President Trump arrives to meet French President Emmanuel Macron in advance of the reopening celebration for Notre Dame Cathedral.
French media are now openly reporting on a sideline meeting between President Trump and Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The meeting with Zelenskyy was predictable given the nature of how Macron had structured the events.
President Trump’s arrival video:
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President Trump and Emmanuel Macron delivered short remarks to the assembled press pool. Video Below:
There it is. The background for the first meeting between President Trump and President Zelenskyy is buried in the story of Emmanual Macron holding two bilateral meetings before the Notre Dame reopening ceremony. [Now, where’s Tucker?]
If you carefully read this Politico Story you can see how President Trump and President Zelenskyy would be in the same place at the same time, courtesy of French President Emmanuel Macron. This explains Trump’s willingness to go to the Notre Dame ceremony and simultaneously reconciles the absence of Joe Biden.
It’s a simple application of geopolitical Occam’s Razor. There’s no other background that reconciles all the variables. Trump is going to speak with Zelenskyy. All of it makes sense.
POLITICO – PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron will hold separate bilateral meetings with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump ahead of the reopening ceremony of the Notre Dame cathedral on Saturday, the French presidency announced.
This will be Trump’s first visit abroad since his victory in the Nov. 5 election. Macron is among those leaders currently in power to have known the soon-to-be 47th president during his first term in office — a position he will look to leverage in order to assert himself as a key European partner to the U.S.
The last Federal Budget that passed through “regular order” was for Fiscal Year 2008, signed by President George W Bush in September of 2007. Every budget since has been outside regular order; a series of continuing resolutions, omnibus spending packages and short-term funding mechanisms. {CITATION}
That is correct. In the past 17 years, all federal spending has been ‘short-term’ or ‘stop-gap’ spending measures, generally known as “Continuing Resolutions,” where the govt (House and Senate) continue to perpetually resolve to fund the government. The CRs as they are known, punt the spending debate by accepting a baseline of prior spending and tweaking around the edges.
The key takeaway to begin thinking about DOGE is to understand that REGULAR ORDER has not been used since Fiscal Year 2008.
Title III of the Congressional Budget Act outlines a legal timeline that each President and Congress must follow {SEE HERE}. Prior to 2007, Continuing Resolutions were only used to resolve short term arguments about spending priorities.
♦ BACKGROUND – The President is required by law to submit his budget by the first Monday in February. Yes, even when an election takes place and a President doesn’t assume office until January 20th, the first Monday in February is still the legal requirement for the new White House budget proposal.
The Presidents’ budget is then submitted to The House of Representatives, where two weeks later the Congressional Budget Office, reviews the budget and issues an opinion as to the cost of the budget. No later than six weeks after the President submits his budget all House committees send the House Appropriations Committee their spending proposals [April 15].
Through May and June, each budgetary appropriations bill from the House is sent to the Senate. The Senate receives the House appropriations bills, then reviews through the Senate Appropriations Committee (Thune just picked Susan Collins as Chair). The Senate proposes their spending priorities based on the House bill because the House has constitutional authority to originate all spending [June 15]. The House and Senate budgets are “reconciled” using parliamentary procedures [June 30] and then sent to the President for signature.
The fiscal year begins October 1st.
That’s the regular order process.
First Lady Melania Trump appears on Fox and Friends morning show to discuss her outlook on returning to the White House.
Melania Trump notes this time is very different as they know what to expect this time and the baseline for knowing who, what, when and how is entirely different than the first term. WATCH:
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…. And just like that, another piece of the puzzle falls neatly into place. President Trump has announced that David Sacks will be joining the administration as the Czar of Artificial Intelligence and Cryptocurrency.
[Source]
The group of Peter Thiel (Palantir), Elon Musk (X), Vivek Ramaswamy (DOGE) and JD Vance (VP), now gain the addition of David Sacks to their core mission. Both govt inspired/networked AI and the world of Cryptocurrency will benefit.
Many voices say the introduction of AI into government networks was/is a foregone conclusion, so we should be happy that it’s the ideology of Musk, Thiel, Sacks, Ramaswamy and Vance constructing the parameters of the weapon. Perhaps they are correct.
On the upside, the Big Banks of JPMorgan, BoA, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley will not be too happy, so there’s that. Bitcoin and various crypto exchanges like Bakkt will continue surging. A new era of finance dawns.
Anytime the professional leftists lose anything, they immediately become victims. Whether defeated in the battle of ideas (retreat to safe spaces), defeated in the field of pop culture, or even defeated linguistically through debate (words are violence). Whenever the professional left loses, they immediately become victims. It’s what they do.
The professional political left, newest version from the Chicago spawn of Dohrn/Ayers, has been waging full combat Lawfare via a weaponized government for the past 16 years. However, Obama/Plouffe were defeated, “their kind” rose again and won the 2024 U.S. Presidential election.
What we see in this “preemptive pardon” narrative, is a repeat of the victim narrative. This time the White House discussion boils down to ‘Lawfare agents must be protected from any retaliation for their action’. Pardons presumably provide the mechanism to protect the victims. In the big picture of ideology, this is a continuation of the same mindset.
Politico started the narrative with an outline {SEE HERE} saying the White House was having an internal debate as to whether Joe Biden should preemptively issue pardons to members of the J6 committee, members who constructed false impeachment accusations, members within the DOJ who fabricated political cases using the Special Counsel process, or generally people on the political left who supported/facilitated all the aforementioned false attack fronts.
As the narrative is told, all those who supported the attacks against President-Elect Trump and his allies, now need to be protected from “retribution.” Inherent in the argument, and within the use of pardons, is the baseline that some form of illegal activity was taking place. Heck, if it wasn’t unlawful conduct, then no pardon would be needed. This is the political catch-22 created by the preemptive pardon narrative.
Defense Secretary Nominee Pete Hegseth paused for an impromptu press gaggle with assembled media following another day of discussions and questions from Senators. WATCH:
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Ronald Rowe Jr., the acting director of the U.S. Secret Service, spoke at a congressional hearing today investigating the two assassination attempts of presidential candidate Donald Trump. After Representative Pat Fallon of Texas began questioning Rowe about his presence at a 2024 9/11 remembrance ceremony in New York, the two men engaged in a shouting match in which Rowe accused Fallon of using 9/11 for political purposes.
“You know why you were there? Because you want to be visible,” Fallon accused. “You are out of line, congressman,” Rowe responded. The shouting match devolved from there. WATCH:
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President Trump is scheduled to arrive in Paris this weekend. Today, almost in an act of divine providence, the government collapsed.
French Prime Minister Michel Barnier will submit his resignation to French President Emmanuel Macron tomorrow, according to France’s BFMTV. He is expected at the Elysee Palace at 10am local time. Barnier’s resignation is a constitutional obligation after he lost a vote of no-confidence earlier Wednesday evening triggering the collapse of his government.
SUMMARY of EVENTS: •Michel Barnier lost a no-confidence vote, triggering the collapse of govt. •It marks the first time a French government has been toppled in this way in more than 60 years. •Barnier is now the shortest-serving prime minister in France’s modern Republic. •Left and far-right parties united to oust him following anger over his unpopular 2025 budget. •Both tabled motions of no-confidence after he used special powers to adopt part of the budget this week without a final vote in parliament. •Nationalist leader Marine Le Pen said the public needed to be protected from the “toxic” budget, and that pressure on Macron is getting “greater and greater”.
FRANCE – The government of President Emmanuel Macron collapsed Wednesday after the National Assembly voted for the first time in more than a half-century to oust a prime minister from office, a sign of the political gridlock that has paralyzed France. The development leaves the country’s public finances in limbo.
A no-confidence motion against the government of Prime Minister Michel Barnier won the support of 331 lawmakers in the 577-seat lower house, forcing him to resign.
In the bigger picture, the U.S. Senate has been operating to control the military against the command of the President for multiple years. The Intelligence Community is in general alignment with the core mission of weakening the Defense Department as part of the larger objective.
We have seen this approach in everything from the castration of General Petraeus to the advancement of wokeism. The civilian leadership of the Defense Department, in combination with the influence of the U.S. Senate has led to a diminishment of mission priority. We have the outcomes through General Mattis, General H.R. McMaster, Lt Col Alexander Vindman, General James Kelly, all the way to Joint Chief’s Chairman Mark Milley; famously culminating in Milley collaborating with Chinese military leadership to undermine his own Commander-In-Chief, Donald Trump.
President Donald Trump has turned his focus to the “war fighters,” the men and women who carry out the mission objective of the Defense Department. The nomination of Pete Hegseth represents the confrontation of a power struggle that has been decades in coming.
The self-serving Senators are trying to block Hegseth, while maintaining a position of pretending support for President Trump. The DeceptiCon republicans in the Senate are in full circling mode, looking for a weakness to exploit.
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According to Hegseth he is firm on the mission priority. President Trump is in full support and the schemes of the conniving Republican Senators, transparently visible in the efforts of Senator Jodi Ernst, who is circling the phalanx President Trump is creating – while simultaneously inserting herself into the DOGE mission. Ernst is doing Mitch’s work, under the instructions from Thune and Mitch. See Ernst with clear eyes.