Tag: donald trump

Authorities Preparing For “Worst Case Scenarios” Ahead of Trump Inauguration

Authorities in Washington DC are scanning for “nuclear irregularities” while the Secret Service preps for “worst case scenarios” as security preparations kick into high gear ahead of the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump.

Trump will be sworn in for his second term in office on Monday, January 20th.

A report by CBS News reveals how Department of Energy helicopters are flying in grid patterns around the city from only 150 feet in the air in order to “scan for radiological or nuclear irregularities.”

Officials are attempting to map a “blueprint” of normal radiation readings over Washington in order to detect anything unusual like potential dirty bombs.

Any slight variation in readings sets off an alarm which is then investigated by the pilots.

The U.S. Secret Service, which has faced criticism for its previous lax security measures around Trump, is also roleplaying “worst case scenarios” that could interrupt the inauguration process.

According to Assistant Special Agent in Charge Michael Thomas, security measures for Trump’s inauguration will eclipse anything previously seen.

This includes the presence of 25,000 law enforcement officers and military personnel, including 7,800 National Guard soldiers.

30 miles of ‘anti-scale’ fencing around the site of the inauguration will also provide a “ring of steel” to protect the event and its 250,000 attendees.

More than 25 Coast Guard vessels are also in position to patrol the area.

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Stealing Credit for the Gaza Ceasefire

Shortly after the ceasefire in Gaza was announced on Wednesday, President Joe Biden issued a statement taking credit for the deal, never mentioning who is really responsible for it.  Biden said: 

“I laid out the precise contours of this plan on May 31, 2024, after which it was endorsed unanimously by the UN Security Council. It is the result not only of the extreme pressure that Hamas has been under and the changed regional equation after a ceasefire in Lebanon and weakening of Iran — but also of dogged and painstaking American diplomacy. My diplomacy never ceased in their efforts to get this done.”

In an eight-minute address Wednesday night from the White House, Biden again never mentioned Trump, giving all the credit to himself and his team.  When a reporter asked him who the history books would credit, Biden replied, “Is that a joke?”

“This plan was developed and negotiated by my team and will be largely implemented by the incoming administration. That’s why I told my team to keep the incoming administration fully informed,” Biden said.

Actually, it wasn’t Biden’s ceasefire plan at all, according to Israel journalist Ben Caspit:

“In fact, the deal being finalized now could have been achieved last May, and was actually formulated by Netanyahu. It was Biden who unveiled Netanyahu’s plan at the time. … ‘Trump forced Netanyahu to finally accept Netanyahu’s plan,’ an Israeli diplomatic source familiar with the events told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity.”

Biden at no time seriously sought any ceasefire. Instead he unceasingly facilitated Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza in a 15-month crime spree, punctuated by pro forma attempts at “ceasefires,” which Biden allowed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to sabotage every time. 

Biden’s “attempts” at “ceasefires” were actually electoral stunts to try to con voters, who were opposed to his genocidal policy, into thinking he was really concerned about thousands of innocent lives being systematically snuffed out with American bombs.

He was also trying to make Americans believe he was earnestly attempting to stop the daily massacres. But a majority of voters knew all along that he, and his replacement Kamala Harris, had no intentions whatsoever of forcing a ceasefire.

Biden had all the leverage over Netanyahu. But instead of using it to force him to accept a hostage exchange at anytime over 15 months to stop the killing, he instead pushed the lie that Israel was merely defending itself. 

This war was never about the hostages, defeating Hamas or defending Israel. It was about ethnically cleansing Gaza in a genocide to further the 1948 project to establish Greater Israel on all of historic Palestine, and the Biden administration was on board with it. 

If Biden had really wanted a ceasefire, like the one he’s now trying to take credit for, all he had to do was telephone Netanyahu and tell him no more guns, no more ammo, no more diplomatic cover and Israel would have been forced to cease its fire.

But Biden never did that.

In his dwindling days in office he fraudulently wants to be remembered as a peacemaker and a statesman, just like he waited until the very end in another stunt to take Cuba off the terrorism list but never restored relations with Havana the way Barack Obama did. 

That Trump is the one instead who forced Israel to accept this ceasefire is beyond doubt, based on credible sources. 

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Animal Farm Politics: The Deep State Wins Again

“No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”—George Orwell, Animal Farm

It cost the American taxpayer $24 million to find out what we knew all along: politics is corrupt.

After four years of being subjected to special prosecutor Jack Smith’s dogged investigation into alleged election interference by Donald Trump, the Justice Department has concluded that Trump would have been convicted of breaking the law if only he hadn’t gotten re-elected.

In other words, the Deep State wins again.

The revelation here is not that Trump broke the law but the extent to which sitting presidents get a free pass when it comes to misconduct.

None of this is news.

The Deep State has been operating from this exact same playbook for decades, regardless of which party has occupied the White House.

Indeed, Richard Nixon let the cat out of the bag when he explained that the very act of being president places one beyond the rule of law (“when the president does it … that means that it is not illegal”).

This is how we ended up with an imperial president—empowered to act as a dictator, above the law and beyond any real accountability—and why “we the people” keep finding ourselves mired in a political swamp of lies, graft, cronyism and corruption.

George Orwell, who died 75 years ago on Jan. 21, 1950, must be rolling in his grave.

In the 75 years since George Orwell died, his works of dystopian fiction—which warn against rampant abuse of power, mind control and mass manipulation coupled with the rise of ubiquitous technology, fascism and totalitarianism—have become operation manuals for power-hungry political regimes wedded to the corporate state.

While Orwell’s novel 1984 foreshadowed the rise of an omnipresent, modern-day surveillance state, his novel Animal Farm aptly sums up the state of politics today, propped up by a two-party system designed to maintain the illusion that voting matters.

Orwell understood what many Americans, caught up in their partisan flag-waving, are still struggling to come to terms with: that there is no such thing as a government organized for the good of the people—even the best intentions among those in government inevitably give way to the desire to maintain power and control at all costs.

As Orwell explains:

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.”

No doubt about it: the revolution was successful.

That January 6, 2021 attempt by President Trump and his followers to overturn the election results was not the revolution, however.

Those who answered President Trump’s call to march on the Capitol were merely the fall guys, manipulated into creating the perfect crisis for the Deep State—a.k.a. the Police State a.k.a. the Military Industrial Complex a.k.a. the Techno-Corporate State a.k.a. the Surveillance State—to amass even greater powers.

It took no time at all for the switch to be thrown and the nation’s capital to be placed under a military lockdown, online speech forums restricted, and individuals with subversive or controversial viewpoints ferreted out, investigated, shamed and/or shunned.

It was a set-up, folks.

The Justice Department’s policy of not prosecuting a sitting president was the tell.

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Arab Officials Say Trump’s Team Did More for Hostage Deal in a Single Meeting Than Biden Admin Did in a Year

An official appointed by President-elect Donald Trump for his next administration was the deciding factor in securing a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, but President Joe Biden nevertheless took a victory lap over the breakthrough on Tuesday.

Steve Witkoff, who Trump appointed as his Middle East envoy for his second administration, emerged successful from a critical meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday, according to The Times of Israel.

Witkoff apparently did more to move Netanyahu toward a ceasefire in a single meeting than Biden did in the past year, according to two Arab officials who spoke with the outlet, which is based in Jerusalem.

Witkoff, a real estate attorney and investor, was in Doha, Qatar, last week to take part in the talks, capping the trip with the stop in Jerusalem to meet with Netanyahu.

Two days later, negotiators from Israel and Hamas confirmed that they accepted the ceasefire agreement in principle.

“A deal could have been reached much earlier, but both sides led to talks falling apart at various times,” one Arab official told the Times.

But the Biden administration was swift to take credit for the ceasefire, overlooking the fact that the approaching Trump administration seems to have been the catalyst for the deal.

Vice President Kamala Harris said in a statement from the White House that the ceasefire was reached “thanks to the leadership of President Joe Biden.”

“President Biden and I have no higher priority than the safety of Americans, and are determined that all the American hostages be returned home as part of this deal,” she insisted.

Harris also appeared to pat herself on the back for the deal.

“In my many conversations with leaders in the region, my unwavering focus has been to end this war such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination,” Harris said.

“I will never stop working to achieve a future of greater peace, dignity, and security for all people in the region,” she continued.

The play here from Biden and Harris is rather obvious.

Biden is concluding a dismal four years in the Oval Office.

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Trump announces creation of External Revenue Service — here’s what new agency will collect

President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday he will create an external revenue office upon his return to the White House that will collect all foreign-sourced revenue, such as tariffs.

“For far too long, we have relied on taxing our Great People using the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Through soft and pathetically weak Trade agreements, the American Economy has delivered growth and prosperity to the World, while taxing ourselves,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

“I am today announcing that I will create the EXTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE [ERS] to collect our Tariffs, Duties, and all Revenue that come from Foreign sources.”

Trump, 78, has already threatened to raise tariffs on foreign countries that do not comply with his hardline immigration policies. The president-elect has singled out Mexico and Canada with threats of a 25% tariff, and has also said he will stop “business” with countries that refuse to take back illegal migrants who have been deported.

The Republican has also said he will levy a 10% to 20% tariff on all foreign goods and up to a 60% tariff on Chinese imports.

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FBI Declares ‘No Known Threats’ for Trump’s Inauguration — 25,000 Law Enforcement and Military Deployed in Washington

As Washington, D.C., gears up for the inauguration of President Donald Trump next Monday, federal and local authorities are making bold claims of readiness, with the FBI asserting they are not tracking any “specific or credible threats” to the event.

However, given the politically charged climate and past security lapses, many are questioning whether the nation’s capital is truly prepared for potential unrest.

Mayor Muriel Bowser, alongside district and federal authorities, assured the public during a Monday press conference that every precaution is being taken.

“We are not currently tracking any specific or credible threats to the inaugural ceremony or to the Capitol complex,” FBI special agent David Sundberg said Monday.

“We will continue to work closely with our partners to share information and identify and disrupt any threat that may emerge.”

J. Thomas Manger, chief of the U.S. Capitol Police, said that the primary concern is the “lone actor” threat.

“That threat of the lone actor remains the biggest justification for us maintaining this heightened state of alert throughout the next week,” Manger said.

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A New Monroe Doctrine, or a Federalized ‘Five Eyes’? 

If one has to move beyond the relentless stupidity of social media in the past few weeks, it is easy to perceive that the singular line of thought that has most animated the right is one of annexation and conquest. One might cautiously divide the American political landscape into three competing archetypes: the revolutionary and often ideological puritans, the equilibrium-seeking landed gentries, and the fearless frontiersmen. The coordination between the three raised the greatest power in history; conflicts among them have led to catastrophes, and, in one particular instance, a civil war. 

Every man, whether new or old, native-born or immigrant, somehow finds themselves in one of these archetypes, and his conduct reflects their intellectual proximity. Possibly America’s greatest era followed the Civil War, where a combination of ultra-republican nationalism, small-i imperialism, the prudence of the native-born oligarchy, and a restrained policy of balance of power abroad—including the last instance an official American “proclamation of neutrality” was issued—led to massive expansion of American power and prestige, not to mention American frontiers. Donald Trump is the closest to a Gilded Age patrician in our modern age. His calls to “retake” Panama, buy Greenland, and “unite” Canada would be understood viscerally by anyone in the late 19th and early 20th century. Not surprising, that it has received support and rationalization from even some unusual corners of the cognoscenti. 

So what are the stakes? Trump’s Greenland-lust in particular has been called a return to a “new Monroe Doctrine” by various commentators. It is in line with “the scramble for the Arctic, one of the new ‘Great Games’ of the 21st century,” and “suggests the recalibrating of US priorities toward a more manageable ‘continental’ strategy—a new Monroe Doctrine—aimed at reasserting full hegemony over what it deems to be its natural sphere of influence, the Americas and the northern Atlantic.” A move away from the last quarter-century of crusading for democratic peace, the new “focus will be on shoring up the most important American interests at home and close to home, avoiding needless conflicts and adventurism in far-off places with marginal ties to American interests, and most importantly of all, restoring America’s confidence as a great country with a bright future.” 

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Podcaster Sam Harris spreads hoax that President-elect Trump wasn’t actually shot

Disgraced public intellectual and author Sam Harris appeared on Bill Maher’s podcast, where he told the Club Random host he believes Trump could have been struck by a piece of shrapnel from a teleprompter at Butler, Pennsylvania rally rather than a bullet.

“I’m surprised that a rifle round making any degree on contact with an ear wouldn’t do more damage. I think a shattered piece of shrapnel from a teleprompter is far more likely to do that to his ear than a rifle round,” Harris says, before Maher interjects by saying that this theory is “silly.”

“If it just hit it by the slightest possible degree, it makes much more sense,” Maher replied.

“There’s no question that rifle rounds went flying. Someone was killed,” Harris replied, referring to firefighter Corey Comperatore. “I’m not debating that at all. Just, if in fact, a teleprompter was hit by a rifle round and we know there was shattered glass, that makes more sense to me.”

“Oh, that he didn’t get hit at all. It was the teleprompter… But that doesn’t change the basic narrative,” replied Maher, who then agrees that the shooter could have “missed him completely.”

Harris goes on to say that this does not change the fact that Trump survived an assassination attempt. 

A photo posted by X user Brick_Suit, who attended the Butler rally that day, shows that no teleprompter was hit.

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Trump Energizes Greenland Independence Movement, Divorce Agreement Coming Up

The Wall Street Journal reports Trump’s Talk of Buying Greenland Energizes Island’s Independence Movement

Greenland is a self-ruling part of the Kingdom of Denmark. The Danish government says it is willing to grant Greenland full independence if there is local support, and recent Greenlandic elections and polls indicate there is.

Trump’s recent threat of a trade war with Denmark is changing the negotiating dynamic, says Ulrik Pram Gad, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies. The Danish government now might be more open to agreeing a divorce deal that includes some continued payments to ease Greenland’s path to independence, he says. “My prognosis is that the Danish government will accept it in the next few years,” he says. An independent Greenland would then be free to forge its own security or economic ties with the U.S., Denmark or anyone else.

In April, Greenland goes to the polls in a vote that could fire the starter gun on independence for the territory of 57,000 people. The last time elections were held, pro-independence parties got 80% of the vote.

The prime minister of Greenland made a New Year’s address to the nation saying that a draft constitution for the country has been prepared and that the independence process should be triggered.

“It is now time to take the next step for our country,” Múte Egede said. “Like other countries in the world, we must work to remove the obstacles to cooperation—which we can describe as the shackles of the colonial era—and move on.” 

A 2009 Danish law lays out how Greenland can take the first step in the process: It must notify the Danish government, the two must negotiate a divorce agreement and the deal must then be ratified by a referendum in Greenland. The Greenlandic government has commissioned legal experts to work out the details of how step one would work with a two- year deadline.

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Zelensky Calls for NATO Troops in Ukraine at Last Ramstein Rally Before Trump Return

The Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which is essentially ‘NATO and Friends,’ convened at Ramstein Air Base on Thursday for its final meeting before Trump returns to the White House.

Zelensky used his speech to call for NATO to deploy troops to Ukraine, claiming it would “force Russia to peace,” when he and everyone else knows it would only serve to bring us to World War 3.

Glenn Diesen, a geopolitical analyst and professor at the University of South-Eastern Norway, noted that while Trump’s talk of wanting to pursue peace in Ukraine is a step forward, he’s in for a wake-up call if he expects Russia to accept a deal that doesn’t address Putin’s long list of security concerns for the region.

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