Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, whose stated mission has been to keep Trump from ascending to the White House again, is confident the field narrowing will bode well for his objectives.

In my estimation, Senator Tim Scott will be the next first-loser candidate to exit the race.

To qualify for the Miami debate, first-loser candidates need to reach at least four per cent in two national polls, or four per cent in one national poll and four per cent in two early primary states. Tim Scott has not reached the 4% national threshold.

The sketchy controlled operatives also need 70,000 individual donors, including 200 donors in 20 states, according to the requirements set by the Republican National Committee (RNC), because we all know money drives the RNC.

The donor standard pushed Pence to exit.

WASHINGTON DC – Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said he expects more people to drop out of the GOP presidential primary following the third debate, after former Vice President Mike Pence announced Saturday that he’s abandoning his White House bid.

“In the end, it just means this race is narrowing, which everyone said that it would,” Christie said during an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, after praising the former vice president for running “a tough race.”

“It will narrow more, I suspect, when we get to the debate stage in Miami,” Christie added.

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Every time this guy pops up, I am reminded of his previous fame in constructing the “YouTube video narrative” as an explanation for the 2012 Benghazi attack.  At the time, it was Jake Sullivan working in the State Dept who fabricated that entire story; yes, it was entirely his creation, and the Clinton and Obama team (then NSA Susan Rice) pushed it into the media as the official U.S. explanation.  It’s funny (not really) how no one ever calls Sullivan out on that history, given his current position.

Taking that background context, while also accepting that everything we are told about Ukraine and the official position of the U.S. as it pertains to current Israeli War aspects, Jake Sullivan’s prior manufacturing of extreme defensive narratives, abjectly false presentations, leads more credence to accepting that we are once again being manipulated by fundamentally false information.  Jake Sullivan is now Joe Biden’s National Security Advisor.

Appearing on CBS, Sullivan outlines the current coordination between the Biden administration and Israeli leadership.  While he didn’t specifically say the words in the headline, instead describing exactly that while pretending something else, Hamas is FACTUALLY holding 500+ Americans hostage as human shields. WATCH:

[Transcript] – MARGARET BRENNAN: We go now to White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. Jake, good morning to you.

JAKE SULLIVAN: Good morning, Margaret.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Does the US know if the roughly five to six hundred Americans in Gaza have survived the past 23 days of bombing and have the hostages?

JAKE SULLIVAN:  We are in regular contact with most of the Americans who are in Gaza. We can’t say every single one, but all of the ones who reach out to us we follow up with on a regular basis, even sometimes a daily basis. And so, we know that many of them are still there, still waiting to get out. And we are working actively to try to make that happen. The challenge right now, Margaret, is that the Egyptians are prepared to let Americans and other foreign nationals out of Gaza. The Israelis have no issue with that. But ¹Hamas is preventing their departure and making a series of demands. We’re trying to work through that to create a circumstance where all of the Americans who are in Gaza are able to get out. It is a priority for the President. He has no higher priority than their safe passage out. And he will continue to work at it until it is accomplished.

[¹What is that, if not hostages and ransom?  /SD]

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Earlier today Mike Lee sent this little bit of raw data from the border, “In the last 4 weeks alone (since the beginning of FY2024), the Border Patrol in the Rio Grande Sector has apprehended 5 illegal immigrants from Afghanistan, 19 from Syria, and 75 from China. It’s not a stretch—in fact, it’s putting it mildly—to say “they might not mean us well.” {link}  It is very concerning to think about who is walking into our country.

Earlier today, Texas AG Ken Paxton also asked the court for a restraining order against Joe Biden’s administration who are taking down border barriers and cutting through barbed wire in order to increase the flow of illegal aliens. [Court Filing Here] AG Paxton wants the court to stop Biden from opening the border.

TEXAS – Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a motion for a temporary restraining order on an emergency basis after federal agents escalated their destruction of Texas’s barrier at the State’s border with Mexico. The federal government’s renewed effort to destroy Texas’s barrier and assist aliens’ entry into the country follows just days after Texas filed a lawsuit against the Biden Administration’s Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”), DHS Secretary Mayorkas, and other agencies for numerous documented incidents of barrier destruction and occasions on which federal agents facilitated aliens’ mass entry during a severe immigration surge in recent months. 

Texas is seeking an order that would enjoin federal agents from cutting, destroying, damaging, or otherwise interfering with Texas’s concertina wire fence. (link) 

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Sometimes I just sit and shake my head.  Why these guys keep appearing with Sean Hannity is beyond my understanding.  That said, the platform and host is the first warning sign, the content of the interview is another.

Speaker Mike Johnson, who is a significant upgrade from Speaker Kevin McCarthy, sits down for an extensive discussion on current political events where Sean Hannity can tell Johnson his role and responsibility as Speaker. WATCH:

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At this point, I am writing this for a whole bunch of people, and it’s ridiculous.

(1) – No, Mark Meadows never told Jack Smith that President Trump didn’t declassify records.  That was the Lawfare leak to ABC News in August – intended to dilute the defense of declassification in the Mar-a-Lago documents case.  It was made up by Jack Smith, and leaked to ABC for a specific purpose.

(2) – No, Mark Meadows never told the DC grand jury (under immunity) that he informed President Trump that Joe Biden’s election was legitimate. Again, that was a Lawfare leak to ABC News this week – intended to undermine President Trump’s DC defense (mens rea, know it) that Trump’s state of mind was such that he knew he was violating the law by saying the election was stolen.  This story was made up by Jack Smith and leaked to ABC for a similar specific purpose.

In reality, Meadows was questioned under oath, during the grand jury, and asked if Joe Biden was the legitimate President.  Meadows responded (encapsulated), “Well, he’s president isn’t he”?  The rest is a manufactured narrative.

(3) – No, Mark Meadows never wore a wire as a confidential informant while he was President Trump’s Chief of Staff.  Again, yet another Lawfare fabrication to the alt-right media, via layers of plausible deniability – intended to get President Trump to attack Mark Meadows and provide fuel for Jack Smith to request the reinitiation of a currently suspended gag order against President Trump.  The ABSURD story is pure Lawfare bait.  The absurdity of the story is why even ABC News couldn’t be used.

And right on cue….

(NYP) – Special Counsel Jack Smith has implored a judge to revive the partial gag order in the federal election interference case against Donald Trump — citing the ex-president’s “threatening” social media posts about former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

Smith’s team argued in a filing late Wednesday that Trump, 77, is capitalizing on a stay in the gag order “to send an unmistakable message to a foreseeable witness in this case… with knowledge that it would reach him.” (read more)

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A few thoughts about the letter itself before getting to the substance.  {pdf link Here}

First, as you are likely aware, the Senators and Committee heads/ranking members do little of the investigative effort themselves. This is where the value of exceptional staff comes into play, along with the background battle between a small group of congressional aides and assistants -vs- an army of Lawfare operatives. The battle to reveal truth takes place deep in the trenches of hidden government, and the only weapon on the side of the righteous is the ultimate weapon – the truth.

Second, again with a familiar approach, this letter is not penned to the recipient FBI Director Christopher Wray, in as much as it is an alarm sounded by Senator Grassley’s office to the larger American audience.  This is essentially Grassley saying to We The People, here’s the evidence of how inherently corrupt and politicized the FBI has become. The motive appears to be providing damaging information the media will avoid mentioning, discussing or outlining.

DC FBI Building, left – Main Justice DOJ Building, right. 

In summary of the 7-page letter, it describes a national effort by the FBI to cover up the activity of Hunter and Joe Biden’s illicit financial dealings.  Because the Biden family essentially operated a network of financial schemes that touched on multiple areas and interests, the activity itself was tracked by the FBI through a series of several dozen Confidential Human Sources (CHS’s) and informants in multiple jurisdictions throughout the U.S.

Because the various field offices and CHS/Informant networks were diverse and widespread, the DC FBI needed a control mechanism that would throw a bag over all the activity coast to coast.  The mechanism they chose was the familiar “Foreign Influence Disinformation” designation.  The FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force was the DC organization -an institutional tool per se’- used to block, impede and eliminate sunlight upon the information that was surfacing from multiple investigations of the Biden family.

Grassley walks through examples of how the central HQ of the FBI deployed the label of “disinformation” in order to get various field offices to discredit their own investigative tools, CHS’s and informants.   The way it worked would be central FBI command would label an investigative lead as “disinformation”, and that would throw a bag over the field office outcome.  The CHS’s and informants were then undermined, discredited and cut loose from the record keeping of the FBI.

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Louisiana Republican Mike Johnson won the vote and has become Speaker of the House of Representatives.  This is a huge shift in momentum for the MAGA base, for common sense pragmatic voters, and for the overall direction of our national body politic.

Speaker Johnson delivered a humble, gracious and fantastic speech after the vote.  WATCH:

WASHINGTON DC – The fourth-term Louisianan sailed to victory with 220 votes, more than the 215 he needed to be elected speaker on the House floor. The final vote on the first ballot was 220-209.

Johnson’s win marked a stunning turnaround after more than three weeks of chaotic limbo in the House following the ouster of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and the demise of three other failed speaker candidates. He did not lose a single GOP vote from lawmakers who were present; Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) is in Israel and did not attend the balloting.

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This is deep weeds inside baseball, but boy howdy does it tell a story. Representative Matt Gaetz (MAGA, FL) goes through the details of yesterday’s House republican conference assembly as they select a Speaker nominee.

What Gaetz reveals in detail is how Kevin McCarthy has been working the conference to undermine any other Speaker candidate so that McCarthy would be renominated as the only possible alternative. The insight and details are really interesting. This is a must watch.

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If Mike Johnson (R-LA) cannot carry the conference, look for the professionally Republican Kevin McCarthy wing to reassemble and attempt reinstallation.

WASHINGTON DC – Rep. Mike Johnson won a closed-door contest on Tuesday night to become his party’s fourth speaker nominee.

Now, the Louisiana lawmaker faces the much tougher task of securing the 217 votes he needs to win on the House floor. Earlier Tuesday, Johnson came in second to Majority Whip Tom Emmer, who then withdrew after former President Donald Trump publicly came out against him.

So, Republicans went back to the drawing board, and made Johnson the latest aspirant to a position the fractured and exhausted conference can’t seem to fill. He beat out a field of four other candidates, including Byron Donalds in the final ballot by a 128 to 29 vote. Some 44 other Republicans didn’t vote for either of the two men.

After winning the nomination, Johnson said he was “very confident” that he could get 217 votes and said “the intention is to go to the floor” for a vote on Wednesday. (more)

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Too many people continue falling for this Lawfare nonsense.   CTH has been outlining what Lawfare operations are all about since we deconstructed the Trayvon Martin narrative.  Perhaps a reminder is useful.

Lawfare, in its most obvious construct, is not a legal approach per se’, it is the intentional manipulation of the legal system to create the optics around information that is intended to be used by media to influence public opinion. {link}

That’s what Lawfare is all about, manipulating public opinion through leaks to the media.  The leaks do not need to be truthful, accurate or directly in line with the prosecution of the case; they are intended exclusively to manipulate public opinion.

Remember, on August 21st, in another ridiculous Lawfare operation, Special Counsel Jack Smith told ABC that Mark Meadows testified that President Trump never attempted to declassify any information {Go Deep}.   That report was transparently false, yet the media ran with it and multiple alternative media promoted it.  Pure nonsense.

In this latest Lawfare effort, again from Special Counsel Jack Smith, again to ABC news, again about former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, the claim is the Special Counsel granted Meadows immunity (that’s the hook), and that Meadows told President Trump the 2020 election was not rigged or stolen.

Now remember, Mark Meadows wrote about the rigged and stolen 2020 election in his book, so why would he undermine his own story by saying something completely the opposite to Jack Smith that is only coming out now?   The Occam’s razor answer is, he didn’t.  This lawfare story is all made up, fictitious, anonymous sources, manufactured to create a public impression.

Bolstering the likelihood that Meadows gave no such testimony, Meadows lawyers, when contacted by media, said the story is fake news.   Yet again, everyone falls for it.  This is how Lawfare succeeds, and this is how Trayvon Martin’s fake and fabricated ear-witness girlfriend becomes the key witness and embarrasses the prosecution on the stand.

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