3 Stories The Trump Indictment Scam Overshadowed
Big developments happened this week with the Russia-China relationship, the banking crisis and a breakthrough in the Arizona election. Here's the rundown...
There’s a piece of wisdom that warns us not to chase after the shiny white object. That is, the object that seems to attract you or even demand your attention, but is either irrelevant or harmful. Over the past weekend, I must confess, I chased the shiny white object.
In the world of political stories, that shiny object is, of course the potential indictment of President Trump by a George Soros-backed District Attorney in New York. I regret having even wasted a scintilla of intellectual energy on this, especially on a weekend when my thoughts should have been firmly devoted to St. Patrick (Friday), St. Joseph (Sunday), and the NCAA Basketball Tournament (the 4-day bloodbath of Thursday through Sunday). But since I did waste my time, here is the gist of it…
*Trump is alleged to have had an affair in 2006 with Stormy Daniels (old story)
*Trump is further alleged to have paid her $130,000 in hush money when he ran for president in 2016.
*It is then alleged that Trump paid her with his own money, rather than campaign funds.
Based on this, the New York DA is saying that the hush money added up to an illegal campaign contribution. That’s it.
As it turns out, the reason the indictment hasn’t happened yet, as of Thursday night, is because, lo and behold, the star witness for the prosecution was shown, in grand jury hearings, to have been lying. It turns out he paid Daniels without ever informing Trump. Furthermore, Trump has launched a countersuit against Daniels over the allegation of the affair to begin with and has already won legal victories.
So, we have an affair that we have no idea if it happened. We have a non-disclosure agreement (the legal jargon for hush money) that is, regrettably, not uncommon among prominent people, but certainly not illegal. And we have an allegation (unproven) that personal money was used.
The case is so obviously stupid, that I had my own realization. From now on, I can’t use my own precious time and energy even looking into this. The Democratic Party, with the quiet complicity of most Republicans, has simply broken their pick. We’ve been through the Russia Collusion Hoax, the Impeachment I Hoax, the lies about January 6 that led to Impeachment II Hoax, the Nuclear Codes at Mar-a-Lago Hoax, and now this. And after this, there will be surely something else.
So, enough is enough. The responsibility for 90 percent of the circus that surrounds Trump lies squarely with his political enemies on both sides of the aisle. Moreover, of the 10 percent that Trump brings on himself, that’s mostly silly social media stuff and nothing of national import.
Therefore, the next time—and we know there is going to be a next time (and several more after that), I’m just assuming it’s a lie. And if it happens to be true? Well, maybe Trump’s enemies shouldn’t have cried wolf so many times. I believe there’s a wisdom fable somewhere that teaches a lesson about this. If we all do get devoured by the Big Bad Orange Wolf, the blame falls on the people who could never just stop with “I don’t like Trump and am not voting for him” and had to drive a deeper knife into the country’s political divisions at a toxic time.
The time I spent chasing the shiny white object, distracted me from the three big stories that really do matter. Which, a cynic might speculate, was perhaps the whole point.
On that note, here is a brief look at those stories with some relevant links. As an aside, my ultimate purpose behind midweek posts is to share alternative media content that’s good. Our biggest need right now—even more than new political leaders—is new media and the ability for all of us to get access to better information. So, here we go, around the world…
The New Russia-China Alliance
Putin and Xi met in Moscow on Monday, to solidify their anti-American alliance. This is exactly the scenario many of us feared would happen by the constant need to turn Putin into a sworn enemy. Rather than engage Russia these last 30 years, the U.S. has isolated Putin’s country. And, quite logically, he is now dealing with someone even worse—at our expense.
Two good videos discussing the implications on this come from The Duran. This is a YouTube show featuring the commentary of Alexander Mercouris. While Mercouris has a troubled past that includes being disbarred as a lawyer, he’s well connected to a prominent family in Greece. And, more important, he does real boots-on-the ground reporting on matters of global significance. In particular, his reporting on developments in the Russia-Ukraine War often cut against the grain of what we see in Western corporate media, only to be vindicated as time goes on. This week, Mercouris discussed the Putin-Xi summit itself, and what their new economic relationship means.
The Banking Crisis
Banking matters go well over my head, but they are right in the wheelhouse of Steve Cortes. A former stock and bond trader and then Trump White House appointee, Cortes, along with former White House colleague Peter Navarro, have nailed what would happen to the economy under this current regime.
How much confidence do I have in Cortes? Early in 2021, he and Navarro warned that inflation was inevitable, given the policy course of this White House. From there, I concluded that interest rates would go up. And that, therefore, now was the time to sell our house. We pulled the trigger when interest rates were still low. As of today, we’ve saved a half-million dollars on interest payments by acting when we did. So yes, I have 500,000 good reasons to think Cortes knows what he’s talking about. On his Twitter feed, he puts out short, concise videos—like this one on the nature of the economic crisis and what it means for small business.
Kari Lake vs. The Cartels
Kari Lake’s election lawsuit when to the Arizona Supreme Court on Tuesday. And…wait for it…the good guys actually got a win! The AZ Supremes ruled that Lake’s charge—signature verification procedures being ignored in the gubernatorial ballot counting last November should have been allowed to be heard in the initial trial back in December. So, the state Supreme Court sent the case back to the trial judge.
Of the seven counts that Lake brought to the highest court in Arizona, this is the only one that survived. But it’s the only one that matters. Because all the drama of election fraud claims, from 2020 to this one all come down to this. Everything from late-night ballot drops to mass mail-in votes without chain of custody to 2000 Mules, all comes down to this. A ballot that has been allegedly mailed in either has a signature that matches the voter’s on-file signature or it doesn’t. And of the evidence that Lake has already gathered, and given sneak public previews of, there are a whole lot of ballots that will fail this very basic test. Meaning they are almost certainly fraudulent, they should be thrown out, and that Kari Lake probably won this race by several points.
Obviously, I don’t know what’s going to happen when this case gets heard again. It’s going to take a judge with a lot of guts to do the right thing. Even this welcome ruling from the AZ Supremes probably came about because they could just punt it back to the original judge. Eventually, someone will have to make a stand.
Whatever happens, Kari Ann Lake is the toughest person in American politics. This is someone who had a seven-figure salary as a newscaster and walked away because she was tired of peddling what she came to believe was COVID-19 propaganda. Instead, she decided to go into battle with the human trafficking cartels in a political war for control of the Arizona government and border.
When the state Supreme Court was meeting, Lake was holding a peaceful prayer rally at a nearby building, in a protest that had shades of Eastern Europe in 1989 and 1990. I don’t know if she intended it or not, but her talk had shades of the great women of the Old Testament—namely, the Book of Esther, with its reminder “You are born for a time such as this.” (Esther 4:14)
