Remember: “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” ~ Mike Tyson
The exploitation of Michael Cohen toward the launch of Speaker Pelosi’s impeachment effort backfired bigly. Not enough people found Cohen credible; and because of the ridiculous way the entire staged performance was carried out by Democrats, and the their media allies, most people saw right through the politicization of it. The plan just failed.
Additionally, some politicians like Jim Jordan, Jody Hice and Mark Meadows started calling out the blatant construct behind Pelosi’s impeachment plan. HPSCI Chairman Adam Schiff sending his staff to New York four times to prep Michael Cohen before the hearings – was only made more ridiculous by Chairman Schiff trying to deny they coached Cohen. Schiff looks like a doofus. So today:
[Nancy Pelosi] “I’m not for impeachment. This is news. I’m going to give you some news right now because I haven’t said this to any press person before. But since you asked, and I’ve been thinking about this: Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country. And he’s just not worth it.” (link)
UPDATE: Jerry Nadler has also joined in (see below).
Chairman Adam Schiff:
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House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff tells me he agrees with Pelosi on impeachment: “If the evidence isn’t sufficient to win bipartisan support for this, putting the country through a failed impeachment isn’t a good idea.”
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Schiff added: “I think given how polarized the country is right now and given how the Republican members of Congress have prostrated themselves right now in front of the president, in the absence of very graphic evidence, it would be difficult to get the support of” the Senate
Just asked House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler about Pelosi’s impeachment comments, and he said he is in agreement. “She laid down a number of conditions – it has got to be bipartisan, the evidence has to be overwhelming – which is what I’ve been saying.”
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Nadler added: “I’ve stated my position: It has to be enough evidence that you think you’ll get substantial support from opposition voters.”
Schiff: “Failed impeachment is not a good idea … The evidence will have to be pretty overwhelming.”
Rep Brad Sherman, supporter of impeachment, to me on Pelosi’s Trump isn’t “worth it” comment: “You don’t impeach Trump for him; you impeach Trump for the Constitution.”
“the evidence would have to be pretty overwhelming” is a considerable change in position for HPSCI Chairman Adam Schiff who was previously open to using rumor, innuendo and supposition to launch investigations.
One of the hurdles the Democrats cannot overcome is the strength of the support for President Trump. Despite the 24/7/365 attacks from their media allies President Trump still has an approval rating of 50%. And approval of handling the economy over 56%.
Consider this recent analysis CTH completed comparing the current approval rating of G7 Leaders: Justin Trudeau, Canada (35%); Emmanuel Macron, France (28%); Angela Merkel, Germany (29%); Theresa May, U.K. (28%); Giuseppe Conte, Italy (67%); and Shinzo Abe, Japan (44%).
It is not coincidental the “globalists” (Trudeau, Macron, Merkel and May) are not supported. Meanwhile the “nationalists” (Trump, Conte and Abe) are very much supported.
I guess we can call this truth: stuff we’ll never see in the media.
Earlier this afternoon White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders and Acting OMB Director Russell Vought held a press conference to brief reporters on the president’s fiscal year 2020 budget and answer questions on current political events:
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[White House] FURTHERING OUR ECONOMIC PROSPERITY: President Donald J. Trump’s budget request will continue our economic resurgence while furthering his vision to reduce spending and invest in America.
The Trump Administration’s pro-growth policies have unleashed the American economy, creating millions of jobs and resulting in historically low unemployment.
However, the national debt – currently more than $22 trillion – remains a grave threat to our economic and societal prosperity.
This budget will address the national debt crisis while still investing in critical American priorities that will allow America to further excel in the future.
RESPONSIBLE BUDGETING: President Trump’s budget request promotes responsible Government spending by prioritizing effective programs and cutting waste.
The budget reduces nondefense programmatic spending by 5 percent below the 2019 cap level.
Proposes policies to shrink or eliminate Federal programs that fail to deliver desired outcomes for the American people.
Reduces spending by $2.7 trillion over 10 years, shrinking the deficit from nearly 5 percent of GDP in 2020 to under 1 percent of GDP in 2029.
Puts the Federal budget on a path to balance within 15 years.
Sticks to the current discretionary spending caps while also providing additional defense resources through investments in Overseas Contingency Operations and emergency funding.
Allows us to fund our national security needs while avoiding a costly “cap deal,” which would increase defense and nondefense spending.
INVESTMENT IN AMERICA: President Trump’s budget request reflects his commitment to defending our Nation, ending the opioid epidemic, and building a strong American workforce.
$32.5 billion for border security and immigration enforcement activities to help manage the immigration crisis on the United States southern border, including:
$8.6 billion for the border wall, funded by Department of Defense (DOD) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
$478 million to hire 1,750 additional Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) law enforcement officers.
$2.7 billion in funding for 54,000 ICE immigration detention beds.
$750 billion for national defense – including $718 billion for DOD to pursue the National Defense Strategy.
Priorities include: strategic competition with Russia and China, countering rogue regimes such as North Korea and Iran, defeating terrorist threats, and consolidating gains in Iraq and Afghanistan.
$80.2 billion to fund Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) medical care requirements in 2020.
Fully supports implementation of the historic VA MISSION Act to provide veterans greater choice on where they receive their healthcare, including at a private provider.
$330 million for the Department of Justice to aid State and local efforts to fight the opioid crisis.
The budget promotes quality education and job training, holds higher education institutions more accountable, and expands Pell Grants to high-quality short-term training programs.
The primary ‘spygate” architect appears on CBS with Margaret Brennan to share his reaction to the sentence of Paul Manafort for tax fraud. Andrew McCabe said he was ‘shocked’, ‘s.h.o.c.k.e.d‘, that Manafort was not given a life sentence.
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[Transcript] MARGARET BRENNAN: We’re back with former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe. He is the author of a new book, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump. Good to have you here.
ANDREW MCCABE (Former Acting FBI Director/The Threat): Thanks so much for having me.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I want to start you off on some of the news of the week.
ANDREW MCCABE: Okay.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was sentenced this week. He will also face sentencing in a DC court in the days to come. He was given forty-seven months, far less than what is the sentencing guideline of up to–
ANDREW MCCABE: That’s right.
MARGARET BRENNAN: –twenty-plus years? Is the length of time he will serve matching the crimes he’s being accused of?
ANDREW MCCABE: Well, I was really surprised by the sentence he was given. I think it’s an incredibly lenient sentence in light not just of the– of the offenses he was convicted for but the additional offenses that he has pled guilty to in DC and the offenses he’s acknowledged, essentially, in the sentencing process in Virginia, that he is res– responsible for. So like most people I was shocked by how lenient the sentence was.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So it sounds like you’re predicting that the DC court may add to those forty-seven months?
ANDREW MCCABE: Well, there’s no question he’s going to get additional time from DC. I don’t think it’s probably the– the job of the DC courts to rectify a mistake or– or something that was done in another jurisdiction. I’m sure that Judge Jackson will approach her sentence with just keeping our eye on the facts of that case but there’s no doubt he’ll get additional time from that process.
MARGARET BRENNAN: In your book The Threat you write about some of the President’s public comments about Paul Manafort in particular and you frame it in one passage as possible witness tampering. You say you fear a judge will be influenced by some of the po– the President’s comments. Did you have any sense that that’s what happened here with Judge Ellis?
ANDREW MCCABE: I don’t. I don’t. But the point that I try to make in the book is that it’s to try to highlight how incredibly irresponsible and, indeed, corrosive statements like that from the chief executive are on the process and on the public’s perception of the fairness and the effectiveness of the process. When the President engages in messaging like people can’t help but step back and ask themselves that question that you just asked, did that have an impact on the process or on the result in this case. We don’t know the answer to that but it introduces a level of doubt and insecurity into a system that we all need to depend on– depend upon to being fair and– and free.
MARGARET BRENNAN: The charges that Paul Manafort faced were in regard to financial crimes. Do you believe that he was a Russian asset?
ANDREW MCCABE: I don’t know the answer to that. I think that Mister Manafort’s extensive involvement with Ukrainian and Russian actors is highly suspicious. I think that that’s something that we’ll wait to see what the Mueller team opines on with their– with their final conclusion.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Because the President seized on a comment made by Judge Ellis who seemed to be just pointing out that the Russian potential links were not actually part of the trial–
ANDREW MCCABE: Right.
MARGARET BRENNAN: –that we have seen underway here. So you’re saying there the President’s comments were not actually accurate.
ANDREW MCCABE: Well, that– that shouldn’t be a surprise. I think that Judge Ellis was very careful to indicate that he was sentencing Mister Manafort for the conduct that was before him. And he– Mister Manafort was not charged in that case with being an agent for the government of Russia. So I think– I think Judge Ellis’s efforts to be careful and tailor his words are far from an exoneration of Mister Manafort on any other potential charges.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I want to ask you as well about Michael Cohen, the President’s longtime attorney and we played in the open some of the– the tapes showing the changing stories here in regard to–
ANDREW MCCABE: Right.
MARGARET BRENNAN: –whether there was discussion or not of a presidential pardon. Now it appears according to the President that it was discussed. As an investigator, what do you make of that?
ANDREW MCCABE: Very, very hard to sort through a basically he said– he said argument between two people who have very challenged credibility. At the end of the day, the strength of Michael Cohen’s testimony– potential testimony is derived not from what he’s telling us now but rather from whatever facts and corroborative evidence the prosecutors were able to glean from that treasure trove of documents and recordings and other things that we’ve heard so much about.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You’re saying, don’t take him at his word, take him by the evidence he presents.
ANDREW MCCABE: That’s right.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I– I want to ask you as well because, of course, the President constantly mentions the credibility that you have–
ANDREW MCCABE: Sure.
MARGARET BRENNAN: –and calls that into question, specifically, on the texts between Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, which is something the President often comments on. You were asked about this on CNN by Anderson Cooper and you said you had no recollection of the meeting that was referred to in one of the text exchange between those two individuals which mentioned an insurance policy in case Trump got elected. Do you know why you were personally mentioned in those texts?
ANDREW MCCABE: I don’t. Lisa Page, Pete Strzok, and I and many other members of that investigative team met in my office, in conference rooms around FBI headquarters all the time. Right? So it was a– it was a ve– intensive investigation that required a lot of attention and a lot of involvement. So I can’t sit here and tell you years later the circumstances of exactly that instance that they seem to be referring to in that text. I also wasn’t a participant in that text, so I can’t add too much more to your understanding of it. I know that Peter has described in his own congressional testimony what he was referring to and I take him at his word for that description.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Because the– the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Lindsey Graham, has been on this program, specifically, referred to those texts and said that it is proof that you along with Strzok and Page showed political bias and a political agenda. And that’s why he wants to call you before the committee to ask– to answer some questions. So one of the other texts there was a quote that said, “We need to open the case we’ve been waiting on now while Andy is acting.” You, while you were acting FBI director. Do you know what case this is? Why would it matter that you were in that acting role?
ANDREW MCCABE: Well, again, I– I can’t tell you what Lisa and Pete were referring to in their private texts. I think I’ve been very clear publicly about how the investigators felt about the work that we needed to do–
MARGARET BRENNAN: Mm-Hm.
ANDREW MCCABE: –in May of 2017. After Director Comey was fired, they made a recommendation to me that we open cases. I acted on that recommendation. I was feeling– I felt very strongly at that time that I needed to make those decisions quickly–
MARGARET BRENNAN: Mm-Hm.
ANDREW MCCABE: –because I anticipated I would not be in the acting role for very long and I didn’t know who would be coming in behind me or how they would handle the ongoing investigation that we thought was important to conclude.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Thank you very much–
ANDREW MCCABE: Sure.
MARGARET BRENNAN: –Mister McCabe.
We’ll be back in a moment for some Republican reaction.
National Security Adviser John Bolton appears with Maria Bartiromo to discuss recent reports that Kim Jong-un is moving toward more nuclear testing.
Obviously that discussion moves quickly into the influence of China and Chairman Xi Jinping.
The frustrating question no-one ever seems to ask is not “if” China controls the DPRK government, but rather “to what extent”?
It has become more obvious in the past few years that North Korea’s Chairman Kim Jong-un has much less control over officials and military leadership within his own government than previously thought.
Does Chairman Xi and Beijing structurally control everything around Kim? Is Kim a hostage; forced to ride a dragon he doesn’t control? I think the answer is yes.
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Once people start to realize that China controls North Korea as a proxy province, then the discussion can evolve toward the true nature of the challenge, and the way President Trump is precariously negotiating a hostage release while refusing to pay the ransom.
In the second part of the interview Ms. Bartiromo discusses the scale of the threat from China; military, economic and national security. Here’s where John Bolton becomes less valuable to President Trump, and oddly Bolton even seems to admit it.
NSA John Bolton can assist and advise President Trump on the best way to move troops, position logistics, and bomb the shit out of an geopolitical adversary. However, the concept of using trade, finance and economics, as a much more powerful national security tool, is outside Bolton’s skill-set.
As a direct consequence of Bolton’s lack of expertise in the use of economics to achieve national security objectives, in the Dance with The Dragon he becomes less influential; you can see it in his responses…. that stuff is just foreign to him.
Deep inside the geopolitical fight against China the most valuable Generals are corporate titans, captains of industry, apex predators and business ‘killers’ who know how to contracts to remove the flesh from a financial adversary and enjoy the challenge of doing it.
National Economic Council Chairman Larry Kudlow appears on Fox News Sunday to discuss economic policy, budgets and taxes. Since the discussion is the economy, Wallace quickly puts on his doomsday hat.
Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Victor Davis Hanson discusses his new book, “The Case for Trump,” live from the Hoover Institution’s office in Washington, D.C.
This is a fascinating lecture given by Victor Davis Hanson, a professor in Classics and Military History. I found this lecture to be incredibly insightful and gives a description of Western Civilization starting with the Greeks that I think everybody should be familiar with whether they want to support or critique the Western Tradition. Enjoy! If you enjoy this production, feel compelled, or appreciate my other videos, please support me on Patreon, or donate directly by PayPal or to my project fund by way of my website. Any contribution would be greatly appreciated. Thank you 🙏
Donald Trump ran for president largely on a promise to reduce the trade deficit, specifically with China. But the new report shows a 10-year record high trade deficit. Why doesn’t President Trump admit that trade deficits are largely a fiction, and it’s his booming economy that makes a “really really great, huge one” possible? Bill Whittle Now is a production of the Members at http://BillWhittle.com
NBC News penned an article about the unorthodox release of DOJ official Bruce Ohr’s transcript. Within the article NBC notes current DOJ officials responded to the congressional request for release by sending them an approved “redacted version”:
(NBC) […] The transcripts of interviews with Ohr and other witnesses before the joint committee investigation were sent to the Justice Department last December to be vetted for public release at the request of the outgoing GOP chairmen, Bob Goodlatte from the Judiciary Committee and Trey Gowdy from the Oversight Committee.
The Justice Department returned the Ohr transcript to the committee this week with redactions. But Collins said he was releasing a copy without those edits because the changes sought by the department did not relate to classified information or sensitive personal data. By releasing the transcript on the House floor, Collins would be protected under what is known as the Speech and Debate Clause from any reprimand. (read more)
Having read the Ohr transcript (also provided below), there didn’t appear to be any national security interests, sources or methods, beyond investigative embarrassment for DOJ and FBI, simply because of the sham of it all.
What parts did the current DOJ redact, and what would have been their justification? What did the current DOJ attempt to hide? …Maybe Representative Doug Collins could provide the redacted version, so we can find out. Curiouser, and curiouser…
This morning, I requested the link https://dougcollins.house.gov/ohr be placed in the record so the American people can review the transcript of Bruce Ohr’s interview.
♦First, Nancy Pelosi specifically set up the House committee rules to: (1) drop any committee notification for the minority; (2) drop any need for committee participation by the minority. What this first point highlights is the scale of pre-planning from 2018 (last year), for this impeachment scheme.
♦Second, the planning of Cohen as the first step in an impeachment process was entirely predictable. [SEE HERE] On a positive note, Jim Jordan appears to know the scheme.
I have created this site to help people have fun in the kitchen. I write about enjoying life both in and out of my kitchen. Life is short! Make the most of it and enjoy!
This is a library of News Events not reported by the Main Stream Media documenting & connecting the dots on How the Obama Marxist Liberal agenda is destroying America
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