patel said on “Mornings with Maria” on Fox News. “We’ve got all the evidence. I can announce on your show that we’ve got all the information we need. We’re working with our prosecutors at the Department of Justice under AG Todd Blanche, and we are going to be making arrests – and it’s coming and I promise, you, it’s coming soon,” he added.


Host Maria Bartiromo asked Patel if the FBI has evidence of election fraud in 2020. “So what we are doing is folding that into our entire conspiracy case,” Patel said. “But we have the information that backs President Trump’s claim (of the stolen election)…but I would say stay tuned this week. You might see a thing or two.” Patel also said he is going to sue The Atlantic on Monday.

Read more …

He was addressing 2016, 2019 and 2020.

• Kash Patel Makes Promise: Arrests Are Coming Over 2020 Election (Margolis)

FBI Director Kash Patel dropped a bombshell Sunday morning that the legacy media will do everything to attack. Appearing on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo, Patel announced that arrests are coming over the coordinated effort to rig the 2020 election. “We are going to be making arrests, and it’s coming, and I promise you, it’s coming soon,” Patel said. That’s not a vague promise from a bureaucrat hedging his bets. That’s the sitting FBI director going on record, on camera, with a direct commitment to the American people that we’re finally going to see some accountability over the shenanigans that took place during the 2020 elections.


Bartiromo, for her part, wasn’t interested in vague assurances. In fact, she set the stage by noting what any honest observer already knows — President Donald Trump has been saying the 2020 election was rigged since, well, 2020. She pressed Patel directly on what he had actually done about it over the past 14 months. His answer was unambiguous. Patel reminded viewers that he wasn’t new to this fight. Long before he ran the FBI, he was in the trenches on the House Intelligence Committee alongside Trey Gowdy, John Ratcliffe, and Devin Nunes, exposing the FISA abuses that targeted Trump’s first presidential campaign. The media came after him then, too — something he clearly wears as a badge of honor.

“That just shows you that when you’re over the target, you keep pummeling the target because the media’s gonna try and pummel you,” Patel said. He wasn’t done. Patel revealed that when he took over the FBI, what he found inside the building went beyond anything that had been publicly reported. Hidden rooms. Restricted and prohibited case files are buried deep in computer systems, deliberately placed where investigators wouldn’t find them. This is the kind of institutional concealment that doesn’t happen by accident. “I had to come in here and find rooms that they hid from the world,” he said. “I had to come in here and find access on our computer systems in restricted and prohibited case files that they purposely put in places for no one to see and find.”

Think about that for a moment. The FBI — the nation’s top law enforcement agency — had evidence stashed away in places designed to keep it from ever seeing daylight. But, sure, the 2020 election was entirely above board. Seriously, if that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about what the previous regime was up to, nothing will. Patel also confirmed that the FBI has already indicted former Director James Comey, and that the case is now working its way through the judicial process. But Sunday’s announcement made clear that Comey isn’t the end of the story — he may just be the beginning.

“I can announce on your show that we’ve got all the information we need,” Patel said. “We’re working with our prosecutors at Department of Justice and their Attorney General Todd Blanche.” He also offered some perspective on why this investigation has taken as long as it has. The corruption being dismantled wasn’t built overnight. “They built this disease temple over 20 and 30 years,” Patel said. Decades of entrenched rot don’t get cleaned up in a single news cycle. For years, conservatives have been told to wait—that accountability was just around the corner, that justice was coming. The promised reckoning never seemed to arrive. Patel is now staking his credibility on the claim that this time is different. He says arrests are coming. Faster, please. Faster.

Read more …

What can I say? Watch. A decade of Trump abuse gets answers.

• Maria Bartiromo Questions FBI Director Kash Patel About Ongoing Issues (CTH)

FBI Director Kash Patel appears on Fox News Sunday to discuss ongoing FBI issues with Maria Bartiromo. Beginning with the issue of missing scientists, Kash Patel notes the FBI is “working with partners in various jurisdictions” to review each case and identify if something more nefarious is afoot. The questioning then shifts to an explosive accusation by The Atlantic about his drinking, partying and indulgences within his position. Patel notes he is going to sue the Atlantic for defamation. Maria Bartiromo also asks if Kash Patel has seen any evidence of the 2020 election fraud as outlined by President Trump for several years. Patel notes he cannot talk about ongoing investigations but hints that more information is likely to come out within the next few weeks.

.


From my personal perspective, Kash Patel does like the indulgences that come with the office. However, I think the accusations against him are likely spurred by disgruntled FBI agents and DOJ officials with an axe to grind. That said, it still doesn’t appear that Director Patel has his arms around the agency he leads, and it is not uncommon to find people within the Trump administration who are frustrated with ongoing dubious activity carried out by remnant FBI officials who are not being brought to heel.

Read more …

And as Kash Patel is moving into action, his targets are calling their press partners.

• The Atlantic’s Kash Patel Hit Piece Is Backfiring – Badly (Brad Slager)

Official word has already come out today: A lawsuit has been filed against the media outlet The Atlantic and reporter Sarah Fitzpatrick. FBI Director Kash Patel has now filed the suit, delivering on his promise made over this weekend that he would do so in response to a hitpiece article published by the outlet on Friday, April 17.


In the article, Fitzpatrick alleged that Patel is frequently intoxicated on the job, has a horrific job performance, and that this has led to a morale problem throughout the Bureau. There has been word that this story was somewhat circulating around D.C., but that no outlet was willing to risk running such speculation. The Atlantic, however, was more than willing to do so, and as I will show in moments, this is in line with the character of that outlet.

The talk over the weekend that this had been a passed-around story that few outlets would touch is hinted at by Fitzpatrick’s teaming up with Jonathan Lemire from MS NOW for the piece. They claim they based this reporting on speaking with some White House officials, and as Sarah explained, it is “according to the more than two dozen people I interviewed about Patel’s conduct.” Who these people are and what their positions entail for them to deliver empirical wisdom on these matters is a complete mystery, for, as we have become more than accustomed to, this is all relying on anonymous sourcing. This is just the beginning of the flaws in this hit piece. How is it you speak to 25 or more people, and not one of them has the stones to admit to their status?

Let us take a look at these people Fitzpatrick and Lemire relied upon for their reporting. Those White House contacts? A complete mystery, as they are nameless. So too are all of the officials at the FBI slamming Patel’s character. But more than these ciphers are cited. We are also hearing from former FBI figures, staffers from different agencies (hardly high-placed sourcing), as well as political operatives (about the least valid of the lot), lobbyists (excuse me, but what?!), and hospitality-service work. So…bartenders and waitresses are part of your sourcing?!

Meanwhile, it was more than Kash Patel objecting to this report. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt shot down these claims and touted Patel’s accomplishments. Ben Williamson from the FBI official public affairs office, the assistant to that office, Erika Knight, Patel’s legal counsel, and the man who worked alongside Patel during his confirmation, Clint Brown, each disputed the claims made. The difference? All of those people are named because they were on the record, yet those people are all discounted because we see how Fitzpatrick and Lemire were on an agenda. Williamson alluded to the common practice we see from the press these days, which I describe in my Townhall media column as The Deadline Gambit.

This is the tactic of a full report on an individual being worked on for weeks, with multiple sources and deep background established, and then the main focus of the piece is given a brief window to “respond” to the report. Try to conjure the amount of time spent by Fitzpatrick to craft this report, from over two dozen sources, then look at Williamson saying they had just two hours to respond to all of that before publication. They sent off the letter to The Atlantic, warning of impending litigation if they went forward, and this appeared to at least generate some changes. At The Daily Beast, they felt they had another “gotcha” moment, revealing a lack of cerebral processing heft when they breathlessly reported:

“Kash Patel’s legal team has revealed more allegations were leveled against him than were published in a bombshell report by The Atlantic—and said what they were. That means that the letter, which came from a personal attorney for Patel rather than from the FBI’s own counsel, effectively put what it describes as false and defamatory statements into public circulation.”Allow me to help you folks out here. You see, after the lawyer contacted them with this letter, it is clear that Fitzpatrick, and/or her editors, pulled some items from the piece out of fear of further litigation. This was not a case of mistakenly exposing something; they were being transparent in showing the flawed reporting taking place.

Sarah Fitzpatrick appeared with Jenn Psaki on Sunday, and she displayed a high level of false bravado when asked about her article and the lawsuit that was threatened at the time. It is unclear how she can say the White House did not refute things when, in her piece, she quotes Karoline Leavitt responding to her questions. And again, there were the complete blanket denials from Patel and his lawyer. But there is more amusement: As she holds up the reputation of The Atlantic, let’s remember what this outlet is all about. This is the same outlet whose managing editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, put out the slanderous stories of President Trump calling fallen soldiers “suckers and losers.”

Goldberg was also the one who claimed Trump insulted a fallen female Marine and reneged on paying for funeral expenses, as her family completely called the story a lie. Yep, just a sterling publication, that. Better still is how Fitzpatrick touts the mastery of their lawyers, as there is a small detail needed to be overlooked. It was just last September when that outlet settled a $1 million defamation case with a former writer. This was a rather clear case of guilt, as Ruth Shalit-Barrett asked for that very sum in her filing. So, for those rubbing their hands in glee over what may be exposed in discovery, this is not exactly a news outlet with a rock-solid reputation.

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Joseph diGenova is 81 years old. He’s a longtime Trump legal advisor floating to the top.

• DOJ Moves In Florida Signals Major Escalation In Russiagate Criminal Probe (ZH)

The Department of Justice appears to be gaining fresh momentum in its criminal investigation into the 2016 Trump-Russia collusion narrative, with a significant overhaul of the team handling the case in southern Florida.


According to investigative journalist Julie Kelly’s reporting at Declassified.live, longtime Trump legal advisor Joe diGenova – a former U.S. Attorney and prominent commentator – will be sworn in Monday as counsel to the attorney general. He will assume leadership of the ongoing grand jury probe based in Fort Pierce, the district overseen by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon. That same courthouse was the site of Cannon’s landmark July 2024 ruling dismissing Special Counsel Jack Smith’s classified documents case against President Trump after she found Smith’s appointment unconstitutional. The grand jury has been active in Fort Pierce since January, Kelly reports.

DiGenova’s wife, Victoria Toensing, has also served as a key Trump legal counselor for years. In a notable earlier move, the Biden Justice Department seized Toensing’s cellphone in April 2021 during a separate inquiry tied to Rudy Giuliani’s efforts to examine the Biden family’s overseas dealings.

But wait, there’s more…

The addition of DiGenova isn’t the only retooling. Earlier this week, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche removed the career prosecutor previously in charge of the investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan, who played a key role in concocting the Trump-Russia collusion scheme in 2016. According to CNN, assistant U.S. Attorney Maria Medetis Long was ousted “after she resisted pressure to quickly bring charges against the former CIA director and prominent critic of President Donald Trump.” Meditis Long notified lawyers representing several individuals who have received subpoenas or interview requests related to the investigation that she was off the case, the New York Times reported on Friday. -Declassified Live

Blanche has also sent one of his senior aides, Christopher-James DeLorenz – who clerked for Judge Cannon during the documents litigation – to the Fort Pierce team.

These changes come shortly after President Trump dismissed former Attorney General Pam Bondi earlier this month, citing dissatisfaction with the pace of the Russiagate accountability effort. In a pointed press conference days later, Blanche—whom Trump immediately named acting attorney general—made clear the department’s direction. “The president has said time and time again that he wants justice,” Blanche told reporters. “If you look at what happened to him, his family, his administration, the agents who protected him, people who just happened to walk by him on a given day, they got subjected to…massive investigations by this department.”

Blanche speaks from direct experience: he defended Trump in both the Florida documents case and the Manhattan hush-money prosecution brought by District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

Earlier this year the Justice Department did secure indictments against a small number of figures tied to the lawfare campaign, including former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Those cases were later dismissed, however, after a judge ruled that the appointment of the acting U.S. Attorney who filed them, Lindsey Halligan, was improper. That decision is now under appeal in the Fourth Circuit.

Still, many Trump supporters are demanding deeper accountability. While the initial charges brought some satisfaction, the expectation is for more significant action. A potential indictment of Brennan – who many view as a top target – now looks increasingly likely. He was recently subpoenaed in connection with his 2023 congressional testimony, in which he denied that the discredited Steele dossier influenced his 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment alleging Russian election interference on Trump’s behalf.

Brennan’s legal team has reacted with alarm. In a highly unusual letter sent last December to the chief judge of the 11th Circuit, his attorneys urged the court to block the probe from proceeding in Fort Pierce—viewed as a more conservative venue than Miami—and to bar Judge Cannon from any involvement. The letter claimed that Cannon’s prior rulings created the appearance of favoritism toward Trump and accused prosecutors of deliberately steering the case to her courtroom in line with what they called the president’s political retribution agenda.

If diGenova’s role expands beyond Brennan to encompass a wider “grand conspiracy” review – potentially covering everything from the roots of Russiagate through January 6, the Mar-a-Lago raid, and the conduct of the now-disqualified special counsel – additional high-profile targets could come into focus. Among them are individuals already the subject of criminal referrals sitting with the DOJ, including Thomas Windom (referred by House Judiciary Chairman James Jordan for alleged obstruction during congressional depositions) and January 6 committee witness Cassidy Hutchinson, accused of fabricating testimony about an incident in the presidential vehicle. This week, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard also referred two former officials—Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson and analyst Eric Ciaramella – for their roles in advancing the 2019 Ukraine-related impeachment allegations against Trump. Both men have documented connections to the original Russiagate players.

Even Jack Smith may not be fully in the clear. Recent reporting from CBS News indicates that Florida prosecutors are examining documents linked to Smith’s prior investigation of the president. Smith could additionally face scrutiny for allegedly continuing to hold himself out as special counsel in court filings long after Cannon disqualified him, raising questions of contempt and potential false statements to Congress.

As Julie Kelly observed in her Declassified.live piece, diGenova—still energetic and far from retirement age—may be exactly the experienced, no-nonsense figure needed to bring decisive momentum to the Florida investigation and deliver the accountability many have long awaited.

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Sundance: “..diGenova sees the connective tissue -the actual characters- flowing from Spygate, through Russiagate, into the Mueller investigation, then into the impeachment effort and then into the Jack Smith operation. Seeing the big picture is the first step.”

• AAG Todd Blanche Moves diGenova and DeLorenz to South Florida Group (CTH)

A formal announcement is likely tomorrow; however, leading information now affirms Acting AG Todd Blanche is moving Joe DiGenova and Christopher-James DeLorenz into positions in South Florida to assist U.S. Attorney Jason Quiñones in ongoing investigation of the Donald Trump targeting. The venue puts any grand jury information in the court orbit of Judge Aileen Cannon. Before getting into the substance, the alignment here is critical to understand. Judge Cannon saw firsthand exactly what the Lawfare constructs consist of when she had the Jack Smith operation in her court during the Mar-a-Lago documents case. Judge Cannon knows the context of weaponized justice and saw the techniques through first-hand experience. This cannot be emphasized enough.


There are a lot of people who want to see some form of accountability finally delivered for the decade-long corrupt Lawfare operation that took place against Donald Trump before he took office (Spygate), during his administration (Russiagate, Mueller, Impeachment), after he left office took office (Jack Smith and Mar-a-Lago) and even through today (Judicial Intervention). Many of those voices have concerns about 81-year-old Joe diGenova, so let me address that first by pointing out how the issues that frame the criticism are also a valuable asset.

Joe diGenova has a very rare current perspective; he completely sees the timeline of Trump targeting for what it is. This is immensely valuable because not enough people understand the complex continuum enough to stand back and see the bigger picture. diGenova sees the bigger picture. diGenova can see the 2015/2016 FBI contractor political spying operation (Spygate) and how it connects to the later Fusion GPS/Clinton construct of Russiagate. More importantly, diGenova sees the connective tissue -the actual characters- flowing from Spygate, through Russiagate, into the Mueller investigation, then into the impeachment effort and then into the Jack Smith operation. Seeing the big picture is the first step.

Now, critics point out that diGenova is a creature of DC. Yes, that is true. However, that’s also an asset given that he understands just how difficult it is to navigate through all of these ridiculous DC interests. diGenova is also a character, boisterous perhaps intemperate and easy to Alinsky (isolate, ridicule, marginalize). So what? It doesn’t matter who is involved in this effort, they are going to be Alinsky’d by the Lawfare operatives on the other side.

Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing see the big picture and have a skillset to tell the story. They can assist brilliantly and direct the telling of the story by connecting the lead prosecutors to the background script of how everything unfolded over the past decade. If Quiñones is researching a “conspiracy” case, it is the primary job of the investigative researchers to connect each of the evidence dots to the larger conspiracy. Sounds perfect for diGenova.

diGenova can put the prior weaponization into a timeline and from that timeline extract the step-by-step evidence that proves it. This timeline of targeting and how it is all connected has been missing in every investigative review up to now. That’s the value of diGenova. This doesn’t mean diGenova is in the courtroom per se’, but rather he’s the one explaining the sequencing of witnesses for a grand jury and how the questioning of one might relate to the questioning of another. Christopher-James DeLorenz has the skillset of knowing Judge Aileen Cannon and the internal machinery of a modern Main Justice. Put them together and the lead prosecutor in Florida has a formidable team putting the details onto the table in front of him/her.

This could have been done in DC years ago by the House Select Subcommittee on Weaponization; however, they did not have the skillset nor the operational strength to push through the DC politics as a group. Former Representative Dan Bishop is a current U.S. Attorney in North Carolina, and he said it wasn’t fear that screwed up the subcommittee effort as it was republican political leadership stopping the subcommittee from aggressively investigating the whole matter, the big picture. There are rumors that Blanche has assigned diGenova because President Trump is frustrated with Main Justice on this issue. I don’t know if that is true, but jumping ju-ju-bones – could you blame Trump?

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In full, they call this: “Trump’s 2019 Ukraine Impeachment”.

Something to think about. Remember Biden firing the prosecutor?

• 5 Stories Democrats Told During Trump’s 2019 Impeachment Have Crumbled (JTN)

Several Republicans, including the influential House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, are throwing their weight behind an effort to repudiate or expunge the 2019 House impeachment vote against President Donald Trump after years of belated bombshells eroded most of the scandalous narrative Democrats sold to America seven years ago.


The latest evidence to boomerang on the 2019 Democrat House impeachment managers came last week when Just the News successfully persuaded Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to release long-secret memos showing the intelligence community had raised red flags about the credibility and political motives of the CIA analyst who prompted the scandal with a tale that Trump had wrongly pressured Ukraine’s president to investigate the Biden family.

Exculpatory evidence withheld from the congressional proceedings in 2019 and 2020: Back in 2019, it was taboo to question anything about the CIA analyst or even to mention his name, now confirmed to be retired CIA analyst Eric Ciaramella. But it turns out Democrats like then-Rep. Adam Schiff as well as the intelligence community’s chief watchdog at the time, Michael Atkinson, withheld from the public some bombshell revelations, according to the memos that Gabbard released last Sunday. Those memos showed Atkinson’s investigators had flagged the CIA analyst for having “potential for bias,” noted he had provided false information in his initial complaint, had apologized for the falsehood and held animus toward conservatives inside Trump’s circles.

Gabbard blasted Atkinson’s work, suggesting the former watchdog had “weaponized the whistleblower process” and used his office to “manufacture a conspiracy that was used as the basis to impeach President Trump.” She referred both Atkinson and Ciaramella to the Justice Department for possible criminal investigation. The fact that such relevant information was kept from Trump’s defense team to use at the impeachment proceedings touched of a firestorm, with famed law professor Alan Dershowitz becoming the first to suggest it was evidence enough to warrant expunging the 2019 impeachment vote. Soon, many Republicans rallied around the idea, including Jordan, Rep. Claudia Tenney and Trump himself.

But the illusion of an untouchable, unimpeachable star “whistleblower” isn’t the only tenet of the Democrat impeachment narrative to crack. Here are four other major parts of the story that Democrats wove together seven years ago that have fallen apart.

The Biden firing of Ukraine’s chief prosecutor
The scandal began in March 2019 when this reporter uncovered evidence in a series of columns in The Hill newspaper that revealed then-Vice President Joe Biden withheld $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees to Kyiv to force the firing in late 2015 of Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who at the time just happened to be investigating Hunter Biden’s Ukrainian employer, the energy firm Burisma Holdings. Shortly after the story broke, Team Biden locked into an alternate story: Shokin wasn’t really investigating Burisma that much, and Joe Biden only took the action because career officials wanted Shokin out for his weak efforts to fight corruption and had recommended that the vice president withhold the loan guarantees.

State Department officials like George Kent backed up the narrative in their impeachment testimony, Kent, for instance, answered “he did” when he was asked during his impeachment testimony whether Joe Biden acted consistent with U.S. policy when he used the loan guarantee as leverage to force Shokin’s firing. That story held for three years until Just the News sued to win documents showing a far different tale. State Department officials, including Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, had actually praised Shokin’s work fighting corruption, even sending him a letter of congratulations. You can read that here.

And contrary to what Biden claimed, a task force of State, Treasury and Justice Department officials had decided in fall 2015 that Ukraine and specifically Shokin had made adequate progress on anti-corruption reforms and deserved a new $1 billion U.S. loan guarantee. “Ukraine has made sufficient progress on its reform agenda to justify a third guarantee,” reads an Oct. 1, 2015, memo summarizing the recommendation of the Interagency Policy Committee (IPC) – a task force created to advise the Obama White House on whether Ukraine was cleaning up its endemic corruption and deserved more Western foreign aid.

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“Some countries have embraced historical revanchism by seeking to revisit the Soviet victory over Nazism, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said..”

“They think… the Soviet victory in WWII was accidental and inadmissible. They think that now is the time to rectify this accident, or a mistake, as they see it..”

Russia watches how the west supports the nazis in Kiev.

• ‘Pandemic of Fascism’ Looming Over West – Moscow (RT)

The West is being swept by a “pandemic of historical revanchism” as it seeks to erase the memory of World War II and rewrite the Soviet victory over Nazi ideology, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has warned. Zakharova made the remarks in an interview with TASS on Sunday on the occasion of Russia’s Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Genocide of the Soviet People, which is being observed for the first time this year. The spokeswoman said that while for a time Russia was absolutely certain that WWII was “a sacred topic for the whole world,” many Western countries adopted a different approach.


“They think… the Soviet victory in WWII was accidental and inadmissible. They think that now is the time to rectify this accident, or a mistake, as they see it,” Zakharova stated. She noted that Moscow used to regard revanchism as “some kind of small germ that would sit in the corner and not go anywhere.” Zakharova, however, said that even “from a small germ can then grow a huge, terrifying pandemic of historical revanchism,” adding that a similar warning could be found in the landmark 1965 Soviet film ‘Ordinary Fascism’ by Mikhail Romm, which became a cautionary tale about the rise and fall of the Nazi ideology as well as of its numerous crimes.

Some Western countries, Zakharova said, do not accept the results of WWII and the rulings of the Nuremberg Tribunal. “No, they do not want to give up the idea of taking over the Ukrainian black soil, Russian oil and gas,” she said, adding that Western ambitions extend to seizing the resources of Central Asia and the South Caucasus. She also cited an escalating war against monuments to those who fought Nazism, but said the most dangerous sign of revanchism was that “they want a revenge which would allow them to prevail in remaking the world order and seizing resources around the globe.”

Moscow has for years sounded the alarm about resurgent Nazi ideology in Europe, citing in particular marches in Baltic states honoring Waffen SS veterans. It has also pointed to torchlit marches celebrating the birthday of Ukrainian nationalist Stepan Bandera, whose Ukrainian Insurgent Army collaborated with Nazi Germany and killed tens of thousands of Jews and Poles during WWII. Moscow has said Ukraine’s denazification is one of the key goals of its military operation against the neighboring state.

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“Being investigated in France is “the new Legion d’honneur,” the Russian entrepreneur has said..”

• ‘Proud To Stand Alongside Elon Musk’ – Telegram’s Durov (RT)

France is weaponizing criminal prosecution in an attempt to suppress free speech, Telegram founder Pavel Durov has said, as he backed X owner Elon Musk in the social media platform’s legal case in the country. Durov made the remarks on Sunday after the Wall Street Journal reported that the US Department of Justice had rejected a French request for assistance in investigating X’s alleged role in distributing sexual deepfakes and unlawful data extraction. The DOJ letter stated that the French probe sought “to use the criminal legal system in France to regulate a public square for the free expression of ideas” and “to entangle the United States in a politically charged criminal proceeding.”


Musk has denied any wrongdoing and dismissed the probe as a “political attack.” Durov rallied behind the X owner, arguing that under President Emmanuel Macron, “France is losing legitimacy as it weaponizes criminal investigations to suppress free speech and privacy.” He also disputed the independence of French prosecutors, saying they “are hired, fired, and promoted by the government.” He added that “the judicial police – who provide often misleading reports to investigative judges – are also controlled by the government.” ”Proud to stand alongside Elon Musk and others targeted by Macron’s campaign against digital rights. In Macron’s France, being investigated is the new Legion d’honneur.”

The French investigation into X was first launched in January 2025, following allegations that the platform’s content algorithm showed bias and could constitute foreign interference. The case has since expanded to include scrutiny of anti-Semitic content, Holocaust denial, and AI-generated child sexual abuse material. Paris prosecutors raided X’s French offices in February 2026, and recently summoned Musk for a “voluntary” interview.

Durov – a citizen of France, Russia, the UAE, and St. Kitts and Nevis – has himself clashed with the French judicial system. He was arrested at a Paris airport in August 2024 and indicted on 12 charges, including alleged complicity in distributing child exploitation material and drug trafficking, after French prosecutors cited Telegram’s near-total failure to respond to legal requests.Durov’s travel ban was fully lifted in November 2025, though the formal investigation continues. Durov has called the arrest and probe “legally and logically absurd” and said its “only outcome” had been “massive damage to France’s image as a free country.”

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“If the American Republic is to survive another 250 years, it must preserve key rights that the EU has been systematically destroying in Europe ..”

• The EU Moves to Destroy the Last Vestiges of National Sovereignty (Turley)

The defeat of Viktor Orban in Hungary last weekend was celebrated by many who saw the former president as establishing single-party rule in his central European nation. The irony is that this claimed victory for democracy may fuel the establishment of a global governance system that is neither democratic nor accountable to citizens. The European Union was criticized by many for taking sides in the Hungarian election and for undermining Orban, who asserted national priorities in disputes with the EU. No sooner had Orban conceded defeat than a jubilant European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called for the final coup de grace for national identity and sovereignty: the elimination of the ability of nations to stand against EU policies.


Orban was controversial for his ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin and his lack of support for Ukraine. He was also accused of authoritarianism and corruption. I shared in some of those criticisms. However, the unintended consequence of this election could be the removal of a single autocrat in favor of a global bureaucracy. Van der Leyen helped elect the pro-EU Peter Magyar in order to remove a barrier to the EU’s ultimate exercise of power. The EU had been squeezing Hungary over its defiance by holding back billions in funds. Magyar is expected to be the perfect suppliant, willing to fall into line with the EU agenda.

The EU Chief has reportedly already given Magyar a list of 27 demands he must meet before she will turn the spigot back on. She did not try to hide the agenda, announcing that the EU needed to “use the momentum now” to consolidate its power. With Hungary out of the way, Von der Leyen is calling for the EU to finally do away with the last vestige of national sovereignty: the veto exercised by its member states. Under the plan, member states would lose control of their policy and could be forced to adhere to the priorities and values of the EU majority. The EU Chief celebrated the new day of global governance in the making: “Moving to qualified majority voting in foreign policy is an important way to avoid systemic blockages, as we have seen in the past.”

In “Rage and the Republic,” I discuss the dangers posed to the American republic this century by the rise of global governance systems like the EU. The book explores how globalists planned to gradually get nations to yield their authority to the EU — destroying national identity and sovereignty in favor of an EU bureaucracy in Brussels.As the EU moves to kill off national sovereignty, EU commissioners are calling for a single European military command, completing a longstanding globalist goal. The 250th anniversary of our republic is occurring as we face an unprecedented EU threat. Our revolution was fought against a foreign empire.

It now faces an even greater threat from a global government asserting the right to compel American companies to censor Americans and comply with environmental, social and governance or ESG policies. At the same time, American figures such as Hillary Clinton are encouraging the EU to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights using the infamous Digital Services Act to restore speech controls to social media. Other Americans have testified before the EU, calling on it to fight the U.S. Banners are now flying in Europe declaring, “We are the Free World Now,” as the globalists attempt to supplant freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

If the American Republic is to survive another 250 years, it must preserve key rights that the EU has been systematically destroying in Europe — freedom of speech, division of powers and political accountability of decision-makers. That is why, I believe, the EU is inherently unstable and likely to ultimately collapse.

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“.. 28 refineries – more than 25% of the number of refineries and 16% of refining capacity – have been either shut or transformed since 2009 ..”

• Europe Faces Summer Jet Fuel Crisis As Iran War Slashes Supply (Paraskova)

Europe faces an imminent jet fuel crisis as the Iran war and Hormuz disruption cut off key Middle Eastern supplies. Long-term refinery closures and rising import dependence have left Europe highly exposed, with limited alternatives and growing competition from Asia. Airlines are already cutting capacity and warning of higher fares, with potential flight cancellations looming as fuel shortages intensify. Accelerated refinery closures in the past decade and increased dependence on kerosene from the Middle East have exposed Europe’s energy supply vulnerability once again.


For years, European consumers have had to contend with last-minute strikes of ground personnel and cabin crew during peak summer travel. This year, strikes may be viewed as a minor nuisance compared to what’s coming within weeks—a jet fuel supply crisis that could ground flights and hike fares.The war in Iran has cut most of Europe’s imports of jet fuel, while local output has been falling for nearly two decades due to dozens of refineries closing permanently or being converted to biofuel production.

The war in Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have severely constrained Europe’s jet fuel supply, while jet fuel prices have spiked to over $200 per barrel. The last imports from the Middle East on tankers that had passed Hormuz before the war began have arrived, and there is only one alternative to source jet fuel—from the United States. These supplies are not only insufficient to replace the loss of Middle Eastern jet fuel. Europe faces increasingly fierce competition from Asia for these cargoes as the crisis first hit Asia with crude supply from the Middle East collapsing, Asian refiners cutting refinery runs, and countries imposing fuel export restrictions to preserve domestic supply.

Back in 2009, nearly 100 refineries were operating in Europe. Of these, 28 refineries – more than 25% of the number of refineries and 16% of refining capacity – have been either shut or transformed since 2009, according to data from the European Fuel Manufacturers Association. As refineries were closing, due to declining fuel demand in Europe and emission-reduction policies, the European dependence on imported supply has grown. The hit to supply from the Middle East caught Europe off guard regarding the security of energy supply for the second time in just four years, after natural gas deliveries from Russia crashed in 2022. This time, the jet fuel crisis could be imminent, analysts and forecasters warn.

Last year, Europe imported about a third of the jet fuel it consumed, with 75% of imports coming from the Middle East, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has said. Its executive director, Fatih Birol, this week warned that Europe has “maybe six weeks or so” of remaining jet fuel supply. “If we are not able to open the Strait of Hormuz … I can tell you soon we will hear the news that some of the flights from city A to city B might be canceled as a result of lack of jet fuel,” Birol told Associated Press in an interview.

Northwest Europe is one of the regions most exposed to the jet fuel crisis, as imports have dropped from historical norms this month, and the import decline is set to accelerate in the coming weeks as more U.S. jet fuel cargoes would go to Asia instead of Europe, Ernest Censier, market analyst at Vortexa, said in an analysis on Thursday. The 15% drop in European jet fuel imports so far in April “reflects structural dependence on Middle Eastern supply: approximately half of NWE’s jet fuel imports typically transit through the Strait of Hormuz,” Censier said.

In addition, relatively short voyage times of about 21 days from Mina Abdulla in Kuwait to Rotterdam mean that supply disruptions are transmitted quickly into regional imports, the analyst added. The U.S. has emerged as the key source of substitution for lost Middle Eastern supply, but this is unlikely to be sustained as U.S. jet/kerosene exports are increasingly being redirected toward the Pacific Basin, reaching a seven-year high this month, and now accounting for over 30% of total U.S. jet fuel exports. “This reallocation reflects a broader shift in US product exports toward the Pacific Basin,” Vortexa’s Censier noted. This leaves Europe highly exposed to the turbulence in the jet fuel markets.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/crsanchezx/status/2045930121391985025?s=20

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle August 7 2025

Aug 072025
 
 August 7, 2025  Posted by at 10:17 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  36 Responses »


Theo van Doesburg Counter-Construction 1923

 

• Trump, Putin To Meet As Soon As Next Week In Potential Breakthrough (ZH)
• Trump Tells Team To Arrange Putin Meeting ‘Fast’ – CNN (RT)
• Marco Rubio Discusses Potential for Trump and Putin Meeting (CTH)
• Ghislaine Maxwell Reportedly Cleared Trump’s Name In DOJ Interview (HUSA)
• Zelensky Rejects Any Limited Ceasefire With Russia (RT)
• Zelensky Rating Slumps – Poll (RT)
• Ukraine ‘Doesn’t Belong Among Civilized Nations’ – Hungarian FM (RT)
• Zelensky and the EU Increasingly Desperate Over The Inevitable Outcome (SCF)
• Top Trump Officials Will Discuss Epstein Strategy (CNN)
• FBI Burn Bags Had More Than Russiagate Files In Them (Margolis)
• DNI Tulsi Gabbard Breaks Down Russiagate (CTH)
• Ex-CIA Officer: Russiagate Deep State Operatives Still Work At The Agency (MN)
• Trump Slaps India With Additional 25% In Tariffs Over Russian Energy Trade (ZH)
• Sen. Adam Schiff Under Criminal Investigation For Mortgage Fraud (ZH)
• The Lucky Continent? (Rabo)

 

 

 

 

Rubio

https://twitter.com/nicksortor/status/1952839386032226316

https://twitter.com/nicksortor/status/1953210757220581495

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1953144644247699556
https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1953126714621522032

coup

scott

https://twitter.com/TheGabriel72/status/1953078954564436172

Taibbi

 

 

 

 

Steve Witkoff was at the Kremlin yesterday with somehing new to tell Putin (we don’t know what). Or there would not have been a meeting. Did Putin have a breakthrough idea? Hard to imagine. He for years now has had the No Nukes, No Nazis, No NATO standpoint, and that stands. Give up -new- territory? Once a piece of land has been declared part of Russia, you can’t just undeclare it. Besides, the people in the oblasts have voted to join Russia, and that is serious.

Russia didn’t want any of this when the SMO started in early 2022, Putin didn’t even want to discuss it for Crimea then. But things have changed. Russian(-speaking) people needed protection, and got it. Curious to see what the talks result in. That the US insists on bringing Zelensky along does not exactly help achieve peace. Same goes for the fully russophobe European NATO nations.

• Trump, Putin To Meet As Soon As Next Week In Potential Breakthrough (ZH)

It appears the Wednesday Witkoff-Putin meeting in Moscow has led to a breakthrough of sorts, coming right down to the wire of threatened fresh US anti-Russia sanctions set to be imposed Friday. Presidents Trump and Putin plan to meet in person as soon as next week, the NY Times is reporting. A meeting with Ukraine’s leader would then follow. “President Trump intends to meet in person with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia as soon as next week, and he plans to follow up shortly afterward with a meeting between himself, Mr. Putin and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, according to two people familiar with the plan,” the breaking report says.

There’s as yet been no indicators from the Russian or Ukrainian sides of the plan, or even that Moscow is aware of an ‘agreement’ to proceed with a meeting. According to more details: Mr. Trump disclosed his plans in a call with European leaders on Wednesday, the people said. The meetings would include only those three men, and would not include any European counterparts. The European leaders, who have tried to play a coordinating role on meetings to end the violence between Russia and Ukraine while supporting their European neighbor, appeared to accept what Mr. Trump said, one of the people familiar with the call said.

Anti-Moscow critics have said that the Kremlin is just buying more time with Washington while its military operations in Ukraine proceed at full pace. Will a breakthrough actually come of this? Trump has said of a fresh call with European leaders that they agreed with him that “the war must end” – but that it must be “an honest end”. There must be something substantial cooking if both sides agree to a meeting, which would be the first such face-to-face interaction between Trump and Putin of the US president’s second term.

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Russia has confirmed the plans now.

• Trump Tells Team To Arrange Putin Meeting ‘Fast’ – CNN (RT)

US President Donald Trump has told his team to “move fast” to arrange a meeting with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, CNN reported on Wednesday. Putin proposed a direct meeting with Trump during talks earlier in the day with US special envoy Steve Witkoff, the news outlet said, citing two anonymous sources in the White House. The US president’s aides reportedly began planning for a potential summit immediately. Though these types of high-level meetings typically require preparation time, “Trump was urging his team to move fast,” CNN wrote. No location has been confirmed, but discussions could begin as early as next week, the outlet added.

Earlier in the day, Trump praised the outcome of the Putin-Witkoff talks, saying there is “a very good prospect” for a meeting between the Russian president and Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky. “There is a good chance there could be a meeting very soon,” he told reporters in the Oval Office. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio indicated on Wednesday that this could come in the form of a trilateral summit involving Trump, Putin, and Zelensky, provided peace talks on the Ukraine conflict go well. The New York Times also reported that the US president intends to meet soon with his Russian counterpart.

Trump unveiled the plan in a recent phone call with European leaders, in which he announced plans to hold a trilateral summit alongside Putin and Zelensky after a one-on-one with the Russian leader, the NYT wrote on Wednesday, citing anonymous sources. Moscow has not yet confirmed any plans for a meeting. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said time is needed to normalize US-Russia relations before a summit can occur. Relations between Washington and Moscow fell to an “unprecedented level” under Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, leaving many points of contention, he told TASS on Wednesday.

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“Rubio added “a lot has to happen before that can occur.”

• Marco Rubio Discusses Potential for Trump and Putin Meeting (CTH)

At the White House event with Apple CEO Tim Cook, President Trump said that “there’s a really good prospect that” there will be a meeting with Zelenskyy and Putin. But he disagreed with the suggestion it amounted to a “breakthrough.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio notes in the interview here, “an opportunity will present itself very soon for the president to meet both with Vladimir Putin and with President Zelenskyy at some point here, hopefully in the near future.” Rubio added “a lot has to happen before that can occur.”

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Pardoning Ghislaine would unleash a lot of anger.

• Ghislaine Maxwell Reportedly Cleared Trump’s Name In DOJ Interview (HUSA)

Convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell reportedly told the Justice Department in a recent interview that she never observed President Donald Trump doing anything around her that “caused concern.” Maxwell was recently interviewed by the DOJ about roughly 100 people who were associated with her and her accomplice, deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. “Maxwell said nothing during the interview that would be harmful to President Donald Trump,” ABC reported, citing anonymous sources. “There is also an audio recording of the interview, the sources said, but it’s not clear whether the administration plans to release the audio to accompany any public release of the transcript,” the outlet added. “The public release of the transcripts could come as soon as this week.”

Maxwell was moved from federal prison in Florida to a cushier, lower-security camp in Texas after her DOJ interview. Maxwell was previously housed in the “honor dorm” of a low-security prison in Tallahassee, Florida. “Maxwell’s cushy new digs in D South – the so-called ‘honor dorm’ – are reserved for 30 to 40 of the low-security Florida lockup’s best-behaved prisoners,” the Daily Mail reported in March 2024. She has an appeal pending before the Supreme Court, and rumors are swirling that President Donald Trump may pardon her in exchange for information about his political enemies. A potential pardon would give Maxwell every incentive to clear Trump’s name – which is what she did, according to a Wednesday report from ABC News.

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“Moscow has also said a ceasefire could be possible if Ukraine halts troop movements, suspends mobilization, stops foreign arms shipments, and holds a presidential election.”

• Zelensky Rejects Any Limited Ceasefire With Russia (RT)

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has rejected any limited ceasefire with Russia, insisting that Kiev will only agree to a complete halt in hostilities. His statement came in the wake of reports from Bloomberg that Moscow planned to propose a pause in air operations. Moscow and Kiev have agreed to several partial ceasefires since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. Both sides have also accused each other of violating the agreements. Following a US-mediated 30-day agreement to pause strikes on energy infrastructure earlier this year, Moscow reported that Kiev’s forces had violated the truce over 100 times. Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing anonymous sources, that the Kremlin is considering offering an “air truce” during the visit of US special envoy Steve Witkoff to Moscow this week.

The arrangement would reportedly involve halting missile and drone strikes but would not end ground operations. The proposal is expected to come amid US President Donald Trump’s threats to impose secondary tariffs on Russia and its trading partners unless a peace deal is reached soon. Moscow has not confirmed plans to propose any sort of limited truce. In a post on his Telegram channel, Zelensky wrote that Kiev supports only an “immediate, complete and unconditional ceasefire. ” We’ve already tried many different formats, he said, referring to proposals for “silence in the skies” and halts to energy sector attacks. He alleged that all such agreements were breached and urged further sanctions on Moscow.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Moscow favors a peaceful resolution and a “long- term, lasting peace” rather than a temporary truce. He has stressed that any settlement must address the “realities on the ground” and the root causes of the conflict. Russia has repeatedly called on Ukraine to recognize the loss of five of its former regions that joined Russia in public referendums, withdraw its forces from those territories, commit to neutrality, and limit its military capabilities. Moscow has also said a ceasefire could be possible if Ukraine halts troop movements, suspends mobilization, stops foreign arms shipments, and holds a presidential election. Kiev has rejected the terms as unacceptable.

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Still much higher than I would have guessed. Who’s doing the polling?

• Zelensky Rating Slumps – Poll (RT)

Public trust in Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has dropped by 7% in about a month, according to a nationwide poll released on Wednesday. The apparent slump in popularity came after his controversial botched crackdown on the country’s key anti-corruption agencies. The survey by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology (KIIS), conducted from July 23 to August 4, suggests that trust in Zelensky stands at 58%, down from 65% in June. The poll says 35% of Ukrainians now say they do not trust Zelensky – an increase from 30% in early June. The drop in support was especially steep among respondents under 30, where trust fell by 15% – from 74% at the start of summer to 59% by early August, according to the poll.

The KIIS partially attributed the decline to Zelensky’s attempt to strip the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) of independence, citing Russian influence. Critics of the move accused Zelensky of having authoritarian tendencies, sparking protests at home and discontent in the West, given that many supporters of Kiev have for years demanded that it intensify the fight against corruption. Following the backlash, Zelensky was forced to roll back the reforms. KIIS stressed that although the controversy undoubtedly damaged Zelensky’s image, other factors are at play.

Of those who distrust him, only 6% cited the controversy as the reason, compared to 21% who pointed to overall corruption and 20% who say Zelensky is an inefficient leader during a time of conflict. The KIIS poll was based on phone interviews with 1,022 respondents across Ukraine. Last month, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) stated that US and UK officials had secretly met with their key Ukrainian counterparts to discuss ousting Zelensky and replacing him with former military chief Valery Zaluzhny. According to the SVR, the recent NABU and SAPO controversy was in large part engineered by Zelensky’s own officials to provide justification for the Western partners to seek his removal.

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“..Ukrainian draft officers were accused of beating to death a dual Ukrainian-Hungarian citizen.”

• Ukraine ‘Doesn’t Belong Among Civilized Nations’ – Hungarian FM (RT)

Ukraine can have no place in the EU and “doesn’t even belong among civilized nations,” Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has said. His comments come after Ukrainian draft officers were accused of beating to death a dual Ukrainian-Hungarian citizen. Media reports emerged last month that 45-year-old Jozsef Sebestyen, who lived in Ukraine’s Zakarpatye Region – home to a large Hungarian minority – died as a result of injuries sustained when he was beaten with iron rods by recruitment officers. News of Sebestyen’s death sparked outrage in Hungary, where hundreds gathered outside the Ukrainian Embassy in Budapest to condemn the incident.

Budapest summoned Ukraine’s ambassador to issue a formal protest and called on Brussels to introduce sanctions against Ukrainian leaders responsible for Sebestyen’s death. Commenting during an episode of the Harcosok Oraja podcast which aired on Wednesday, Szijjarto said: “A country like that not only has no place in the EU – it doesn’t even belong among civilized nations.” Ukraine’s forced conscription, marked by beatings and even killings, is “state-institutionalized” and “state-executed,” Szijjarto claimed. He added that any civilized country would act immediately upon seeing footage of officers violently detaining people, and that those responsible would be swiftly arrested and jailed.

“So what happens in Ukraine instead? Everyone turns their heads, no one dares to talk about it,” the foreign minister concluded. The Ukrainian military has claimed that Sebestyen died of a medical condition and showed no signs of violence. Hungary, however, has requested that the EU impose sanctions on three Ukrainian officials involved in mobilization efforts. In addition to alleged human rights violations, Hungary has cited several reasons for its opposition to Ukraine’s bid for EU accession. Szijjarto has argued that Ukraine’s membership would weaken rather than strengthen the bloc, while Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban has repeatedly warned that it would bring war directly onto EU territory.

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“The Western rhetoric of “defending Europe” is a smokescreen used to justify the militarization of the continent and the artificial prolongation of the conflict.”

• Zelensky and the EU Increasingly Desperate Over The Inevitable Outcome (SCF)

In yet another sign of Ukraine’s psychological collapse, President Vladimir Zelensky has once again openly advocated for the political destabilization of Russia. In recent speeches, Zelensky stated that only a regime change in Moscow could guarantee “security” for Europe and prevent future conflicts on the continent. In practice, this is a desperate attempt to keep the narrative of the “Russian threat” alive, even as it becomes increasingly clear that the West has lost control of its proxy war against Moscow. Zelensky proposes a two-step plan: deepen the seizure of Russian financial assets and intensify diplomatic and political efforts to bring down the current Russian government. His logic is simple—but completely flawed: according to him, even if the war in Ukraine ends, the “threat” will remain as long as Vladimir Putin is in power.

The proposal, however, ignores Russia’s internal political reality, where Putin enjoys broad popular and institutional support. In other words, what the West and Kiev are pursuing is a coup d’état disguised as a “democratic transition”. But any serious analyst knows that the political structure of the Russian Federation is solid and widely backed by its population. Putin’s recent re-election, with a strong majority and high voter turnout, confirms this. There is no internal base for an uprising against the Kremlin—nor is there any international legitimacy for such an operation. Moreover, Zelensky’s calls to use frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine’s war effort border on institutionalized looting. It is a flagrant violation of international law and economic sovereignty.

Confiscating the assets of citizens and companies based solely on nationality, then redirecting those resources to the war industry, reveals the level of moral and legal degradation that now dominates Western politics. Even more concerning is the fact that European leaders, such as Kaja Kallas, have already openly advocated for the fragmentation of Russia—a dangerously revanchist discourse reminiscent of the Cold War, which undermines any possibility of multilateral dialogue. The idea of breaking up the Russian Federation into dozens or even hundreds of “microstates” reflects an imperialist fantasy rooted in the darkest moments of European colonialism—and echoes remnants of the Nazi-fascist ideology that presupposes the creation of ethno-states.

Nonetheless, the obsession with “containing” Russia ignores a fundamental fact: there is no concrete evidence that Moscow intends to invade other European countries. The special military operation in Ukraine did not stem from any expansionist ambition, but from the need to protect the Russian population in Donbass and to curb NATO’s encroachment on Russia’s borders. After years of Western provocation and the genocide of ethnic Russians in what was then eastern Ukraine, Moscow chose to act. The Western rhetoric of “defending Europe” is a smokescreen used to justify the militarization of the continent and the artificial prolongation of the conflict.

In reality, Europeans are already feeling the economic and social consequences of this suicidal policy: inflation, an energy crisis, the erosion of civil liberties, and growing public dissatisfaction—manifested most recently in electoral results favoring illiberal candidates and parties, which were shamefully censored by European governments. The most rational path for Europe would be to distance itself from Kiev’s pro-war madness and adopt a foreign policy based on stability, sovereignty, and mutual respect. Unfortunately, European leaders appear fully aligned with a Russophobic agenda—even if it means plunging the continent into yet another decade of chaos. Zelensky does not speak for himself; he is merely the loudest voice of a failed project that insists on attacking Russia while Ukraine itself collapses economically, militarily, and politically.

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“Trump on Tuesday defended Blanche’s recent sit-down with Maxwell, arguing that Blanche wanted to ensure that people who “aren’t involved are not hurt” by something “very unfair.”

• Top Trump Officials Will Discuss Epstein Strategy (CNN)

Top Trump administration officials will gather at the vice president’s residence Wednesday evening as they continue to weigh whether to publish an audio recording and transcript of Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s recent conversation with Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. The administration’s handling of the Epstein case, as well as the need to craft a unified response, is expected to be a main focus of the dinner, three sources familiar with the meeting told CNN. The meeting will include White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, Vice President JD Vance, Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel and Blanche. With the exception of Vance, the White House considers those officials the leaders of the administration’s ongoing strategy regarding the Epstein files, two of the sources said.

The meeting comes as Trump’s administration is considering releasing the contents of Blanche’s interview last month with Maxwell. Two officials told CNN that the materials could be made public as early as this week. There have also been internal discussions about Blanche holding a press conference or doing a high-profile interview, possibly with popular podcaster Joe Rogan, according to three people familiar with the discussions, though those conversations are preliminary. Rogan, who endorsed Trump on the eve of last fall’s election, has been highly critical of the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein case and previously called their refusal release more information about Epstein a “line in the sand.” [..] Patel and Bondi have previously clashed over the administration’s Epstein strategy.

Meanwhile, CNN previously reported that the Justice Department has been digitizing, transcribing and redacting the interview materials as they weigh if and when to publicly release the information from the Maxwell interview. There is over 10 hours of audio, a senior Trump administration official said. Portions of the transcript that could reveal sensitive details like victim names would also have to be redacted, one of the officials said. One official told CNN that some of the conversation within the White House has focused on whether making the details from the interview public would bring the Epstein controversy back to the surface. Many officials close to Trump believe the story has largely died down. Trump on Tuesday defended Blanche’s recent sit-down with Maxwell, arguing that Blanche wanted to ensure that people who “aren’t involved are not hurt” by something “very unfair.”

On Wednesday morning, the family of Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre issued a statement asking why no survivors had been invited to the meeting at Vance’s home. They offered to attend in Giuffre’s stead, as she died by suicide earlier this year. “Missing from this group is, of course, any survivor of the vicious crimes of convicted perjurer and sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein. Their voices must be heard, above all,” wrote Giuffre’s two brothers and sisters in law, Sky and Amanda Roberts and Danny and Lanette Wilson. Amid the clamor for more disclosures about the case, the House Oversight Committee on Tuesday issued nearly a dozen subpoenas to the Justice Department and high-profile Democratic and GOP figures for files and information related to Epstein — a significant show of defiance against Republican leaders.

Two of the administration officials said if they were to release the audio and transcript, it would likely be done sooner rather than later. One said the release could be several weeks from now, depending on what the most senior-level officials within the West Wing and Justice Department decide. It was not immediately clear whether the White House and DOJ were aligned on the issue. “This is nothing more than CNN trying desperately to create news out of old news. [Trump] already addressed this issue in an interview with Newsmax, a real news outlet that routinely gets better ratings than CNN,” White House Communications Director Steven Cheung told CNN, when asked about the possibility of releasing the transcript. Blanche interviewed Maxwell at the US attorney’s office in Tallahassee, Florida, last month over a period of two days. Maxwell was sentenced in 2022 to 20 years in federal prison for carrying out a yearslong scheme with Epstein to groom and sexually abuse underage girls. She has continued to appeal her conviction, including with the Supreme Court.

Last week, Maxwell was moved from a Florida federal prison to a lower-security federal prison camp in Texas, a relatively uncommon move as those convicted of sex offenses are almost always deemed too high of a risk to public safety. As Trump has faced mounting pressure from his base for transparency, the White House has repeatedly said the DOJ should release all “credible evidence” in the Epstein files. Asked about Blanche’s meeting with Maxwell last week, Trump again said he’d like to see everything in the files released. “We’d like to release everything, but we don’t want people to get hurt that shouldn’t be hurt, and I would assume that was why he was there,” Trump told Newsmax on Friday. The president said he hadn’t spoken to Blanche about his meetings with Maxwell and didn’t know when that information would be made public.

“I haven’t spoken about it, but he’s a very talented guy, Todd Blanche, and a very straight shooter, and I think he probably wanted to know, you know, just to get a feeling of it,” Trump said. CNN previously reported that a senior Trump administration official stated that the president is not currently considering clemency for Maxwell, though he has repeatedly left the door open on the matter in recent weeks, saying he’s “allowed to do it.”

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The Russiagate Files contained Epstein files.

Why any evidence in the burn bags of anything was not…well, burned, no idea.

• FBI Burn Bags Had More Than Russiagate Files In Them (Margolis)

Last month we learned that FBI Director Kash Patel uncovered a hidden SCIF room at FBI headquarters — sealed off since the Comey era — stuffed with thousands of Trump-Russia documents and burn bags. Among the most damning finds? The classified annex to the Durham report. “Just think about this,” Patel said. “Me, as director of the FBI, the former ‘Russiagate guy,’ when I first got to the bureau, found a room Comey and others hid from the world in the Hoover Building — full of documents and computer hard drives no one had ever seen. They locked the door, hid access, and just said, ‘No one’s ever gonna find this place.’” But there was something else in those burn bags besides Russiagate documents. According to Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), materials tied to Epstein were among the contents found in the burn bags, and a formal investigation is now underway.

During an interview on “The Benny Johnson Show,” Rep. Luna dropped a bombshell: “I’m asking [the FBI] directly who authorized this information to be placed in burn bags and what information they have about the former deputy director of the FBI destroying evidence pertaining to Jeffrey Epstein, which we know right now the FBI is actively investigating.” She credited Johnson’s program with kickstarting the inquiry. “It was your show that kinda tipped me off to follow up with one of those whistleblowers, and now that’s a full-fledged investigation,” Luna said. Johnson sought clarification. “You’re confirming to us that the FBI has destroyed Epstein evidence?” he asked. “I’m confirming that there’s an open investigation, and that the leads on your show resulted in them finding burn bags pertaining to Russiagate and potentially Epstein, yes,” Luna replied.

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1952745647821463844

The congresswoman tied the attempted destruction of Epstein-related material to a broader pattern of misconduct during the Bush-era DOJ and FBI. “The actual cover-up was in 2005, 2006, 2007 when Epstein was allowed to skate even though they had him dead to rights,” Johnson said, pointing to former FBI Director Robert Mueller and then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Luna didn’t dispute the timeline and said this was part of what she’s pushing to uncover. Beyond Epstein, Luna also alluded to the potential destruction of evidence tied to the FBI’s now-debunked Trump-Russia investigation. “Had Tulsi [Gabbard] not come forward with that information in regards to Russiagate… think about it: people using their positions of power to violate constitutional rights, civil liberties, go after people, spy. It can’t be tolerated in a free and fair society.”

Despite the disturbing implications, Luna expressed confidence that the current administration is making progress on accountability. “I’m just really happy to know that, under this administration, that people are being held accountable,” she said. She also noted arrests are being made behind the scenes. If proven true, the FBI’s attempted destruction of Epstein-related materials could mark a new chapter in the scandal — and raise even more questions about who’s protecting whom.

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Long interview. Miranda Devine used to mostly write, but has now become a “face”.

• DNI Tulsi Gabbard Breaks Down Russiagate (CTH)

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard appears for an extensive podcast interview with Miranda Devine. It may create ‘splodey heads in Washington DC, but DNI Gabbard is now positioned as the tip of the spear to penetrate the fraud, lies, schemes and manipulations of the Intelligence Branch of government. Tulsi Gabbard is the leading voice for honesty and sunlight against the entire DC apparatus that participated in the Russiagate construct.

Gabbard now understands how the DC silo system was weaponized during the manufacturing of information against a political candidate, Donald Trump. Gabbard is speaking truth toward a corrupt system, and she will be the target of all fury that’s dependent on the retention of the corruption. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard sits down with Miranda Devine to discuss, in her own words, Obama’s Russiagate plot to sabotage Trump, Hillary Clinton’s vendetta against her, and the evidence that could topple Brennan, Clapper, and Comey.

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It’ll take time to sweep all the agencies.

• Ex-CIA Officer: Russiagate Deep State Operatives Still Work At The Agency (MN)

A former CIA operations officer has warned that Deep State operatives who concocted the fake Russia collusion narrative against President Trump under then Director John Brennan are still active inside the agency. Bryan Dean Wright told the Daily Caller that “At least two still do work there. That doesn’t mean that all of the other people have left. Those are just the two that I’m aware of.” nWright claims that One of the operatives still has a “blue badge,” meaning they are a direct CIA employee, while another possesses a “green badge,” and carries out work as a contractor. The Daily Caller notes that Wright declared in a recent op-ed that Brennan should “rot in prison” for treasonous plotting to undermine the integrity of the Republic. “These men thought they knew what was best for America, and they didn’t give a damn what voters like you thought,” the former spook asserted.

Wright further suggested that because Brennan worked at the agency for so long, he likely continues to shape the culture at the CIA and has almost certainly cultivated generations of like minded employees. As we’ve highlighted, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has officially handed the Department of Justice a criminal referral relating to the “treasonous conspiracy” by Brennan, other Obama officials and the former President himself outlined in Declassified documents. Further documents released by Gabbard have revealed that not only did the CIA believe a Russian intelligence assessment that the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign planned to smear Trump by linking him to the Kremlin, but that the FBI helped the Clinton campaign orchestrate the Russia hoax to distract from its investigation into her emails.

The declassified documents also show that the Clinton Campaign plotted to use Crowdstrike to push the claim that Russian hackers leaked information from the Democratic National Convention (DNC) and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). President Trump has admitted that he previously refrained from pursuing an indictment for Hillary Clinton, but believes now she should “pay a very big price.” A House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence report declassified on July 23 has also shown that just five CIA analysts under Brennan wrote the 2017 intelligence assessment, which included the infamous fake Steele dossier, on which the Russia hoax was based.

The report notes that according to a CIA self-assessment declassified on July 2, the analysts were part of a “Fusion Cell” Brennan had put together months to explore Russian election interference. There are concerns that those agents remain embedded in the framework of the CIA. Current CIA Director John Ratcliffe proclaimed last week that Brennan, James Comey, Hillary and others face “serious legal consequences,” for their roles in the scandal, revealing that he has made additional referrals for criminal prosecution, building on those sent weeks earlier by Gabbard, including one about Barack Obama.

“We’re gonna continue to share the intelligence that would support the ability of our Department of Justice to… bring fair and just claims against those who have perpetrated this hoax and the American people and this stain on our country,” he said during a Fox News interview. On Sunday Ratcliffe described Hillary’s role in the Russia hoax and her efforts to frame Trump as the “greatest political scandal” in a lifetime. “There was Intelligence from foreign Intelligence services, that one U.S. presidential candidate was trying to frame another candidate for treason, claiming that he was an agent of a foreign power, an agent of Russia, and that Intelligence was never shared,” Ratcliffe urged.

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India gets blamed for Ukraine. Get serious. What do you say to that? Show it to me on a map?

• Trump Slaps India With Additional 25% In Tariffs Over Russian Energy Trade (ZH)

Just as he warned yesterday, President Trump signed an executive order imposing an additional 25% tariff on India over its purchase of Russian energy, the White House said Wednesday hours after talks between the US and Russia over the war in Ukraine failed to yield a breakthrough. The accelerated tariffs – which will stack on top of 25% country-specific tariffs set to be implemented overnight – will go into effect within 21 days, according to the executive order signed by Trump. “They’re fueling the war machine. And if they’re going to do that, then I’m not going to be happy,” Trump said Tuesday in an interview with CNBC. This rhetoric was escalated in the initial paragraphs of the Executive Order:

“Executive Order 14066 of March 8, 2022 (Prohibiting Certain Imports and New Investments With Respect to Continued Russian Federation Efforts To Undermine the Sovereignty and Territorial Integrity of Ukraine), expanded the scope of the national emergency declared in Executive Order 14024 of April 15, 2021 (Blocking Property With Respect To Specified Harmful Foreign Activities of the Government of the Russian Federation), to include the actions taken against Ukraine by the Government of the Russian Federation. To address that unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States, Executive Order 14066 prohibited, among other things, the importation into the United States of certain products of Russian Federation origin, including crude oil; petroleum; and petroleum fuels, oils, and products of their distillation.
…
To deal with the national emergency described in Executive Order 14066, I determine that it is necessary and appropriate to impose an additional ad valorem duty on imports of articles of India, which is directly or indirectly importing Russian Federation oil. In my judgment, imposing tariffs, as described below, in addition to maintaining the other measures taken to address the national emergency described in Executive Order 14066, will more effectively deal with the national emergency described in Executive Order 14066.”
…
Accordingly, and as consistent with applicable law, articles of India imported into the customs territory of the United States shall be subject to an additional ad valorem rate of duty of 25 percent.” The reaction was immediate extended selling pressure in India ETF…

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“Pulte indicated potential violations of federal laws, including wire, mail, and bank fraud.”

• Sen. Adam Schiff Under Criminal Investigation For Mortgage Fraud (ZH)

How does the old expression go? “When you point one finger at someone, three point back at you?” Sen. Adam Schiff – best known for dramatizing Trump’s Ukraine call during his first term, misidentifying evidence in texts, overstating “collusion” findings, and defending a FISA memo later found to contain false statements – is under criminal investigation for alleged mortgage fraud, according to a Trump administration source cited by Fox News. Laura Ingraham revealed the news on “The Ingraham Angle” last night, reporting that the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Maryland is conducting the probe. The investigation follows a criminal referral from the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) to the Department of Justice, according to Fox News.

FHFA Director William Pulte alleged that Schiff “has, in multiple instances, falsified bank documents and property records to acquire more favorable loan terms,” which he said could endanger the stability of the U.S. mortgage system. According to the FHFA, Schiff and his wife purchased a home in Potomac, Maryland, in 2003, financing it with a $610,000 Fannie Mae-backed loan by declaring it their primary residence. However, Schiff also claimed a condo in Burbank, California, as his primary residence, even receiving a $7,000 California homeowner’s tax exemption. Fox News writes that in a 2011 affidavit, Schiff certified the Maryland property as his primary residence. The FHFA notes that this designation was reaffirmed in multiple refinancing filings through 2013, despite Schiff serving in Congress representing California.

A 2023 spokesperson said, “Adam’s primary residence is Burbank, California, and will remain so when he wins the Senate seat.” Another comment to CNN explained that both the Maryland and California addresses were listed as primary residences “because they are both occupied throughout the year and to distinguish them from a vacation property.” FHFA investigators and Fannie Mae’s financial crimes unit concluded Schiff showed “a sustained pattern of possible occupancy misrepresentation” across five loans. Pulte indicated potential violations of federal laws, including wire, mail, and bank fraud.

https://twitter.com/ElectionWiz/status/1952876848079114744

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“..on a per capita basis, Switzerland has already pledged a significant amount of investment into the US and Swiss multinational companies already have sizeable facilities in the country..”

• The Lucky Continent? (Rabo)

While European equity markets ended the day on a slight positive note, the US market could not hold its opening gains and the S&P500 ultimately ended down some 0.5%. The US treasury curve flattened, led by front-end increases in rates (2y +5bp), following the significant steepening last week. European yield moves stayed within a narrow +/- 2bp range. The US trade deficit shrunk further in June, to $60.2bn, the lowest deficit since September 2023. Unsurprisingly it was yet another significant decline in imports – as tariff-mitigating frontloading activities faded – that drove that decline in the deficit. A prime example, again, were Swiss goods shipments, which showed a (seasonally adjusted) drop in US imports to $6.7bn from 13.4bn in May. That brings the US trade balance deficit even below its pre-trade war level and this suggests that we could start to see a reversal of the front-loading trade over the next few months.

That also means that the backlash is yet to come for exporting countries. So, even though the US-EU trade deal was slightly more favorable than we had accounted for in our projections for the Eurozone, the economy could still slip into a recession. But that would more likely still be more a technical contract rather than a real recession. Economists may have gotten a bit more clarity on the tariffs in recent weeks, especially when it comes to several big economies such as Japan and the EU (although questions remain). But for some other countries, the prospects remain far less certain (if that word still has any meaning). Case in point is India, which is still asking itself how to respond to Trump’s recent tirade and his threat of a substantial increase in the current 25% tariff on Indian exports, because of its “high barriers to trade” and its purchases of Russian oil.

So far, Modi’s government has been intransigent, arguing India is being unreasonably targeted by the US. The country is looking for ways to limit the economic damage, but Bloomberg reports that officials will continue to seek back-channel talks to ease the tensions. It remains to be seen whether India is willing to risk a significant escalation – like China was. Switzerland is in a similar crisis-fighting mode. After the surprise announcement of a 39% tariff on Swiss exports last Thursday, the country’s leaders have been frantically discussing alternative proposals to bend this rate, which is more than double the tariff the EU agreed with the US. The tariff will go into effect tomorrow, so Swiss President Karin Seller-Sutter flew –unsolicited!– to Washington yesterday with a “more attractive offer” in her bag.

Business minister Parmelin commented on Swiss public radio that the government needed to “fully understand what happened” between Swiss and US trade negotiators. Not too long-ago, reports had suggested that Switzerland could be one of the first countries to announce a deal with the US, after the UK. There was even some optimism that the tariff could be a low as 10%. That said, there is a clear difference between the British and Swiss trade relationships with the US. The UK has a modest goods trade deficit with the US. Switzerland, by contrast, has a buoyant surplus. This stood in the region of CHF 38.5bn last year, with chemical and pharmaceutical products being a key part of that. This contributed to Trump’s initial threat of a 31% tariff for Switzerland. It is not clear why that rose to 39% on August 1, but reports do point to a difficult phone call between the Swiss president and Trump last week.

There is speculation that Switzerland’s new offer could follow the blueprints of the Japan and EU deals, which include pledges to buy more American LNG and to invest more in the US. That said, on a per capita basis, Switzerland has already pledged a significant amount of investment into the US and Swiss multinational companies already have sizeable facilities in the country. Perhaps as a last-ditch effort may we suggest the Swiss President emphasize to President Trump that the “Trump Victory Tourbillon comes equipped with a Swiss-made TX07 Tourbillon”, as the Trump watch website advertises?

Our FX strategist, Jane Foley, notes that Swiss economic data and inflation have been relatively weak lately. Assuming Swiss politicians can negotiate a trade deal with the US with a baseline tariff closer to 15% this week, the probability of another rate cut this year – following the June cut – will likely diminish. That may give the CHF some support, and on this outcome we see scope for EUR/CHF to return to 0.93 near-term. However, confirmation of higher tariffs would likely lead to further upward pressure on EUR/CHF. The June high in the 0.9430 area may offer some resistance.

Remarkably some European officials are now even using the troubles nations such as Switzerland and India are facing to give a positive spin on the EU’s recent trade agreement. They argue that the US-EU deal may be better than deals some others have gotten or may get. Both sides are in the final stages of drafting a joint statement on their trade deal, which would essentially be a nonbinding rundown of what both sides have agreed to, according to those officials. One EU official also said that negotiators hope to have more news soon on the list of goods that will be exempted from the 15% tariff.

However, if the EU pushes too far, it may draw the ire of the US president, who already remarked that he will impose a 35% tariff on EU goods if the EU does not make good on its promise to invest an additional $600bn over Trump’s term. And note that the EU’s ‘commitment’ on that front is hard to steer, given that most of those investments should be done by the private sector (and if this implies factories moving from Europe to the US that would obviously weigh on European growth potential further down the line).

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