President Trump announced today his daughter and White House adviser Ivanka Trump will lead the U.S. delegation to India for the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in November.
The delegation was announced by both President Trump and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Twitter. Prime Minister Modi previously invited Ivanka Trump to visit India during his visit to the White House. The conference is scheduled for November 28-30, and businesswoman Ivanka Trump’s attendance is seen as a way to promote high-visibility women’s entrepreneurship around the world.
Strategic value. Ivanka and Arabella Trump are cultural heroines in China, very well regarded. China and India are currently in serious economic competition. Trump is essentially rewarding India with Ivanka’s value, while China watches from distance.
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As surprising as it seems, the U.S. State Department never checked the ‘.gov’ accounts of key Hillary Clinton aides Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills and Jake Sullivan in the initial search to fill the FIOA request filed by Judicial Watch for communication over Benghazi. Yea, go figure…
(Via Judicial Watch) […] District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta ordered the State Department “to search the state.gov e-mail accounts of Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills, and Jacob Sullivan,” former aides of Hillary Clinton during her tenure as Secretary of State. The State Department is ordered to search in those accounts “for records responsive to [Judicial Watch’s] March 4, 2015, FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] request.” (A separate Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit first broke open the Clinton email scandal.)
[I]f an e-mail did not involve any state.gov user, the message would have passed through only the Secretary’s private server and, therefore, would be beyond the immediate reach of State. Because of this circumstance, unlike the ordinary case, State could not look solely to its own records systems to adequately respond to [Judicial Watch’s] demand.
When candidate Donald Trump first proposed renegotiating NAFTA back in 2015 everyone was stunned. Fixing bad trade deals had never been proposed by any candidate. Candidate Trump also proposed a border wall. Those two policy initiatives are entirely connected. Almost immediately the government of Mexico realized the potential impact and threatened to use illegal migration if NAFTA was reopened.
Well, Trump won the presidency. The crony capitalists/lobbyists in DC (U.S. Chamber of Commerce – Tom Donohue) are freaking out. Congress was notified of the intent to renegotiate NAFTA. Mexico and Canada were notified. Commerce Secretary Ross, U.S.T.R Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin are ready to begin next week (Wed).
President Trump and Secretary Ross have already announced they will try to renegotiate NAFTA on a trilateral basis (U.S., Canada and Mexico). However, if it doesn’t work, they’ll scrap the 3-way NAFTA and go one-on-one with individual bilateral agreements.
Today Mexico’s Economic Minister Ildefonso Guajardo threatens to flood the U.S. with South American illegal aliens, criminals and gang members as leverage to keep exploiting NAFTA.
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico could pull back on cooperation in migration and security matters if the United States walks away from talks to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Mexican economy minister said in a newspaper report published on Thursday.
When we initially read this article yesterday our review began with an earnest and sincere effort to understand the concerns amid the career bureaucrats in the U.S. State Department; and also to understand the overall cultural climate that would need Secretary Tillerson’s Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to calm these officials….
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The No. 2 U.S. diplomat on Tuesday sought to allay concerns among the State Department’s rank-and-file employees over possible layoffs and perceptions of a lack of firm direction under the administration of President Donald Trump. (more)
…After all, this has to be about the eleventyth time either Secretary Tillerson or Deputy Sullivan has addressed these ‘climate assessment’ issues. It was less than a week prior to this latest effort by Sullivan when Tillerson himself was talking to the department.
I mean seriously, how much “talking to‘ could one organization need? These are obviously some seriously needy people. Then again, we’ve long discussed the overall liberal perspectives within the department; so the most entrenched liberalism inside government is definitively inside the Department of State.
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Apparently CTH and Asian expert Gordon Chang are on the same intellectual page in analysis of the ongoing North Korea issues. In this interview Mr. Chang outlines the dynamic between U.S. President Trump, North Korean President Kim Jong-un and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Gordon Chang also agrees that mounting economic pressure on China will be the pathway to getting the DPRK into line.
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The North Korean commentariat today has all been centered around a “response” to a precipitous strike by the United States. As previously outlined by Secretary Tillerson, via the “four no’s”, and backed up by the entire U.S. policy team, there is no intent on the U.S. to initiate a North Korean regime change. That leverage approach is China’s to utilize; while we hold China accountable.
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Robert Mercer is a billionaire hedge fund manager who originally constructed the multi-million Cambridge Analytica data tool to aid Ted Cruz in winning the 2016 GOP Primary.
Mr. Mercer bought controlling interest in Breitbart Media for $10+ million. It was through Breitbart media that Mercer, together with Steve Bannon, deployed the Cambridge Analytica tool with a two year presidential poll (2014/2015) to vacuum up user data for later use in the 2016 republican primary. Kellyanne Conway is part of their long-term relationship dynamic.
However, after Ted Cruz refused to specifically and enthusiastically endorse the winner, Donald trump, at the GOP convention in Cleveland, Robert Mercer kicked him out of his suite. Robert Mercer generally stays in the background and his daughter Rebekah Mercer leads the political advocacy. That said, they have the resources and disposition to destroy just about any political foe they choose to engage.
(Via Politico) One of Donald Trump’s most generous political benefactors is providing a six-figure donation to a super PAC devoted to unseating Sen. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican who has been fiercely critical of the president.
Robert Mercer, a reclusive hedge fund billionaire who was intimately involved in Trump’s rise and helped to bankroll his 2016 campaign, is contributing $300,000 to a super PAC supporting former state Sen. Kelli Ward, who is challenging Flake in a Republican primary next year.
Well, many of us were waiting for this – and we have discovered exactly what most CTH readers anticipated, China is a paper tiger.
Last night China finally delivered the official communist government position outlining their perceived leverage over the U.S. and President Trump’s economic diplomacy and economic security platform.
China has always used The Global Times to communicate their official communist state positions. Last night China delivered their warning; oh, you’re gonna love this:
“US needs correct logic in dealing with North Korea”.
[…] The US asks China for help when it cannot solve its problems with North Korea. Some US elites even want to urge China to claim full responsibility for the issue or they will threaten to retaliate. Under this logic, isn’t it reasonable for North Korea to attack its southern neighbor when it is under military threat from the US?
Moreover, those US elites may not have considered the leverage China has over the US. What if China restricts the usage of iPhones and the number of Chinese students to the US, or imports fewer US agricultural products? (link for more)
Now, it is critical to emphasize this is the official outlook of the Chinese Communist regime and what they perceive as their leverage over the United States. This is the official outlook of the party apparatus behind Xi Jinping.
So let’s look at their position in sequence.
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State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert delivers the press briefing for August 9th, 2017. The insufferable media gnats remain fixated on President Trump’s remarks about North Korea – remarks, combined with months of created leverage, that are actually delivering results.
After ignoring all of the action President Trump, Secretary Tillerson, Secretary Mnuchin, and Secretary Ross have taken to shape the geography; and without even seeing the leverage Trump has positioned on China, Russia and North Korea; the pool reporters are floating questions from a parallel universe called ‘bizarro world’.
Seriously, questions about possibly needing a new “diplomatic direction” are ridiculous against the backdrop of the greatest international diplomatic win in years happening only a few days ago with the 15-0 UNSC unanimous vote on North Korea sanctions.
U.S. journalists are embarrassing.
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[Transcript will be added later]
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As you know CTH takes a different approach at significant world events. We try to share the untold stories as they shake out, in real time, in granular details not noted by the MSM. We discuss the stuff on the way to the destination. That way when we arrive at a ‘way point’ we have a historic reference, a back-story, to comprehend consequential headlines when they happen.
With that in mind, here’s another non-discussed granular detail, spotted recently, building toward a much more significant geopolitical outcome, vis-a-vis Russia.
You might remember on August 4th President Trump and French President Emmanuel had a phone call. The outline of the phone conversation is HERE, but there was no real reason for them to be chatting…. or was there?
Western media has paid virtually no attention to how Trump’s big picture economic policy enmeshes and bolsters his national security policy.
Quite literally, and I really want to emphasize this, Secretary Mnuchin (Treasury) and Secretary Ross (Commerce) are just as important as Secretary Mattis (Defense) and Secretary Tillerson (State).
Stop and think about that for a minute.
When President Trump went to Saudi Arabia for the Arab Security Summit the two most visibly active cabinet members were Mnuchin and Ross. When has a Treasury Secretary and Commerce Secretary ever had as much importance during world security events?
Think about it.
Who was Obama’s Commerce Secretary during Iran negotiations?
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During a Monday Rotary Club meeting in Kentucky senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell took questions from audience members who asked McConnell to explain why Republican lawmakers have been unable to deliver major legislative accomplishments for the president.
Senator McConnell responded by saying President Trump’s expectations are too high.
“I’d ask for a show of hands, but I know everybody’s saying, ‘been there, haven’t done anything,’ which I find extremely irritating — and I’m going to tell you why. A Congress goes on for two years. Part of the reason I think that the storyline is that we haven’t done much is because, in part, the president and others have set these early timelines about things need to be done by a certain point.”
“Our new president, of course, has not been in this line of work before, and I think had excessive expectations about how quickly things happen in the Democratic process.”
Fortunately, this ridiculously elitist and arrogant establishment tone will likely not play well. This, along with a host of other ridiculous comments and realities could doom Luther Strange in the upcoming Alabama special election. Luther Strange is the loyal Decepticon favorite of Mitch McConnell and Karl Rove. Mo Brooks and Roy Moore are more aligned with President Trump.
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