I'm going to reemphasize x infinity, because it's the greatest thing I have seen on Twitter in years. @ellencarmichael deserves a follow, because her earnest political outlook is so authentic (it saves a million words). THIS is the authentic outlook of the republican party.
Please do not disparage her or ridicule the perspective. Instead, absorb -genuinely- what Carmichael is saying, along with the replies to her suggestion from the professionally republican followers she maintains.
It is the greatest visible example of the GOP disconnect in years.
The only other moment that comes close to just sitting there as a representative example of the professional political disconnect, was the 2016 South Carolina republican primary debate; and the audience reaction to MAGA Trump as presented.
In 2016, President Trump first introduced the professional republican class (the GOP betters) to the concept of America-First economic nationalism.
They were clueless. The audiences sat puzzling their puzzlers wondering what was this jibberish.. what was this odd policy.
In New Hampshire, then Candidate Trump introduced China as a geopolitical and economic threat.
Jeb's infamous and incredulous "c'mon man'... represented the GOP audience view. WTF are you talking about, they said... China? What is this nonsense.
Until Trump, the catchphrase from the GOP "betters", this is generations of outlook talking points, included the acceptance of:
..."The United States is a service driven economy"...
Bush Sr.
Clinton
Bush Jr.
Obama
30+ years of the same mantra. Until Trump.
It's funny in retrospect, but even today the professional political class of Republicans do not understand the basic inflection point that Trump represented.
That incredulous disconnect is still so brutally visible as to surface in the Carmichael tweet.
That's the value of it.
Bush, McCain, Romney, Jeb, et al,... none of them connected to the issue of, or even the concept of, "economic nationalism."
The entire apparatus of the GOP as a professional political party couldn't fathom what was at the nucleus of middle-class voter pain. Trump did.
What is this attraction?... said dozens of the best paid political consultants and Wall Street cocktail party invitees.
It must be because Trump's a TV reality media star they reconciled in their echo-chamber. Yeah, yeah, that's it, the rubes know him from TV.
Gottabe...
That disconnect I am describing, still permeates the professional GOP apparatus to this very day.
Hedge funders, Donors, Wall Street, Multinationals, the apparatus that supports the architecture of one wing of the 2-party club dynamic, just can't fathom the appeal of Trump.
Sacrilegious words like "tariffs", "reciprocity", "trade equity", "protectionism" had long been banned from better conservative circles.
Books burned. Mention amid Wharton School lesson plans strictly forbidden. By the time of Trump, an economic code of Omerta existed.
But like the flickering flame of liberty, the embers of economic nationalism still existed.... barely alight, but smoldering.
Here's comes Trump with the bellows, and BOOM, just like that, YES, it reignites.... America-First is introduced. Worse yet, it comes without apology.
Trillions, on a global level, suddenly at stake. Billions on a corporate and even personal level suddenly at risk, for the professional political class.
Wait, he,.... what,... tariffs?
Oh, hell no, they thought. Hell no. This system he speaks of is unimaginable. The horror.
Peel all the skin off the onion, and even though they (like Carmichael) might not be able to understand it, that's the core of the disconnect.
Economic nationalism is the unifying theme of MAGA.
Economic nationalism is what creates the largest populist tent in the history of republican politics.
Blacks, whites, latinos, asians, all colors all creeds, all races, all united.... because the "working-class" is the unifying element.
MAGA is the voice of the working class.
The working class is what keeps all the shit working. We are the binding of our patchwork quilt of a constitutional republic.
The working class that had been beaten, put down, isolated, disconnected from policy, ridiculed for not having pedigree, all of it. United in MAGA.
It's a massive political tent. The biggest political coalition in the history of American politics.
However, you have to be in the working-class in order to understand the working class. That's the GOP problem.
Candidate Trump introduced the professional GOPe to economic nationalism.
President Trump then initiated economic nationalism.
The MAGA working class immediately felt the benefits of economic nationalism.
This is what unifies the MAGA base and attaches to President Donald Trump.
This is what the GOP professional political class just do not understand, and even more dislike. DeSantis, Noem, Haley, Pence, Cheney et al.
None of them carry a multiracial working-class coalition.
/END
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Larry Ellison previously said he "would never let Elon Musk fail." Ellison is Musk's financial backstop.
Musk will never stake a position against Oracle, Google or Thiel's interests.
Ellison then began moving toward TikTok. K-Street funded to assist with lobbying. Trump circle directly part of the assist (Sacks, Lutnick, Musk).
David Ellison simultaneously begins moving toward Paramount (CBS). There is no distance between father and son. Trump circle then assists (Hollywood tariffs).
Ideologically social media and boomer media target operations complete. Now watch what happens with CNN.
At the end of this construct, AI enmeshed with govt., and Social Media data, via national security and Palantir.
L Ellison wins. D Ellison wins. Musk wins. Thiel wins. Sacks wins. Ackman wins. Alex Karp wins. Bibi wins.
The Kentucky Derby is won by horses, but it’s the owners who get the prize money.
Inside the released report by John Durham, the special counsel outlined how former FBI Director James Comey was intimately involved in the creation of the Carter Page FISA application.
Durham noted that Comey kept asking the DOJ National Security Division and FBI counterintelligence investigators, “Where’s the FISA, we need the FISA.” However, John Durham never interviewed James Comey or Andrew McCabe.
The former FBI Director and Deputy refused to cooperate or give testimony to John Durham. So, how did John Durham have details about the demands of Comey?
The answer is found in the footnotes.
Durham reviewed transcripts of interviews given by Andrew McCabe to the Office of the Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, who previously investigated FBI conduct in the origin of the Carter Page FISA. Durham pulled quotes from that transcript. [Footnote #1207, page 199 – Durham Report]
QUESTIONS: If Andrew McCabe gave testimony to the OIG about the motives and impetus of FBI Director James Comey in pushing for the Carter Page FISA application, why did the OIG report never outline those transcribed interviews? Why was the interview transcript never included in the 2019 OIG report?
[ NOTE: A transcribed interview of Andrew McCabe exists in the OIG office. @DNIGabbard through @AGPamBondi can request the transcription and release it to the public.]
However, let me answer the questions without the customary pretending from the DC professional political class. The short version is that OIG Michael Horowitz was protecting the DOJ and FBI. The longer version is a coverup that includes Rod Rosenstein, Bill Barr and ultimately yes, John Durham.
“Where’s the FISA? We need the FISA?” ~ James Comey
You see, the DOJ-NSD and FBI CoIntel needed to find a safe and legal justification for previous spying on the Trump campaign.
The Clinton operation and 2016 FISA Title 1 surveillance of former CIA operative Carter Page became the fraudulent justification for that intent.
Because “FISA Title I” surveillance authority against a U.S. citizen is so serious (the U.S. government is essentially calling the target a spy), only a few people are authorized to even apply for such surveillance warrants. One of the four people authorized to make such a Search Warrant request is the Asst. Deputy Attorney General as head of the National Security Division of the DOJ.
In September and October of 2016 a few critical things were happening:
1. NSA Director Mike Rogers was about to inform the FISC of the FBI spying operation using the NSA database.
2. CIA Director John Brennan was informing President Trump of the risk factors associated with the Clinton/FBI operation (that included #1).
3. The DOJ-NSD was quickly assembling the FISA Court application, sans Woods File, to be used against Carter Page. The Clinton/Steele Dossier was going to be used in lieu of the mandatory Woods File.
While Comey was saying, "where’s the FISA? We need the FISA?" Pressure was building on the office of the Asst. Deputy Attorney General in charge of the DOJ-NSD, that's John Carlin.
Subsequently, Asst. Attorney General John P Carlin resigned as head of the DOJ-NSD.
A few years later, while COVID was raging and few people were paying attention, OIG Horowitz released a COVID delayed letter and summary report about the FBI spying operation [technically, exploiting the NSA database].
On its face the OIG release outlines a review and finding, actually a warning, by Horowitz’s office about FBI contractor access to “a certain national security database.”
The OIG report was titled: “Management Advisory: Notification of Concerns Identified in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Contract Administration of a Certain Classified National Security Program.”
The advisory part is particularly interesting when absorbed through the prism of prior information.
On the surface of the release, the OIG was noting concerns and a warning shared with the FBI about ongoing contractor access to the NSA database. Thus, a “classified national security program” becomes defined.
However, in the background of the release it appears the OIG was using this public notification as a CYA of sorts.
Meaning the OIG was saying publicly they have advised the FBI of “concerns” they carried with the FBI abusing access to the NSA database.
Within the report you will note the IG calls out the FBI because the FBI hid their response to the IG warning behind the cloud of “classification.”
This left the IG with no alternative except to say the classified response has to be accepted as the final FBI response to the IG warning.
The IG goes on to say to the FBI you have 90 days to tell me what you did to address the contractor access abuses.
In reality OIG Michael Horowitz was covering his ass and telling us why. Perhaps that's why Horowitz was removed from his position recently and sent to the IRS office where Secretary Bessent could keep an eye on him.
Keep in mind this contractor access to the bulk NSA metadata is a big deal. All of the FISA audits in the past eight+ years have pointed out how FBI contractors continue to abuse their access to the database and unlawfully extract information without minimization efforts required by fourth amendment protections.
The scale of the abuse is actually stunning; and the OIG reviewed the process and found the same issues that existed in 2015 and 2016 remained uncorrected five years later.
1/ During the period of Nov 2015 to April 2016, the Obama administration, through the FBI under James Comey and Andrew McCabe, was conducting a political spying operation against all republican presidential primary candidates using the power of their offices.
The intent was two-fold. (1) Tracking the candidates to identify activity; and (2) conducting opposition research to be fed to the campaign of Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton.
This surveillance activity was happening in concert with Comey, McCabe and a small group inside the FBI, running a defensive operation for the issues surrounding Hillary Clinton's prior use of private email servers -which included classified information transmission- during her tenure as Secretary of State.
2/ Documentary evidence of the Obama spying operation surfaced as an outcome of the NSA compliance officer discovering the FBI activity.
The compliance officer reported the activity to National Security Agency Director, Admiral Mike Rogers.
The spying operation is not an issue of FISA-702, or any FISA system or process. However, the availability of FBI access to the NSA database is what triggered the discovery of the spy operation.
That FBI access is created under the auspices of FISA, but FISA-702 or any aspect therein was not the issue.
The issue was the spying operation. FISA and using the NSA database to conduct the electronic surveillance, was simply the tool to exploit the electronic communication (metadata) of the targets.
The Obama administration was spying on their political opposition and telling the Clinton team the results of their surveillance.
The United States government was spying on candidates for office in order to control the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
3/ After Director Mike Rogers was made aware of the operation, the exploitation of the NSA database, the NSA Director blocked the FBI from access and begun an investigation.
That investigation culminated in Director Mike Rogers informing the regulatory body in charge of protecting the database from exploitation.
FISC:
With the NSA now collecting the private electronic communication of Americans, the FISA Court was assigned the responsibility of oversight; intended to protect the growing metadata library and ensure the 4th Amendment provisions to the constitution were maintained.
The FISC oversight was intended to stop the government from reviewing the private records of Americans, the NSA database, without a warrant.
1) Newly appointed U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, from the Eastern District of Viginia, has released a criminal indictment of former FBI Director James Comey. [LINK BELOW]
The indictment alleges three counts. Counts one and two are ‘false statements’ to congress on September 30, 2020, [18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(2)] and count three is ‘obstruction of a federal proceeding’ stemming from the same testimony. [18U.S.C. § 1505]
The first false statement charge surrounds Hillary Clinton’s “approval of a plan concerning” Donald Trump and the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election.
2) COUNT #1 – James Comey claimed he could not remember being made aware of the Trump-Russia collusion plan, and there is ample evidence from his own previous public statements, from public and sworn statements by former CIA Director John Brennan, from former statements by officials in the January 5, 2017, meeting memorialized by Susan Rice, from statements that remain sealed as recounted by former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and from statements under oath by the former Clinton campaign team -including campaign manager Robby Mook- that James Comey was well aware of the plan.
While this first count is based on the tenuous “I don’t remember” aspect, this count holds more material benefit than simply Comey’s recollection. This count could open the door to public testimony by McCabe, Rice, Mook, Brennan and even Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton herself as to Comey’s knowledge; each was a first-hand witness.
This first count holds strong material value in a public trial regardless of the outcome. This first count establishes the baseline for USAO Lindsey Halligan to bring all material witnesses into court and publicly put them on record outlining the Trump-Russia collusion scheme.
You could say, I hope the intent is not just to incarcerate Comey per se’ – but rather to use what Comey represents to indict the entire enterprise around him. The facts behind Count #1 make this possible.
Let’s all hope this strategic intent unfolds.
3) Count #2, involves James Comey falsely testify he did not direct former his FBI Special Government Employee (SGE) Daniel Richman to leak information to New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt.
This second count is easily evidenced through the prior investigation of Office of Inspector General Michael Horowitz and all prior witness statements therein. Again, that includes testimony to Horowitz given by former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
Additionally, the second count is evidenced by the direct testimony of Daniel Richman himself, who was hired by James Comey and given special access privileges to classified information systems. Richman was likely a grand jury witness during the assembly of the case against Comey. Count #2 is the easiest to prove beyond any reasonable doubt.
2. The results from the FBI search warrants, was the predicate material for the J6 team to begin targeting Trump supporters in the aftermath of the 2020 election.
3. Those Arctic Frost search warrants included banking records, networks, affiliations, communications, Google search results, social media platform user IDs and much more.
2) It was in June 2022, when Senator Chuck Grassley sent a letter to then Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Chris Wray, notifying them of whistleblower allegations from within the FBI that senior leadership in both Main Justice and FBI are involved in a coordinated effort to cover up criminal activity related to Hunter Biden.
3) The whistleblower allegations, in combination with the documented history of DOJ and FBI misconduct, culminate in Senator Grassley stating:
...“If these allegations are true and accurate, the Justice Department and FBI are – and have been – institutionally corrupted to their very core to the point in which the United States Congress and the American people will have no confidence in the equal application of the law. Attorney General Garland and Director Wray, simply put, based on the allegations that I’ve received from numerous whistleblowers, you have systemic and existential problems within your agencies.”
Grassley was admitting what has been visible for years.