United States Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer was interviewed by Fox News host Laura Ingraham ahead of his important participation in the Asia trip.

Within the interview Ambassador Lighthizer shows his wolverine attitude toward the ongoing trade deals and his role within the larger geopolitical strategy of the Trump Doctrine.  There’s solid, affirming and unwavering economic insight within this interview.

Interestingly Lighthizer mentions the national security aspects inherent within the administration’s economic trade strategy. He details how his role, within the larger policy, is to focus intensely on achieving the best ‘America-First‘ trade deal possible. “Killers”.

Secretary Wilbur Ross (commerce), Secretary Steven Mnuchin (treasury), Secretary Rex Tillerson (state) and Secretary James Mattis (defense) then collate the outcome and ultimately President Trump makes the final decision.  Working in concert, together they map how to use the leverage within the Lighthizer’s deals to achieve national security objectives.

President Trump has weighed in on the shocking admission by former interim DNC Chair Donna Brazile about the Clinton Campaign controlling the DNC throughout the 2015 and 2016 Democrat primary election.

Twitter Link

Shortly before 7:00pm EST the personal Twitter account of President Donald Trump was removed by an employee of the company.  Twitter says “human error”:

(LINK)

This is somewhat surreptitious timing as CTH has been compiling some exclusive data for a later research article about internet and social media control agents.

Shorthand preview is the “Vast Russian Conspiracy” narrative is directly related to Google’s ideological efforts, in collaboration with like-minded allies, to retain monopolistic and ideological control over the business side of the internet through e-commerce, revenue controls, and financial exploitation.  ie. “Internet Racketeering”.

Robert Mercer the multi-billionaire hedge fund co-chief of Renaissance Technologies; owner of Breitbart media; previous backer of Ted Cruz and currently reformed supporter of President Trump is making significant moves.

The overarching direction of the repositioning appears to be common sense. The end result, at least from a 30,000 ft level, positions Mercer toward the pragmatic MAGA Trump movement (CTH perspective) and politely distanced from the gnats and Bannon Bros.

Mr. Mercer sent a letter to his hedge fund principles (investors and pension advisers) notifying them of his stepping down from Renaissance Tech, including the board of directors, though he will remain deeply involved in the research and analytics side of the operation.

Additionally, Mercer appears to have caught-on to the general direction where the gnat swarm was/is headed and is now distancing himself from the nuttery side of right-minded political engagement.  Mercer is shifting controlling ownership of Breitbart media to his two daughters.  This is good news for team common sense and bad news for the hungry gnats.

In a very rare statement attributed directly to Mr. Mercer, he explains his perspectives on Steve Bannon and how despite the general agreement on intent, the methods and approach by Bannon is not always in alignment with Mercer’s own outlooks on politics.

No doubt there are a multitude of CTH readers who will identify with the sentiments contained within the statement from Mr. Mercer.  Indeed, as CTH has oft repeated: if you hang around a one-legged man long enough, sooner or later you’re gonna start limping.

There are a myriad of very important ideological battles being waged upon a large and encompassing ideological geography.  A candidate riding to the voting booth on a horse might sell well to a particular viewer/voter, but in the larger picture it does nothing to draw in the man or woman who hits the alarm clock at 5:15am prior to working for the next and necessary paycheck.

Good moves here by Mr. Robert Mercer, and from a perspective of intellectual honesty, CTH offers appreciation toward any influence agent of such established caliber who puts reasonable logic at the forefront of purposeful planning.

… And here we go.  Toldyaso.  Right on cue…  Elizabeth “Liawatha” Warren outlines to Jake Tapper, the #1 goal of current DNC Chairman Tom Perez is to bring back the Bernie Sanders supporters ahead of the 2018 elections.

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Of course the part Senator Elizabeth Warren leaves out is that she knew the DNC was under the direction and control of the Hillary Clinton campaign back in 2015, Hillary told her, and that’s why Warren never put her name in the candidacy hat. Duh.  Oh, and like none of the-deep-in-the-weeds political reporters knew this?  Ohhkay. Sure. Whatevs.

Unfortunately the Bernie crowd is just gullible enough to buy this re-branding strategy. And of course, in an effort to retain their opinion of Teh One, none of the progressives will admit to themselves that President Obama most certainly knew of the plan.

FULL OUTLINE HERE

On the positive side, considering the timing, the Democrats are conceding to lose all remaining special elections in 2017 due to deflated voter enthusiasm.  However, that’s a short price to pay for the larger re-branding strategy.

Twitter admits during 2016 election Trump used platform half as much as Clinton but had twice as much success.  Additionally, Twitter legal counsel admits to hiding up to 48% of negative Clinton twitter content (hashtag tweets surrounding DNC and Podesta emails), yet suppressed nothing negative about candidate Donald Trump…

During testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sean J. Edgett Acting General Counsel for Twitter, Inc. delivered a 20 page opening statement (full pdf below).  Within the statement attorney Edgett shared the protocol for Twitter hiding hashtags they deemed troubling in the lead-up to the 2016 election.

The volume of activity on our system is enormous: Our users generate thousands of Tweets per second, hundreds of thousands of Tweets per minute, hundreds of millions of Tweets per day. ~ Sean J Edgett, Twitter General Counsel

However, amid all the examples cited, Twitter did not “hide” any material that was negative toward candidate Donald Trump.  In every example cited Twitter only took action to hide user content that was negative toward candidate Hillary Clinton.  A remarkable ‘coincidence‘.

[Page #6 of Testimony ] Before the election, we also detected and took action on activity relating to hashtags that have since been reported as manifestations of efforts to interfere with the 2016 election. For example, our automated spam detection systems helped mitigate the impact of automated Tweets promoting the #PodestaEmails hashtag, which originated with Wikileaks’ publication of thousands of emails from the Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s Gmail account.

The core of the hashtag was propagated by Wikileaks, whose account sent out a series of 118 original Tweets containing variants on the hashtag #PodestaEmails referencing the daily installments of the emails released on the Wikileaks website.

In the two months preceding the election, around 57,000 users posted approximately 426,000 unique Tweets containing variations of the #PodestaEmails hashtag. Approximately one quarter (25%) of those Tweets received internal tags from our automation detection systems that hid them from searches.

As described in greater detail below, our systems detected and hid just under half (48%) of the Tweets relating to variants of another notable hashtag, #DNCLeak, which concerned the disclosure of leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee. (pdf link)

Additionally, according to the Twitter analysis (Page #11) their review found a negligible amount of overall activity (within the Hashtags they forcibly hid from view) came from any account with “potential” linkage to Russia:

“Slightly under 4% of Tweets containing #PodestaEmails came from accounts with potential links to Russia. […] With respect to #DNCLeak, approximately 23,000 users posted around 140,000 unique Tweets with that hashtag in the relevant period. Of those Tweets, roughly 2% were from potentially Russian-linked accounts.”

…which begs the question.  This analysis was, by their own admission, “in retrospect”, meaning after the fact.  There’s no way they could identify the user affiliation as it was happening.  So why did they “hide” the trending hashtag?

Further, and in relationship to that question, if slightly under 4% of tweets containing #PodestaEmails came from concerning accounts, then why take the action to hide 25% of total user content including that hashtag?  Similarly, if “roughly 2%” of #DNCLeak use was from concerning users, then why did they hide 48% of the trending hashtag content?

See the problem?

Essentially Twitter legal counsel is admitting here, through twisted analytic hindsight obfuscation, they censor Twitter based on their internal opinion of the content within trending hashtags.

Hilariously, the page #11 testimony also shows that Hillary Clinton used Twitter twice as much as Donald Trump – yet had half as much engagement (re-tweets).

Our data showed that, during the relevant time period, a total of 1,625 @HillaryClinton Tweets were Retweeted approximately 8.3 million times.

The 851 Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account during this period were Retweeted more than 11 million times.

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https://www.scribd.com/embeds/363258194/content?start_page=1&view_mode=&access_key=key-2HFd4vNj7NpML2e4rFh2

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The U.S. Conference Board is an economic think tank in partnership with Nielsen surveys which provides predictive economic analysis based on consumer and economic surveys within the larger U.S. economy.  The latest monthly report from the board shows a stratospheric level of consumer confidence, 125.9 the highest level since 2000.

Accordingly, “consumers were even more optimistic in October than economists polled by Reuters expected.”  The media and economic teams who thrill at the possibility of being able to talk-down the U.S. economy are apoplectic…

(Reuters) U.S. consumer confidence jumped to a near 17-year high in October, with households upbeat about the labor market and business conditions, which could underpin consumer spending and boost the economy in the final three months of the year.

The economy’s prospects were further bolstered by other reports on Tuesday showing an acceleration in wage growth in the third quarter and sustained increases in house prices in August.  (read more)

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The only ‘unexpected‘ part is actually the speed of Trump’s MAGAnomics taking hold within the larger Main Street economy; specifically regarding wage increases.   CTH forecast the American labor market seeing the year-over-year comparative wage rate increases around 3 to 5% happening in the second full year of applied MAGAnomic policy. However, there are signs the blue and white collar wage growth is six to eight months ahead of schedule.

American wages and salaries, which account for 70 percent of U.S. employment costs, rose 0.7% in quarter three (July-Sept).  Those same wage rates increased 0.5% in the second quarter (April – June).   This means the year-over-year comparisons for wages and salaries are now trending up 2.5 percent in the 12 months through September (’16 -vs- ’17) after gaining 2.3 percent in the Q2 comparison through June.

With inflation on highly-consumable products, food, fuel, energy holding steady at near zero, the increases in wages mean actual disposable income increases.  This lowered cost of living dynamic is allowing growth in consumer spending for the middle class.

Trump’s MAGAnomics is now entering a phase of self-fulfillment.  Drive down energy prices;… which keep costs down for high consumables;… while simultaneously increasing  overall middle America economic development;… which drives up wages; ….which facilitates the American worker’s ability to spend;… which drives GDP growth.

If President Trump’s economic policies can keep the momentum (note, tax help from congress would be nice), then after approximately two more quarters of this level of GDP growth the economic engine will be running on auto pilot; and once again the common sense free market Main Street (transactional) economy will be operational.

On the housing front you’ll note another dynamic at play which is directly related to growth in the Blue-Collar economy.  Remember, the housing sector is directly related to the regions of the U.S. with the largest expansion of economic growth.  A third report on Tuesday showed the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller composite home price index of 20 U.S. metropolitan areas rose 5.9 percent in August from a year ago after increasing 5.8 percent in July.

In the aggregate housing prices are being driven by a limited number of properties available for sale in the areas of the U.S. with the strongest economic growth.

Record-breaking increases in consumer confidence, combined with rising wages and strong house prices should keep consumer spending very strong for the rest of the year.

Yes, Mr. President, we will be saying “Merry Christmas” again…