Things are again not what they seem, but you have to stand back to understand the right questions.

People have asked about the recent release of the declassified FBI documents (a partial release) and what they mean.  Having spent years deep in the research, here’s my take.

At first blush people may say there’s nothing really there that we didn’t already know. I would differ on that perspective because the process is telling us something very loudly, and the absence of material is shouting even louder.

Simple question:  This stuff was declassified by President Trump and released by the FBI, correct?  If so, then why isn’t the release simply uploaded to the FBI.Gov website.  Why release it to congress and then leak it to John Solomon?

Read the underline.  First things first. Explain to me exactly how these were “obtained.”  Where did Solomon get them?

[SOURCE]

If it’s all on the up-and-up, and if it is simply an outcome of declassified material, then why is sourcing for the documents clouded in some weird mystery.  Shouldn’t we know the process?  Those of you who remember the FISA application release, will know why this process issue is important.

Next, the information is given to the founding member of the “Tick Tock” club.  John Solomon has singularly been responsible for more purposefully controlled information releases than any other ‘conservative’ media rep for the Intel Community.  The Russiagate files coming from Solomon should be the first big “red flag” that causes pause.

Who game them to Solomon?  And again, why not just upload them to a .gov website (DNI, FBI or even HPSCI).

I suspect the intention here, the motive of the process, is to focus on the politics of the release, NOT the illegal nature of the conduct that is contained within the evidence the release outlines.  They want the public focused on the “politics” not the “illegal surveillance” and unlawful conduct that underpins Russiagate.

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The absolute #1 tell highlighting this as a nonsense exercise, a delay tactic on behalf of the swamp, is the venue for Tulsi Gabbard’s “new task force” announcement, Sean Hannity.

In order to pass DC approvals for confirmation, Gabbard had to join the ‘FISA is awesome’ club.  Now, she aligns her DNI silo with the foolishness of the Sean Hannity ‘tick-tock’ club.  Sorry, but we’ve seen this performance so many times it is now blood boiling to watch them try and repeat it.

DNI Gabbard claims she is creating a new “transparency task force” to analyze information for potential declassification and public release.  However, the task force will now have to “dig” until they have every document discovered, before they can release it, because releasing information as it is discovered is against the operational mission of the people who control the silo process.  But she swears, if you wait for it, it will come. “Trust the plan.”

Oh, it’s so complicated.

Oh, it’s so big and hard to do.

Oh, the evidence is so hard to find.

This is the same nonsense story from Bill Barr, John Durham, Michael Horowitz and the other previous members of the Sean Hannity ‘tick-tock club,’ including John Solomon (controlled releases) and other “conservatively aligned” tradecraft media.  Barr is now Bondi, Wray is now Kash, Durham is now Bongino, the audience is the same.  It’s nonsense.

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Margaret Brennan is very worried about the penguins of the Heard and McDonald Island being able fill their orders for EU heavy industrial equipment, against the backdrop of President Trump’s 10% tariffs.  Secretary Lutnick points out the issue of transnational shipping, as Brennan sits flummoxed.

That’s just one of the talking points from the ever-insufferable Margaret Brennan in this left-wing narrative engineering under the pretense of an interview.  WATCH:

[TRANSCRIPT] – MARGARET BRENNAN: Mr. Secretary, welcome to “Face the Nation.”

COMMERCE SECRETARY HOWARD LUTNICK: Great to be here.

MARGARET BRENNAN: We see about 60% of Americans have money in the stock market, which mean that retirees could be just as concerned as hedge fund managers this morning. Did you expect this level of shock in the financial markets?

SEC. LUTNICK: Well, you’ve got to realize this is a national security issue. I mean, we don’t make medicine in this country anymore. We don’t make ships. We don’t have enough steel and aluminum to fight a battle, right? All our semiconductors are made overseas. So every button we press when we try to start our car or even use our microwave, these are all semiconductors. They’re all made elsewhere. We’ve got to start to protect ourselves, and we’ve got to stop having all the countries of the world ripping us off. We have a $1.2 trillion trade deficit, and the rest of the world has a surplus with us. They’re earning our money. They’re taking our money, and Donald Trump has seen this, and he’s going to stop it. So it is going to be a big change. Of course, it’s going to be a big change, but the rest of the world has been ripping us off for all these many years. Donald Trump has seen it. He’s spoken about it–

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Appearing on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, regime commander for the hard left, White House Director of the National Economic Council, Kevin Hasset, shared that, “more than 50 countries have reached out to the president to begin a negotiation.”

Despite all the media pontification to the contrary, this notation should not come as a surprise, considering how dependent many emerging nations are on access to the U.S consumer market.

The ‘taking a knee’ sequencing should be reviewed through two closely intertwined metrics. (1) The wealth of the nation; and (2) the dependency of the nation.  Both metrics are closely aligned, and that will be the commonality of the first to line up to join a zero-tariff trade agreement.

More wealthy, parasitic and ideologically opposed nations will fight hard before they acquiesce. However, they will eventually acquiesce and come to terms.  The wealthy nations (like EU etc.) will be the most vocal in opposition to the global trade reset; and they will also be the voices we should see strategically ignored by President Trump.

NEC Director Kevin Hassett cuts through the Stephanopoulos talking points like a ninja quokka. WATCH:

You know Stephanopoulos is outwitted when he relies upon Rand Paul to frame his narrative.  lol

Regarding the Russia talking point.  How is Trump supposed to calculate a tariff regime against a country we have placed under trade sanctions with a full economic embargo?  There’s no current U.S. trade with Russia, deficit or otherwise, so there’s nothing to tariff.

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The de minimis loophole comes from back in the 1930s. The idea back then was, say you went on a vacation to Paris, you shouldn’t have to file customs paperwork or pay taxes if you decided to ship some little Eiffel Tower statues to your friends back home.

Congress in 2015 then raised the de minimis threshold from $200 to $800. However, the e-commerce world exploded, and Chinese companies began using the de minimis loophole to ship cheap goods (ex. Temu and Shein) into the USA direct to consumers without paying any customs duty.

Yesterday as part of the global trade reset and tariff structure, President Trump revoked authorization for Chinese goods to transfer to the USA using the de minimis rule. The de minimis exemption has been cancelled for all products coming out of China. The rule change only targets China and Chinese shippers. No one else.

[See Executive Order Here]

The minimum duty is $25, and the tariff rate is 30% for all products mailed from China into the USA that previously qualified under the de minimis rule.

Beyond tariffs or sector specific countervailing duties, the removal of China to use the $800 de minimis exemption will destroy their economy.  There is no way for manufacturers in China, marketed into the USA, to be able to survive if they are forced to collect and organize the requirements for U.S. custom and import duties. They will simply dissolve.

FACT SHEET – […] “Following the Secretary of Commerce’s notification that adequate systems are in place to collect tariff revenue, President Trump is ending duty-free de minimis treatment for covered goods from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Hong Kong starting May 2, 2025 at 12:01 a.m. EDT.

Imported goods sent through means other than the international postal network that are valued at or under $800 and that would otherwise qualify for the de minimis exemption will be subject to all applicable duties, which shall be paid in accordance with applicable entry and payment procedures.

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President Trump delivers a speech at the White House outlining a global trade reset established on the principle of trade and tariff reciprocity.  [Primary Executive Order Here]  – [Executive Order Here]

“The post-war international economic system was based upon three incorrect assumptions: first, that if the United States led the world in liberalizing tariff and non-tariff barriers the rest of the world would follow; second, that such liberalization would ultimately result in more economic convergence and increased domestic consumption among U.S. trading partners converging towards the share in the United States; and third, that as a result, the United States would not accrue large and persistent goods trade deficits.”

“Put simply, while World Trade Organization (WTO) Members agreed to bind their tariff rates on a most-favored-nation (MFN) basis and thereby provide their best tariff rates to all WTO Members, they did not agree to bind their tariff rates at similarly low levels or to apply tariff rates on a reciprocal basis.  Consequently, according to the WTO, the United States has among the lowest simple average MFN tariff rates in the world at 3.3 percent, while many of our key trading partners like Brazil (11.2 percent), China (7.5 percent), the European Union (EU) (5 percent), India (17 percent), and Vietnam (9.4 percent) have simple average MFN tariff rates that are significantly higher.”

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Country-specific ad valorem rates of duty as specified in Annex I to the main Executive Order.

The tariffs generally target completed goods, not the imported chemical or component materials needed to by industry to manufacture the products domestically.  Annex II are the exemptions to the Executive Order.

I have been going through the details and will have much more soon.

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Canada Prime Minister Mark Carney delivers a speech to the nation notifying the Canadian people that the era of an economic and military collaborative relationship between the United States and Canada is over.

As the majority of Canadians cheer, the Prime Minister said that Canada as a free independent and sovereign nation will now embrace its connections to the United Kingdon and European Union and seek to replace their national dependency on the United States by severing ties in North America and entering a new era of close relations with Great Britain and Europe.

When questioned if Canada would join the European Union, a seemingly natural fit for the ideologically aligned country, Prime Minister Carney said, “nothing is off the table.”   In a rather remarkable end to the confrontation, the Carney says the economic and military ties between the USA and Canada are officially declared severed.  WATCH:

“We as Canadians, have agency”… What does that even mean?

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President Trump asked Prime Minister Trudeau and the Canadian government to close the border to narcotraffickers and shutdown the pipeline of Chinese fentanyl.  The Canadian govt chose not to and Prime Minister Mark Carney continues the refusal.

The entire Canadian border enforcement system, agents, support personnel, the entire operation for 5,000-mile border consists of 300 people.  Not exactly a strong commitment to border security.

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Elon Musk and the primary members of the DOGE team gave a behind the scenes review of their mission to Fox News correspondent Bret Baier.  Elon Musk outlines how the Dept of Government Efficiency is on track to remove $1 trillion in excessive waste, fraud and abuse from the federal budget.

The team discusses just how excessive the fraud is within the federal spending programs as they outline finding after finding of federal spending that is often outrageous and stunning.  This is MUST WATCH television.

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Review the discoveries at DOGE.GOV HERE

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President Trump has given remarks supporting National Security Advisor Mike Waltz during an interview with NBC.

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump stood by his national security adviser, Mike Waltz, after The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief was accidentally added to a private, high-level chat on the messaging app Signal where military plans were being discussed.

“Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,” Trump said Tuesday in a phone interview with NBC News.

When asked what he was told about how Goldberg came to be added to the Signal chat, Trump said, “It was one of Michael’s people on the phone. A staffer had his number on there.”

Trump said Goldberg’s presence in the chat had “no impact at all” on the military operation.

The president expressed confidence in his team, saying he was not frustrated by the events leading up to The Atlantic’s story. The situation, Trump said, was “the only glitch in two months, and it turned out not to be a serious one.” (more)

The rest of the DC setup is transparently clear.  (1) Goldberg held the story until the day before a long-scheduled Senate Intelligence Committee hearing. (2) The SSCI then used the hearing to blast the heads of the Trump administration intelligence silos on the issue of “classified” information in the text messages.

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According to Jeffrey Goldberg from The Atlantic [SEE HERE], National Security Advisor Mike Waltz invited him to a group chat on the Signal app, where various Trump administration officials and cabinet members were discussing how to address the Houthi rebels in Yemen in advance of military airstrikes.

The media is having a field day with the story, and it does have multiple angles that will unfold in the next several days and weeks. Some media even claiming the story could take down Mike Waltz and/or Pete Hegseth due to the national security implications in the series of events [Politico Here]. However, I wouldn’t go that far at all.

(left, Mike Waltz – right, Pete Hegseth)

Why Mike Waltz would be texting an invite to Jeffrey Goldberg is an issue for later discussion. Generally, given the nature of these things it is not the principal who sets up the text network, usually a top aide or lead staff, which might indicate Waltz’s wife Julia Nesheiwat was involved [SEE WHY], but let’s put that aside.

Goldberg claims “details of war plans” were discussed in the group chat.  Perhaps so, perhaps not.  This specific part of the story is refuted by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.  What was discussed and further shared and outlined by Breitbart News [SEE HERE] is a conversation about the strategic reasoning for the U.S. to directly attack the Houthi rebels in Yemen and reopen the sea lanes into and out of the Suez Canal.

The EU and Egypt are the primary beneficiaries of U.S. involvement toward stopping the Houthi terrorists from targeting ships in the region.  Egypt manages the Suez Canal, and obviously there are some strategic U.S. benefits in the region from helping Egypt deal with the Houthi issue.  Specifically, as President Trump seeks to have Egypt, Saudi Arabia and partners help solve the problem in Gaza.

Additionally, most of the shipping through the region is headed to the European Union through the canal.  Reestablishing safe maritime flow of goods economically assists the EU more than any other region.  Again, a point of leverage for the Trump administration as President Trump confronts the issues of EU support for a Ukraine conflict he is trying to resolve.

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