(link to tweet)

Publicity stunt – Criminal action, or Both?
UPDATE: 9:00pm Apparently the IRS documents Maddow has illegally taken possession of are from 2005.
Additionally, the White House responds: (more…)

For those who are economic and trade policy junkies, President Trump’s key pick for U.S. Trade Representative, Robert Lighthizer, testified today at his Senate Confirmation Hearing.  To skip the legislative posturing {gag} forward the video to 33:00:

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Mr. Lighthizer, 69, worked for decades as a trade lawyer, representing clients including U.S. Steel Corp.  Historically, he has been critical of U.S. officials who supported China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001, and argued the move worsened America’s trade deficit and hollowed out our manufacturing sector.
Two decades of actual, and quantifiable, results later shows Lighthizer was absolutely 100% correct in his criticisms and predictions.  Ultimately this is why the Globalists within the Democrat machine want to keep Lighthizer out of office.  Mr. Lighthizer will forget more about trade deals than the next closest person could ever know. (more…)

Together with her family, Seema Verma accepted her commission today as head of  the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).  Vice-President Mike Pence delivered remarks during the official swearing in ceremony.

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Seema Verma comes to the CMS job with extensive Medicaid experience. Her consulting firm, SVC, Inc., worked closely with Indiana Gov. Mike Pence to design Indiana’s Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act.
The expansion, known as the Healthy Indiana Plan 2.0, went into effect in 2015, and Verma’s involvement in it may prove important as Congress and the Trump administration make decisions on the future of Obamacare.
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Against the backdrop of intelligence reports pointing toward the U.K. as the source of President Obama’s covert surveillance over Candidate and President-Elect Trump; a claim  from U.K. London resident (Ecuadorian embassy captive) Julian Assange takes on additional dimension.
Assange is essentially claiming the Pro-Clinton Deep State institutional systems are working toward the elimination of President Trump (via congressional action), and then replacing Trump with Vice-President Pence:
While it might be disconcerting to see, on its face this is not a revelation.  There is no surprise within a claim that various DC based interests would be much better positioned if a more traditional politician was occupying the White House.
(more…)

Every time I see an interview discussing 2016 surveillance of the Trump Campaign and candidate Donald Trump I keep going back to that November 17th, 2016, Trump Tower visit by NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers.
No-one in the Obama chain-of-command knew Director Rogers was going to meet with President-Elect Trump; Rogers did it entirely on his own impetus, and James Clapper was furious in the aftermath.
Additionally, Admiral Mike Rogers is still running the NSA. President Trump has made no effort to replace him.

“Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command. He didn’t use the NSA. He didn’t use the CIA. He didn’t use the FBI, and he didn’t use Department of Justice. He used GCHQ. What the heck is GCHQ? That’s the initials for the British spying agency. They have 24/7 access to the NSA database. So by simply having two people go to them saying, ‘President Obama needs transcripts of conversations involving candidate Trump, conversations involving president-elect Trump,’ he’s able to get it, and there’s no American fingerprints on this.”
~ Judge Andrew Napolitano

If what Napolitano’s sources are saying is true, then it’s even more confirmation of our hunch in an earlier timeline.  NSA Director Mike Rogers didn’t want to participate in, or give aid in relationship to, the surveillance scheme.  Consequently, the Obama White House worked around Rogers with another source, British Government Communications Head Quarters (GCHQ), for the same information.
(more…)

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer delivers a press briefing from the Brady room.  March 14th 2016:  Live Stream Link – Alternate Live Stream

(more…)

Well, it would appear our hunch was correct.

If Trump was going to pull off a “reverse Castellano’s“, Caesar needed Brutus to feel comfortable enough to come close…

The problem for Speaker Ryan was a lack of muti-dimensional situational awareness, and the abject inability to escape President Trump’s political gravity.  Breitbart Media, with transparent coordination between Matthew Boyle, Steve Bannon and President Trump delivers the shiv right on cue.

(Breitbart) On a never-before-released private October conference call with House Republican members, House Speaker Paul Ryan told his members in the U.S. House of Representatives he was abandoning then-GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump forever and would never defend him ever again. (read more)

Here’s what everyone needs to understand about this play: (more…)

In an effort to keep the Daily Open Thread a little more open topic we are going to start a new daily thread for “Presidential Politics”. Please use this thread to post anything relating to the Donald Trump Administration and Presidency.

This thread will refresh daily and appear above the Open Discussion Thread.

President Trump Twitter @POTUS / Vice President Pence Twitter @VP

Sean Spicer Twitter @PressSec

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. THY WILL BE DONE, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but DELIVER US FROM EVIL.
For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen †

Earlier today President Trump signed an executive order initiating a full review of all federal departments to include a recommendations within 180 days for which departments and programs can be completely shut down. Almost immediately the Swamp trees begin convulsing spasmodically.
The notification ripples had yet to carry across the swamp water notifying all of the inhabitants when…   Apparently President Trump was not satisfied with the XO instructions alone.  Trump slams down the atomic sledgehammer in an epic budgetary notification to battalion commander T-Rex.

WASHINGTON DC – President Trump’s administration has told the State Department to cut more than 50 percent of U.S. funding to United Nations programs, Foreign Policy reported.

The push for the drastic reductions comes as the White House is scheduled to release its 2018 topline budget proposal Thursday, which is expected to include a 37 percent cut to the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development budgets.

It’s not clear if Trump’s budget plan, from the Office of Management and Budget, would reflect the full extent of Trump’s proposed cuts to the U.N.

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