Trump

The Democrats Really Think That They Have Finally Got Trump This Time

It seems like the Democrats have been trying to figure out a way to remove Donald Trump from office forever.  Trump was under investigation even before he won the election, and it has literally been a miracle that his presidency has been able to survive for as long as it has.  But now the Democrats think that they have finally got him.  A parade of witnesses has come forward testifying that Trump pressured the president of Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and his son, and that Trump withheld key military aid from Ukraine as leverage.  Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff and other top Democrats believe that this constitutes an “abuse of power”, and that this “abuse of power” qualifies as a “high crime or misdemeanor”.  Other than Fox News, the mainstream media is solidly behind the Democrats on this, and we have seen a shift in public opinion polls in favor of impeachment.  Many conservatives continue to doubt that an impeachment trial will actually happen, but Nancy Pelosi would have never let things get this far if she didn’t know for sure that she has the votes that she needs to impeach Trump in the House.  At this point, it appears extremely likely that Trump will be impeached, and that will set up a historic trial in the U.S. Senate.

On Tuesday, House impeachment investigators will hear testimony from Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, and according to a draft of his opening statement he plans to tell them that he notified his superiors twice regarding his concerns that military aid to Ukraine was being withheld in order to pressure the Ukrainians to investigate the Bidens…

The White House’s top expert on Ukraine twice notified superiors about concerns that the president and those working for him were linking foreign aid to Ukraine with investigations that would help President Donald Trump politically, a push that he said could undermine U.S. national security, according to an opening statement obtained by USA TODAY.

The testimony of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman before the House Foreign Affairs, Intelligence and Oversight committees Tuesday will mark the first time lawmakers investigating the impeachment inquiry will hear from someone who listened to Trump’s July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — the call at the center of the impeachment investigation that included a Trump’s request that Ukraine investigate former Vice President Joe Biden.

This is likely to be bombshell testimony, but the American public won’t get a chance to hear from Vindman firsthand because the Democrats made a critical strategic mistake.

At the outset of this process, the Democrats decided to keep the proceedings shielded from the American public.  This has opened them up to tremendous criticism from Republicans, and it has resulted in them missing opportunity after opportunity to move public opinion more dramatically.

For the past month, the Democrats have looked like they are trying to hide what they are doing, and the process has been deeply unfair to President Trump.

Finally realizing that they have massively screwed up, the Democrats now plan to hold a vote in the House later this week that will make the next phase of the impeachment inquiry more open to the public.  In a letter to her fellow Democrats in the House, Nancy Pelosi explained why this move is being made at this time.  The following is an excerpt from her letter…

This week, we will bring a resolution to the Floor that affirms the ongoing, existing investigation that is currently being conducted by our committees as part of this impeachment inquiry, including all requests for documents, subpoenas for records and testimony, and any other investigative steps previously taken or to be taken as part of this investigation. This resolution establishes the procedure for hearings that are open to the American people, authorizes the disclosure of deposition transcripts, outlines procedures to transfer evidence to the Judiciary Committee as it considers potential articles of impeachment, and sets forth due process rights for the President and his Counsel.

‘We are taking this step to eliminate any doubt as to whether the Trump Administration may withhold documents, prevent witness testimony, disregard duly authorized subpoenas, or continue obstructing the House of Representatives.

If the Democrats are going to be successful, they need to get somewhere around 60 percent of all Americans on their side, because it is at that level where certain Republicans in the U.S. Senate would feel comfortable betraying Trump.

In order to do that, the Democrats desperately need to get these proceedings on television, and this resolution will finally authorize that.

But will this be a case of too little, too late?

We shall see.

Ultimately, the Democrats never should have gone down this road, and even if everything they are alleging is true there is nothing that Trump has done that represents a “high crime or misdemeanor”.

And with Republicans in control of the U.S. Senate, you would think that Trump should be feeling quite safe.

Unfortunately, so far only seven Republicans have publicly stated that they have ruled out removing Trump from office, and most Republican Senators are purposely refusing to take any sort of a public stand.  Here are a few examples…

  • Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho): “I’m a juror and I’m comfortable not speaking.”
  • Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.): “I’d be a juror, so I have no comment.”
  • Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.): “I don’t need a strategy for impeachment because I may be a juror someday.”
  • Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine): “I am very likely to be a juror so to make a predetermined decision on whether or not to convict a president of the United States does not fulfill one’s constitutional responsibilities.”

So much for loyalty.  President Trump recently endorsed Senator Risch, and this is how he is repaying Trump?

If the Republicans in the Senate came together and released a public statement in which they pledged not to remove Trump from office, that would immediately suck all the life out of the impeachment process.

But they are not going to do that.  In fact, there are persistent rumors that quite a few Republican Senators are ready to stab Trump in the back.

Whether you support Donald Trump or not, the truth is that every American should be deeply alarmed by what is happening in Washington right now.  In 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville warned us that this might happen someday: “A decline of public morals in the United States will probably be marked by the abuse of the power of impeachment as a means of crushing political adversaries or ejecting them from office.”

The scenario that he warned about is playing out right in front of us, and if Donald Trump is removed from office it is going to cause irreparable damage to our system of government.

About the Author: I am a voice crying out for change in a society that generally seems content to stay asleep.  My name is Michael Snyder and I am the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I have written four books that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters.  (#CommissionsEarned)  By purchasing those books you help to support my work.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but due to government regulations I can only allow this to happen if this “About the Author” section is included with each article.  In order to comply with those government regulations, I need to tell you that the controversial opinions in this article are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the websites where my work is republished.  This article may contain opinions on political matters, but it is not intended to promote the candidacy of any particular political candidate.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.  Those responding to this article by making comments are solely responsible for their viewpoints, and those viewpoints do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of Michael Snyder or the operators of the websites where my work is republished.  I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.

Most Americans Do Not Believe That This Chapter Of American History Is Going To End Well

This is a very difficult article for me to write.  America is more divided today than it has ever been in my entire lifetime, and the very deep divisions that now exist are getting deeper with each passing day.  In particular, the animosity between the political left and the political right has risen to an extremely frightening level.  Instead of learning to love those that we disagree with, we are constantly being trained to absolutely loathe them, and the pot is constantly being stirred by the mainstream media and many of our national leaders.  And as both sides go at it like cats and dogs, irreparable damage is being done to our political system.  At this point, we are not too far away from a point where this country will not be governable by anyone.  Our federal government has degenerated into a bad soap opera featuring an endless parade of insults, threats, petty stunts, scandals and investigations.  All of this drama may be entertaining at times, but it is not any way to run a country.

And now all of the political strife and discord in this country has been given a focal point.  I have repeatedly warned that Democrats should have never gone down the road of impeachment, because either way this process turns out it is going to be very bad for America.

If Trump is impeached by the House but protected by the Republicans in the Senate, the left is going to go absolutely ballistic.

But if Trump is impeached by the House and then removed from office by the Senate, the right is going to go absolutely ballistic.

Either way, this story is going to have a very negative end.

And even if Trump wasn’t in the White House, the seething hatred between the left and the right would still be there.  In fact, things have gotten so bad that a new survey found that 67 percent of all Americans believe that we are “on the edge of civil war”…

Partisan political division and the resulting incivility has reached a low in America, with 67% believing that the nation is nearing civil war, according to a new national survey.

“The majority of Americans believe that we are two-thirds of the way to being on the edge of civil war. That to me is a very pessimistic place,” said Mo Elleithee, the executive director of Georgetown University’s Institute of Politics and Public Service.

I was stunned to see such a high number.

Obviously most Americans don’t actually want a “civil war”, but this is what most of them see coming.

Earlier today, I came across an article about a Major League Baseball umpire named Rob Drake that is now in hot water for posting about “civil war” on Twitter…

Major League Baseball is looking into a now-deleted tweet from umpire Rob Drake warning of a civil war if president Donald Trump is impeached.

According to a copy of the tweet obtained by ESPN, Drake tweeted that he planned to buy an assault rifle “because if you impeach MY PRESIDENT this way, YOU WILL HAVE ANOTHER CIVAL WAR!!! #MAGA2020″.”

Is that really how this chapter in American history is going to end?

Are we destined to see utter chaos in the streets?

I am not saying that we should all try to find a way to agree on everything.  When it comes to our most fundamental values, there are certain things that I will never, ever, ever agree on with my political opponents.

And the fact that our nation no longer has a cohesive set of values is definitely a big part of the problem.  With various national leaders constantly touting their own value systems and trying to pull us in a whole bunch of different directions simultaneously, it is certainly not surprising that we have ended up at this point.

But nobody should want a fractured nation where we are literally fighting with one another in the streets.

Of course when you ask people about who should be blamed for this mess, Democrats point at Republicans and Republicans point at Democrats.  If you doubt this, just check out these numbers…

Among Democratic voters, 63 percent say GOP leaders are “very responsible” for the decline in civility and 86 percent say Trump is “very responsible.” Only 10 percent of Democratic voters place a large degree of blame at the feet of their party leaders.

Among Republicans, those numbers are flipped – 67 percent of GOP voters say Democratic leaders are “very responsible” for the decline in today’s politics, easily the largest culprit among those voters.

Frustration and anger have been building in this country for a very long time, and now this impeachment process threatens to be a flashpoint.  No matter what happens, tens of millions of Americans are going to be deeply, deeply upset by the result, and you don’t want to be there when their anger is unleashed.

A number of years ago I wrote a novel which envisioned absolutely massive protests in Washington D.C., but at that time I had no idea that Donald Trump would become president or that the Democrats would one day try to impeach him.  And now it looks like the Democrats want to have articles of impeachment ready by the end of this year, and that means that a Senate trial is coming soon.

And once a Senate trial starts, the eyes of the entire world will be on Washington.

Many on the right are assuming that a Senate trial will be a slam dunk for Trump, but it is not necessarily safe to make that assumption.  On Wednesday, the number two Republican in the Senate said the following about this process…

“The picture coming out of it, based on the reporting that we’ve seen, I would say is not a good one,” Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Republican, told CNN. “But I would say also that until we have a process that allows for everybody to see this in full transparency, it’s pretty hard to draw any hard and fast conclusions.”

That certainly doesn’t sound like someone that already has his mind made up about how he will vote.

There are going to be a lot of twists and turns to this drama in the weeks ahead, but it is becoming increasingly clear that the end result will not be a good one for America.

And as I just detailed above, a large percentage of the population shares my pessimism regarding how this chapter in American history will end.

About the Author: I am a voice crying out for change in a society that generally seems content to stay asleep.  I am the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I have written four books that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters.  (#CommissionsEarned)  By purchasing those books you help to support my work.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but due to government regulations I can only allow this to happen if this “About the Author” section is included with each article.  In order to comply with those government regulations, I need to tell you that the controversial opinions in this article are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the websites where my work is republished.  This article may contain opinions on political matters, but it is not intended to promote the candidacy of any particular political candidate.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.  Those responding to this article by making comments are solely responsible for their viewpoints, and those viewpoints do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of Michael Snyder or the operators of the websites where my work is republished.  I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.

 

If Donald Trump Is Impeached, That Will Be A Sign That All Hell Is About To Break Loose In America

Most Americans don’t realize it yet, but in just a few weeks we will witness one of the most critical moments in American history.  Right now the Democrats in the House of Representatives are drafting articles of impeachment, and it is expected that there will be a vote by the end of this year.  If President Trump is impeached by the House, that will set off a chain of events that nobody is going to be able to control, and if the U.S. Senate ultimately decides to remove Trump from office, all hell will break loose in America.  There are tens of millions of very loyal Trump supporters in this country, and many of them are extremely passionate.  Simply impeaching Trump would represent a “breaking point” for many of them, and if Trump is actually removed from office by a Republican-controlled Senate it is inevitable that we would see a very frightening explosion of righteous anger, and at that point there wouldn’t be much of anything that could be done to calm them down.  A large percentage of the population would instantly lose all the faith they ever had in our political system, and unfortunately there would be widespread civil unrest in the streets.

In addition, the impeachment of a U.S. president would unleash havoc on Wall Street.  Trump has warned that the stock market would crash, and it is likely that he is quite correct about that.  Of course the U.S. economy is already steamrolling toward a recession, and so instability on Wall Street would only escalate our economic problems.  It is not hard to imagine the U.S. economy plunging into a deep recession or possibly even a full-blown depression pretty rapidly after Trump is removed from office.  And with utter political chaos reigning in Washington, it would be difficult to convince anyone that things would turn around any time soon.

If the Democrats could have just been patient enough to get to November 2020, they would have had the opportunity to vote Trump out legally.

But they didn’t want to do that, and now we are headed down a road that is going to tear this country apart.

What do you think the left is going to do if Trump is not removed from office and then he goes on to win again in 2020?

Needless to say, it would be a temper tantrum unlike anything we have ever seen before in American history.

On the other hand, how do you think Trump supporters will react if Trump is illegally impeached and removed from office before we even get to the election?

We truly are in unprecedented territory, and it is very difficult to see how this story is going to end well.

This is a can of worms that never should have been opened, but there is no going back now.  According to NBC News, the impeachment inquiry is rapidly moving forward, and Democrats plan to focus their impeachment case on Trump’s “abuse of power”…

House Democrats are zeroing in on a framework for their impeachment case against President Donald Trump that will center on a simple “abuse of power” narrative involving the president’s actions regarding Ukraine, according to multiple people familiar with the deliberations.

As Democrats continue closed-door depositions with critical witnesses and prepare to move to the next phase of public hearings, they are wrestling over which elements and evidence to bring in, which to leave out. The goal is to explain to the public the reasoning and relevance of any eventual impeachment charges.

But can a president actually be impeached for an “abuse of power” that does not involve the breaking of any specific laws?

As a former lawyer that has studied constitutional law, I would definitely consider that to be unconstitutional.  And removing a president using this sort of a pretense would set an extremely dangerous precedent.

Unfortunately, right now the momentum is on the side of the pro-impeachment forces.  On Friday, yet another prominent Republican came out in favor of impeachment…

Former Ohio Governor and 2016 Republican presidential candidate John Kasich said Friday he now supports impeaching President Donald Trump.

Kasich said it was White House acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney admitting there was a quid pro quo between the United States and Ukraine that “pushed me really across the Rubicon.”

Of course many could argue that John Kasich isn’t a real Republican at all, and they would be right.

And ultimately Kasich doesn’t really matter.  What really matters is what the Republicans in the U.S. Senate think, because after the House votes to impeach they are going to decide Trump’s fate.

The Democrats only have 47 seats in the Senate, and it is going to take 67 votes to convict Trump, and so the math would seem to favor the president.

But there are only a few Republicans in the Senate that are truly loyal to Trump, and things could still go either way.

In the end, it is not comforting to realize that one of the key votes in the Senate is held by “Pierre Delecto”…

Mitt Romney has a secret Twitter account that he used to promote his failed 2012 campaign and now uses to engage with reporters and condemn political moves with which he disagrees.

It was revealed Sunday evening by Slate that the 72-year-old Utah senator goes by the name Pierre Delecto, with the handle @qaws9876, on his undercover Twitter account that he admittedly uses to act as a ‘lurker’ on the social media site.

As Delecto, Romney often used the “like” button to promote anti-Trump tweets…

If that’s not bad enough, Romney is using the “like” button on his Pierre Delecto account to file away those tweets that make Mitt Romney’s heart sing: tweets accusing Trump of swindling kids with cancer, about invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office, and attacking Newt Gingrich for impeaching Bill Clinton while cheating on his own wife.

Of course the Democrats are going to need more than just Mitt Romney to remove Trump from office, and without a doubt there are other Republicans in the Senate who do not like Trump at all.

In fact, GOP strategist Mike Murphy has argued that there are 30 Senate Republicans that would vote to convict Trump if the vote was held in secret.

But how many of them are willing to do it publicly?

We shall see.

In Washington, the elite like to have men and women in Congress that have been compromised in some manner, because it is so much easier to “persuade” them to vote a certain way when push comes to shove.

In the end, I don’t know if pro-impeachment forces will be able to get to 67 votes, but if I was President Trump I would definitely be sweating right now.

About the Author: I am a voice crying out for change in a society that generally seems content to stay asleep.  I am the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I have written four books that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters.  (#CommissionsEarned)  By purchasing those books you help to support my work.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but due to government regulations I can only allow this to happen if this “About the Author” section is included with each article.  In order to comply with those government regulations, I need to tell you that the controversial opinions in this article are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the websites where my work is republished.  This article may contain opinions on political matters, but it is not intended to promote the candidacy of any particular political candidate.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.  Those responding to this article by making comments are solely responsible for their viewpoints, and those viewpoints do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of Michael Snyder or the operators of this website.  I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.

3 Polls Show A Majority Of Americans Now Support Impeachment As A Major Constitutional Crisis Looms

The mainstream media is relentlessly trying to convince the American people that President Trump did something wrong, and to a certain degree it appears to be working.  As you will see below, 3 major polls have found that a majority of Americans now support impeachment.  But according to the U.S. Constitution, President Trump cannot be impeached unless he is convicted of a crime.  Article II, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution sets a very high standard for impeachment: “The President, Vice President and all Civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”  Top Democrats love to give interviews about impeachment, but you will notice that none of them ever point to a specific federal law that President Trump violated, and none of them ever bother to explain how President Trump’s specific behavior fits the elements of any particular federal statute.  As a former lawyer, this disturbs me greatly, because the law is supposed to be applied impartially.  Either President Trump is guilty of breaking a specific law or he isn’t.  You can’t just impeach someone because you don’t like that particular individual, but that appears to be what the Democrats are doing, and in the process they are absolutely trampling on the Constitution.

Unfortunately, a slim majority of the U.S. population now appears to be on the side of the pro-impeachment forces.  A little over a week ago, a Fox News survey was the first poll to show this…

A new high of 51 percent wants Trump impeached and removed from office, another 4 percent want him impeached but not removed, and 40 percent oppose impeachment altogether. In July, 42 percent favored impeachment and removal, while 5 percent said impeach but don’t remove him, and 45 percent opposed impeachment.

President Trump blasted that poll on Twitter, but then earlier this week Gallup released a survey with even worse results…

Currently, 52% say Trump should be impeached and removed from office, while 46% say he should not be. This is roughly the opposite of what Gallup found in June when asked in the context of special counselor Robert Mueller’s investigation.

Subsequently, the highly respected Pew Research Center released their own startling poll…

The new survey by Pew Research Center, conducted Oct. 1-13 among 3,487 adults, finds that 54% currently approve of the House’s decision to conduct an impeachment inquiry, while 44% disapprove.

Neither party engenders a great deal of confidence that they will be “fair and reasonable” during the impeachment inquiry, the survey finds. About four-in-ten (43%) expect that the Republicans in Congress will be fair in handling the inquiry, while slightly more (47%) say the same about the Democrats in Congress.

Once can be a coincidence, twice is a trend, and three times means that we have a major problem on our hands.

In fact, an average of all the latest national polls about impeachment shows that “a majority of Americans” now support this process…

For the first time, a majority of Americans said this week that they supported the impeachment of President Trump. Not just in one, outlying poll — in an average of all current national polls compiled by the data journalists at FiveThirtyEight.

From a historical perspective, this is really stunning, because during Richard Nixon’s impeachment process a majority of Americans never supported his impeachment until the very end.

And in Bill Clinton’s case, public support for his impeachment never even reached the 40 percent mark.

So to see that more than 50 percent of Americans are in favor of impeaching Trump is rather stunning, and it shows that the mainstream media still possesses an immense amount of influence in our society.

But even if everything that the Democrats are alleging that President Trump did is 100 percent true, there is still no impeachable offense here.

Whether you are a fan of Trump or not, you should want to see justice done in this case.  Ultimately, our representatives in Washington are supposed to be our “public servants”, and they should be treated just like everyone else.

If it can be shown that President Trump’s behavior specifically fits the elements of a specific federal crime, and if that specific federal crime rises to the level of a “high crime or misdemeanor”, then President Trump should accept his fate.

I have gone over all of the “crimes” that the Democrats are accusing Trump of committing, and they must not be reading the federal statutes regarding these crimes very carefully, because Trump’s actions don’t fit any of those statutes.

Look, if Trump was really guilty of a “high crime or misdemeanor”, there would be plenty of Republicans in Congress turning on him by now.  And I am not talking about turncoats like Mitt Romney that have their own political agendas.

If President Trump was really guilty, a large number of Republicans would turn on him just like we witnessed during the Nixon saga.  When it become clear that Nixon was guilty, members of his own party rapidly abandoned him, and Nixon was forced to resign.

But that hasn’t happened in this case, and it is not going to happen because Trump is not guilty.

Unfortunately, the Democrats are going to draft articles of impeachment anyway, and at this point it looks like the vote in the House is going to go against Trump.

So then the drama will move to the Senate, and Mitch McConnell is telling everyone to be ready for a trial “as soon as Thanksgiving”…

Majority leader Mitch McConnell told Republican senators Wednesday to be ready for an impeachment trial of President Trump as soon as Thanksgiving, as the Senate began to brace for a political maelstrom that would engulf the nation.

An air of inevitability has taken hold in Congress, with the expectation that Trump will become the third president in history to be impeached — and that Republicans need to prepare to defend the president. While McConnell briefed senators on what would happen during a Senate trial, House GOP leaders convened what they expect will be regular impeachment strategy sessions.

The good news is that McConnell has pledged to protect Trump, and that almost certainly means that the effort to remove Trump from office will fail.

But the uproar that the Democrats and the mainstream media are creating over all of this is going to divide this nation even more deeply, and it is setting the stage for the kind of civil unrest that I have long warned about (#ad).

When this process is finally over, about half the country is going to end up believing that Trump committed some sort of major crime but that justice was kept from being done by Trump’s Republican friends in the Senate.

There is going to be so much anger on the left, and what makes this situation even more volatile is the fact that we are heading into an election year.

We have never seen anything like this before in American history, and things are about to get very, very ugly.

About the Author: I am a voice crying out for change in a society that generally seems content to stay asleep.  I am the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I have written four books that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters.  (#CommissionsEarned)  By purchasing those books you help to support my work.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles in written form on their own websites as long as this “About the Author” section is included.  In order to comply with government regulations, I need to tell you that the controversial opinions in this article are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the websites where my work is republished.  This article may contain opinions on political matters, but it is not intended to promote the candidacy of any particular political candidate.  You can follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.  Those responding to this article by making comments are solely responsible for their viewpoints, and those viewpoints do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of Michael Snyder or the operators of this website.

 

Trump: “As President I have an obligation to end CORRUPTION, even if that means requesting the help of a foreign country or countries.”

President Trump has posted yet another tweet that is likely to elicit howls of outrage from the left.  In the tweet, he claims that he has “an obligation to end CORRUPTION, even if that means requesting the help of a foreign country or countries.”  And he is exactly correct.  As the chief law enforcement officer in the land, President Trump should be cracking down on corruption wherever it is found.  But the Democrats are trying to twist Trump’s request of help from Ukraine into a campaign finance violation, which as I pointed out yesterday is absolutely absurd.  Unfortunately, at this point the Democrats are fully committed to going down the road of impeachment, and so there is no turning back now.  But as this process unfolds, Trump will just keep on tweeting, and the left will just keep becoming more and more hysterical.

As China Settles In For A Long Trade War, Economic Pressure On Trump Continues To Grow

The trade war between the United States and China is increasingly weighing on the global economy, but unfortunately it does not appear that it will end any time soon.  Many pundits in the U.S. originally believed that the trade war would be short because the economic pain would be too much for the Chinese to handle.  But the truth is that the Chinese are not nearly as motivated by short-term concerns as we are.  They have always been long-term planners, and they are not afraid to set goals that may take multiple generations to achieve.  So they are not going to allow an angry American president that may be voted out of office by the end of next year to greatly alter their long-term economic strategies.

If an acceptable agreement could have been reached with Trump, the Chinese would have jumped at that opportunity.  But right now the two sides are so far apart that they are basically not even on the same playing field, and any additional “negotiations” are not going to change that.  However, the Chinese are likely to try to keep talks with the Trump administration alive in an attempt to prevent the trade war from escalating even more.  In essence, the Chinese are trying to minimize the damage while running out the clock on the Trump presidency.

So for China, this trade war has become an exercise in endurance, and this is something that a Fox Business article recently discussed…

Researchers from Deutsche Bank wrote a note over the weekend, explaining how they believe China appears to have shifted its strategy from a focus on “resolution to one of endurance.”

“We think China is neither aiming to quickly reach a trade deal, nor trying to hit back at the U.S. as hard as it can,” Deutsche Bank China Economist Yi Xiong wrote in a report. “Rather, China seems to have internalized the trade war as a given fact, and is trying to preserve China’s economic resilience under rising tariffs.”

Here in the U.S., we have become quite accustomed to sacrificing our long-term prosperity in order to avoid short-term pain, but the Chinese are simply not going to do that in this case.

Instead, they are going to work extremely hard to do what they can to bolster the Chinese economy internally while they wait for a more “reasonable” U.S. president to get elected.  The following comes from the South China Morning Post…

China will “enhance countercyclical measures in macroeconomic policies … to ensure sufficient liquidity and reasonable growth in credit,” according to a statement by the government’s Financial Stability and Development Commission on Sunday. The wording marked a subtle change from previous policy statements that called only for “appropriate” fine-tuning of monetary policy.

The statement did not mention the trade war with the US, but included specific guidelines on what China should do to manage its economy in the coming months. It urged financial institutions to help sell local government special bonds, with proceeds to be used for government-backed investment projects, while it also told local authorities to “fully tap investment potential”.

Unlike Chinese officials, President Trump has an upcoming election that he must deal with, and the longer this trade war persists the worse his re-election chances are going to become.

As I detailed yesterday, signs of economic trouble are erupting all around us, and the pain from this trade war is only going to become more intense as each new month passes.

So Trump is going to become increasingly desperate to get China to come to an agreement, and that may lead to some very rash decisions.  For example, it is being reported that he “wanted to double tariff rates on Chinese goods” after the Chinese responded to recent U.S. tariffs by imposing some of their own…

President Donald Trump wanted to double tariff rates on Chinese goods last month after Beijing’s latest retaliation in a boiling trade war before settling on a smaller increase, three sources told CNBC.

The president was outraged after he learned Aug. 23 that China had formalized plans to slap duties on $75 billion in U.S. products in response to new tariffs from Washington on Sept. 1. His initial reaction, communicated to aides on a White House trade call held that day, was to suggest doubling existing tariffs, according to three people briefed on the matter.

Unfortunately for Trump, no amount of pressure is going to get the Chinese to budge.

Yes, the Chinese will “talk” to U.S. officials as a delaying tactic, but they have already decided that they will never accept the sort of deal that Trump wants.

Meanwhile, our economic numbers just continue to deteriorate.  On Tuesday, we learned that a key measure of U.S. manufacturing just fell to the lowest level in three years…

A key U.S. factory gauge unexpectedly contracted for the first time since 2016, sending stocks and bond yields lower and boosting expectations for interest-rate cuts as global manufacturing woes deepen.

The Institute for Supply Management’s purchasing managers index fell to 49.1 in August, weaker than all forecasts in a Bloomberg survey of economists, data released Tuesday showed. Figures below 50 indicate the manufacturing economy is generally shrinking. The group’s gauge of new orders dropped to a more than seven-year low, while the production index hit the lowest since late 2015.

In response to that number and more troubling news about the trade war, U.S. stocks were sharply down…

Stocks fell on Tuesday, the first trading day of a historically tough month, after the world’s two largest economies began imposing new tariffs on each other’s goods. Weak manufacturing data also dented investor sentiment.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 285.26 points lower, or 1.1%, at 26,118.02. The S&P 500 lost 0.7% to end the day at 2,906.27 while the Nasdaq Composite pulled back 1.1% to 7,874.16.

We have reached an absolutely critical moment in modern American history.  The largest financial bubble in our entire history is on the verge of bursting, and many believe that we could be on the precipice of an economic downturn even worse than what we experienced in 2008 and 2009.

A trade deal with China would greatly help the short-term outlook, but the Chinese are not willing to give Trump what he desires.  So the only way one will happen is if President Trump completely caves in, but I don’t see that happening.

That means that a tremendous amount of pain is ahead, and the American people are completely unprepared for that.

About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared Now, The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters. His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News. From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other prominent websites. If you would like to republish his articles, please feel free to do so. The more people that see this information the better, and we need to wake more people up while there is still time.

President Trump Is Preparing An Executive Order That Will Crack Down Hard On Social Media Censorship Of Conservatives

It appears that President Trump is getting ready to bring down the hammer on the big social media companies.  According to Politico, the Trump administration is in the process of drafting an executive order that will “tackle Silicon Valley’s alleged anti-conservative bias”.  And it is very much in President Trump’s own self-interest to do this.  Social media played a key role in helping him win in 2016, but since that time we have seen an unprecedented wave of censorship on the major social media platforms, and most of that censorship has been directed at conservative voices.  If President Trump doesn’t do something, it is hard to see how he will win in 2020, and of course that is precisely what the leftist executives at the big social media companies want.

Ultimately, it would take an act of Congress to do everything that needs to be done, but President Trump should be applauded for trying to do what he can on his own.  Apparently Politico was able to speak to three separate sources that are familiar with the drafting of this new executive order, and after speaking to all of them Politico came to the conclusion that the Trump administration is very serious about “wielding the federal government’s power against Silicon Valley”…

The White House is circulating drafts of a proposed executive order that would address allegations of anti-conservative bias by social media companies, according to a White House official and two other people familiar with the matter — a month after President Donald Trump pledged to explore “all regulatory and legislative solutions” on the issue.

None of the three would describe the contents of the order, which one person cautioned has already taken many different forms and remains in flux. But its existence, and the deliberations surrounding it, are evidence that the administration is taking a serious look at wielding the federal government’s power against Silicon Valley.

It is not clear if such an executive order would hold up in court, and undoubtedly there will be legal challenges right away.  Of course those legal challenges will take a long time to play out, because we all know how quickly our legal system moves.

But for the short-term, what really matters is what effect this will have on the behavior of the big social media companies.  The goal should be to scare them into doing the right thing, and hopefully the wording of this executive order will be as forceful as possible.

Since some of these big tech companies have contracts with the federal government, in his executive order Trump could try to prohibit federal contractors from discriminating against customers based on their political views.  A similar approach has been attempted a couple of times before…

One potential approach could involve using the government’s leverage over federal contractors, a tactic the Obama administration used to advance LGBT rights. A 2014 executive order prohibited federal contractors from discriminating against workers on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Trump earlier this year signed an executive order meant to promote free speech on college campuses by requiring schools to agree to promote free inquiry in order to receive federal research funding — something the schools were already supposed to do.

We’ll see what happens, but hopefully Trump can get this executive order issued quickly, because the 2020 election season has already begun.

Of course liberals are upset about this potential executive order, and many of them continue to insist that conservatives are not being specifically targeted by the social media companies.  For example, just check out this excerpt from a Vox article…

As Recode and other outlets have reported, there has been no evidence to prove that companies such as Google and Twitter have anti-conservative bias baked into their products. Regardless, the president and Republican lawmakers have continued to make such claims, emboldened in part by a recent claim by a former Google engineer that he was fired for his conservative political views. (Google says the employee was fired for misusing company equipment; other reports indicate that he shared emails internally in which he defended white supremacist groups.)

Seriously?

Because of what I do, I have connections throughout the conservative media, and just about everyone I know has been censored, banned, shadowbanned or deplatformed in some way, shape or form.  Over the past two and a half years we have witnessed the greatest purge in the history of the Internet, and it has been absolutely brutal.

Some conservative voices are still able to use social media, but the heavy hand of censorship is always present.  For example, every time Dr. Michael Brown posts a video on YouTube, it is immediately “flagged as unsuitable for most advertisers”…

To this moment, the instant one of my YouTube videos is posted—and I mean the very instant—it gets flagged as unsuitable for most advertisers, which we then have to contest by calling for a manual review. At that point, you genuinely have no idea what the reviewer will decide.

Of course other conservative voices have been targeted for elimination from social media altogether.  Mike Adams of Natural News is an incredibly genuine guy and one of the most articulate conservative voices on the entire Internet, and he has been deplatformed by just about every social media platform that exists…

In response to a coordinated, heavily-funded smear campaign against Natural News and myself, the Health Ranger, Facebook has now permanently banned Natural News from posting content. The channel name that has been banned is Facebook.com/healthranger, which was our primary channel reaching over 2.5 million people.

This is on top of the permanent bans of Natural News content from Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Google News, Apple and other techno-fascists that now represent the greatest threat to human freedom the world has ever seen.

There is no reason why Mike Adams should have ever been banned by anyone.  I have had the opportunity to sit down with him in person, and he is someone that cares deeply for America and for those around him.  What the big social media companies have done to him is absolutely disgusting.

But of course he is far from alone.  One study found that since the 2016 presidential election, social media traffic to a group of some of the most conservative websites on the Internet was down by 93 percent.  You can find the full study right here, and it is definitely worth reading.

In the end, it is very simple.  The leftists that run the big social media companies hate what we believe, and they don’t want us to get the truth out.  The don’t believe in a free marketplace of ideas, because their ideas always lose.

So the only way that they can win is by shutting us up, and that is precisely what they have been attempting to do.

The social media giants built multi-billion dollar empires by giving everyone a voice, but now that they have such a dominant position on the Internet they have decided that many prominent conservative voices should be completely silenced.

They want to control what ideas people are exposed to, thus shaping the overall direction of the country as a whole.

If they are allowed to get away with it, they will greatly alter the political future of America far beyond the 2020 election.

Something needs to be done immediately, and so let us hope that President Trump gives this executive order some really strong teeth.

About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared Now, The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters. His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News. From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other prominent websites. If you would like to republish his articles, please feel free to do so. The more people that see this information the better, and we need to wake more people up while there is still time.

When President Trump Was Asked About The Epidemic Of Human Feces On Our Streets, Here Is How He Responded…

If you go visit Japan, I guarantee that you won’t see a single person defecating on the sidewalk.  It just doesn’t happen over there, or in most other highly civilized nations on the planet.  But here in the United States, we have such a problem with human waste on our city streets that even the president of the United States is talking about it on national television.  President Trump has been known to comment on the deplorable conditions in other nations from time to time, but during an interview on Monday night Fox host Tucker Carlson asked Trump about the horrific conditions in some of our own cities.  In particular, Carlson noted that unlike New York and Los Angeles, there is “no one going to the bathroom on the streets” in Japan…

Trump sat for an interview with Tucker Carlson during his trip to South Korea over the weekend. The Fox News host observed that cities in Japan, host of the Group of 20 summit, had “no graffiti” and “no one going to the bathroom on the streets,” and said New York City and Los Angeles had a “major problem with filth.”

In response, President Trump blamed the liberals that are running those big cities for the current conditions, and he described what some homeless people are going through as “living in hell”…

The president described cities in a dire state, claiming police officers are “getting sick just by walking the beat,” and some people are “living in hell.”

Some people may be tempted to think that Trump was exaggerating, but the truth is that conditions on the streets of some of our major cities just continue to deteriorate at a very rapid pace.

For example, just consider the following excerpt from a Los Angeles Times article that was published about a month ago…

I’ve seen so many rats the last two weeks in downtown Los Angeles, I have to suspect they’re plotting a takeover of City Hall, which vermin infiltrated last year.

The city of Los Angeles has become a giant trash receptacle. It used to be that illegal dumpers were a little more discreet, tossing their refuse in fields and gullies and remote outposts.

Now city streets are treated like dumpsters, or even toilets — on Thursday, the 1600 block of Santee Street was cordoned off after someone dumped a fat load of poop in the street. I’m not sure when any of this became the norm, but it must have something to do with the knowledge that you can get away with it.

Of course similar things could be said about Seattle, Portland, Denver or just about any major city out west.

When authorities cleaned up the homeless camps that had popped up on a two mile stretch along a bike trail in Orange County last year, this is what they hauled away…

  • 404 tons of debris
  • 13,950 needles (approximate number based on what disposal containers hold)
  • 5,279 pounds of hazardous waste (human waste, propane, pesticides and other materials)

It literally took months to clean everything up, and that was just one very small two mile stretch of southern California.

But when it comes to human feces, nobody can even come close to San Francisco.

According to Forbes, there have been more than 118,000 officially reported cases of human feces on the streets since 2011…

Since 2011, there have been at least 118,352 reported instances of human fecal matter on city streets.

New mayor, London Breed, won election by promising to clean things up. However, conditions are the same or worse. Last year, the number of reports spiked to an all-time high at 28,084. In first quarter 2019, the pace continued with 6,676 instances of human waste in the public way.

This is supposed to be one of the wealthiest cities on the entire planet, and yet it has become a giant human manure pile.

Of course much of this is being fueled by drugs.  Addicts are often so zombiefied that they don’t care who or what is around when it comes time to use the potty.  In the U.S. today, more people die from drug overdoses than from traffic accidents, and even the New York Times admits that we are in the midst of the “worst drug crisis in American history”.

But for many others, being homeless has nothing to do with drugs at all.  The middle class is being eviscerated all around us, and poverty is growing with each passing day.  And it turns out that several of the counties with the most unaffordable housing in America just happen to be in California…

ATTOM Data Solutions published its 2Q19 US Home Affordability Report, which reveals median home prices last quarter weren’t affordable for the average American in 74% (353 of 480 counties) of the counties analyzed.

The most unaffordable counties, the reported noted, were in Los Angeles County, California; Cook County (Chicago), Illinois; Maricopa County (Phoenix), Arizona; San Diego County, California; and Orange County, California.

There is never going to be any sort of a permanent solution to the homelessness crisis in California until there is a lot more affordable housing, and right now liberal policies are standing in the way of that happening.

Unfortunately, the entire country is likely to see a substantial rise in homelessness as this new economic downturn continues to escalate.  At this point things have already gotten so tight that a third of all Americans have cut spending within the last 12 months…

A third of Americans say they’ve cut spending in the last year, and that percentage is about the same no matter the demographic. Reasons for spending less ranged from a loss of household income and new debt to fear of recession, job loss or large medical bills from an unexpected illness or injury.

Considering the fact that 59 percent of all Americans are currently living paycheck to paycheck, the truth is that most of us are just a couple of bad breaks away from financial disaster.

So instead of looking down on homeless people, the rest of us should be working harder than ever so that we can survive the very rough times that are coming.

Nobody plans to fall into poverty, and nobody actually wants to be homeless.

But tonight more than 550,000 Americans do not have a home, and that number is only going to keep rising.

About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared Now, The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters. His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News. From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other prominent websites. If you would like to republish his articles, please feel free to do so. The more people that see this information the better, and we need to wake more people up while there is still time.

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