In the latest Michigan Poll [DATA HERE] candidate Not Sure Yet is closing in on candidate Ron DeSantis for first place loser.

[SOURCE]

According to numerous sources in the region, team Undecided has been blasting DeSantis for weeks.  Meanwhile, with Not Sure Yet surging, the Super PAC supporting I Don’t Know is rumored to be gearing up for a major push.

It’s anyone’s guess because the Michigan primary is a long way off, but a neck and neck four-way race between Not Sure, Undecided, DeSantis and I Don’t Know, could make things really interesting.  Keep watching…. and don’t forget, Maybe is the dark horse.

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I was reviewing a Wall Street Journal article about the Sinai border between Egypt and Gaza and various Western opinion about Egypt’s unwillingness to allow Palestinian refugees to cross the heavily controlled border.

For those who do not know the deep background, the Western media context looks troublesome {GO DEEP}. However, I rise in defense of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, because we have tracked and discussed the issues for a long time. Egypt is in a very difficult position right now, and with Obama/Biden in the White House – the challenge is made even worse. First the WSJ framing of the issue:

TEL AVIV— A diplomatic effort to evacuate U.S. citizens from Gaza faltered after Egyptian officials said they would only allow foreigners to cross the border if aid could pass in the opposite direction.

Egypt’s refusal on Saturday, confirmed by three officials and in an announcement on state television, thwarted the latest U.S. push to evacuate any of the 500 or more Americans in Gaza wishing to leave through the enclave’s southern border with Egypt.

Israel—which has sealed off Gaza’s northern border with a ground invasion by Israeli forces believed imminent—said Saturday that it would give a few hours of safe passage for people in northern Gaza to move southward. A doctor in Gaza said corpses were piling up in the main hospital’s morgue and under rubble from Israeli airstrikes launched in response to Hamas militants’ lightning strike into Israel last Saturday.

[…] Egypt is apprehensive about the prospect of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees being displaced into Egypt, or of getting drawn deeper into the conflict. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, an ardent enemy of Hamas, has also warned that a mass displacement from the enclave could mean an end to the aspirations of a Palestinian state.

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This guy is beyond shameless.  After coordinating an appeasement policy toward Iran that included the return of $6 billion in sanctioned money, the current occupant of the Secretary of State’s office, Anthony Blinken, says the administration is unsure of the Hamas motive attacking Israel.  This might sound like a crazy thing to say, until you realize it is a necessary pretending game in order to maintain the policy for preferring a two-state solution.

If Blinken or Biden were to admit that Hamas has a fundamental purpose to kill the people of Israel, they would have to admit there’s no possibility of the Palestinians and Israeli’s cohabitating the same landscape; thus, their ‘two-state’ solution would be moot.  So, they must maintain the flawed premise and pretend not to know the motivations of Hamas.  It really is a shameless exhibition in ideology, as advanced. WATCH:

[Transcript] – MARGARET BRENNAN: We now go to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who joins us from the State Department here in Washington. Good to have you with us. Mr. Secretary, I know you have been working–

SECRETARY OF STATE ANTONY BLINKEN: Thanks Margaret.

MARGARET BRENNAN:  Straight through on this. Can you answer the question yet of whether the Hamas assault is over? Are there more attacks to come?

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According to multiple DC media sources, a quiet effort is underway by members of the professionally republican mindset to kick Matt Gaetz out of the House Republican caucus.  However, the advocates worry they will be primaried by voters in their district, as the population of Republican voters supports Gaetz.  It is a duplicitous dynamic.

Meanwhile, Kevin McCarthy has told his Republican conference that despite prior statements, he will not attempt to become the House Speaker again and will instead retire to his home district in California.

No one is quite sure what comes next; what is clear is that Gaetz has channeled the frustration of the Republican/MAGA base into an actionable result.  This should not come as a surprise to the GOPe, although many of the cloistered clan continue pretending not to understand the dynamic at play.

Allow me to provide some simple clarity.

♦ In 2009 72% of the country, and an even larger percentage of the Republican voters, did not want Obamacare.  The govt takeover of healthcare was along purely ideological grounds.  For the 2010 midterm election, the professional Republican apparatus campaigned on this single issue – repeal Obamacare.  The voters destroyed the Democrats and flipped 67 seats to Republican control.  The professional Republicans wanted the House, frustrated American voters gave it to them.

The Republicans did nothing.

♦ In 2012, the professional Republicans campaigned on retaining the House and asked to begin a process of taking down the Democrat control of the Senate. Remember, it was a 60/40 Senate when the Obamacare boondoggle was begun.  Keep the House, help us take Senate seats, and we will repeal Obamacare and balance the budget.  That was the call of the 2012 professional Republicans.  The voters delivered.  The GOPe kept the house, took 6 seats in the Senate and introduced a wave of fresh Republican blood.

The Republicans did nothing.

♦ In the 2014 midterm election, the professional Republicans campaigned on retaining the House and now flipping the Senate with more GOP seats.  Keep the House, give us the Senate majority, and we will repeal Obamacare and deliver a balanced budget.  The voters again delivered.  Beginning in January 2015, the Republicans controlled the House and the Senate majorities for Obama’s last two years.

The Republicans did nothing.

Worse still, even with professional Republican control of both chambers of congress, President Obama never had to use his veto pen.

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REPOST BY REQUEST (with addendum) – As the geography narrows before us, it is important to remember the stakes and avoid the distractions.  As a consequence, the baseline must be reaffirmed. It is critical to understand that both the DNC and RNC are private corporations with no affiliation to government.

It is a difficult shift in thinking, but the party system in U.S. politics revolves around two distinct private corporations, two clubs that feed from the same corporate trough and position for influence and affluence within a political dynamic they control.

The priority for both clubs, Republican and Democrat, is NOT politically or culturally ideological.

In the modern era, the corporate priority first begins with a battle over who controls each corporation.

As long as there is no challenge, the clubs operate without issue.  However, when there is a battle for control of the corporation, a battle that will ultimately determine the financial outcome, the internal battle becomes the priority.

2024 is going to be the election season when we see this corporate battle explode inside in the Republican group.  Decades of entrenched power are at stake, and there has been four years of counter positioning and backroom discussion leading up to this moment.

As a consequence, and I know this might sound odd to many people – but winning and/or losing elections becomes a secondary issue.  The people who control the RNC as a private corporation are not focused on winning elections. The RNC corporation is focused on retaining mission control.

The RNC want to give the illusion of support for MAGA conservatism because the illusion of choice requires a base voter.  However, every move they make on an operational level is exactly in line with their previous outlook toward cocktail-class corporate republicanism.  The MAGA base of support cannot trust this corporate group and we must not be blind or unguarded about the Machiavellian schemes they construct.

Donald Trump is not a problem for the Republican Party; Donald Trump is our response to the problem within the Republican Party.

When you hear the billionaire donor influence group saying the two priorities for control of the Republican Club involve, (1) eliminating populism in the ranks; and (2) realigning with multinational corporate objectives (vis a vis Wall Street), what they are publicly expressing is their RNC corporate need to get rid of the America First economic agenda; to get rid of the MAGA influence.

How has this historically surfaced?

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Despite numerous pontifications to the contrary, it was always going to go this way.  Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and the idiot professional political consultants, those enlisted by the Sea Island billionaires to try and drag the $100 bill on a fishing string through the MAGA hood, were only going to fool the first few blocks of voters; after that, people wised up.

The problems are too numerous to encapsulate; however, for the sake of brevity they can be argued into three main buckets: (1) Fakery – the entire dishonest operation from the outset (triggered visibly in ’21, originating back in ’18) was based on deception, astroturf and false pretenses.  (2) The candidate just isn’t that good, is inauthentic in the extreme, zero private sector understanding, and is dependent on #1.  (3) Transparently a Big Club operation, surrounded by the most expensive deceptions the GOPe can muster.

I said last summer the DeSantis campaign would collapse upon itself as sunlight poured in.  That’s exactly what has been happening.  Despite their initial trust deposits, Florida Republican voters are now a case study in ‘not going to be fooled again’.  Once you see the strings on the marionettes, you can never return to that moment in the performance when you did not see them.  It doesn’t matter how good the stage presentation; the strings are visible, and continued pretending only makes it worse.

(Politico) – A top spokesperson for Ron DeSantis’ super PAC is sounding a decidedly dour note on the Florida governor’s presidential prospects, saying his campaign is facing an “uphill battle” and is trailing badly in the key nominating states.

[…] “Right now in national polling we are way behind, I’ll be the first to admit that,” [Steve] Cortes said in a Twitter spaces event that was recorded on Sunday night. “I believe in being blunt and honest. It’s an uphill battle but clearly Donald Trump is the runaway frontrunner.”

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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.

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The Weissmann/Mueller report contains claims that Russia hacked the DNC servers as the central element to the Russia interference narrative in the U.S. election.  This DNC hack claim is the fulcrum issue structurally underpinning the Russian election interference narrative pushed by the Weissmann and Muller Special Counsel.  However, this essential claim is directly disputed by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, as outlined during a Dana Rohrabacher interview and by Julian Assange’s own on-the-record statements.

Assange was arrested at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London immediately after the Weissmann/Muller report was released to Bill Barr.  Despite investigating the background of the Trump-Russia nonsense, John Durham never touched the DNC hacking claim – the core of the Mueller report.  Why? Because Durham knew the U.S. Government threw a bag over Assange to protect the fraudulent Trump-Russia and Russian interference claims.

Again, this reality speaks to the corruption within the John Durham investigation.  Durham was protecting Weissmann, Mueller and the core of their justification for a 2-year investigation.   Durham knows why Assange was arrested.  Durham stayed away from it, intentionally.

The Russians HAD TO have made efforts to interfere in the election, or else the factual basis for the surveillance operation against candidate Donald Trump is naked to the world.

That’s why so much DOJ, FBI and Mueller special counsel energy was exhausted framing the predicate.

“Seventeen intelligence agencies,” the December 29th Joint Analysis Report, the expulsion of the Russian diplomats which was an outcropping of the JAR, the rushed January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment, shoving microphones in everyone’s faces and demanding they answer if they believed Russia interfered – all of it, and I do mean every bit of it, is predicated on an absolute DC need to establish that Russia Attempted to Interfere in the 2016 election.

The “Russian Malicious Cyber Activity – Joint Analysis Report” (full pdf) is pure nonsense.  It outlines nothing more than vague and disingenuous typical hacking activity that is no more substantive than any other hacking report on any other foreign actor. However, it was needed to help frame the Russian interference narrative.

There were no Russian diplomats involved; there was no Russian election interference; there was no Russian hacking of the DNC; it was all a fraud created by the intelligence community (IC), FBI and Main Justice to support Hillary Clinton’s lies and then cover their own targeting tracks.

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The FBI did not weaponize itself.  The weaponization of the institution was done by people; the same people that John Durham did not indict for weaponizing it.

The same applies to the DHS, ODNI, DOJ, DOJ-NSD and SSCI.  These institutions did not weaponize themselves; they were weaponized by the people within them.

This is the core reality behind the missing part of the John Durham report, no proposed change in policy or institutional systems.  Why? Because the policies and systems are not the issue; it was the intent of the people within it – those who weaponized it.  Here’s the kicker. Those people are still in place – that’s why the weaponization continues.

It doesn’t do us any good to rewrite the same articles repeatedly to emphasize the same point.

WE MUST GET THIS INFORMATION INTO THE BLOODSTREAM OF THE LARGER AMERICAN ELECTORATE.

Here’s the cited evidence.

Former FBI Director James Comey openly admitted to Congress on March 20, 2017, how the FBI, FBI Counterintelligence Division, DOJ and DOJ-National Security Division, together with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the CIA, had been conducting independent rogue investigations of Donald Trump for over a year without informing Congress [the Gang of Eight]. When asked the question, Comey winced, then justified the lack of informing Go8 oversight by saying, “um, because of the sensitivity of the matter?”

Stupidly, Congress never pressed James Comey on that issue. The arrogance of Comey was astounding, and the acceptance by Congress was infuriating. However, that specific example highlighted just how politically corrupt the system had become. In essence, Team Obama usurped the entire design of congressional oversight…. and Congress just brushed it off.

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Sunlight is the best disinfectant; this core and essential truism will never be defeated.

People have asked for a summary of the current status of Special Counsel Jack Smith and the background of what is happening within the investigation as it takes place in the shadows of the DC schemes.  So here’s an analysis and review of: (a) the corrupt endeavor that Jack Smith represents; and (b) the problem he will never overcome in his quest to use lawfare tactics against President Donald Trump.

Two points, at the outset of this outline.  First, if you know anyone better acquainted with the granular issues at the core of this investigation than me; or if you know someone who has a documented day-by-day research library of the events discussed as they unfolded; let me know who they are, and I will talk to them.  Second, if you think John Durham is on some quest to provide justice where the landscape is filled with injustice, you need to reevaluate your position, it’s wrong.

To the second point, stop kidding yourself with false doses of hopium.  Special Counsel John Durham exists for the exact same reason the Robert Mueller and Andrew Weissmann special counsel existed.  The goal of the silo defenses is to protect Washington DC from the disinfecting sunlight you are about to read.  However, in the bigger picture there is nothing these Machiavellian conscripts can do to change the substantive truth.

In the most recent development the New York Times is reporting, “Boris Epshteyn, a top adviser to former President Donald J. Trump, is scheduled to be interviewed on Thursday by prosecutors in the office of the special counsel Jack Smith.” {link} Let me write the remainder of this summary from the perspective that Jack Smith has a big problem; his problem is the truth of events that protects Donald Trump.

In 2016 and 2017 the combined corrupt weight of multiple DC institutions, that includes the intelligence community, DOJ, FBI, Obama White House, legislative leadership, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and the political apparatchiks around the Democrat machinery, all colluded to illegally and unconstitutionally spy on the presidential campaign of Donald J Trump.  Their activity culminated in the fraudulent Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy and fake 2016 election Russian interference claims.

Everything created as an outcome of this spying, surveillance and ultimately the Trump-Russia narrative, was built on fraud.  Even the casual observers now admit it was political weaponization of government institutions to illegally target political opposition.  In May of 2017 Robert Mueller was installed to cover up this operation.  The lawfare team put into place by the system operators who were at greatest risk from discovery, was headed by Andrew Weissmann.  Mueller represented the face, but Weissmann was the lead operative constructing the coverup operation.

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