First Details Surface – Fox News Owner Rupert Murdoch Paid Ron DeSantis at Least $1.25 Million For Election Effort Book Deal


Posted originally on the CTH on July 1, 2023 | Sundance 

The details are starting to surface, but something is still sketchy.  According to required state financial disclosure filings, Ron DeSantis is reporting an additional $1.25 million in income from Rupert Murdoch’s publishing house Harper Collins.

However, given the fact that Megyn Kelly was paid $10 million by Rupert Murdoch for her 2016 effort to remove Donald Trump, the $1.25 million being reported by Ron DeSantis doesn’t fit. [Unless there are going to be a series of payments.] Additionally, according to the Florida financial disclosure rules, this income report is for last year, 2022. “the financial disclosure is due July 1 of each year for the preceding calendar year.” (link)

(Via Politico) – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis took home $1.25 million from his publisher for writing a book he released in February, according to a state financial disclosure filed Friday.

The book money is the first additional stream of income beyond his government salary that DeSantis has reported since he won election to lead Florida in 2018. (read more)

By now everyone is well aware how books are used as laundering and payment mechanisms for politicians, media influencers and people in positions of power. The entire book deal dynamic in politics is just another way to skirt campaign finance and laws on limits for contributions.

Given the nature of the stakes at play in combination with the scale of money being thrown around by billionaires, Wall Street and multinational corporations, I highly doubt that Ron DeSantis was only paid $1.25 million for his book. It just doesn’t pass the commonsense sniff test.

We will not know until July 1, 2024, how much income Ron DeSantis received in 2023.

All the suspicious cats remain, well, suspicious….

Six-Minute-Abs: Desperate for Traction DeSantis Vows to Start Shooting Mexicans at the Border


Posted originally on the CTH on June 29, 2023 | Sundance 

President Trump famously threatened Mexican President AMLO with 25 to 50% immediate border tariffs within a week if Mexico didn’t help secure the southern U.S. border. The result was 18,000 activated Mexican National Guards to enforce the “Remain in Mexico” policy, while the border wall was under construction.

The southern border crisis has created an opportunity for a desperate Ron DeSantis to skip the seven-minute-ab border security competition and go straight to the six-minute-ab pitch, whereby a President DeSantis will start shooting Mexicans who attempt to smuggle across the border.  Appearing in a heavily coordinated and scripted interview with Rupert Murdoch’s debate moderator, Martha MacCallum, DeSantis announced his “use of deadly force” policy just before traveling to the Yale Club in New York for fundraising.

A gleeful Martha MacCallum was more than willing to support the 6-minute-ab pitch, narrating an introduction of “the governor“, yes, she used that exact descriptive for the guy who is on the monitor.  The transparent construct of the interview was made even funnier by the desperate transparency of it.  WATCH:

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To Cement Grassroots Bona Fides DeSantis Attends Yale Club Fundraiser


Posted originally on the CTH on June 28, 2023 | Sundance 

Ron DeSantis is heading to the Big Apple to reunite with his Yale alumni and accept a boost in capital for his ailing campaign.

The $6,600/plate appearance is the latest effort by Team DeSantis to connect to the ordinary working class voter he needs to try and regain footing after his effort has fallen short of the Sea Island billionaires’ expectations.

The Yale Club appearance tomorrow is more friendly terrain for the Florida governor, a return to those who are at the root of his political career.

(Via NBC) – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is coming to New York for a private presidential campaign fundraiser that’s set to be hosted by at least four Wall Street executives, including one with past ties to a firm backed by liberal billionaire George Soros, a frequent target of DeSantis and other Republicans.

The event is scheduled to take place June 29 at the swanky Yale Club, according to a copy of an invitation seen by CNBC. It will be one of DeSantis’ first fundraisers in the Big Apple since he officially launched his campaign for president last month.

The hosts listed on the DeSantis invitation include Paul Ardire, a partner at GoldenTree Asset Management, along with Christian Michalik, Rob Michalik and Corwynne Carruthers, who are all leaders at Kinderhook Industries, a private equity firm with at least $5 billion in assets under management, according to data from PitchBook. GoldenTree has at least $50 billion in assets under management, PitchBook says. (read more)

Despite the combined efforts of Rupert Murdoch, Ken Griffin, Elon Musk, the Sea Island billionaires, hedge fund managers, Wall Street groups and a host of multinational corporations, recent polling shows the richest fundraiser in the GOP field has failed to gain traction with the lesser controllable voters.

Additionally, the purchased right-side media, Daily Wire, Salem Inc. and a strong coalition of “conservative influencers” are producing diminishing returns.  The former Team Cruz crowd is pushing hard, but it becomes a complicated dynamic of influence when they must pretend they are not aligned with Jeb and the Bush clan.

Alas, a brief reprieve from the pretending with a Yale Club booster confab is sure to recharge the spirit of DeSantis, as he enters a full-throated albeit transparently desperate, phase of his six-minute-abs campaign.

DeSantis is now promising to use tariffs against Mexico, break up the federal government and attack the FBI and DOJ in a last-ditch effort to convince the suspicious crowd that his association with the spooks from Skull and Bones is only an optical illusion.  The tiaras of Casey are contingent upon selling a carefully branded narrative, that thus far has not captured enough of the sheeple masses for success.

Meeting with the Yale Club is sure to boost morale.

[…] DeSantis and the event’s co-hosts have ties to the fundraiser’s venue due to them all being Yale graduates. Yale Club members can only be those who received a degree from the Ivy League school or “full-time graduate students who are completing a degree-granting program at Yale, and full-time professors,” according to their website.

DeSantis graduated from Yale in 2001. DeSantis said in a book released just before he ran for president that he viewed earning a degree from Yale was the equivalent of being a political “scarlet letter” in a Republican primary. (more)

Asked Again Twice About Ukraine, Ron DeSantis Ducks, Weaves and Avoids The Question – At a Certain Point the Neocon Cannot Hide


Posted originally on the CTH on June 22, 2023 | Sundance 

CTH has said for a year the Achilles heel Ron DeSantis carries, the weak spot that outlines his neocon nature, becomes extremely visible on the subject of Ukraine.

Twice previously, DeSantis has tried to walk the tightrope and navigate his lies surrounding the Ukraine war. Each time he outlines something that leans toward Ukraine needing to concede to Russia and NATO needing to stop meddling on Russia borders, he immediately walks back his comments.  DeSantis is stuck on the issue of Ukraine because DeSantis cannot be honest about his position on Ukraine.

Today in South Carolina [Forbes got the state wrong in the title] the issue of Ukraine surfaced in a public Q&A (video below), and both times DeSantis ducked, obfuscated, distracted and refused to answer the question.  The second person asked more directly, “What are you going to do about the war in Ukraine?”, because DeSantis never answered the first questioner. WATCH [prompted to 01:08:23]

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Only Donald Trump has the solution to the Ukraine war.  (1) Stop NATO, namely U.S. created, from provoking nonsense antagonisms on Russia’s border; and (2) Force Zelenskyy to the negotiation table of reality.  The Ukraine war stops immediately the day after the 2024 election, if Trump wins.

However, Ron DeSantis cannot take that attitude or foreign policy approach.  DeSantis must maintain the approved Republican pro-war narrative as outlined by Democrats, Republicans, UniParty, and the DC political leadership writ large.  The DC position on the Ukraine war is all about money; DeSantis must maintain that policy.

Everyone Is Going to Think I’m Nuts, But I’m Not Nuts…


Posted originally on the CTH on June 22, 2023 | Sundance 

This is a totally freehand writing for CTH readers, not written with any intent other than our conversation.

For a long time, I have written various forms of an article and deleted it – crumpled it up and thrown it away… because it’s just so hard to write about.

However, an insightful comment by Dutchman today has just pushed me to write it.  Unlike most writing, this is no notes, few citations, just thoughts.

You guys are having a discussion about Larry Hogan’s commentary to CBS News.

In the middle of the discussion, someone writes the familiar and common sentiment about Ron DeSantis, a reasonably decent and good governor, doing his big politically stupid run for 2024.   Dutchman responds:

DUTCHMAN – […] “IMHO, you and others who express your sentiment, don’t REALLY “get it”;

The WHOLE reason DeSantis was the most popular Governor throughout his first term, was a CON;
EVERY action he took as Governor, was a political calculation planned and intended to create the image of “the free State of Florida” and RDS as “Trump lite”.

It wasn’t that “he changed” after getting the $millions, he was ALWAYS terrible at connecting with voters, a terrible campaigner, and he was NEVER MAGA; it was all a “PR.” or advertising campaign to create a totally artificial, and unconnected from reality IMAGE.

And it is that IMAGE that people “fell in love with” and it never existed.

This is important because if people don’t understand this, recognize they were “conned” and understand HOW they were manipulated, they will keep falling for it, every time.

However, once you understand your own vulnerability to being manipulated, accept you need to CHANGE how you view things, THEN you won’t need someone else (like Sundance) to point it out to you, again.

5 minutes of OBJECTIVELY looking at a candidate, will be about 4 1/2 minutes more than necessary, to spot the phonies.” (link)

Perhaps, let me take you back to the spring of 2022 in my thoughts, and show you just how subtle, weird and difficult it is to really understand the nature of this political world we are in right now.  A political world where nothing is what it seems.  I have been inside this research rabbit hole for over a decade, so bear with me.

[SIDEBAR – Y’all know how I dug, and dug, and dug, and dug into the GOPe after the 2012 election to figure out just how the powers that be are able to construct the illusion of choice.  From that research I was able to drill down into the raw material, the stuff they actually did, that outlined the concept of the “splitter strategy”, which I then held in my notes until 2015 while watching for the replay.  The work back in 2012 helped me to foresee what would happen in 2016, and like clockwork, it rolled out exactly as expected.]

In the winter of 2021 and spring of 2022, every Spidey-sense within me said Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is setting himself up for a 2024 run for the GOP nomination. Every data point that I was looking at aligned with it happening, and that included the part that no one was paying attention to in 2016.

BACKGROUND – In 2015, when Marco Rubio filed to run as a candidate for the 2016 GOP nomination for President, then little known one-term congressman Ron DeSantis filed to run for Rubio’s Senate seat.  WTF?  DeSantis’ only real qualification to run for that Florida Senate seat was a big donor assist from the Club 4 Growth.  CfG supported DeSantis in Congress, big time – and CfG was the financial mechanism behind DeSantis in 2016 to take the Rubio Senate seat if he won the GOP nomination.  Just keep this in mind.

In the latter part of 2021 and early 2022, all of the obscure stuff in the background of DeSantis looked like he was being positioned to run in 2024.

It was January 6, 2022, when someone (Pushaw) organized that influencer confab at the governor’s office.  However, and this is where my own intellectual bias comes into play at times defeating my cynicism, I kept telling myself there’s no way DeSantis could be so stupid.

No way, regardless of all the mechanics that were paving this path, that Ron DeSantis would be stupid enough to run against a likely reelection bid by Donald Trump.  For over six months, I kept putting the human factor at the forefront and forcing myself to ignore all of the datapoints that indicated DeSantis was being managed to do this.  After all, c’mon, he’s not a stupid guy….  I kept telling myself.

Even in July 2022, every time the thought crossed my mind to revisit this issue, I kept making the mistake of denying the data, denying what was visible, simply because the alternative to stupidity was almost unthinkable in scale.

♦The Alternative – If DeSantis wasn’t stupid, and if DeSantis was indeed going to run for 2024, the alternative to stupidity was a long-term plan… A plan that would have been laid out essentially before his first campaign in 2018…. A plan that times to the exact same moments when Paul Ryan and the other GOPe member of congress announced they were not seeking midterm reelection for Trump’s midterm race…. A plan that coincided with buckets of former CIA operatives running for congress in both the Democrat and Republican races in that 2018 midterm….  A plan that had Eric Holder working in California to trigger the first ballot harvesting test run….

If DeSantis wasn’t stupid, the alternative was that he was part of a larger operation being carried out by the real power brokers who control U.S. elections, the billionaire donors and control agents, ie. “The Big Club.”

Now, stay with me… Under this scenario, if DeSantis wasn’t stupid, then he was always a controlled ‘political’ operative waiting to be triggered and have his career boosted by the Big Club crowd who funded him.  Names like Bush, Clinton, Cheney, McCain, Romney and McConnell all circle this controlled orbit.

The odd, and seemingly impossible, DeSantis registration to run for the Florida Senate seat of Marco Rubio aligned with this almost conspiratorial outlook; except it wasn’t based on conspiracy theory, it was just a big datapoint, sitting there – staring back.

All of the data aligned that way, but I kept telling myself to ignore it – because at a certain point human reason has to be placed into the analysis, and there’s no way that DeSantis would be so stupid.  Surely, regardless of how much he was controlled and influenced, he -the person- would have the ability to say, “No, this is just silly.”

That said, throughout the spring and summer of 2022, 80% of the objective data, and even more when considered in historic context, indicated DeSantis was going to enter the 2024 election at the behest of the people who control the Republican National Committee, the Republican Governors Association and the various political fundraising committees in both the House and Senate along with PAC’s and Superpacs.

In essence, if DeSantis was indeed planning a 2024 White House run, then all of the datapoints reconciled.   If he wasn’t going to run, then there was just a lot of coincidental questions that didn’t make sense in the activity.

When faced with that scenario, you apply the scientific method and try to prove the opposite of the thesis.

Could I prove: DeSantis was *not* going to run and was *not* under the control of the Big Club (Sea Island et al)?  The answer was no.

Now it’s July 2022.  The headlines were all about Donald Trump and the conflicts with the NARA over documents and presidential records.  Something was coming.

I told myself to put away all of the DeSantis questions until that moment with Trump was triggered; then wait and see how he responds.

If DeSantis is abhorred by the outcome of the DOJ/FBI targeting of Florida resident Trump, then he likely was not part of the plan to use him.  However, if DeSantis was not abhorred by whatever was being cooked up, well, that would tell a big story.

On August 8th, 2022, when the FBI raided the home of Donald Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis sent out one short twitter comment from his “personal” page and then went fully silent and invisible.

Despite his extremely high Florida visibility, literally almost every single day of the year holding press conferences and media events, DeSantis went fully into a bunker after the raid, and for five days was completely silent and missing from the public. There was no opportunity to question DeSantis about his feelings on the raid.

Instead, the people managing the governor broadcast two pre-recorded video messages about innocuous subjects and never made a public appearance.

Simultaneously, the people around the governor restructured a newly branded national campaign, and launched a national tour outside the State of Florida immediately after the five days in the bunker.   These tours are planned long in advance, so someone knew something.

Mid-August 2022, the national tour, the book, the media use, the change in tone and personality, the new branding message, the people visited for fundraising, all of it…  carefully scripted, long planned and being executed on cue.   All prior polling showed a double-digit lead in Florida.  Democrats had pulled out of financing; the Democrat Governors Association didn’t put in a dime to support Charlie Crist, and yet DeSantis was banging a big tin cup raking in tens-of-millions.

Immediately, I said that’s it… that’s enough.  The evidence is overwhelming… It’s August 2022, and its crystal-clear; DeSantis is running for 2024, and I was confident outlining every step in the customary sequence that would take place including the timing of his announcement to May 2023.  It was all obvious.

But back to the scenario…. Back to the discussion y’all are having…. Back to my original thoughts in 2021….

….If DeSantis isn’t stupid, that means?

It means exactly what Dutchman has just said.  “This is important because if people don’t understand this, recognize they were “conned” and understand HOW they were manipulated, they will keep falling for it, every time.

It means Ron DeSantis was a Big Club operation put into play in 2018.

Start there, review the timeline, review the events and everything makes sense.  Republicans are very good at creating the illusion of choice.  They are doing it again, only this time they are failing.

Larry Hogan is Big Mad, Says Ron DeSantis Running “One of Worst Campaigns” Ever


Posted originally on the CTH on June 22, 2023 | Sundance 

Former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan is big mad at all the billionaires that are pouring money into Ron DeSantis and not providing enough money for the other guys, like himself, who isn’t even a candidate.

Hogan hates Donald Trump and finds himself bitter and angry that political income (general political grifting) has become much harder now. The billionaires are all searching for someone, anyone who can defeat Trump and his insufferable America-First agenda. Hogan jumps up and down shouting look at me, over here, I’m acceptable; but the billionaires are just not giving him any attention. It is tough to be Larry Hogan right now.

In this video Hogan blasts Ron DeSantis campaign and says it’s likely the end of the DeSantis effort. WATCH (prompted):

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2024


Posted originally on the CTH on June 20, 2023 | Sundance 

We are inside every facility, every institution, every meeting, every moment of their existence – and we notice everything. We are there when they do not expect, and we melt away before they notice our appearance. We see what they hide, we hear what they whisper, we decipher their codes, and we understand the complexity they create in their effort to conceal.

Quit worrying!

BOOM! Ron DeSantis Privately Tells Corporate Donors He Is Against U.S Tariffs on Chinese Goods


Posted originally on the CTH on June 20, 2023 | Sundance 

This is the big one.  The Economic Policy is the distinct and singular policy at the core of Make America Great Again.  The MAGA coalition is centered around the principles of America First economics, and Ron DeSantis has just admitted he does not support them.

CTH has long warned about Ron DeSantis’ economic policy being driven by the donors who fund him.  When he was in congress, DeSantis voted in support of Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) for President Obama, and DeSantis voted in support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement (TPP).

These are the trade policies supported by the Club for Growth who was congressman DeSantis’ biggest funder.  The Club for Growth also held the pre-announcement donor fundraiser in February of this year in support of DeSantis ’24.

The Wall Street billionaire, hedge fund, multinational corporate alliance, that assembles at Sea Island and funds Ron DeSantis, are fully against America First trade and economic policies.  DeSantis has just made an admission of his alignment with that corporate “globalist” outlook to a private confab of donors in California.

The DeSantis campaign is in full panic and retreat mode now that his establishment position is exposed.  The statements during the secret meeting were leaked.

[CALIFORNIA] […] The Republican snuck in and out of the Coalinga landmark undetected by the public nor the media, by design. He flew in and out of the nearby Coalinga airport, ushered to the back loading docks by unmarked Fresno County Sheriff’s vehicles.

The Central Valley lunch stop for 60 donors — paying $3,300 — was in between a breakfast event in Sacramento, and an evening in southern California.  The only indication that something special was going on was a “private event” sign. Most of the questions for the security guard related to the location of the restrooms.

[…] John Harris, the rancher and entrepreneur, hosted the DeSantis event at his eponymous resort, along with Fresno developer Richard F. Spencer.  Harris was unable to attend, but Spencer did grant a rare media interview with GV Wire.

[…]  The Florida governor also talked about global supply chain problems and China, and “how to make life better for the people here in the United States,” Maher said.  Others reported that DeSantis said Trump’s tariffs were “not effective.” (read more

More about the donor event is HERE – “Around 50 people joined DeSantis for lunch at Harris Ranch in Coalinga, which was hosted by Harris Farms Chairman John Harris and Richard Spencer, the owner of Fresno-based Harris Construction.” (link)

In addition, while in California, DeSantis also went to another Big Club fundraiser. “Governor of Florida Ron DeSantis’s Silicon Valley Peninsula fundraiser was hosted by John Hamilton, a real estate investor who has donated tens of thousands to RINOs and former presidential hopefuls Mitt Romney and John McCain.” (more)

Ron DeSantis aligning against the core values of America First economics is a HUGE warning flare.  We have discussed this issue on these pages and in every platform we can reach for a long time.  The DeSantis team is trying desperately to recover from sunlight upon their donor influence, but they cannot refute the words of their candidate in support of those donor priorities.

Keep in mind also that Donald Trump recently announced the sweeping “Economic Agenda 47“, which includes baseline tariffs against all imported goods.

♦UNIVERSAL BASELINE TARIFFS: President Trump has announced a plan to replace the Biden system of punishing domestic producers and rewarding outsourcers with a new system that rewards domestic production while taxing foreign companies.

Rather than raising taxes on American producers, President Trump will impose tariffs on FOREIGN producers through a system of universal baseline tariffs on most imported goods.  Higher tariffs will increase incrementally if other countries manipulate their currency or otherwise engage in unfair trading practices. (link)

Candidate Ron DeSantis now stands in opposition to this approach, and the current tariffs against imported Chinese goods which have been exceptionally effective.  So effective, even the Biden administration has admitted their value.

As long as Donald J. Trump singularly represents the only counterforce against this UniParty globalist construct, he will continue to be targeted by the system of financial controllers who fund the political system.  For the sake of brevity, this alignment of multinational corporate and financial economic interests is called the “Big Club.”

As part of the strategic political effort, the Republican wing of the Big Club needs to carve up the supporters of Donald Trump into smaller, easier to target, pieces.  This is where the value of the culture war, what is now considered as ‘wokeism’, plays into the strategy of those who seek to control political outcomes and remove the threat that Trump represents to their financial interests.

In many ways, this is why we are seeing prominent Republican officeholders pushing the culture war as a tool for their own political advancement.  The same Big Club members who are directly fighting against the America-First economic agenda, are the same Big Club members who are funding the Republican politicians to push the culture war.

The corporations, billionaires and multinationals who are funding the Republican candidates do not have any vested interest in the culture war. For them the social issues are a tool, technique or insurance policy to guarantee security of the interest that does matter – their financial status.

There are trillions at stake, literally trillions.  Additionally, decades of their prior investment interests are contingent upon the ‘service driven economy’ being maintained.

Dollars drive the U.S. global trade and financial exchanges.  The multinationals, both corporations and banks, have pre-deployed investments all around the globe.  However, many of those investments are entirely contingent upon the retention of the U.S. economic system they pre-established before the investment was made.  President Donald J. Trump represents the threat to that entire financial system.

Once you understand this, then a great deal of the more nuanced and granular U.S. political moves, almost all of which are funded by the corporations and billionaires who are attached to the global investment process, begin to make sense.

Every non-Trump candidate, funded to create the opposition to America First, is part of this process to use anti-wokeism as a strategy.

With this level of money at stake, do not be surprised when you look at how much is being spent to construct the system that guarantees the continuation of globalism. The money spent in funding the Republican candidates to advance the distracting cultural war pales in comparison to the amount of money at risk in the 2024 election outcome.

We know it works, because we have the results to cite.

It was the Fourth Quarter of 2019…..

Right before the pandemic would hit a few months later, despite two years of doomsayer predictions from Wall Street’s professional punditry, all of them said Trump’s 2017 steel and aluminum tariffs on China, Canada and the EU would create massive inflation – it just wasn’t happening!

Overall, year-over-year inflation was hovering around 1.7 percent [Table-A BLS]; yup, that was our inflation rate.  The rate in the latter half of 2019 was firmed up with less month-over-month fluctuation, and the rate basically remained consistent.   [See Below]  The U.S. economy was on a smooth glide path, strong, stable, and Main Street was growing with MAGAnomics at work.

A couple of important points.  First, unleashing the energy sector to drive down overall costs to consumers and industry outputs was a key part of President Trump’s America First MAGAnomic initiative.  Lower energy prices help the worker economy, middle class and average American more than any other sector.

Which brings us to the second important point.  Notice how food prices had very low year-over-year inflation, 0.5 percent.  That is a combination of two key issues: low energy costs, and the fracturing of Big Ag’s hold on the farm production and the export dynamic:

(BLS) […] The index for food at home declined for the third month in a row, falling 0.2 percent. The index for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs decreased 0.7 percent in August as the index for eggs fell 2.6 percent. The index for fruits and vegetables, which rose in July, fell 0.5 percent in August; the index for fresh fruits declined 1.4 percent, but the index for fresh vegetables rose 0.4 percent. The index for cereals and bakery products fell 0.3 percent in August after rising 0.3 percent in July. (link)

For the previous twenty years, food prices had been increasingly controlled by Big Ag, and not by normal supply and demand.   The commodity market became a ‘controlled market’. U.S. food outputs (farm production) was controlled and exported to keep the U.S. consumer paying optimal prices.

President Trump’s trade reset was disrupting this process.  As farm products were less exported, the cost of the food in our supermarket became reconnected to a ‘more normal’ supply and demand cycle.  Food prices dropped, and our pantry costs were lowered.

The Commerce Dept. then announced that retail sales climbed by 0.4 percent in August 2019, twice as high as the 0.2 percent analysts had predicted. The result highlighted retail sales strength of more than 4 percent year-over-year.   These excellent results came on the heels of blowout data in July, when households boosted purchases of cars and clothing.

The better-than-expected number stemmed largely from a 1.8 percent jump in spending vehicles. Online sales, meanwhile, also continued to climb, rising 1.6 percent. That’s similar to July 2019, when Amazon held its two-day blowout Prime Day sale. (link)

Despite the efforts to remove and impeach President Trump, it did not look like middle class America was overly concerned about the noise coming from the pundits.   Likely that’s because blue collar wages were higher, Main Street inflation was lower, and overall consumer confidence was strong.  Yes, MAGAnomics was working.

Additionally, remember all those MSM hours and newspaper column inches where the professional financial pundits were claiming Trump’s tariffs were going to cause massive increases in prices of consumer goods?

Well, exactly the opposite happened [BLS report] Import prices were continuing to drop:

[Table 1 – BLS report link]

This was a really interesting dynamic that no one in the professional punditry would dare explain.

Donald Trump’s tariffs were targeted to specific sectors of imported products.  [Steel, Aluminum, and a host of smaller sectors etc.]  However, when the EU and China responded by devaluing their currency, that approach hit all products imported, not just the tariff goods.

Because the EU and China were driving up the value of the dollar, everything we were importing became cheaper.   Not just imports from Europe and China, but actually imports from everywhere.   All imports were entering the U.S. at substantially lower prices.

This meant when we imported products, we were also importing deflation.

This price result is exactly the opposite of what the economic experts and Wall Street pundits predicted back in 2017 and 2018 when they were pushing the rapid price increase narrative.

Because all the export dependent economies were reacting with such urgency to retain their access to the U.S. market, aggregate import prices were actually lower than they were when the Trump tariffs began:

[…]  Prices for imports from China edged down 0.1 percent in August following decreases of 0.2 percent in both July and June. Import prices from China have not advanced on a monthly basis since ticking up 0.1 percent in May 2018. The price index for imports from China fell 1.6 percent for the year ended in August.

[…]  Import prices from the European Union fell 0.2 percent in August and 0.3 percent over the past 12 months.

[Page #4 – BLS Report, pdf] – BLS press release.

So yes, we know President Trump can save Social Security and Medicare by expanding the economy with his America First economic policy.  We do not need to guess if it is possible or listen to pundits theorize about his approach being some random ‘catch phrase’ disconnected from reality.  Yes folks, we have the receipts.

This was MAGAnomics at work, and this is entirely what created the middle class MAGA coalition.  No other Republican candidate has this economic policy in their outlook, because all other candidates are purchased by the Wall Street multinationals.

America First MAGAnomics is unique to President Trump, because he is the only one independent enough to implement them.

That’s just the reality of the situation.  They hate him for it… 

Ron DeSantis Compares Himself to a Disciple of Jesus Christ


Posted originally on the CTH on June 16, 2023 | Sundance 

Yeah, he really did that. Folks, I’m not sharing this to be snarky about Ron DeSantis per se’, this isn’t actually his messaging. It’s worth looking at this through the prism of who is operating the management, branding and communication effort. This level of ridiculous religious pandering is stunningly identical to Ted Cruz in the early 2016 GOP nomination.

The DeSantis campaign knows they need to target evangelical and faith-based voters. Put a group of people who are not actually centered on the principles of faith in charge of a political campaign, tell them they need to appeal to faith-based voters, and this is exactly what you get.

The DeSantis campaign organizes what should be an interview with friendly allies in the Christian Broadcasting Network. [Full Interview Here]  CBN’s David Brody then interviews Ron DeSantis asking him what historic figures he would associate himself with. DeSantis’s answer is so far beyond pandering cringe, it makes you seriously wonder who constructed this messaging for him [likely, Jeff Roe]. WATCH:

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Grandma’s rules apply to me providing any further commentary on the issue, but wow – just wow.

That campaign must be under so much external pressure from the GOPe donors, it’s unreal to watch.

Kari Lake Asks Florida Palm Beach Audience “Who Supports Ron DeSantis?” – The Response is Apropos of Current Florida Sentiment


Posted originally on the CTH on June 16, 2023 | Sundance 

During a recent event in Florida of approximately 1,000 audience members, Kari Lake asked the crowd if anyone supports Ron DeSantis?  The response from the audience is reflective of the typical Floridian response now that DeSantis has shown his political ambitions and dispatched Florida voters.  WATCH:

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PALM BEACH, FL – […] At one point in her remarks to about 1,000 people who attended the event, Lake named each of the Republican candidates challenging Trump, who was indicted a second time last week.

When Lake mentioned Gov. Ron DeSantis, three people put up their hands but brought them down quickly amid a cascade of boos.  The good news for DeSantis, however, is that former Vice President Mike Pence drew an even louder chorus of disapproving cat calls. (more)

The audience reaction is reflective of a much wider view held by most Florida GOP voters.  The backlash is two-fold.  One part of it is driven by the stunning increase in cost of living for the working-class and folks on fixed incomes.  The second part is driven by people who just feel conned by the entire DeSantis operation.  All the DeSantis ‘influencers’ are working desperately to hide the reality on the ground.