The populist Five Star Movement (M5S) and the establishment Democratic Party (PD) – two parties with pretty much nothing in common – have joined hands to take down their arch political opponent – Matteo Salvini.
Yesterday, the BBC reported that the two unlikely partners were able to strike a coalition deal to take down right-wing populist Matteo Salvini and his League Party, which has surged in popularity in the last months.
The two parties which have traditionally been at odds with one another entered into coalition discussions after the previous coalition between the League and M5S broke down after months of internal strife.
A failed attempt by M5S to do away with plans to construct a high-speed rail link proved that the populist coalition could no longer govern, Salvini said at the time. Salvini subsequently tabled a no-confidence motion against him with the hope that it would bring forth new elections.
But that’s not what happened. Salvini seemingly has been outmaneuvered by his political opponents.
The leaders of the newly-arranged coalition have asked Italy’s currently sitting president Sergio Mattarella to reinstate Giuseppe Conte as the official head of the government.
Presidential spokesman Giovanni Grasso has said that Conte is set to meet with President Mattarella this morning. Most expect Conte to be given a mandate to form a new government.
Salvini has stated that only thing which brought the two parties together was their mutual hatred for himself and his National Populist League party.
“The only thing that unites them (M5S and PD) is their hatred of the League,” Salvini told journalists on Wednesday. “The truth is that 60 million Italians are being held hostage by 100 parliamentarians who are dead scared of losing their seats,” he added.
In order to be finalized, the coalition agreement first must be approved by party members in an online vote. That vote is expected to take place before the end of the week.
If a final agreement is reached, the new governing coalition could serve until the next scheduled election in 2023.
According to federal statistics, the Department of Homeland Security – at its current catch and release rates – releases over 200 illegal immigrants into the interior of the United States every single day.
After the implementation President Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy which keeps ‘asylum seekers’ in Mexico while they wait for their claims to be processed, the number of illegal immigrants being released into the country’s interior has leveled out to around 208 each day.
The DHS released 7,700 illegal immigrants into the interior of the country between July 23rd and August 26th. This month’s numbers mark a small increase in the level of catch and release to the weeks of July 10 and July 22 which saw approximately 192 illegal border crossers and illegal immigrants released into the U.S. each day.
This amount of catch and release cases seen during this period decreased by 85 percent compared to the amount that occurred before the enacting of Trump’s Remain in Mexico policy.
The catch and release process is far from ideal. In most cases, it involves federal immigration officials taking illegal border jumpers into nearby cities by bus. Sometimes it even involves flying illegal immigrants to the interior of the country and simply dropping them off with the mere hope that they show up at their immigration hearings.
Sadly, once they’re released into the United States, the vast majority of illegal immigrants and border jumpers are never deported. The illegal immigrants coming to this country are well aware of this and continue to game the system accordingly.
Right now, between 11 million and 22 million illegal immigrants are living in the United States. Most of them reside in states like California, New York, Texas, Florida, and Illinois.
In August, most illegal immigrants and border hoppers, somewhere around 4,100, were released in San Antonio, Texas. An additional 1,200 were let go in El Paso, whereas 1,500 were released in Phoenix, Arizona and another 900 were released in San Diego, California.
Most illegals and border jumpers will not show up to their immigration hearings and the cost to sustain them will passed along to the American taxpayer.
The Department of Homeland Security has released close to 224,700 illegal immigrants into the United States since December 21, 2018.
Each and every year, 1.2 million legal immigrants are admitted into the United States, with the vast majority of them arriving via a process known as “chain migration” – a process whereby newly naturalized citizens can bring an unlimited number of foreigners into the country.
Gee, what a surprise! News outlets are reporting that video security footage from the corridor outside of Jeffrey Epstein’s cell from the night he “committed suicide” is “unusable.”
The Washington Post was the first to report that “some video footage taken outside criminal financier Jeffrey Epstein’s cell the night of his death was deemed ‘unusable’ by investigators.”
Epstein died allegedly by his own hand in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) earlier this month, prompting a federal investigation into the circumstances surrounding his death. Both the FBI and the Justice Department’s inspector general’s office are investigating.
According to the Washington Post story one of the cameras in the hallway outside of Epstein’s cell captured “unusable footage,” though it is unclear what about the footage made investigators deem it “unusable.” Clearer footage was apparently captured in the vicinity by other cameras, The Post’s report said.
Since Epstein’s death, the MCC has been under fire for several incidents of alleged broken protocol, including guards reportedly sleeping on their shift, Epstein being housed alone, and the prison facing severe staffing shortages.
Epstein’s Lawyers Not Confident In ME’s Conclusion of Suicide
After the cause of death was deemed a suicide by the New York chief medical examiner, Epstein’s defense team said in a statement that they were “not satisfied” with the conclusion and blasted the “medieval conditions” of the federal prison, blaming their employer’s death on those alleged broken protocols.
Soon after the ME’s conclusions, Epstein’s defense team announced that they would be conducting an independent investigation alongside the federal probes, saying that they would use legal action, if necessary, “to view the pivotal videos — if they exist as they should — of the area proximate to Mr. Epstein’s cell during the time period leading to his death.”
Now, it is some of those very videos that “coincidentally” are found to be “unusable.”
Epstein was charged in July with conspiracy and sex trafficking of minors. He was transferred to suicide watch after he was found unconscious with bruises around his neck but was taken off constant observation in late July.
He was found dead in his cell a little less than two weeks later.
A man from Portland, Oregon was assaulted by a mob after he took his wife on a Saturday evening date. His only sin – forgetting to take off his “Make America Great Again” hat
Shortly after Luke Lenzner and his wife arrived at Growler’s Tap after midnight for what he described as a “date night”, the couple was quickly surrounded by an angry mob of leftists just outside the establishment’s patio when someone sucker-punched him.
According to a probable cause affidavit obtained by a local newspaper, Lenzer’s wife reportedly told the police that she had encouraged her husband to sport the MAGA both to show his support for President Trump and to see what kind of reaction others would have to it.
“I got mobbed by everybody that was in that bar outside. People came from the inside out — just circled me and my wife,” Lenzner told reporters. “Surrounding me, like literally surrounding me, pushing me. I’m just trying to get through, trying to stop the person from hitting me, from taking my hat, and then I get sucker-punched.”
“The lady asked me, ‘Is that a MAGA hat?” Lenzner told the reporters. “Then the next thing I know, she’s running around the corner attacking me, trying to take my hat off.”
When police finally arrived at the bar sometime around 12:50 am, they found large bruises on Lenzer’s face. A manhunt for the perpetrators ensued and police were able to locate two people in their 20s who witnesses said were involved in the assault.
One of the bartenders who witnessed the assault mentioned that Lenzner could’ve instigated the punch by pointing to his MAGA hat.
22-year-old Leopold Hauser and 23-year-old Adebisi Okuneye were arrested and charged with third-degree assault.
Lenzer’s wife said that she was proud of her husband for standing up for what he believed in.
According to reporting by Fox News, federal prosecutors are in the final stages of making a decision on whether to charge former FBI official Andrew McCabe over the circumstances that led to his firing from the bureau last year.
A source close to the process told Fox recently that McCabe has had a “target on his back” because of the Justice Department inspector general findings against him over his actions during the Hillary Clinton email investigation, as well as his role in the surveillance warrants against Trump campaign associates during the Russia investigation. McCabe is a former deputy and acting director of the FBI.
Fox’s report comes after the — The New York Times first reported on these developments. The Times piece said that McCabe’s lawyers recently met with DOJ attorneys who would handle a prosecution, which seems to be an indication of a possible indictment of McCabe.
McCabe’s legal team and the Justice Department declined to comment on the Fox report. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. also has not responded to a Fox News request for comment.
When and Why Was McCabe Fired
If you recall, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired McCabe in March 2018 after the Justice Department inspector general report found that he had repeatedly misstated his involvement in a leak to The Wall Street Journal regarding an FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation.
Fox’s unnamed source confirmed that the inspector general files on McCabe went to U.S. Attorney John Durham, who is handling the “Investigation of the Investigators” probe which is looking into the origins of the Russia case, so that Durham can investigate McCabe’s actions.
Earlier this month, McCabe sued the FBI and the Justice Department over his firing, arguing it was part of Trump’s plan to rid the bureau of leaders he perceived as disloyal to him.
The complaint contends that the two officials responsible for demoting and then firing McCabe — FBI Director Chris Wray and then AG Sessions — created a pretext to force him out in accordance with the Pesident’s wishes.
The stated reason for the firing was that McCabe had misled investigators over his involvement in a news media leak, but McCabe says the real reason was “his refusal to pledge allegiance to a single man.”
Fox says that McCabe has been singled out for attacks by the President since before he was elected, after news emerged in the fall of 2016 that McCabe’s wife had accepted campaign contributions from a political action committee associated with former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, during an unsuccessful run for the state senate there.
McAuliffe is a close ally of Bill and Hillary Clinton, who was being investigated at the time for her use of a personal email server while she was secretary of state.
For his part, McCabe has consistently denied any wrongdoing and has said the inspector general’s conclusions relied on mischaracterizations and omissions, including of information favorable to McCabe.
This past weekend, former U.S. congressman Joe Walsh, became the second Republican to challenge President Donald Trump for the party’s 2020 White House nomination. Walsh is currently a conservative talk show host.
Despite the President’s enormous popularity among most Republicans, Walsh has often criticized Donald Trump as “a bully who is unfit for office,” and he used those very words as he announced his bid to take on Trump in 2020.
“I’m running because he’s unfit,” Walsh, 57, told ABC’s “This Week” program. “Somebody needs to step up.”
Adding, “He’s a bully and he’s a coward and somebody needs to call him out. The bet … of my campaign is that there are a lot of Republicans that feel like I do. They’re afraid to come forward.”
Walsh won a House of Representatives seat from Illinois as a candidate of the Republican Party’s fiscally conservative Tea Party movement in 2010 but was defeated by Democrat Tammy Duckworth in his 2012 re-election bid. After leaving Congress, he became a Chicago-area radio talk show host.
Walsh is the second disaffected Republican to try to take on Trump. William Weld, a former Massachusetts governor, is also vying to unseat Trump, but his candidacy has so far failed to gain any real traction.
Former U.S. Representative and South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford said in July he was considering a primary challenge because of the rising federal debt.
An Uphill Fight to Take on Trump
Like most Republicans, Walsh was once a Trump supporter but says he turned against the President partly because of Trump’s allowing the federal deficit to burgeon, because Trump became too close to Vladimir Putin, the authoritarian leader of Russia, and because Trump is a “racial arsonist who encourages bigotry and xenophobia to rally his base.”
Walsh was also formerly a harsh critic of President Barack Obama but Walsh now says he regrets his incendiary anti-Obama remarks.
Any Republican challenger will face a formidable re-election effort mounted by Trump, who has consolidated his grip on the party’s national and state machinery. A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted Aug. 19-20 showed 87% of Republicans approve of his performance in office.
Walsh said he was undeterred. “I think this thing … will catch on like wildfire,” he said. “I’m a conservative,” Walsh added. “And think I there’s a decent chance to present to Republican voters a conservative without all the baggage.”
White Republican men are the ‘greatest terrorist threat’ in the US, according to CNN commentator.
Last week, during a heated exchange with a Republican strategist, leftist CNN commentator Angela Rye said that the “greatest terrorist threat” in the United States are “white men” who think like he does.
The conversation really got fiery after GOP campaign strategist Patrick Griffin triggered Rye by arguing that the so-called “Squad” of far-left, Antifa-loving Democrats – Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib – had “hijacked” the Democratic Party from California Democrat and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Rye, the former executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus, responded saying, “It’s so interesting that you use the term — the only two Muslim women in Congress, the term you chose to use, sir, is ‘hijacking,’”
Griffin hit back, saying, “It has nothing to do with whether they’re Muslim or not,” Griffin responded. “Nothing to do with that… They’ve hijacked from their own principles.”
“That’s a real interesting word choice, and you understand why,” Rye interrupted while asserting that Griffin had purposefully employed the word to link the far-left Democrats to radical Islamic terrorists.
Rye, clearly perturbed, continued, saying, “You can talk over me all you want to but the bottom line is the greatest terrorist threat in this country is white men, white men who think like you. That is the greatest terrorist threat in this country.”
Griffin dismissed her remarks as “silly rhetoric.”
“No, it’s not!” Rye replied.
“You know what’s silly? The fact that you’re on here knowing how dangerous times are right now defending this nonsense,” she retorted.
While addressing Rye’s comments, Dr. Steve Turley, a prominent National Conservative academic and YouTube commentator attributes this widely proliferated meme of white men or ‘white supremacists’ being the single greatest threat to the United States, to a so-called study conducted by the far-left, Soros-funded, New America Foundation.
Dr. Turley contends that the study’s purpose was to “undermine national, cultural, and historical integrity of the United States in the name of left-wing globalism.”
The study found that of the all 26 post-911 terror attacks that occurred on US soil, 19 were committed by non-Muslims. Furthermore, the study found that 48 people were killed by so-called “white terrorists” compared to 26 people killed by jihadists.
Of course, it didn’t take very much time for this meme to spread via the mainstream media propaganda apparatus.
And, that’s why we’re constantly hearing far-left progressive news commentators like Angela Rye and Don Lemon parrot this talking point.
But the Soros-funded study only included the attacks that were successfully carried out. After taking into account all of the terror attacks that were planned within the United States by jihadists, but which were thwarted by authorities, we discover that we aren’t just dealing with 26 attacks, but well over 100 attacks by jihadists,74 percent of which were stopped by police.
This means that radical Islamic terrorism is far greater a threat than any dangers posed by “white supremacist” terrorists. The far-left globalist news media is only telling part of the story to back up their narrative. The whole story, which of course doesn’t support their narrative must be hidden from the public.
The friendly relationship between the United States and Germany has taken a turn for the worse. A new survey authorized by the Atlantik-Brücke and carried out by the polling firm Civey discovered that 85 percent of respondents assessed relations between the countries as poor to very poor.
According to a Der Spiegel editorial, US-German relations have plunged to perhaps an all-time low over deep political, social, and economic disagreements.
In the editorial, the author says that since Richard Grenell took over the reins as the American ambassador to Germany, both countries have been engaged in a kind of diplomatic ‘silent game’.
The article also quotes a statement made by the ex-president of the European Parliament and prominent SPD politician, Martin Schulz.
Schulz, when speaking of the US Ambassador, said: “Grenell is behaving not like a diplomat, but like a right-wing extremist colonial officer”.
According to Der Spiegel, Grenell’s behavior has led German officials to keep their distance. Apparently, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas prefers to keep encounters with the US ambassador as brief as possible, while Chancellor Merkel has never even spoken with him.
The editorial cites existing policy differences between Washington and Berlin on Iran, NATO defense spending, and unresolved trade disagreements.
US President Trump and US Ambassador Germany Richard Grenell have repeatedly and harshly criticized Germany’s unwillingness to comply with the NATO voluntary goal payment obligation of 2% of GDP.
In an interview with the German news agency DPA, Grenell went as far as to say that Germany abuses its friendship with the US.
“It is really insulting to expect that the US taxpayer pays for more than 50,000 Americans in Germany, but the Germans use their trade surplus for domestic purposes,” Grenell said.
The US has also considered moving some of its troops stationed in Germany to Poland.
Despite 85 percent of surveyed Germans having expressed their attitudes toward the US as negative or very negative, Berlin still hopes that the “good old days of the transatlantic partnership” will eventually return after Donald Trump’s presidency ends.
However, since current geopolitical trends seem to suggest that National Populism is here to stay, the Germans may be engaged in misplaced optimism and extreme naivety.
Is the long-standing love affair between Fox News and President Donald J. Trump hitting some rough waters?
The President said over the weekend that he “was unhappy,” with Fox News, and that “something is going on over there.”
The comments came in response to a question tossed at Trump about the network’s recent survey showing the President losing head-to-head matchups against four of the top Democratic presidential primary candidates. Trump’s full reply to the reporter was “There’s something going on at Fox [News], I’ll tell you right now. And I’m not happy with it.”
The President quickly added that he didn’t “believe” the poll, adding, “Fox has changed. My worst polls have always been from Fox.”
He then went on to complain about how Democrats had barred the network from hosting or televising the party’s 2020 primary debates and signaled a warning about the general election cycle.
“And I think Fox is making a big mistake,” the president said when asked about the polling and the network’s leadership. “Because, you know, I’m the one that calls the shots on that — on the really big debates.”
A New Target?
President Trump railing against the news media is nothing new, but the usually “Trump Friendly” Fox News has rarely been the target of his ire. But, lately, Trump has increasingly lumped in Fox News with the rest of his “enemies” for what he views as unfavorable coverage.
Earlier this year he had admonished his “favorite network” for providing a forum for 20202 Democratic candidates. Trump took jabs at Fox News over the network’s town halls with Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders in April and Pete Buttigieg in May.
The polls in question that caused the current spat between Trump and Fox showed Trump’s approval rating in the low 40s and had him losing by six or more points to Democratic 2020 rivals Sens. Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden.
Of course, Trump questioned the veracity of the polls, but he seemed more upset that Fox had the audacity to report the actual results of its own poll.
The President also teed off on Fox News political analyst Juan Williams, who Trump said, “has never said a positive thing” — following up on a tweet earlier in the day in which he called Williams “pathetic,” “nasty” and “wrong.”
However, like all lovers that have a bit of a falling out, Trump went on to list “his partner’s” good qualities, following up his comments outside of Marine One on Sunday with, “I’m certainly happy [with]– I think Sean Hannity, and Lou Dobbs, and I think Tucker Carlson and Laura and Jesse Watters, and Jeanine. We have a lot of great people.”
When it comes to healthcare, Democratic 2020 hopeful Kamala Harris seems to still be struggling to get her story straight. What she truly believes seems to vacillate, especially when she is speaking to a group of wealthy donors at a fundraiser in the Hamptons, and not the American public on the debate stage.
The Daily Beast among other outlets has reported that the Democrat had waffled once again on her support for Medicare for All. “I support Medicare for All,” she told the crowd of wealthy donors. But as you may have noticed, over the course of the many months, I’ve not been comfortable with Bernie’s plan, the Medicare for All plan.”
This despite being the cosponsor of Sanders’ “Medicare for All” bill. What really seems to have Harris backpedaling faster than a rewinding video of Lance Armstrong is one of the proposed legislation’s major features — the elimination of private insurance.
In late July, she finally released her own version of a “Medicare-for-all” bill, which, in a departure from Sanders’s proposal, would maintain a role for private insurance within a universal public system. Why would she do that? As her rival and bill’s cosponsor Bernie Sanders might say, “it’s all about the Benjamins.”
In other words, Harris, who unlike Bernie who has made elimination of for-profit insurance a key part of his vision for healthcare – is afraid to piss off wealthy donors and corporate interests. In fact, David Sirota, a Sanders campaign adviser, wrote in his newly minted newsletter, Bern Notice, “The Harris flip flop is a reminder that while Medicare for All received an enthusiastic response at Bernie’s Fox News townhall in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania — it doesn’t get that kind of response on the big dollar fundraising circuit in the Hamptons.”
The debate between Harris and Sanders on the healthcare issue is partly about a difference between Sanders’s proposal, which would eliminate private insurance, and Harris’s, which would preserve a role for insurers in the health care system. But by seizing on Harris’s remarks — and the venue where she made them — the Sanders campaign is connecting their healthcare plan to their candidate’s larger argument on corporate greed.
Harris Has Been All Over the Map on Healthcare
Harris really has been all over the place on Healthcare. Before she released “her plan,” it was nearly impossible to get any consistency from the candidate on healthcare. As stated earlier, she signed on to Sanders’s single-payer Medicare-for-all bill, and soon after, she was on the trail, publicly backing his idea to get rid of private insurance entirely, saying “let’s eliminate all of that. Let’s move on,” at a CNN town hall in January. She then walked that back, saying that she meant getting rid of “bureaucracy.”
Later on in April, at another CNN townhall, she emphasized that there would be some role for private insurance under Sanders’s bill, even though the Sanders Medicare for All Act would reduce private insurance’s role to things like cosmetic surgery or premium hospital rooms. And then, during the Democratic debate in June, Harris raised her hand when NBC’s Lester Holt asked, “Who here would abolish their private health insurance in favorite of a government-run plan?”
But she then walked that back to say she misunderstood the question, saying she personally would prefer to enroll in public insurance.
In fact, since becoming an upper-tier contender for the Democratic nomination, every time she seemingly endorsed the actual bill she cosponsored, she’s eventually walked it back.
On the other hand, Sanders has remained steadfast in painting corporate America as the “enemy of the people.” He sees a for-profit health care system as fundamentally broken. His campaign platform is centered on fighting the greed of major corporate interests, whether pharmaceutical companies, the fossil fuel industry, or private insurance industry.
In a speech about Medicare-for-all in June, he pledged to reject money from the insurance and drug companies, and called on other presidential candidates to do the same.
For Sanders’s campaign — healthcare, like everything else is all about his perceived influence of the wealthy. But, in Harris’s case he may be right given her propensity to flip-flop on the issue.
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