HPSCI Ranking Member Devin Nunes discusses his review of phone records, and how the mysteriously collected phone data that Chariman Schiff put into his impeachment report doesn’t match with his own review.
China controls North Korea; essentially as a proxy province. As a result Beijing controls the messaging from the DPRK. Chinese Chairman Xi Jinping is the captor and North Korean Chairman Kim Jong-un is the captive – it’s essentially a hostage dynamic. The historic objective has been to use DPRK aggression as a hedge against the west.
Predictably there was going to come a moment when Chairman Xi realized the trade negotiations by his adversary, President Trump, were a hall of mirrors. The U.S. President has played China by using their own panda-mask strategy against them.
President Trump achieved his goal when no-one was paying attention. The goal was a decoupling from China on economic terms. Strategic decoupling has been underway for over a year. There is no actual intent to reach a trade deal with China where the U.S. drops the tariffs and returns to holding hands with a happy panda playing by new rules. This fictional narrative is a figment of fantasy being sold by a financial media that cannot fathom a U.S. President would be so bold as to just walk away from China.
For almost three years U.S. President Trump has been working on two connected objectives: (1) removing the threat posed by North Korea by severing the ability of Beijing to use the proxy province as a weapon (Kim is hostage to China); and (2) deconstructing the growing economic influence of China.
Both issues are directly connected to U.S. national security; and both issues are being approached by President Trump through the use of economic leverage to achieve national security results.
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HPSCI Ranking Member Devin Nunes responds to the possibilities of how HPSCI Chairman Adam Schiff gained private phone records for use in his impeachment effort.
As the House impeachment of President Donald Trump becomes more of a forgone political conclusion it’s worth considering what terms and conditions Senate Leader Mitch McConnell will extract in order to preserve a Trump Presidency.
Most political pundits will not correctly outline the status of the possibilities, because most political pundits are willfully blind to the structure of the McConnell Senate.
First, McConnell doesn’t care about holding a majority position in the Senate. Whether he is a majority leader or a minority leader doesn’t matter to McConnell. In fact McConnell’s political skill-set does better in the minority than the majority.
The preferred political position for Mitch McConnell is where he has between 45 and 49 republican Senators, and the Democrats hold the Majority with around 55. Of course with Reid’s retirement, this would now be with Majority leader Chuck Schumer holding office.
Why does McConnell prefer the minority position?
The answer is where you have had to actually follow Mitch McConnell closely to see how he works. When the Majority has around 52 to 55 seats, they need McConnell to give them 8 to 9 votes to overcome the three-fifths (60 vote) threshold for their legislative needs. It is in the process of trade and payment for those 8 to 9 votes where McConnell makes more money, and holds more power, than as a sitting Majority Leader.
The 60 vote threshold, and McConnell’s incredible skillset in the minority, is where he shines. Each of the needed votes to achieve sixty is worth buckets of indulgence to the minority leader. This is why McConnell never changed the Senate rules for legislative passage.
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The CIA primarily leaks PR spin to the Washington Post. The FBI primarily leaks PR spin to the New York Times; and the State Dept. primarily leaks PR spin to CNN. This narrative distribution model is the one constant in an ever changing universe.
Cue the audio visual… Obviously the prior Washington Post effort to conflate the Durham investigation with the Horowitz investigation didn’t get the desired result. As a consequence it only took a few days before the Washington Post was back at it (Matt Zapotosky and Devlin Barrett again) to try obfuscation 2.0; this time with Joseph Mifsud.
For three years the New York Times, Washington Post and CNN have sold the FBI claim that Professor Joseph Mifsud was a Russian operative passing information about Clinton’s emails to George Papadopoulos.
That essential point underpins their defense of the predicate for the CIA and FBI to open the July 31st investigation of the Trump campaign. Again, for three years Joseph Mifsud was sold as a Russian operative; working on behalf of Russian interests.
That “Mifsud is a Russian asset” claim is the fulcrum of Crossfire Hurricane. Mifsud has to be a Russian asset, or else… George Papadopoulos talking to Australian Diplomat Alexander Downer about Mifsud is simply political gossip without merit, value or bearing.
The key point is Mifsud has to be a Russian operative in order for all of the downstream FBI activity to be justified. If Mifsud ain’t Russian, the CIA and FBI have a problem.
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Devin Nunes appeared on Tucker Carlson to discuss the impeachment events of the day. However, thankfully they also discussed the revelation that HPSCI Chairman Adam Schiff randomly started issuing subpoenas for telephone information. That’s the part I find very troubling. Notice how the media simply ignores it? This is a pretty big damn deal.
Under what authority can congress arbitrarily send subpoenas for the private phone records of citizens, journalists, and fellow politicians? Can Nunes now start sending subpoenas for the phone records of Michael Isikoff around the time of the Flynn phone call leak?… and can congress publish those call records as a part of some possibly inquiry into the leak… and we can cross reference to identify the FBI leaker?….
Representative Matt Gaetz confronted the jaw-dropping level of political bias and Trump Derangement Syndrome exhibited by Chairman Nadler’s panel of left-wing experts.
With a visible display of righteous indignation Mr. Gaetz dressed down the pompous liberal law professor, Pamela Karlan, and cut right to the heart of the matter with the entire panel. WATCH:
Professor Pamela Karlan of Stanford Law School became the pompous face of the academic impeachment panel today when she ridiculed the son of President Trump in an effort to highlight her resistance bona-fides. Imagine the hate that necessarily exists in the heart of a witness who would rehearse such a line to gain tribal cheer.
Bilat #4 was a private meeting between President Trump and Denmark Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and closed to public. [Greenland purchase?…]
Prior to Bilat #5 President Trump and Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte’ hold a media availability prior to their meeting. [Video and Transcript Below]
Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor and not a supporter of President Trump, warned House lawmakers today against impeaching a President without merit. Mr. Turley said that to impeach Trump based on the current evidence “would be to expose every future president to the same type of inchoate impeachment.”
[Opening Remarks Below]