Wednesday, October 8, 2025

The U.S. Empire in the Trump Era


I suppose that every Royal Rascal that discovers himself to be powerful is tempted by the Devil to create an empire. And usually succumbs.

In the case of the U.S., I’d say that the Spanish-American war in 1898 was the test to see if the U.S. was powerful enough yet for empire. Then, in 1907, President Roosevelt sent the Great White Fleet around the world.

Painted white to signify peace, the fleet was a display of American naval power, showcasing the U.S. as an emerging global force.

So of course, you would expect a dull college president like President Woodrow Wilson to buy into the narrative that the U.S. was “an emerging global force” and jump into World War I in 1917 “to save the world for democracy,” and he did.

And of course, as you’d expect with a college president, Woodrow Wilson botched the peace in the subsequent punitive Treaty of Versailles, which led to the Federal Reserve’s first botched credit crisis in 1929, which led to Literally Hitler.

Then there was World War II, in which the U.S. cast itself in the starring role of not just saving democracy but annihilating Nazism. But, oh no! After World War II the U.S. found that the Communist Soviet Union had occupied half of Europe, so we had to rev the U.S. Empire up into overdrive to save the world from Communism.

No problem, because the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989-91; so the Cold War was won.

Of course, after the defeat of Communism the political and administrative leaders of the U.S. didn’t step up to the mark and wind up the U.S. Empire. Instead, the institutions created to fight the Cold War waddled along into well-fed middle age and dined on the Middle East and then Ukraine. What’s the point of the State Department and the CIA and the whole USAID ecosystem if it isn’t meddling in other countries’ politics and manipulating regime change -- to save democracy?

Although well-fed, President Trump is no administrative bureaucrat. He lived his life “in the arena” of risk-taking business. And the rest of the world seems to be waking up to find that in the Trump Era they are not in Kansas anymore.

Here’s Gregory Copley:

U.S. President Donald Trump, during the first year of his second presidency, severely shook strategic relationships with key historical allies in the Anglosphere, the traditionally English-speaking societies of the world.

And the Canadians are really, really offended, so Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is really going to… Well, just wait and see: after all, Mark Carney in his former life was a great and powerful Oz central banker, so there!

Then there’s Aris Roussinos, who feels that the “West” is now paying for blindly following the U.S. into the future of the 1990s: letting manufacturing wither, advocating for human rights, saving the world for climate change, encouraging mass immigration because diversity is our strength.

Now “the West” finds that its blind followership has led to decline and decay. And the U.S. has elected a president who has pulled the plug on its post-WWII imperium. But how are, e.g., the Brits going to dig themselves out of the mess the U.S. led them into?

The old UK regime is dead in office: the time is running out to shape the Britain that will replace it, in anything other than Farage’s image.

Oh no! Not the dreadful Nigel Farage! Yes, Minister, Sir Humphrey Appleby has threatened to resign if Farage becomes Prime Minister.

Don’t worry, says Newt Gingrich. He realized in the 1980s that the Soviet Union was doomed because the “World War II Soviet military was being made obsolete by the information revolution.”

Now the world is changing again in the current technological revolution:

Ukraine will build 4 million drones this year, including autonomous vehicles capable of hitting targets 1,900 miles away.

I wonder if all those plump generals and admirals present at Quantico last week are up to the task. Did they play with toy drones and Minecraft when they were kids?

And I wonder if the rules of empire haven’t changed drastically. Used to be that emperors sent their Hoplites or legionaries or archers or Bluebellies or Doughboys or GIs off to war. So where does the Pentagon get its skilled drone operators and strategy game experts for the next war?

Or have the rules of the game completely changed, so that a great empire no longer sends armies into the field but rather startup entrepreneurs and tech gurus and VC capitalists and “art of the deal” businessmen to conquer the other economy? Today, economic imperialists like Elon Musk find that the kids are lining up at the door begging for a chance to be on the team to Occupy Mars.

Has any academic expert in critical theory researched the difference between Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Mars?



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Podcast and entertainment thread for Oct 8

 


Don't let fear dominate your life.

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One Tweet That Perfectly Captures How Dems Are Approaching Debate Right Now


In 2015, our own Guy Benson wrote End of Discussion, which delved into how the institutional Left shuts down debate and discussion. It started with trigger warnings, speech codes, and other nonsensical progressive protocols aimed at nuking the falsification process. It’s a sign that their arguments were weak, unpopular, and easily debunked. Hidden underground, avoiding those with differing views, these people have turned into the Morlocks. The new mantra is if they can’t censor it, they shoot it. And the polling confirms that. There can’t be a discussion because liberals are perched on rooftops, taking shots at us.

YouGov made it clear: liberals are five times more likely to endorse or support the killing of one’s political rivals. Donald J. Trump wrecked the Left’s systems of censorship. He kicked three of the four legs supporting this system. Democrats undid the rest of it, lying about COVID in 2020. With no means to debate, no critical thinking to be had since they opted to remain in their insular, exclusionary, and utterly unhinged urban and coastal enclaves, the Left became more adroit at trotting out insane ideas and shutting down anyone who voiced concerns or, God forbid, a contrary opinion. 

I think a debate about whether agreeing wholesale that men can be women (they can’t), and genital mutilation surgery for minors was legitimate health care, might have been prudent before going down a path of abject insanity on this issue. It’s so nuts that even the Europeans are shutting down the transanity. But Trump said something about it, so we must do the opposite on steroids. It’s made Democrats look anti-science, among many, many other things. 

Now, Charlie Kirk has been assassinated, an ICE detention facility in Dallas, Texas, has been attacked, and we have an attorney general candidate, Jay Jones, in Virginia who openly wished death upon his Republican colleagues and their families. Why? Jones believes that once pain is inflicted on his enemies, they will change their opinions. The text messages from Mr. Jones, which date back to 2022, are beyond disqualifying, but Democrats seem okay with it, because they somehow know the real Jones. Whatever that means. I’m sure John Wayne Gacy’s neighbors and friends said the same thing about him until police found what he was burying in the crawl space. Gacy would be defended by today’s Democratic Party, rape, murder—all of it—if he were vital to the movement. In 2020, he reportedly hoped that police officers would die during a debate about qualified immunity. 


The Democratic Party is so infatuated with its own causes that, coupled with self-righteous extremism, it has made it highly susceptible to political violence and domestic terrorism. We cannot reason with our enemies; we must kill them. That’s the marching order. And it’s repeated endlessly, on network news and programs like The View, where the GOP is demonized 24/7. Will Chamberlain had the perfect tweet to capture today's Democratic Party's approach toward debate: 


The Democrat-media complex, the party, the legacy press—they’re all in on the operation to activate their supporters to commit acts of violence and mayhem against those with whom they disagree. It’s the Manchurian Candidate, except the brainwashing is happening in real-time, and en masse. It’s not a small squad; it’s half the country. And no one needs to show a queen of hearts to trigger these people. Calling someone Hitler, a fascist, or a threat to democracy, etc., is all that’s needed to get the ball rolling. They tried to kill Trump twice, they assassinated Charlie Kirk, and now ICE agents are next on the Democratic Party hit list. 

When do we fight back? Because the time for discussion is over, I feel. We don’t need to turn down the rhetoric, since we didn’t do or say anything wrong. We’re normal, and liberal America is very much not.



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Time to Get Radical


Being radical is the opposite of being conservative, or, rather, it was the opposite of being conservative. Now, the only way to conserve anything like the society that we grew up in is radicalism, meaning a complete rejection of the status quo in favor of what was and can be again. We talk a lot about how the institutions have been taken over, about how the norms have been bulldozed, about how the left literally wants us dead. How do we know they want us dead? Just consider the latest iteration of a continuing cycle of hatred and blood, where somebody revealed the texts of the guy who’s running to be the chief law-enforcement officer of Virginia – a Democrat, of course – and his fantasy about forcing his political opponents to watch their children die so they’ll come around to his way of thinking. No senior Democrat has, at this writing, demanded he drop out. That’s because they agree with him. Yeah, that’s enough to radicalize any conservative with half a brain, which excludes most of the GOP congressional caucus.

What you must understand, now that you’re a conservative radical, is that you owe no obligation of deference or obedience to any institution. They’ve all been corrupted. They’ve all been infiltrated and taken over, turned from their imperfectly pursued purposes – institutions have always been a problem – into engines of communist oppression. How did this happen? They paid attention and we didn’t. A perfect example is the Soros prosecutors. Maybe 10 percent of people vote in typical district attorney elections, and the Soros-types were able to leverage their money into political power by flooding these yawners with cash. It’s electoral arbitrage, where a few bucks go a hell of a long way. We could’ve stopped it by showing up to vote, but we didn’t. And now, look what we have.

It’s the same thing with the institutions. They showed up, and we didn’t. We assumed everything was in good – or at least relatively harmless – hands, like they were when we were growing up. We were wrong. What about academia? Most of us came out of college not particularly interested in politics, just remembering it as a time of beer, chicks, and football – not necessarily in that order. “Oh wow, my time at the University of College was fantastic. I bet it’s exactly the same now!” I was involved in conservative politics back at UC San Diego in the 1980s, and I got in some fights with the faculty. They kept trying to screw with us. But it was nowhere near what it is today. And most of the normal college students didn’t know anything about those fights. Sure, they had the occasional ponytailed grad student spewing socialist nitwittery, but they basically ignored him. They were busy doing college things. But now it’s gotten worse. Much, much worse, so much worse that even normal people can’t go to college without seeing the love of communism, perversion, and general weirdness all over the place and directly in their faces. For the last few years, college students have been begging for help – Charlie Kirk became who he was by actually listening to them – but the regular Republicans didn’t get it. Yeah, they knew there were a few freaky professors, but again, their experience with college was beer, chicks, and football. They didn’t realize that the beers have been banned, the chicks have penises, and… well, they still liked the football. That was the thing. It felt normal enough. There was still football, right? Yay team! They didn’t have to react. Well, now they can’t avoid it. They have to react.

We’ve been blown out of our comfortable slumber. Our kids come home from school and ask how they can go about getting rid of that nagging penis. At work, we have to sit through HR presentations on why straight men of pallor are responsible for the failures of everyone else. Democrat politicians who, as recently as Bill Clinton, at least pretended to take the side of normal people – can’t even come out against illegal aliens, criminals, perverts, or welfare cheats. They literally cannot not be weird. They will always take the side against normal people and use every lever of power available to them to hurt us. It’s undeniable.

Understand that they do have a lot of backing, much of it from sexually unsatisfied wine women who need to up their SSRI dosage and wash it down with more oaky Chardonnay to wipe away the pain of their daddy not loving them instead of taking it all out on us. Have you noticed how they all look the same, these sour apple doll women with the stupid black glasses and bad hair? Leftism gave them a way to participate in society when, in more enlightened times, these mediocrities were funneled into fields and endeavors where they couldn’t do any damage. But we tried to be nice, and we gave them a little power and today they are trying to make transvestites the face of your light beer brand, change the logo on your kitschy country store chain, and impose a regime of naggy fascism upon the rest of us.

The coalition also includes race hustlers, calculating zillionaires, and advocates for the Third World invasion of America. There are also some dedicated communists, but there aren’t very many of them. Nobody bothers to learn about communism anymore. At one time, the cadres read Marx. Now, at best, these dorks get about 10 minutes into a Hasan Piker video. They are Instagram Marxists, not adhering to any ideology or political framework, but rather espousing whatever feels right at the moment. And what feels right at the moment is always what gives them the most power at the moment. That’s why you get Queers for Palestine. That’s why they can turn on a dime. Yesterday, federal law enforcement was sacred because they were beating up grandmas who were taking selfies in the Rotunda. Today, they’re literal Nazi Gestapo fascist Gestapo fascists. These online revolutionaries’ heads would spin if there were anything inside of them heavy enough to build up some torque. 

But it was never about the ideology. It was always about giving people who should, by all rights, be consigned to the fringes of society because they are lame and weird, political and cultural power. Look at these people. Every single one of them should be given a wedgie. We need to bring back bullying. It wasn’t perfect, but at least it kept the freaks in their place. If we’re to be given the choice between being ruled by a bunch of sociopathic shrieking mutants with daddy issues who literally want to murder us, or a bunch of louche James Spader types in soft suits with feathered hair who simply hold us in contempt, that’s the easiest choice any of us will ever have to make.

The good thing is that the only power they have is the power we give them. Yes, some of them have managed to secure a position where they have their hands on the levers of power, at least superficially. But thanks to the election, we control the real power. And real power comes, as they would know if they knew anything about Chairman Mao, from the barrel of a gun. They don’t have guns in significant numbers. Oh, they have enough to try to murder the occasional church kid, Supreme Court justice, or college speaker – and sometimes they succeed. But they don’t have enough to impose their will if we simply say no. They exist in power at our sufferance, and I say we’ve suffered enough.

They are feeding off the corpse of the America we grew up in, promiscuously spending the currency that is our default respect for our institutions. But they’re running out of cash. We no longer care what our betters say, because we know they’re not better. They’re much, much worse. Today, they occupy many – but not all, thanks to the rigorous and vicious Trump administration campaign to dislodge them – of the heights of our society. But we’re going to retake the high ground.

Oh, they will tell you that you must respect the norms. They will demand that you respect the institutions. They will call for your submission because, back in the past, those institutions served a purpose other than that of the communists who long marched into their sinecures. They rely on habit. But habits are made to be broken. That’s why you must be radical. That’s why you must reject everything you were presented with in favor of something else. And because we’re conservatives, that something else is something old, something tried, something proven, something true. Why do you think the phrase “Make America Great Again” resonates? Because America was great, but then these bastards drove it into the ground. Well, we radicals are going to pick it up and dust it off. And we don’t care what we must smash to make that happen.



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🎭 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓

 

Welcome to 

The 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓 

Here’s a place to share cartoons, jokes, music, art, nature, 
man-made wonders, and whatever else you can think of. 

No politics or divisive posts on this thread. 

This feature will appear every day at 1pm mountain time. 


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Part III – Covering Up the Biggest Political Scandal in U.S. History



::BUMPED::

People in Washington DC are starting to realize the full scale of the Obama surveillance system. All of the evidence and datapoints, those released and those yet to surface, flow in one direction. Even the professionally reluctant are starting to admit.

What Obama, Biden, Comey, Crossfire Hurricane, Robert Mueller, Arctic Frost and Jack Smith were doing, was using their offices -and govt systems- to watch their opposition, spy on them, then take action based on the results.

Friend of the Treehouse John Spiropoulos has put together a series of videos explaining how President Obama, FBI Director James Comey and CIA Director John Brennan constructed a coverup to hide their political surveillance operation. Today, the fourth segment in the series.

Rumble Link – YouTube Link

From the perspective of Obama, Comey and Brennan, expanding Hillary Clinton’s Trump-Russia collusion narrative was the key element to hide the activity of the administration prior to the November 2016 election.  That’s the motive for the FBI and CIA to collaborate on the agenda after the shocking outcome of the 2016 election result; but pay close attention to the activity of the primary “at risk” official, James Comey.

The December ’16 Joint Analysis Report (JAR), and the January ’17 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), were fabricated to enhance a spying coverup. Spiropoulos has taken the time to put the deconstruction of the ICA into a simple to follow video format.



From a risk management perspective, initially the surveillance and spying operation was a low-risk endeavor.  Obama held power and was going to hand off operations to Hillary. The Clinton administration would retain the officials who were doing the surveillance/spying, and no one would ever know.

Donald Trump was not expected to win the election.  When he did, all of the participants were suddenly at risk. President Obama and every member of his cabinet involved in the spying operations, then used Clinton’s “Russiagate” smear to cover up Obama’s “Spygate” activity.

The IRS was used to identify targets 2010 through 2012, until discovered in April ’12.  Suddenly, President Obama has a problem. President Obama then sends his Chief of Staff, Jack Lew, to run the IRS and block discoveries around the IRS weaponization.

From 2012 through April 2016, the Obama administration was spying on their political opposition using the FBI to conduct surveillance through their access to the NSA database.

In April 2016, NSA Admiral Mike Rogers was alerted by the NSA compliance officer who noted the uptick in database access activity by the FBI searching the Republican primary candidate field.

Post April 2016, the Obama administration had a problem. Enter FBI operation “Crossfire Hurricane,” July 2016, in an effort to remove the political risk.

October 2016, the FBI rushes a FISA application through the FISC, circumventing the missing ‘Woods File’, with the Chris Steele dossier as evidence.

October 2016, NSA Director Rogers sends the first official notification of the FBI using the NSA database to the oversight body, the FISA Court.

December 2016, worried about Trump now discovering the NSA database spying, the Obama administration wraps the Clinton smear into official policy, blaming the Russians and validating Crossfire Hurricane. That’s where the Intelligence Community Assessment becomes critical.

May 2017, needing to extend the coverup of the FBI activity, special counsel Robert Mueller then takes over Crossfire Hurricane. All FBI evidence and personnel transfers to Mueller.

April 2019, Robert Mueller operation wraps up, prior activity coverup shifts to Impeachment process.

July 2019, John Durham kicks in extending DOJ/FBI control through 2020 election.

Fall 2020, mail-in ballots triggered to facilitate 2020 election outcome.

January 2021, FBI triggers Operation Arctic Frost, targeting Trump supporters and 2020 election researchers. FBI again using NSA database search queries to identify targeting.

March 2021, FBI Arctic Frost results fed to J6 Committee and DHS. TSA trigger “Quiet Skies” targeting via results from Arctic Frost.

August 2022, FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago to retrieve any evidence Donald Trump might have of FBI spying and surveillance activity.

September 2023, Jack Smith targets congressional members who had contact with President Trump.

It’s one long continuum of coverup activity within Main Justice and the FBI, supported by all other various agencies who operate in support. What are they covering up? The 2012 through 2016 political spying operation within the Obama administration, as carried out by the same Main Justice and FBI operations.



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The Left Lost the Meme Wars


RedState 

A year ago, before Kamala Harris put Gin to Tonic and started her 107 days to disaster, many on the political left saw that they were getting carpet-bombed with funny memes. One guy at The Independent wrote about it, lamenting that he was the guy in high school who repeated a joke until it smelled like 7/11 sushi. The funny part about his article is that what he was doing in high school wasn’t “pre-memeing,” it was just annoying, and based on his profile pic, I can see why.  

"Memeing," making effective memes, requires a sense of humor and sense of timing. I don’t think this guy ever “got the joke.” 

He wrote:

I don’t mean to sound a thousand years old, but when I was a kid repeating somebody else’s joke over and over until it became interminable wasn’t called a “meme”. It was called “being the most annoying kid in school”, and we all hated that person (I was that person). 

Now, though, memes are all the rage. Once the prime tool of communication for always-online basement dwelling nerds, now everybody and your mother seems to know about being “demure”, or who the “Hawk Tuah” girl is. It’s even gotten to the point that politicians are getting in on the action: Joe Biden embraced his “Dark Brandon” persona, even selling merch to that effect, and our own health secretary Wes Streeting hit James Cleverly with a “Sure, Jan” just a few weeks ago. 

Trump is genuinely funny. He is a natural comedian. Gavin Newsom is “that other guy.” He's like the guy above. He doesn’t “get it." He never fit in with the funny kids. Hair Gel doesn't meme - he has a team of two who produce “memes” to mock Trump’s style, but like so many on the left, they are reusing a joke. They're repeating a joke that everyone has heard.  

I draw political cartoons that people repost, and those cartoons become “memes.” They are used and reused when appropriate. Reusing a joke requires timing, and the left has none.  

Trump mocked Hakeem Jeffries with a sombrero. He and the left went nuts. RACIST! But Hakeem isn’t Mexican, or even Hispanic. Sure, it was funny, but what was even funnier was the apoplectic reaction from the left.  

Of course, I jumped in. Excuse the language (profanity alert!). I had to:

And: 

AOC recently posted this insipid nonsense about Stephen Miller.  

It’s stupid insults about physicality. I guess she thought it was funny. It's the insult joke that everyone responds to with: “Ummm, I don’t get it.”  

You know what is funny – and will never not be funny? This 

No one trolls the other side like Donald Trump. Before “meme” was a household term, Trump was meming the left with ALL CAPS tweets, then with ALL CAPS Truth Social posts. The left recognized that it was falling behind in the Meme Wars.  

I drew that after AOC faked being handcuffed. Every time she says, does, or posts something stupid, I pull it out. Thanks, AOC – you're a well of stupid that keeps on giving.  

In Meme Wars, the left lost long ago.



Maybe they don’t know it. Maybe they will repeat insipid 4th-grade jokes like “I know you are, but what am I?”  The war is over. The left lost The Meme Wars.


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Embattled MSNBC - Soon to Be 'MS NOW' - Trots Out New 'Core Principles,' and We Can't Stop Laughing


RedState 

"Never kick a man when he's down" is a reminder not to exploit or pile on someone who’s already struggling or in a weakened state, and doing so is both unfair and lacking in basic decency.

While I generally subscribe to the idiom, if we switch it up a bit to "Never kick a TDS-riddled, miserably- failed 'news' outlet when it's down," I'm out — principally because the outlet in question is itself grossly unfair, hopelessly biased, and lacking in common decency.  

On Monday, embattled MSNBC took its first step toward total independence from NBC News, as the long-planned divorce began to take shape.

In November, Comcast officially announced it would spin off several NBCUniversal cable networks, including MSNBC, in a move that promises to shake up the Trump-loathing network, which will no longer be affiliated with NBC News — with the Peacock itself not exactly being a beacon of journalistic objectivity.

In the intermediate term, MSNBC’s broadcasts may look the same to viewers, but behind the scenes, the network, now owned by Versant, has quietly stopped using NBC News correspondents for both domestic and international reporting. 

And in an internal memo obtained by TVNewser, Brian Carovillano, Versant’s senior vice president of standards and editorial partnerships for news, outlined new guidelines, known internally as "ten core principles," that MSNBC (MS NOW) will adopt.

Before we continue, I meant what I said in the headline with respect to laughing. 

Anyone who has watched the TDS-riddled likes of Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, Rachel Maddow, Nicolle Wallace, Chris Hayes, Jen Psaki — the list goes on — and now reads the new "ten core principles," and then contrasts those principles with the aforementioned list of Democrat Party sock puppets will surely laugh out loud — or at least laugh heartily to themselves.

Let's jump into those "core principles," shall we? As reported by AdWeek, they include:

Accuracy, fairness, and opinion, which ... should be based on “accurate, reported facts.” Meanwhile, the news network will put an emphasis on sources that can be identified by name. If a source needs to remain anonymous, the knowledge must be firsthand, and the network must be transparent about why the source is remaining anonymous.

OK, the part about anonymous sources, if followed, should be embraced by all media. 

But, expecting MSNBC, of all outlets, to embrace accuracy and fairness, much less accurate, reported facts — including in on-air opinions — sounds like a helluva stretch from the current reality of the troubled network; particularly given the proclivities of the on-air "talent" I listed. 

Next up, Carovillano said other core principles include the enhancement of "actual journalism," embracing a variety of perspectives and transparency, and... wait for it... remaining independent and not influenced — presumably by the left, as has been the case since MSNBC's inception.

Finally, Carovillano said MSNBC "journalists" need to hold themselves to the same high standards “of professional and journalistic integrity in their outside appearances and on their personal social media.”

Color me skeptical, but I'll believe it when (if) I see it. 

Meanwhile, CNN — the ridiculously self-proclaimed "most trusted name in news" continues to do what it's always done in the Age of Trump. And as we all know, if you If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten. In CNN's case, that's continuing to watch your ratings swirl down the toilet. 



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Now More Shady Hunter Biden Dealings - This Time in Romania


RedState 

There would appear to be no end to the shady dealings of the former First Son, Mr. Hunter Biden. Now, a new Hunter Biden scheme has emerged into the light of day like a hissing cockroach crawling out from under a rotting log; this time it's a scheme to sell off the land surrounding the United States Embassy in Romania to a group that included Chinese monied interests.

Yes, really.

While his father, Joseph R. Biden Jr., was vice president, Hunter Biden began developing relationships that led to an audacious proposal to sell the land around the United States Embassy building in Romania to a group that included a Chinese company.

Hunter Biden was involved in the proposed deal from multiple perspectives, creating what he privately acknowledged to an associate was an ethical quagmire, according to documents and four people with knowledge of the matter who were not authorized to speak about it.

Even after years of investigations, and a suggestion by federal prosecutors that Mr. Biden’s work in Romania left him vulnerable to a foreign lobbying charge, the full story of his efforts there has not been told before. Previously unreported details exemplify how Mr. Biden’s pursuit of lucrative foreign deals fit into the broader foreign influence industry and complicated U.S. diplomacy.

That's a lot of formal language that boils down to, "Hunter Biden was selling access and engaging in shady business dealings while bringing nothing to the table but his last name."

The deal he was pursuing left open the possibility that the Chinese could have ended up with an ownership stake in a critical asset — the land around the embassy in Bucharest, and possibly the land on which the embassy sat. The possibility concerned one of his former partners who sought to avoid the outcome at the time, while another partner later rejected the idea that it was ever on the table.

The chapter fits into a well-worn playbook used by deep-pocketed foreign interests to seek favor in Washington by courting politically connected Americans, including presidential family members like the adult sons of President Trump or the son and brother of former President Jimmy Carter.

You don't say.

This smacks a lot of treacherous indifference on the part of the son of a former vice president and former president, and some of these deals were in the works when old "Autopen Joe" was in office, either as VP or president. While Joe Biden spent most of his four years in the White House trying to tie his shoes and follow the white tape on the floor to find his way to the presidential bathroom, his son clearly spent a lot of time during those four years engaging in graft-for-profit, even down to and including his "art" career. Indeed, that last bit might be the most egregious; most of Hunter's artwork looked like what you would get if you gave a bunch of paint to a chimpanzee and surrounded him with canvas, and yet they mysteriously sold for huge sums.

Newly Declassified Intelligence Shows Joe Biden Asked CIA to Hide Ukraine's Concerns About Biden Crime Family Business

Biden's Chief of Staff Finally Grilled: Reveals Concerning Information, Including About Hunter Biden and Pardons

Here's what part Hunter played in the Romania scheme:

Hunter Biden had dual roles in the enterprise.

One was as a businessman. He and his partners, including his father’s younger brother James Biden, were stakeholders in a venture that was to co-own developed properties and vacant land around the embassy in Bucharest. Joining them was the wealthy Romanian who had developed the area and an influential Chinese state-linked company, which Hunter Biden was courting.

The other role was as legal counsel. While these negotiations were going on, Mr. Biden was separately working as a lawyer and adviser for that same Romanian developer, Gabriel Popoviciu. His legal team was trying to stymie a corruption case in Romania related to the purchase of the land years earlier.

Legal counsel? Seriously?

The deal appears to have fallen through in 2017, with the Chinese monied interests not yet having sunk a dime into... whatever this was. Of course, the outgoing President Biden signed a pardon for his errant son, and it appears to be the only pardon actually signed by the former president, by hand, not by the autopen, not by whoever was running the autopen on any given day. And that pardon pretty much precludes federal charges for anything Hunter Biden has done since pre-school.

So, yeah, Hunter gets away with it. Again.



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