People These Guys Believe They Know What’s Best For You. Both Are Damn Traitors.
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) on Monday evening became the first sitting GOP member of the House of Representatives to publicly call for the removal of House Speaker Paul Ryan now, rather than on Ryan’s planned schedule post-election, during an interview onBreitbart News Tonight on SiriusXM.
During a discussion with host and Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Rebecca Mansour about Ryan’s failures on immigration with a looming pro-amnesty discharge petition hanging in the balance, Gosar hammered the entire current leadership team.
“Part of the problem is I think the whole leadership team is toxic,” Gosar said. “And that’s part of the problem. How did we choose this? These are the same group of people that conveyed the jurisdiction of the omnibus. These are the same group of leaders that haven’t honored a promise.”
Gosar pointed to the founding chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), as a solid replacement of Ryan when the time comes. Mansour had asked him about a call from Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney—a Freedom Caucus House member before he joined President Donald Trump’s administration—for Ryan to be removed now to force House Democrats to demonstrate in a floor Speakership vote their true allegiance to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.
“There’s a movement of people that are backing Jim Jordan from the Freedom Caucus,” Gosar said. “He would be a great person to get back to having leadership for change and well-statute reform. That’s how you look at this: it’s got to be somebody that is going to bring back good process which brings back good policy which builds good politics. This is problematic.”
News broke this weekend that a group of grassroots conservatives—well more than a hundred of them—are calling to draft Jordan for the speakership.
He further elaborated on his support for Jordan for Speaker.
“I think Jim Jordan is a great person. I think the move is afoot to draft Jim Jordan,” Gosar said. “I think if the votes were already had I think the replacement would have already been there. I think the further this goes down the road—I think this was the latest warning call in regards to that process, on the farm bill. I think it’s time. I think it would energize our base. It would get somebody who would actually get back the jurisdiction and the clout to Congress and the House as equal footings with the Senate and stop taking this crap allowing the Senate to back us into corners and mitigate with ourselves instead of being a fair and equal component like the Senate. This would be the perfect scenario—otherwise we’re going to have the same kind of problems over and over again.”
When Mansour asked again if Gosar was specifically saying call the vote for Speaker now and elect Jordan before the election in November, he replied: “Absolutely.”
“It allows us to pony up but it also allows us to get things done,” Gosar said. “Because we haven’t seen it done.”
Gosar listed a number of things Ryan promised but has not delivered as speaker.
This all comes amid a fraught political time for the House GOP leadership. Ryan, who announced he is not seeking re-election thereby ceding his authority as Speaker by taking a lame duck approach to the midterm elections, is widely viewed as not doing enough to stop an effort by pro-amnesty open borders Republicans to use a discharge petition to force the issue of amnesty onto the floor of the House of Representatives.
“Once again, the damage is done because if you’re a member of the moderates why would you sign onto that when you know you can have the discharge petition come forward if this Goodlatte bill doesn’t come forward? So they’ve played this whole hand out publicly which is totally bananas,” Gosar said.
Meanwhile, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy—the presumed heir apparent as Speaker—has a major uphill battle ahead of him to convince members like Gosar and other conservatives to vote for him if and when he does have a speakership vote on the floor. While McCarthy is indeed personally close with President Trump, he was thwarted by these same conservatives in his last bid for speakership back in 2015 which cleared the way for Ryan’s ascendancy to third place in the line of the presidential succession. McCarthy could very well win them over in the end, but he has an enormous amount of work to do—and palling around with Ryan, when Ryan is not stopping this discharge petition, does not help his case.
Waiting in the wings is House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, also viewed as a potential contender for the speakership should McCarthy not succeed. Scalise would face many of the same hurdles as McCarthy faces.
It remains to be seen how this all will go down but one thing is certain at this stage: Ryan is in serious trouble, and is very likely to not survive to his desired expiration date at the beginning of next year at the end of this Congress.
Congressional investigators are puzzling over a December 2016 text message that suggests the Justice Department sought to grant immunity to Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
In a Dec. 13, 2016 text exchange, FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok sent his mistress, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, a text message referring to a conversation he had with the Justice Department discussing immunity and potential grand jury testimony.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee released the text message along with 384 pages of additional records on Wednesday.
“Talked with DoJ about HA interview,” Strzok wrote to Page.
“Told them we had to interview, no immunity. They said they thought that would get counsel to the point of saying she’s either taking the 5th in the Gj or you need to give her immunity. I said that’s fine, please have discussions to get the decision to that point and I would run it up the chain.”
Peter Strzok text message to Lisa Page, Dec. 13, 2016.
The initials “HA,” the gender reference and other text messages that Strzok sent in that time frame strongly suggest that he was referring to Abedin.
A day before the text about immunity, Strzok said that a top FBI official had offered to meet with Clinton’s lawyer, David Kendall.
Peter Strzok text message to Lisa Page, Dec. 12, 2016.
Kendall did not represent Abedin in the email case so it is unclear why the FBI sought to meet with him. A lawyer who represented Abedin on the email matter did not respond to a request for comment.
It is unclear what case Strzok was investigating at the time, and there have been no reports that Abedin was granted immunity or that she pleaded the Fifth.
The Hillary Clinton email investigation was closed for good on Nov. 6, 2016, just two days before the election. The FBI re-opened its investigation in late Oct. 2016 after Clinton emails were discovered on a laptop shared by Abedin and her husband, Anthony Weiner.
The FBI was still investigating Weiner for sending lewd messages to an underage girl.
She’s also facing three counts for fraudulent use of an application for ballot by mail. These are state jail felonies. That can include up to four years in state prison and a fine of $10,000.
According to the affidavits, Barron signed up a felon to receive a ballot by mail due to a disability.
Investigators say the felon denied being disabled as he was a cowboy. He also claimed raising the concern to Barron before being signed up.
Yes Democrats would like every dead vote.
Two other affidavits have similar accounts of two separate voters. The voters denied filling out the form stating that they had a disability.
The investigation is under the Starr County District Attorney’s Office.
District attorney Omar Escobar says they seek to ensure the sanctity of voting especially when the ballot is outside of a polling site.
“It’s too easy to exert influence and pressure on somebody at home. An assistant, a worker, an election worker to go and ask them, ‘did you already receive your ballot by mail?’ ‘Yes. I got it here’. And then to hover over the ballot and to vote a particular way,” said Escobar.
The affidavits also state another woman was seen with Barron. There is a potential for other arrests.
Barron is an employee of Rio Grande City Consolidated Independent School District. She has been put on administrative leave.
An internal investigation is also being carried out.
The school district’s attorney says the terms of her leave are still being worked on, this includes whether or not she will be paid during her leave.
Now lets take the damn gloves off and expose who is right damit!
President Donald Trump denounced his former top strategist, Steve Bannon, on Wednesday, saying that he “lost his mind” after leaving the White House last summer.
“When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind,” Trump said of Bannon in a statement the White House issued. “Now that he is on his own, Steve is learning that winning isn’t as easy as I make it look.”
The statement represented an emphatic break from the person considered the architect of Trump’s presidential campaign. Bannon continued to enjoy access to the president after he left the White House, but that has ended, one person familiar with the matter said.
Earlier on Wednesday, New York Magazine published excerpts of a forthcoming book by author Michael Wolff in which Bannon criticizes Trump’s campaign as well as the president and his family. The Guardian published excerpts of the book in which Bannon predicts that Special Counsel Robert Mueller will “crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV” over the president’s son’s meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower in June 2016.
Bannon also called Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with the lawyer, in which he expected to receive damaging information on Trump’s election opponent Hillary Clinton, “treasonous” and “unpatriotic,” according to the Guardian.
Bannon, reached by Bloomberg News, declined to comment on the remarks published by the Guardian. Two people close to him said he wasn’t bothered by the president’s statement. They asked not to be identified discussing Bannon’s reaction.
265-Word Statement
In his 265-word statement, Trump went on to indict Bannon for some of his activities at the White House and afterward. He blamed him for the loss of a Republican Senate seat in Alabama in a special election last month and accused him of leaking to news reporters while he served as the White House chief strategist.
“Steve had very little to do with our historic victory, which was delivered by the forgotten men and women of this country,” Trump said. “Yet Steve had everything to do with the loss of a Senate seat in Alabama held for more than thirty years by Republicans. Steve doesn’t represent my base — he’s only in it for himself.”
Bannon backed former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore over Trump’s preferred candidate, incumbent Senator Luther Strange, in a primary election for the Alabama seat. Moore lost to Democrat Doug Jones in the special election after several women accused him of sexual misconduct while they were teenagers.
Trump Jr. also declined to comment, but re-tweeted a Bloomberg News reporter’s tweet about the outcome of the Alabama election with the comment: “Thanks Steve. Keep up the great work.”
“Steve pretends to be at war with the media, which he calls the opposition party, yet he spent his time at the White House leaking false information to the media to make himself seem far more important than he was,” Trump said. “It is the only thing he does well. Steve was rarely in a one-on-one meeting with me and only pretends to have had influence to fool a few people with no access and no clue, whom he helped write phony books.”
Statement from the President of the United States:
Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my Presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind. Steve was a staffer who worked for me after I had already won the nomination by defeating seventeen candidates, often described as the most talented field ever assembled in the Republican party.
Now that he is on his own, Steve is learning that winning isn’t as easy as I make it look. Steve had very little to do with our historic victory, which was delivered by the forgotten men and women of this country. Yet Steve had everything to do with the loss of a Senate seat in Alabama held for more than thirty years by Republicans.
Steve doesn’t represent my base—he’s only in it for himself.
Steve pretends to be at war with the media, which he calls the opposition party, yet he spent his time at the White House leaking false information to the media to make himself seem far more important than he was. It is the only thing he does well. Steve was rarely in a one-on-one meeting with me and only pretends to have had influence to fool a few people with no access and no clue, whom he helped write phony books.
We have many great Republican members of Congress and candidates who are very supportive of the Make America Great Again agenda. Like me, they love the United States of America and are helping to finally take our country back and build it up, rather than simply seeking to burn it all down.
In addition to Wolff’s book, titled “Fire and Fury: Inside Trump’s White House,” Bannon was the subject of a best-selling book published last year by Bloomberg Businessweek writer Joshua Green, “Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency.”
Trump complimented Bannon when he left the White House in August, saying he “would be a tough and smart new voice at” his website, Breitbart news. “Maybe even better than before. Fake News needs the competition!”
And Bannon boasted at a private luncheon in Hong Kong in September that he spoke with Trump by phone every two to three days, according to two people who attended.
After Trump issued his statement on Bannon, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s campaign staff tweeted a GIF image of the Kentucky Republican sitting at his desk, grinning. Bannon, a populist and nationalist who considers much of the Republican establishment corrupt, has said Senate Republicans should replace McConnell and has sought to recruit people to run against McConnell’s favored candidates in Republican primaries, including in Alabama.
Wolff’s Revelations
Wolff, who New York Magazine said conducted more than 200 interviews for his book including with the president and most of his senior staff, also reported that Trump never expected to win the election and had promised his wife, Melania, that he wouldn’t be president. She “was in tears — and not of joy” on election night as it became clear Trump would beat Clinton, Wolff reported.
“The book is clearly going to be sold in the bargain fiction section,” Melania Trump’s spokesman, Stephanie Grisham, said in a statement. “Mrs. Trump supported her husband’s decision to run for president and in fact, encouraged him to do so. She was confident he would win and was very happy when he did.”
Wolff reported that friends Trump phoned at night after leaving the Oval Office for the day would leak details of the conversations to reporters and that many of them consider him ignorant. Rupert Murdoch, co-chairman of Twenty-First Century Fox Inc. and a close Trump confidante, called him an “idiot” — preceded by an expletive — after one such call, Wolff wrote.
Trump’s longtime friend Thomas Barrack called the president “not only crazy” but “stupid,” Wolff reported. Barrack denied making the comments on Wednesday.
Wolff portrays Trump’s top three advisers at the beginning of his presidency — Bannon, senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, and former chief of staff Reince Priebus — as consumed by infighting and frequently unable to coordinate strategy.
He wrote that a former deputy chief of staff who also left last year, Katie Walsh, was frustrated by the chaos of Trump’s White House and by the president himself, and quoted her saying that working for him was “like trying to figure out what a child wants.”
Other revelations may prove more damaging to the White House in the long-term. Michael Flynn, the president’s former national security adviser, allegedly justified a pre-election speaking engagement paid for by Russians by saying it would only present a conflict of interest “if we won.”
“This book is filled with false and misleading accounts from individuals who have no access or influence with the White House,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement. “Participating in a book that can only be described as trashy tabloid fiction exposes their sad desperate attempts at relevancy.”
The “populist surge” in Europe has far from peaked and is the most significant change to the European order since the end of the Cold War, a new report by former British left-wing Prime Minister Tony Blair’s own think tank has claimed.
Assessing what the report identifies as a “populist threat” as a means to defeat it and “renew the centre”, the globalist Institute for Global Change document questions widely-held assumptions that right-populist politics is an “interlude”, or blip in history which “optimistic” observers believe will burn out.
Blair Gifts Money to Set up New Anti-Populist ‘Institute
To the contrary, the Institute’s own research shows “the trend line suggests that populists will continue to gain strength in the next round of elections”, and particularly in Eastern Europe, the report noting: “Populists are strongest in Eastern Europe. They routinely out-compete the political mainstream and have already taken power in seven countries: Bosnia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Serbia, and Slovakia.”
Populism could instead prove to be “the new normal” and may “drive European politics into a more nationalist and protectionist direction… governments would move decisively towards restricting net migration flows; make access to some social benefits conditional on citizenship status; and undermine minority rights in key respects.”
Populist Woman Mayor Wins Rome by Landslide: ‘New Era’ Begins
Looking forward, the paper predicted that should the next decade see populist parties enjoying the same growth as they had in the past ten years, then nations like Germany and Sweden could too see themselves “vulnerable” to such movements.
The report comes as left-wing papers including The Guardian and New York Times mourned the “demise of Europe’s centre-left”, at the expense of the populist right, noting surging right-wing parties across the continent.
EXCLUSIVE: Polish Senator SLAMS ‘Offensive’ BBC Hit Job on Anti-Mass Migration Poland, Hungary
EXCLUSIVE: Top Polish Government Minister Hits Back at ‘Offensive’ BBC ‘Illiberal Democracy’ Smears
A senior Polish politician has hit back as the BBC airs a documentary on Poland and Hungary which accuses them of being anti-democratic.
Beyond protecting Europe’s borders, one of the areas of right-populist influence that apparently most concerned the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change authors was changes to institutions, across Europe often created or shaped in the post-war period and widely acknowledged to be totally in the hands of mainstream, politically-left management as a result of the famed “long march through the institutions”. One prominent example of such change being presently wrought by a European populist government is reform of the judiciary in conservative Poland.
A hangover of the old Communist system, the Polish government was elected on a platform of judicial reform to increase accountability in the courts, but has been relentlessly attacked by globalist institutions such as the European Commission for attempting to rebalance. Poland and Hungary are both key points of interest in the Tony Blair report, where the ruling parties of both nations are accused of emphasizing “a nationalism based on soil, blood, or culture”.
Despite the criticism, the report concedes “populist governments in Hungary and Poland are as popular as ever”.
Wealthy New York City elites are preparing to flee the state because the Republican tax bill is going to make them face the full brunt of Mayor Bill de Blasio and Democratic state leadership’s tax rates.
“Everybody I speak to brings this up. Every NYC resident I speak to asks about the feasibility involved in doing it,” Wall Street tax expert Robert Willens told Yahoo Finance. “I’ve been doing this more than 40 years, and never heard more discussion about relocating than recently.”
Wealthy New Yorkers can currently lower their federal taxable income by more than $100,000 through a provision of the tax code known as the State and Local Tax Deduction, or SALT. The average SALT deduction in the Manhattan area is at least $60,000.
The Republican bill will cap the deduction amount at $10,000, meaning wealthy New Yorkers who currently write off expensive real estate could face an extra six figures in taxable income.
President Donald Trump is expected to sign the bill into law by Christmas, which is why many hedge fund and private equity managers are seriously considering getting out of New York.
New York is a state run by Democrats and one that taxes its citizens at a higher rate than any other state in the nation. The state’s combined state and local income tax burden tops California’s at 12.7 percent. That amounts to roughly $6,993.42 per New York taxpayer.
For the first time, many wealthy Manhattanites will finally feel the full burden that their state legislators and city leadership have put on them.
De Blasio is actually trying to increase millionaire New York City taxpayers’ loads as Republicans put the finishing touches on their bill.
The mayor is trying to levy a 14 percent tax increase on the city’s millionaires to pay for improvements to the city’s subway system. The governor-elect of New Jersey is looking to pull a similar tactic to raise money for public schools in the state.