Wilhelm Trübner A Gorgon‘s head 1891
Senate
https://twitter.com/i/status/1856400926937846131
Bannon
Steve Bannon:
“Let me tell the Senate, and let me tell their staff…Even if you don’t agree to a PUBLIC vote, we’re gonna get it leaked…you are not going to be able to hide from this vote.”#WarRoom pic.twitter.com/y3jk1vCWe7— MAGA Kitty (@SaveUSAKitty) November 11, 2024
RNC Chair Lara Trump blasts Senate Republicans for hiding their vote for Majority Leader behind secret ballot:
"You should own it. You should be able to explain yourself… We want our leaders to be transparent. We want you to tell us what you're doing behind the scenes" pic.twitter.com/iLWNLJsjim
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) November 11, 2024
Republican Senators are reportedly feeling "bullied" because their true alliances to the DC machine were exposed
Senators Thune and Cornyn are a direct continuation of McConnell's power
Voting for them is a betrayal of voters' will.
We have the power. Call your Senators. pic.twitter.com/995WsMZSmo
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) November 11, 2024
Top investigative journalist Julie Kelly reveals how Mitch McConnell uses shadow "dumb puppet" Senators like Jon Thune and John Cornyn to preserve DC Machine:
"John Thune has got to be the dumbest guy in the U.S. Senate.” pic.twitter.com/BLnOaKsjC4
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) November 11, 2024
Bannon: We’re not going to let the Senate carry McConnell’s legacy to block President Trump. People have worked too hard, and Trump didn’t put it all on the line for you to stab him in the back. Those days are over. This is the accountability project. pic.twitter.com/hrTrIEivMK
— Bannon’s WarRoom (@Bannons_WarRoom) November 11, 2024
Sachs
Prof. Jeffrey Sachs : Netanyahu has done more damage to the United States than just about any person on this planet.
The Americans don't really understand the full price that we're paying to back Netanyahu's madness and cruelty. pic.twitter.com/IRX70j9AnD
— Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil (@ivan_8848) November 12, 2024
Kamala broke
.@KamalaHarris’s campaign spending scandal just got A LOT worse. Kamala ended up $20 million in debt and now we’re finding out that she was lying to donors to keep the cash flowing. Democrats were acting like sleazy salesmen and a billion dollars got washed away in a landslide.… pic.twitter.com/Iv6uLCYM4r
— Jesse Watters (@JesseBWatters) November 12, 2024
Voter ID
https://twitter.com/i/status/1855955650687246392
“They [the US establishment] need a charismatic, populist firebrand to boost recruitment and spearhead the rush to war..”
• Did US Deep State Allow Trump to Win? (Sp.)
On election day Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton suggested that the vote count might take days as in 2020, triggering election rigging suspicions among X users. However, Donald Trump was declared the winner the day after the election. Amid pre-election claims from conservative commentators that the US establishment would not allow Donald Trump to win, some American commentators have suggested that Trump voter enthusiasm was “too big to rig” while others speculated that the purported vote-rigging mechanisms in place had been stopped by the ruling elites. According to this argument, the elites reasoned that Trump could be maneuvered into pro-war positions and would be more successful in marshaling public support than Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and, as such, the deep state ‘allowed Trump to win.’
Some commentators presume that the US establishment sees Trump and his popularity as a convenient vehicle for new overseas campaigns as part of his efforts to “make America great again”. Patriots often think of greatness in terms of military dominance, they say. “They [the US establishment] need a charismatic, populist firebrand to boost recruitment and spearhead the rush to war. Harris can’t do that. Harris had trouble attracting even a hundred supporters to her rallies,” wrote US political commentator Mike Whitney, suggesting Iran could be the next target. The fact that Trump has appointed Elise Stefanik, a firebrand for Israel, as US ambassador to the UN lends credibility to Whitney’s suspicion. It would be easy to seduce Americans into a new military adventure if they are led by a popular leader, warned former Ronald Reagan official Dr. Paul Craig Roberts on his website.
“MAGA Americans are tired of losing wars,” wrote Dr. Roberts. “They want to win. The military/security complex will have Trump supporters in the streets waving the flag. They will wave the flag and expect Trump to win. It is all part of making America great again. It is a war recipe for disaster.” Transparency website OpenSecrets and financial tech startup Quiver Quantitative have shown that US defense contractors funded the Trump campaign generously. Similarly, during his first term, Trump supported what at the time was seen as the largest military budget in US history in 2018. In 2020, the US press called him one of the military-industrial complex’s “biggest boosters”. Likewise, the Big Three financial powers – Wall Street giants BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street – weren’t disturbed by Trump’s possible victory. Their post-election prognoses were largely positive, foreseeing a rise in the US market, growth for tech and crypto and the dollar strengthening under Trump.
“I’m tired of hearing this is the biggest election in your lifetime,” BlackRock CEO Larry Fink stated at an October 21 conference, as quoted by The Financial Times. “The reality is, over time it doesn’t matter.” He stressed that the world’s largest asset management firm “work[s] with both administrations and are having conversations with both candidates”, signaling that Trump will be fine for Wall Street. Moreover, there appeared to be one instance in which Trump surpassed his contender Harris in the eyes of BlackRock. The firm has been making headlines this year for its aggressive accumulation of crypto-currency assets. It launched its iShares Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) on January 11, whose trust quickly grew into the world’s largest fund. Trump appears to be on the same page as BlackRock concerning crypto-currency even though he was previously skeptical about it.
While on the campaign trail, Trump promised to turn the US into “the crypto capital of the world”. He also announced plans to change some areas of government about crypto and suggested creating a strategic Bitcoin stockpile. In contrast, his contender Harris sounded less enthusiastic about crypto and advocated a “regulatory framework” for it, much in the vein of Joe Biden’s financial oversight approach which placed certain limits on their use. It’s hardly surprising, then, that crypto-currencies, especially Bitcoin, shot up in value on the news that Trump won. Needless to say, BlackRock benefitted from the development. The deep state is entrenched and institutionalized and has many ways to maneuver Trump to its purpose or block his efforts altogether, according to Dr. Roberts. During Trump’s first term, dissent from the intelligence community, the military, the State Department and media disrupted his plans.
The American media is already working hand-in-glove with the ruling establishment to position Trump contrary to his intentions, both in his appointments and in foreign policy. Trump has had to deny that he is going to appoint former colleagues Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley to his administration in order to assure his supporters that the mistakes of his first term will not be repeated. However, other reports that Trump allies Elon Musk and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. are being pushed aside into advisory positions without executive authority lead some to wonder if the Trump administration is over before it begins. The deep state’s policy of revolving doors connects the government, intelligence agencies, academia, Wall Street and big industries. A majority of Republican members of Congress are themselves part of the establishment.
Meanwhile, Trump supporters, including General Michael Flynn and Infowars host Alex Jones, warn about a possible new attempt on the president-elect’s life. In some sense, one could say that the deep state is now holding a metaphorical gun to Trump’s head. Time will tell whether Trump will manage to outplay the establishment.
“Trump has already filled early positions on his team with get-it-done leaders who are more interested in execution than limelight.”
• Trump Builds No-Nonsense Team (JTN)
Donald Trump sent an unmistakable message with his first few personnel choices for his second term, dispatching to the halls of power players like Elise Stefanik, Tom Homan, Lee Zeldin and Stephen Miller who take a no-nonsense approach to their jobs and will focus on everyday Americans’ wants and needs rather than those of global elitists and Washington special interests. And if the president-elect’s new team can stay focused on making America affordable again by defeating inflation, making the country secure again by fixing the border and rounding up criminals and restoring common sense to public policies from energy to transgenderism, one of the nation’s top pollsters believes he can cement a lofty place in history. “Donald Trump now has the opportunity to become the most influential president since Ronald Reagan,” pollster Scott Rasmussen wrote Monday in a private report to clients of his Napolitan Institute.
“If over the next four years he and the Republican Congress can achieve the three main priorities established by the American people, he will have presided over a fundamental political realignment and paved the way for ongoing GOP success.” [..] Rasmussen cautioned, however, that Trump’s legacy of impact will be determined by how well he can align a Congress that often finds excuses not to act behind executing his agenda. “Trump’s lasting influence and the potential realignment are far from assured,” Rasmussen wrote. “They depend entirely upon whether or not the incoming administration can do what voters are hoping for: making the economy work, securing the border, and returning to common sense about gender identity. If they fail, voters will move on, and the Trump era will be just a blip in the nation’s history.”
The need for a GOP Congress to act in convincing ways in 2025 led one of Trump’s former advisers to urge the president-elect to intervene in Wednesday’s battle for Senate majority leader, which pits establishment Sens. John Thune and John Cornyn against Florida’s Rick Scott, who has increasingly become a MAGA favorite. “I would like to see President Trump full throatedly say who he wants,” former White House aide Seb Gorka told the Just the News, No Noise television show Monday night. “And I would like that to be Scott because otherwise the swamp has that magnetic, huge, sucking vacuum power, and they’ll do what they normally do. So a public, you know, pro Scott action from the president is what we’ve got to see. That’s my humble request, Mr. President.” No matter how the Senate leader race ends, Trump has already filled early positions on his team with get-it-done leaders who are more interested in execution than limelight.
“75% headcount reduction across the board in the federal bureaucracy, send them home packing, shut down agencies that shouldn’t exist..”
• Musk And Vivek Ramaswamy To Head Department Of Government Efficiency (ZH)
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have been selected by President-elect Donald Trump to head the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), where they will “slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies,” according to an official release from the Trump-Vance transition team, which called this “potentially, the “Manhattan Project” of our time.” According to the statement, “Their work will conclude no later than July 4, 2026” – the nation’s 250th anniversary. Musk previously predicted he could cut at least $2 trillion from the US federal budget, while Ramaswamy suggested firing federal workers based on their social security numbers. “Here’s how: if your [Social Security number] ends in an odd number, you’re fired,” he wrote on X.
In September, Ramaswamy told podcaster Lex Fridman: “Get in there on day one, say that anybody in the federal bureaucracy who is not elected, elected representatives obviously were elected by the people, but the people who are not elected, if your social security number ends in an odd number, you’re out, if it ends in an even number, you’re in. There’s a 50% cut right there. Of those who remain, if your social security number starts in an even number, you’re in and if it starts with an odd number, you’re out. Boom. That’s a 75% reduction done. Literally, stochastically, okay, one of the virtues of that, it’s a thought experiment, not a policy prescription, but one of the virtues of that thought experiment is that you don’t have a bunch of lawsuits you’re dealing with about gender discrimination or racial discrimination or political viewpoint discrimination.”
Vivek sat down with Lex Fridman, and he compared the federal government to former Japanese corporate culture. If you can’t fire an employee, the boss is actually the servant to the employee. Smart framing. The people through POTUS serve the bureaucrats when they should serve us. pic.twitter.com/vVdKeaRByN
— FischerKing (@FischerKing64) September 25, 2024
He also said: So the way I would do it, 75% headcount reduction across the board in the federal bureaucracy, send them home packing, shut down agencies that shouldn’t exist, rescind every unconstitutional regulation that Congress never passed. In a true self-governing democracy, it should be our elected representatives that make the laws and the rules not unelected bureaucrats. And that is the single greatest form of economic stimulus we could have in this country, but it is also the single most effective way to restore self-governance in our country as well. And it is the blueprint for, I think, how we save this country.[..] …most people who have run a company, especially larger companies know this, it’s 25% of the people who do 80 to 90% of the useful work, these government agencies are no different. And how many government workers do we have?
“This will send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in Government waste, which is a lot of people,” Musk said on Tuesday in a statement provided by the Trump transition team. Earlier in the day, Trump said the new government efficiency effort would develop a plan to eliminate “fraud and improper payments,” conducting a “complete financial and performance audit” of the federal government. Trump also said that the panel would partner with the White House’s Office of Management and Budget. In the last fiscal year, the federal government spent more than $6.75 trillion – of which more than $5.3 trillion was spent on Social Security, health care, defense and veterans’ benefits.
BREAKING: Donald Trump announces that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) together.
"Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration…"
"To dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess… pic.twitter.com/xNpQdd1qAv
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) November 13, 2024
“A weak appointment as Attorney General and the Trump administration is finished before it begins..”
• Can Trump Succeed? (Paul Craig Roberts)
I have been speaking with MAGA Americans and, as I suspected, there is little comprehension of the vast impediments to renewal. The swamp that Trump is to drain is entrenched and institutionalized, but Trump supporters think that with Trump elected and the Senate and House in Republican hands the job is done. Nothing could be further from the truth. The majority of Republicans in the Senate and House are RINOs, not Trump supporters. They are part of the establishment and comfortable in it. Mitch McConnell is forever as he is in the process of demonstrating. This Wednesday McConnell is holding the election of the Senate Majority Leader. His two candidates, chosen without any input from Trump, are John Thune and John Cornyn, neither being MAGAs. Senator Rick Scott, more likely to be helpful to Trump, is running against the establishment’s candidates.
If the establishment prevails, Trump’s strong appointments are likely to be blocked or to languish unconfirmed. The prospect of being blocked can discourage an appointee from accepting the appointment. The establishment can also hamstring Trump by rushing through many unfriendly judicial appointments. Trump Americans need to understand that the enemy has not folded its tents and left the field. Here is Trump himself warning: President-elect Donald Trump on Nov. 10 publicly mentioned one condition for the next leader of the Senate Republican Conference: He or she must clear the way for recess appointments for Trump administration officials. “Any Republican Senator seeking the coveted LEADERSHIP position in the United States Senate must agree to Recess Appointments (in the Senate!), without which we will not be able to get people confirmed in a timely manner,” Trump wrote on social media platform Truth Social on Nov. 10, addressing the upcoming Senate leadership vote.
He noted that such votes can take “two years or more,” which is “what they did four years ago, and we cannot let it happen again.” “We need positions filled IMMEDIATELY!” he wrote. Aside from the request, Trump also said that Republicans should not confirm any judges in the coming months before his inauguration “because the Democrats are looking to ram through their Judges as the Republicans fight over Leadership,” adding, “THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE.” I know from experience that there are many ways in which things can go wrong. [..] The euphoria that Trump and his supporters are experiencing can easily lead to deadly mistakes. Appointments that face confirmation challenges can be avoided in the interest of not having a defeat before the new administration is underway. Consequently, when the new administration is underway, it will lack the strength it needs to succeed.
The Biden regime can enter into Ukraine and Middle East agreements that lock-in the Trump administration. A weak appointment as Attorney General and the Trump administration is finished before it begins. In order to succeed, Trump will have to bring the power of the people against the establishment. This means he will have to fight. With the wrong appointments the fight will never begin. Compromise for the sake of unity will be the weapon of the establishment and the presstitutes. Trump said he was going to unify the country. How does one unify with enemies who tried to kill you and who are opposed to the Constitution of the United States? Perhaps Trump should have thought about this before he handed the unity weapon to his enemies. Trump and his supporters must not forget that Trump is leading an insurrection against the establishment.
“Hours after Donald Trump wins the most conclusive mandate in 40 years, Mitch McConnell engineers a coup against his agenda by calling early leadership elections in the senate. Two of the three candidates hate Trump and what he ran on.”
• Gorka Urges Trump To Intervene In Senate Leader Race, Endorse Rick Scott (JTN)
One of Donald Trump’s former first-term advisers urged the President-elect on Monday night to directly intervene in the race for the next Senate Majority Leader by endorsing Florida Sen. Rick Scott. Sebastian Gorka, who currently has a popular show on Salem Radio Network after serving as a deputy assistant to the president for security affairs in 2017, became the latest prominent conservative to throw his weight behind Scott’s bid. But Gorka went further by personally appeals for Trump to get involved in the race. “I would like to see President Trump full throatedly say who he wants,” Gorka told the Just the News, No Noise television show Monday night. “And I would like that to be Scott because otherwise the swamp has that magnetic, huge, sucking vacuum power, and they’ll do what they normally do. “So a public, you know, pro-Scott action from the president is what we got to see. That’s my humble request, Mr. President,” Gorka added.
The Senate GOP Leader’s job, which is being vacated at the end of the year by Sen. Mitch McConnell after two decades, is expected to be decided Wednesday by a secret ballot. The race pits establishment Sens. John Thune and John Cornyn against Scott, who has increasingly become a MAGA favorite and easily won re-election to his Florida seat last week. Leaked “whip” head counts of senators’ preferences have shown Thune in the lead, followed by Cornyn and Scott. That has kicked many Trump supporters into action in a bid to increase Scott’s chances. “I will be supporting Rick Scott for Senate Majority Leader,” Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., wrote on X. “The status quo of $2 Trillion annual deficits is unsustainable.” Billionaire Elon Musk joined the chorus over the weekend, endorsing Scott. Many others have followed suit.
“The people who just gave Donald Trump a sweeping mandate do not want Thune or Cornyn to lead the US Senate,” Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA and conservative grassroots leader who helped the Trump campaign win all seven swing states, wrote on X. “They want Rick Scott. It’s very clear.” Talk show host Tucker Carlson made a blisering attack on Thune and Cornyn. “What the hell is going on in the US Senate?” Carlson wrote on X. “Hours after Donald Trump wins the most conclusive mandate in 40 years, Mitch McConnell engineers a coup against his agenda by calling early leadership elections in the senate. Two of the three candidates hate Trump and what he ran on.
“One of them, John Cornyn, is an angry liberal whose politics are indistinguishable from Liz Cheney’s. The election is Wednesday, it’s by secret ballot, and it will determine whether or not the new administration succeeds. “Rick Scott of Florida is the only candidate who agrees with Donald Trump,” Carlson added. “Call your senator and demand a public endorsement of Rick Scott. Don’t let McConnell get away with it again.” Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a lifelong Democrat who turned Trump supporter this election, also expressed support for Scott, who is viewed as more conservative than Cornyn and Thune. “Without Rick Scott, the entire Trump reform agenda wobbly,” Kennedy wrote on X.
“Little Marco.”
• Marco Rubio Emerges As Finalist For Trump’s Secretary Of State (JTN)
Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, a hawk on China and Iraq, has emerged as the finalist to be President-elect Donald Trump’s Secretary of State in his second term and his nomination could be announced as early as Tuesday, according directly familiar with the deliberations The New York Times, CNN and other legacy news outlets first reported Monday night that Trump had settled on Rubio. Just the News independently confirmed Trump had settled on the Florida senator. Rubio, a Cuban-American, would be the first Latino to serve as the nation’s top diplomat if nominated and confimed by the Senate. He has large experience on the foreign stage and ran unsuccessfully against Trump during the 2016 primaries, where his future boss humorously named him “Little Marco.”
But Rubio was an ally as Trump began his remarkable comeback to win the presidency in 2024. Trump has been filling out his national security team, on Monday formally naming Rep. Elise Stefanik as UN ambassador and Rep. Mike Waltz of Florida as his national security adviser. Advisors told Just the News on Monday night that Trump also was closing in on naming Scott Bessent as his Treasury Secretary nominee. Bessent, a 62-year-old hedge fund manager who once worked with liberal philanthropist George Soros, emerged in recent years as a top Trump adviser on the economy.
Can you spell hornet’s nest?
Kash Patel was supposed to get this.
• Trump Names John Ratcliffe As CIA Director (ZH)
President-elect Donald Trump has announced he has selected John Ratcliffe as director of the CIA. “John Ratcliffe has always been a warrior for Truth and Honesty with the American Public,” Trump wrote in a message sent on the evening of Nov. 12, the latest in a flurry of Tuesday evening appointments. “I look forward to John being the first person ever to serve in both of our Nation’s highest Intelligence positions. He will be a fearless fighter for the Constitutional Rights of all Americans, while ensuring the Highest Levels of National Security, and PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH.” Ratcliffe, an attorney, served as director of national intelligence during the first Trump term. As Nathan Worcester reports, via The Epoch Times, Ratcliffe was previously a Republican congressman from Texas and an anti-terrorism and national security chief for Eastern Texas.
Originally from Illinois, Ratcliffe earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Notre Dame before obtaining a law degree from Southern Methodist University. He was later U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Texas and, from 2004 until 2012, mayor of Heath, Texas, a community in metro Dallas-Fort Worth. While in Congress, he was a member of the House Intelligence Committee and the House Judiciary Committee. During Trump’s first term, Ratcliffe made a name for himself as a staunch Trump loyalist. Trump dropped an early attempt to elevate Ratcliffe to the director of national intelligence position in 2019. But the following year, he renewed the effort, nominating him in May against the backdrop of the COVID-19 response.
Kennedy, Malhotra, Bhattacharya, Ladapo. Not a bad start.
• Florida Surgeon General Ladapo Ready To Serve Trump Admin (Attkisson)
The 2024 campaign is the first since the end of the COVID-19 emergency. And important figures who turned from mainstream to maverick as a result may play crucial roles in an effort to transform the medical establishment. One key player is Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo, who spoke with me a few weeks before the Nov. 5 election about what he’d like to do in the next Trump administration. “I actually would like to be secretary of HHS,” he said. “And the reason I would like to do that is because I’m in it for impact. Like, if I can’t have impact, I’m not in it.” Dr. Ladapo’s desire to have impact became clear during the pandemic. When Covid hit, he was a professor of medicine at the University of California, researching heart health. He became one of the mainstream figures to break away and speak out early against what they considered the disastrous shutdowns, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention mandates and government misinformation.
“The pandemic was really just something remarkable,” he said, “because … somehow you got so many people with good intentions to engage and really enroll in things that are obviously very clearly immoral and badly intended. And so that’s a remarkable thing.” Born in Nigeria, Ladapo earned his medical degree and a doctorate in health policy at Harvard University. In September 2021, he was tapped by Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis to be his state’s surgeon general. “I felt very clearly that my objective, my role, was to reset the tone,” he said. “And the tone was ‘fear, fear, fear, fear, fear.’ You know, ‘Must do this, must do this, must do this. Everyone get in line, everyone get in line, everyone get in line,’ And I just wanted to rip that all apart and remind people that people and individuals are what matter, and their will matters and their preferences matter and good health matters.”
That includes, he says, safety of the controversial Covid vaccines. In January, he said the Food and Drug Administration had failed to examine unique risks, and he concluded that “these vaccines are not appropriate for use in human beings.” Dr. Ladapo isn’t the only esteemed medical figure who bucked the establishment over Covid and is now allied with now President -elect Donald Trump. Others who’ve been speaking with Trump officials about taking a role in the new administration include Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. He was among the first to formally organize opposition to the shutdowns. He also co-authored The Great Barrington Declaration, a petition that raised concerns about establishment Covid response strategies and was signed by over 63,000 scientists and medical practitioners.
Also, Dr. Aseem Malhotra, a top British cardiologist. He became an activist on Covid vaccine safety after he says his father, also a cardiologist, died from the vaccine. Another person who stands to factor in, in a big way, is attorney and children’s health advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He joined the Trump campaign with a “Make America Healthy Again” mantra. He may take on a new role to oversee an end to corruption in public health agencies.
“.. the hush money trial was “tainted” by evidence that should be protected under presidential immunity…”
• Judge Merchan Delays Decision On Trump Guilty Verdict In Hush Money Case (JTN)
Judge Juan Merchan on Tuesday agreed to delay issuing a decision on whether to toss out President-elect Donald Trump’s guilty verdict on state charges of falsifying business records until Nov. 19. This pause in the proceedings to consider what effects Trump’s victory in the presidential election means for the case moving forward was requested by Trump’s legal team, which wants Merchan to dismiss the guilty verdict. Trump was found guilty in May after a six-week trial on 34 counts of falsifying business records during the 2016 presidential election to hide a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels so that she would stay quiet about an alleged sexual encounter. The former president pleaded not guilty to the charges. The chargers were brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg last year.
In July, after a landmark Supreme Court ruling outlining presidential immunity, Trump asked Judge Merchan to toss out the guilty verdict. The Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 opinion earlier that month that presidents have presidential immunity for some “official acts,” but not unofficial ones. The high court did not specified what would constitute official versus unofficial acts, leaving Merchan to parse the evidence cited in the case. Trump attorneys Todd Blanche and Emil Bove argued that the hush money trial was “tainted” by evidence that should be protected under presidential immunity.
“Because of the implications for the institution of the Presidency, the use of official-acts evidence was a structural error under the federal Constitution that tainted [the District Attorney’s] grand jury proceedings as well as the trial,” the lawyers wrote. The lawyers argued specifically that testimony from former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks and former Special Assistant to the President Madeleine Westerhout as well as other testimony about the inner workings of the executive branch should not have been admitted under the high court’s ruling. Merchan was originally set to rule in September, but delayed the decision to “avoid any appearance” that he was attempting to influence the election.
“Though the networks could try to manufacture another phony scandal, who would believe them?”
• MSNBC, CNN Ratings Collapse After Election While Fox News Flourishes (ZH)
Mainstream propaganda outlets MSNBC and CNN have seen an absolute collapse in viewership following the 2024 presidential election. According to Neilsen data, last Thursday’s total views on Fox News came in at 2.6 million – of which 375,000 were in the coveted 25-54 age demographic, Mediaite reports. In comparison, MSNBC only had 596,000/71,000 25-54 viewers and CNN brought in 419,000 / 91,000 25-54. Fox News was up some 60 percent year over year for the day, while MSNBC and CNN were down 23 and 40 percent – respectively. In prime time the news was even more bleak for CNN and MSNBC as they shed 30 percent and 54 percent of their viewers, respectively, compared to the same day last year.
MSNBC host Alex Wagner had her lowest-rated show ever in terms of total viewers, while Chris Hayes’s show brought in its worst numbers since May of 2016. On Friday, seven MSNBC shows recorded their lowest Friday ratings for the year. While Fox averaged 4.4M viewers Wed-Fri in prime time and 701,000 in that key demographic, MSNBC had just 808,000 total viewers for the same period (90k in demo), and CNN had 611,000 total average prime time viewers (159k in demo). No wonder CNN’s Chris Wallace is about to explore podcasting. Fox’s Elizabeth MacDonald breaks down the carnage at MSNBC by time slot between Oct. 30 and Nov. 8:
Morning Joe 1st hour – down 39.6%
Morning Joe 2d hour – down 36.9%
Andrea Mitchell – down 39.7%
Ari Melber – down 49.6%
Joy Reid’s Reidout – down 54.6%
All-in w Chris Hayes – down 47.2%
Alex Wagner Tonight- down 53.6%
Lawrence O’Donnell – down 60.6%
Stephanie Ruhle – down 67%Three weeks ago Axios, citing Gallup, pointed out that Americans’ trust in media has plummeted to a historic low… What’s interesting is that Democrats have the highest trust in mass media, yet their networks are ghost towns. As Outkick.com reports further; CNN and MSNBC’s futures are bleak. The two networks maintained relevancy during Trump’s first term by aggressively promoting the Russia hoax. Though the networks could try to manufacture another phony scandal, who would believe them? Trump’s decisive victory demonstrated that the left-wing cable news networks have lost their influence. CNN and MSNBC exhausted every resource at their disposal to stop Donald Trump from achieving victory, eventually stooping to a plot to depict him as the second coming of Adolf Hitler, the most ruthless dictator in modern world history. It didn’t work. The lies, the hysteria, and the besmirchment only made Trump more popular and sunk CNN and MSNBC deeper. Here is how race lady Joy Reid is handling the results:
Joy Reid will now prioritize “black interests” over America because she’s given up on all the whites and Latinos in the country. pic.twitter.com/LGzUi8A486
— Catch Up (@CatchUpFeed) November 11, 2024
“..the Ukrainian leader proposes inviting Ukraine to NATO, lifting restrictions on strikes deep into Russian territory, and deploying a “comprehensive non-nuclear deterrence package” in Ukraine.”
• Zelensky Tries to Woo Trump With Revised ‘Victory Plan’ (Sp.)
Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky showed his “victory plan” to Donald Trump back in September, with two clauses designed specifically to spark the US president-elect’s interest in potential resource-related deals, Financial Times reported on Tuesday, citing several European and Ukrainian sources. According to the newspaper, Ukraine is adjusting its “victory plan” for the future Trump administration, emphasizing potential business deals, access to raw materials and the deployment of troops in an attempt to secure his support. According to the sources, Ukraine’s allies in Europe and the US, including leading representatives of the Republican Party, gave advice on how best to formulate proposals that would stimulate close cooperation with Kiev, rather than stop critically important assistance to the country.
One of the two tailored clauses suggested replacing part of the US’s contingent in Europe with Ukrainian troops after the end of the conflict. The other, which was first developed by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham (listed in Russia as a terrorist and extremist), involves the sharing of Ukraine’s most important natural resources with Western partners. Zelensky unveiled his “victory plan” in mid-October, insisting that it could help end the conflict in Ukraine no later than 2025. The document includes five clauses and three secret addendums. In particular, the Ukrainian leader proposes inviting Ukraine to NATO, lifting restrictions on strikes deep into Russian territory, and deploying a “comprehensive non-nuclear deterrence package” in Ukraine.
Zelensky’s plan drew criticism in the EU and NATO for outlining in detail the multiple obligations of Ukraine’s Western allies but not assigning any to Kiev itself. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova slammed it as a set of incoherent slogans that pushed NATO into a direct conflict with Russia, while Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the real peace plan for Kiev would be to realize the futility of the Ukrainian policy. He said that Kiev should “wake up” and understand the reasons that led it to the conflict.
“Donald Trump has lots of different voices in his ears and there’s a front of the Republican Party, quite a lot of them actually, who take the wrong line on Ukraine..”
• UK Could Send Troops To Ukraine – Boris Johnson (RT)
The UK cannot let Ukraine suffer a defeat in its ongoing conflict with Russia, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told GB News in an interview published on Tuesday. London could go as far as sending in troops if Kiev “goes down,” he warned. According to Johnson, Russia’s success in Ukraine would spark a security crisis for the US and its allies on a multitude of fronts. “It’ll be the Baltic states. It’ll be in Georgia. You’ll see the impact of a Ukrainian defeat in the Pacific theater. You’ll see it in the South China Sea,” the politician said, without specifying what exactly could happen in those regions. He also described military and financial assistance to Kiev as a “sensible investment” and a “good” way to spend public funds, arguing that the UK would supposedly have to pay much more otherwise because “our collective security will be really degraded by a resurgent Russia threatening all sorts of parts of Europe.”
The former prime minister also pointed to the prospect of the US cutting aid to Kiev as a potential risk, claiming some people with “wrong” views on the issue were in president-elect Donald Trump’s inner circle. “Donald Trump has lots of different voices in his ears and there’s a front of the Republican Party, quite a lot of them actually, who take the wrong line on Ukraine,” he said. If aid to Ukraine is reduced and Kiev starts losing, London could be forced to deploy troops to the region, Johnson claimed. “We will then have to pay to send British troops to help defend Ukraine,” the politician stated.
Russia has repeatedly stated that it had no plans to attack NATO or any of its members. At the same time, Moscow has also warned on multiple occasions that by providing military aid to Kiev, the bloc increases the risk of a direct clash, specifying that it would treat the provision of long-range missiles for Ukrainian attacks deep inside Russian territory as a direct assault by the countries which had supplied the weapons. Earlier, Putin ordered changes to the nation’s nuclear doctrine that listed attacks by a non-nuclear state supported by a nuclear power as a reason for a nuclear response on Russia’s part, among other things. Last week, The Telegraph reported that the UK, together with France, could push for further escalation of the Ukraine conflict by attempting to convince Washington to allow Kiev strike targets deep inside Russia with Western weapons, including Storm Shadow/Scalp cruise missiles.
“First, the United States will refuse to export liberal democracy.”
• Trump Will Abandon Two Key Principles Of US Foreign Policy (Gevorg Mirzayan)
The return of Donald Trump to the White House portends significant changes in American foreign policy. Experts name at least two US foreign policy features that Trump will be forced to abandon. Why from them and who personally in the immediate circle of the US president will embody this new approach? A two–month period of political fortune–telling begins in the United States before Trump takes office. American experts and journalists are trying to figure out who will join the new administration of the President-elect. And in particular, who will lead his foreign policy – who, that is, will take the posts of Secretary of State, National Security Adviser, and head of the Pentagon. Various candidates have been named, including former Defense Secretary Mike Pompeo and U.S. representative to the United Nations Nikki Haley. However, Trump has made it clear: he will not rely massively on his ex-officials, even those who served under him during his first term.
And this has its own logic – after all, the classic Washington establishment is unlikely to fit into Donald Trump’s new foreign policy strategy. A strategy that will not comply with a number of principles of classical American diplomacy. First, the United States will refuse to export liberal democracy. “We have built our foreign policy on intimidation, moralizing and lecturing countries that seek to avoid cooperation with us. In contrast, China’s foreign policy is focused on building roads and bridges, as well as providing food for the poor. And I think we should follow a foreign policy based on respect… and the national interests of the United States,” U.S. Vice President–elect J.D. Vance said a year and a half ago when he criticized the appointment of the “moralizing Stephanie Sullivan” as the American ambassador to the African Union.
And Trump fully shares this approach. “The new Trump administration will try to implement a realistic foreign policy course and abandon the liberal hegemonic traditions that were characteristic of American foreign policy throughout the period after the end of the Cold War. They will try to make American policy more pragmatic and more successfully counter American rivals,” Dmitry Suslov, the Deputy Director of the Higher School of Economics Center for Integrated European and International Studies, explains to Vzglyad. That is, to China, Russia and their global projects (like the BRICS). This approach has actually been overdue for a long time – after all, moralizing no longer works. Not only because the United States has ceased to be a moral beacon, but also because many countries (including a number of American allies) have begun to pay increasing attention to their own sovereignty; and, accordingly, to resist the imposition of any values destructive to their societies from the outside.
Under Trump, moralizing is generally impossible. After all, it implies demonstrative loyalty in exchange for the material benefits provided by America – in particular, access to the American market. And Trump is not going to hand out economic carrots. “The new administration will pursue a more protectionist and self-seeking foreign policy line. We strive to ensure that investments go to the United States, and not from the United States to third world countries,” Dmitry Suslov explains. Following moralizing, another important principle of Western globalist diplomacy will be thrown into the trash: “whoever is not with us is against us.”
Unlike Russia, which professed the principle of “we work with those who are not against us” (allowing states to pursue a multi-vector policy), the West has rigidly forced Third World countries to make a choice between it and its opponents. For example, the West has forced Ukraine to cooperate with either the EU or Russia in 2013. And then it forced Ukraine to turn into an anti-Russian springboard within the framework of “who is with us”. Perhaps eleven years ago, this strategy was effective – then the collective West was strong and had a reputation as a player who should not be messed with. However, the situation has changed now. And just in recent years the strategy “who is not with us is against us” has produced at least five misfires.
With Turkey, which, while remaining in NATO, has continued to cooperate with the Russian Federation. With India, which the United States unsuccessfully tried to force to stop working with Iran and Russia (in particular, to buy Russian hydrocarbons). With Saudi Arabia, which is establishing relations with China and has even transferred oil trade with it to the yuan. Washington’s attempts to train the Saudi leadership only led to a humiliating hours-long wait for US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to have an audience with the head of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. With Hungary, whose Prime Minister Viktor Orban has refused to follow the pan-European policy of isolating Russia. He is betting on national interests – and as part of this bet, he is blocking Brussels’ initiatives on new sanctions, He even flies to Moscow. And also, with Georgia where the local leadership has defiantly refused to open a second front against Russia, participate in anti–Russian sanctions, or accept Western LGBT values.
“..Biden’s hardline policy toward Tehran ultimately harmed his major foreign policy initiative, of defeating Moscow..”
• What Rough Beast? (Juan Cole)
President Joe Biden has now joined the ranks of Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush as a president whose Middle East policy crashed and burned spectacularly. Unlike Carter, who was stymied by the Iranian hostage crisis, or Bush, who faced a popular Iraqi resistance movement, Biden’s woes weren’t inflicted by an enemy. Quite the opposite, it was this country’s putative partner, the Israeli government, that implicated the president in its still ongoing genocide in Gaza, as well as its disproportionate attacks on Lebanon and Iran, for which Biden steadfastly declined to impose the slightest penalties. Instead, he’s continued to arm the Israelis to the teeth. Israel’s total war on Palestinian civilians, in turn, significantly reduced enthusiasm for Biden among youth and minorities at home, helping usher him out of office. It also created electoral obstacles for Kamala Harris’s presidential bid.
By his insistence on impunity for the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden has left the Middle East in flames and the U.S. and the world distinctly in peril. During his first three years in office, his administration wielded the tools of diplomacy in the Middle East. Donald Trump’s sanctions against the Houthis in Yemen had imperiled the civilian population there by denying them humanitarian aid and gasoline to drive to the market for food. Biden lifted those sanctions and sponsored continued negotiations between those in power in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa and in the neighboring Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh. Only relatively small contingents of American troops remained in Syria and Iraq to help with the mopping-up operations against the so-called Islamic State terrorist organization.
Danger signals nonetheless soon began flashing bright red among friend and foe alike in the region, as Biden’s team quickly squandered an opportunity to restore the 2015 “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action,” or JCPOA, between the U.N. Security Council and the Iranian regime in Tehran, which Trump had so tellingly trashed. Between 2015 and 2019, that deal had successfully kept Iran’s civilian nuclear enrichment program purely civilian, closing off the four most plausible pathways to a nuclear weapon. In those years, the Iranians had, in fact, mothballed 80% of their nuclear program in return for sanctions relief. While the U.N. Security Council lifted economic sanctions on that country, Republicans in Congress refused to halt unilateral American sanctions, which applied to third parties as well. European investors had to jump through hoops to invest in Iran while avoiding Treasury Department fines. As a result, a disappointed Iranian leadership went unrewarded for its careful compliance with the JCPOA.
Then, in May 2018, Trump stabbed the Iranians in the back, withdrawing the U.S. from the JCPOA and slapping the most severe economic sanctions ever applied by one country to another in peacetime on Iran. It essentially added up to an invisible blockade of the Iranian economy, even interfering with ordinary commerce like that country’s oil sales. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasted of having convinced the gullible Trump to take such a step, which led Iran’s petroleum exports to plummet over the next three years. Trump even designated the Iranian National Bank a terrorist organization, again with potentially crippling consequences for the entire economy. In revenge, Iran went back to enriching uranium to high levels and building more centrifuges, though without actually producing weapons-grade material. To this day, its civilian nuclear program remains a form of “the Japan option,” an attempt at deterrence by making it clear that it does not want a bomb but that, if it feels sufficiently threatened, it can build a nuclear weapon relatively quickly.
As soon as Joe Biden defeated Trump in 2020, the centrist Iranian President Hassan Rouhani declared that the JCPOA could be restored by the two leaders virtually by fiat. And Biden’s foreign policy team initially appeared to consider negotiations to reinstate the treaty, only to ultimately retain Trump’s outrageous sanctions as “leverage,” demanding that Iran return to compliance with the JCPOA before the two sides could talk. Perhaps the Iranian public got the message that Biden was determined to be as hostile as Trump. Certainly, in the next round of voting in the summer of 2021, they swung behind hardliner Ebrahim Raisi. And despite occasional modest diplomatic forays since then, relations have been in a dumpster for the remainder of Biden’s term, with most of Trump’s “maximum pressure” sanctions still in place. And once again, as in the Trump years, the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu has lobbied Biden hard to cease all negotiations with Tehran.
Iran, which might have been drawn into the Western camp, has instead become a hostage to Beijing. Starting in 2019, China accepted smuggled Iranian petroleum at a substantial price discount. Then, when the Ukraine War broke out and Biden imposed maximum sanctions on the Russian Federation, Moscow and Tehran found themselves pushed ever closer. Now, the two countries plan to sign a “strategic partnership agreement,” while, in July 2023, Iran joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, cementing the alliances with both China and Russia into which it had been so vigorously pushed by Washington. Iran also became a definite asset for Russia in its Ukraine War, providing Vladimir Putin with crucial weaponry. In short, Biden’s hardline policy toward Tehran ultimately harmed his major foreign policy initiative, of defeating Moscow.
“What in the world is going on? Israel’s security problem, on its border, is 50 miles to the south. What’s an Israeli army doing here in Beirut?”
• A 1984 Conference Forged Israel’s Influence Over US Media (Klarenberg)
The story of how Western media was transformed into Israel’s doting, servile propaganda appendage is not only a fascinating and sordid hidden chronicle. It is a deeply educational lesson in how imperial power can easily subordinate supposed arbiters of truth to its will. Comprehending how we got to this point equips us with the tools to assess, identify, and deconstruct lies large and small – and effectively challenge and counter not only Israel’s falsehoods but the entire settler colonial endeavor.
On June 6, 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon. The effort was ostensibly intended to drive Palestinian Liberation Organization freedom fighters away from their positions on Israel’s northern border. But, as the IDF savagely pushed ever-deeper into the country, including Beirut, it became clear that ethnic cleansing, massacres, and land theft were – as in Palestine – the true goal. Throughout the Lebanese capital, news crews from major networks and reporters from the West’s biggest newspapers were waiting. Israel’s rapacious bloodlust and casual contempt for Arab lives had hitherto been, by and large, successfully concealed from the outside world. Suddenly, though, scenes of deliberate IDF airstrikes on residential housing blocks, Tel Aviv’s trigger-happy soldiers running amok in Beirut’s streets, and hospitals overflowing with civilians suffering from grave injuries, including chemical burns due to Israel’s use of phosphorus shells, were broadcast the world over, to nigh-universal outcry.
As veteran NBC news anchor John Chancellor contemporarily explained to Western viewers: “What in the world is going on? Israel’s security problem, on its border, is 50 miles to the south. What’s an Israeli army doing here in Beirut? The answer is we are now dealing with an imperial Israel, which is solving its problems in someone else’s country, world opinion be damned.” Global shock and repulsion at Israel’s conduct would only ratchet during the IDF’s resultant illegal military occupation of swaths of Lebanon. In September 1982, an Israel-backed armed Christian militia, Phalange, entered Sabra, a Beirut neighborhood home to many Palestinians displaced by the 1948 Nakba. Over a two-day span, they slaughtered up to 3,500 people while mutilating and raping countless others. Again, unfortunately for Tel Aviv, mainstream journalists were on hand to document these heinous crimes first-hand.
To say the least, Israel had an international PR disaster of historic proportions on its blood-soaked hands. The risk that further exposure of its genocidal nature might decisively and permanently shift global opinion in favor of the Palestinians and the Arab world more generally was significant. The attack on Lebanon had already spurred Western news outlets to critically reassess other illegal annexations and occupations in which Israel was and remains engaged. As ABC News reporter Richard Threlkeld commented at the time: “Israel was always that gallant little underdog democracy fighting for survival against all the odds. Now, the Israelis have annexed East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, settled down more or less permanently on the West Bank, and occupied close to half of Lebanon. In the interests of self-defense, that gallant little underdog, Israel, has suddenly started behaving like the neighborhood bully.”
So it was that in the summer of 1984, the American Jewish Congress – a major Zionist lobby organization – convened a conference in Jerusalem, Israel’s Public Image: Problems and Remedies. It was chaired by U.S. advertising supremo Carl Spielgovel, who a decade earlier provided pro bono advice to the Israeli government on strategies for publicly communicating why Tel Aviv refused to adhere to the terms of the Henry Kissinger-brokered 1973 Sinai Accords. Spielgovel later recalled: “It occurred to me then that the Israelis were doing a good job at training their military people, and they were doing a relatively good job at training their diplomatic corps. But they weren’t spending any time training information officers, people who could present Israel’s case to embassies and TV anchormen around the world. Over the years, I made this a personal cause celebre.”
The 1984 Jerusalem conference offered Spielgovel and a welter of Western advertising and public relations executives, media specialists, editors, journalists, and leaders of major Zionist advocacy groups an opportunity to achieve that malign objective. Together, they hammered out a dedicated strategy for ensuring the “crisis” caused by news reporting on the invasion of Lebanon two years earlier would never be repeated. Their antidote? Ceaseless, methodical, and wide-ranging “Hasbara” – Hebrew for propaganda – for “changing people’s minds [and] making them think differently.”
Roman precision
https://twitter.com/i/status/1856294347643199665
Feed fish
Further proof that no matter the animal, humans will pet it. pic.twitter.com/Ud757QcPiL
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) November 11, 2024
Tesla Berlin
NEWS: Five years ago today, Elon Musk announced @Tesla would build its European Gigafactory in the Berlin area.
Within less than 2 years, Europe's most modern car factory was built, commissioned and started production — something most people said was impossible. pic.twitter.com/SzKXrBJQJR
— ALEX (@ajtourville) November 12, 2024
Madre
Madre… pic.twitter.com/ftgLTJ2s6c
— La biblia de los animales. (@BibliaDLos) November 11, 2024
Tuck in horse
Tucking in your horse for the night pic.twitter.com/W0LCbM40Ji
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) November 12, 2024
SOS
What action did the female store clerk take when she noticed the girl's SOS sign …
This video may have been staged or not….it is a important and useful video. pic.twitter.com/oJmzakkga2
— The Red (@WomaninRedx) November 12, 2024
Dog
He is incredible man….knows a very good technique!pic.twitter.com/t1fcPxZ9h9
— Figen (@TheFigen_) November 12, 2024
2 points
With two different points of viewpic.twitter.com/UBD8nVrzpD
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) November 12, 2024
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