There’s a lot of people who don’t have a comprehensive understanding of what it takes to battle the multinationals in economic warfare.  Those same people don’t like Gary Cohn.
CTH recognizes the inherent value in Mr. Cohn as director of President Trump’s national economic council.  The guy knows the economic schemes better than almost all of the globalist adversaries.  Like Wilbur Ross, the former executive of U.S. Steel, Gary Cohn is one of the well dressed “killers”; an apex financial predator who’s eyes will contract while he shakes your hand just before he rips your throat out during negotiations.  Departing he’ll wink at your carcass, and still make your team pay for the clean up.
In this interview segment Director Gary Cohn discusses the Republicans’ tax reform plan, infrastructure initiatives and laughs out loud at President Barack Obama taking credit for the economy.  Director Cohn is a bad, bad man; perhaps the best of the bad men.

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After lunch with Vice-President Mike Pence, President Donald Trump delivers remarks at the swearing-in ceremony for Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

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[Transcript] THE PRESIDENT: Well, this is an honor. You’ve been with us so long now. Anyway, I have no doubt. And it’s going to be incredible what takes place.
I want to start by thanking Elaine Duke. You’ve done so well and we really appreciate it. And I know you’ll be here for a long while and working together, but this is a very special occasion because this is an issue I ran on — it’s borders, it’s homeland security. And it’s one of the certainly important things. I can’t ever say anything is the most important, because our military is the most important, and lots of other things. But this is right there. This is one of the real big issues.
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Despite the negative banter from the gnats the U.S. economy is continuing to outpace economic expectations.  More importantly the gains are within targeted sectors long-ago written off.  Yes, Trump’s MAGAnomic policies are proving it was always possible.
Job gains exceeded 280,000 as the Main Street economy continues gaining momentum. The manufacturing sector added 31,000, a slight deviation from ADP payroll actuaries a week ago, which remains a complete reversal of prior historic job growth.   For the past three decades manufacturing jobs had been shrinking, now the sector is growing.  This is the important part of the overall picture.

The unemployment rate remains at 4.1%, because the underlying data has been strongly manipulated for the past several years.  If the data ran negative the statistical ruse would be evident; so the explanation remains that workers who left the economy have reentered, ie. “slack“.  :::eyeroll:::
Wage growth was estimated at 2.5%, which is in line with our previous analysis.  We do not anticipate massive wage rate gains until the full ‘slack‘ is taken up within the employment market.  Our prediction remains that Quarter #2 2018 (April, May, June) will be approximately the time-frame when wage rates increase at 5% and more.
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Tonight President Donald J. Trump is holding a Making America Great Again MAGA rally at the Pensacola Bay Center in Pensacola, Florida.  Anticipated start time is 8:00pm EST
UPDATE: Video Added

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Last night news broke that U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras “has been recused” from the case overseeing the prosecution of General Mike Flynn. Details are vague. According to Reuters, both the judge and the Flynn legal team have yet to comment.
Additionally, there is no concrete answer as to whether the recusal was done by the judge himself or was forced upon him. While the reasoning is the key, the difference between the two options adds another layer of consequence within the rest of this outline.  Reuters News Service puts it this way:

(Reuters) – The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia judge presiding over the criminal case for President Donald Trump’s former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has been recused from handling the case, a court spokeswoman said on Thursday.
According to a court filing, U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras, who presided over a Dec. 1 hearing where Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about his contacts with Russia, will no longer handle the case.
Court spokeswoman Lisa Klem did not say why Contreras was recused, and added that the case was randomly reassigned. Reuters could not immediately learn the reason for the recusal, or reach Contreras. An attorney for Flynn declined to comment. (Link)

Obviously, the customary reason for recusal is when there is a conflict of interest between the case as assigned and the judge overseeing it.  However, as you can clearly see, in this case it’s rather odd that if a conflict existed the judge would have even begun to oversee the case at the prior hearing.  Why wait until six days after the first hearing?
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Judge Rudolph Contreras recused himself from the case surrounding Michael Flynn, and people are wondering why.  There’s one very distinct possibility.

POLITICO – President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, will face a different judge to be sentenced than the one who took Flynn’s guilty plea to a felony false statement charge last week, court records show.
Judge Emmet Sullivan was randomly assigned to take over the case after Judge Rudolph Contreras recused himself. (more)

As soon as CTH saw the name Judge Rudolph Contreras our spidey sense alarm bells began ringing.  You know why?…
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President Trump and Vice-President Mike Pence met earlier today with congressional leadership: House Speaker Paul Ryan, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
[Video and Transcript of remarks below]  When Nancy Pelosi began talking the look on VP Pence’s face is, well, priceless. Additionally, anticipating Pelosi and Schumer are going to hold up the budget by threatening military spending, the ever-strategic Trump invited General Mattis into the discussion so the Democrat leadership could tell him to his face why they would be willing to put American military lives at risk.  Epic.

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[ Transcript] 3:08 P.M. EST – THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. We’re all here as a very friendly, well-unified group. It’s a well-knit-together group of people. And we hope that we’re going to make some great progress for our country. I think that will happen, and we appreciate it very much.
And, Chuck, Nancy, would you say anything — like to say anything? Chuck?
LEADER SCHUMER: Well, we hope we can come to an agreement. Funding the government is extremely important, helping our soldiers is very important, and helping average citizens is very important.
So we’re here in the spirit of: let’s get it done.
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“The Predicate”

FBI Director Christopher Wray appears before the House Judiciary Committee today to answer questions about the ongoing mission objectives of the FBI.  However, the opportunity for Wray’s appearance is being used to further investigate and unravel the ongoing issues surrounding the politicization of the FBI under the former leadership of Director James Comey.  Specifically how the FBI was weaponized against the campaign of candidate Donald Trump to the benefit of 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
In the questioning segment below Ohio Representative Jim Jordan questions Director Wray about the role of FBI Deputy Head of Counterintelligence, FBI Agent Peter Strzok. Jim Jordan outlines the role of Strzok -as it is currently known- and asks if Agent Strzok then took information from Christopher Steele (author of the ‘Steele Russian Dossier’) and used that dossier as the predicate to organize the FISA application that began the surveillance of people associated with the Trump campaign:

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This line of questioning is critical because when combined with a year of investigation by the Dept of Justice, Office of Inspector General, the sunlight takes a two-pronged approach:
♦The IG is working from the inside to investigate the politicization, a more apt term is ‘weaponization‘, of the FBI and DOJ within those organizations.  The IG is then identifying specific people and specific behavior.
♦The oversight committees (Judiciary, Intelligence) are working from the outside of the organizations to spotlight the consequences from those people and from that behavior.
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The November jobs reports are coming out and the results are Bigly remarkable.  Manufacturing job growth in November was 40,000 new jobs.  That’s the highest single month jobs growth in over 15 years.  These manufacturing jobs are higher wage jobs. This is the blue-collar-billionaire economic outcome President Trump has been working toward within every economic proposal, policy and initiative.
The first wave of companies (large and small manufacturers of American products) to jump on the Trump economic initiatives, have invested and begun building-out their capacity. Now we begin to see those companies hiring workers to create the products and services.

Overall the U.S. economy added 190,000 jobs in November which is almost twice the number needed to replace retiring workers.  The government’s headline unemployment number is currently at 4.1%.  For several years we have questioned the methodology behind the unemployment numbers.  What we are likely to see is reality forcing the skewered methodology to push that unemployment number below 4%.
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Don’t be so caught up watching the granules moving at your feet that you fail to step back and recognize the entire landscape is shifting.  It Has Begun… 
Important remarks today. After a year of careful navigation Captain Trump has now hoisted the Spinnaker and is using massive economic winds to advance ALL ‘America-First’ policy objectives.

[…] “to get it going the way I really want, where we have GDP getting up to 4, 5, and even 6 percent — because I think that’s possible. If you look back in your notes, you’ll say when I said 4 percent, people said that would be years. Well, it’s turned out that I’m right because without the hurricanes this last quarter, we would have hit 4 percent. At 3.3 percent, which was adjusted previously — this is far beyond what anybody thought it would be at. So we’re at 3.3 percent GDP. I see no reason why we don’t go to 4, 5, and even 6 percent. And I don’t want to go beyond that because then it will be criticized if we don’t hit it.
But every time we go up one point, just so you understand, one point means $2.5 trillion, means 10 million jobs. So one point in GDP is an incredible statement. $2.5 trillion for each point, 10 million jobs for each point. And I think we’re going to be going up a lot of points.”

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