National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow discusses the forecast for ratification of the USMCA against the backdrop of Pelosi’s announced focus on impeachment.
Additionally, Kudlow discusses the status of Chinese trade negotiations and the recently affirmed trade deal with Japan.

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 WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. House of Representatives is proceeding with efforts regarding the Trump administration’s trade deal with Mexico and Canada, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters on Thursday, saying House Democrats had discussed the pact a day earlier.
“We’re moving ahead on the U.S-Mexico-Canada agreement,” Pelosi said at a news conference. “We’re, again, hoping to be on a continuing path to ‘yes’” to approve the deal aimed at replacing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). (link)
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Arriving at Joint Base Andrews President Trump delivers remarks to the press pool about the ongoing fiasco with an unnamed hearsay “whistleblower” and the political use of a constructed controversy.  [Video Below, Transcript ADDED]
“I just watched a little of the news on TV. It’s a disgrace.” – “It’s Adam Schiff making up stories.” – “Democrats are going lose the election and they know it. That’s why they are doing it.” – “It should never be allowed.” – “I have to put up with Adam Schiff on an absolutely perfect phone call with the new president of Ukraine. That was a perfect call.” – “But Adam Schiff doesn’t talk about Joe Biden and his son walking away with millions of dollars from Ukraine, and then millions of dollars from China.”…

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[Transcript] THE PRESIDENT: Hello, everybody. I just watched a little bit of this on television. It’s a disgrace to our country. It’s another witch hunt. Here we go again. It’s Adam Schiff and his crew making up stories and sitting there like pious whatever you want to call them. It’s just a — really, it’s a disgrace.
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If you have read any of the documents that came from Fusion-GPS, Nellie Ohr and Christopher Steele, you will likely find an amazing amount of similarity to the format and writing in this “whistleblower” complaint.
It was obviously written by a Lawfare member.
The complaint is the same structure as the Steele Dossier.  No direct knowledge; no direct evidence to the claims; second-hand gossip, rumors from people who might have known another person to have overheard something, mixed with prior media reports to narrate a story as told by the author. Here is the complaint:
[scribd id=427562713 key=key-6T7Fy4sGJpb6SmFtAHcq mode=scroll]
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The complaint is based on the July 25th phone call between President Trump and President Zelenskyy of Ukraine.  Here’s the transcript of that call:
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You know the Democrats had a pre-planned strategy to use the “whistleblower” complaint, because Adam Schiff has the production scheduled for 9:00am public hearing today.
Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire is appearing before the House Intelligence Committee to face lawmakers’ questions about his handling of the hearsay whistleblower complaint relating to a phone call between President Donald Trump and the president of Ukraine.  The transcript of the non-controversial call was released yesterday.
Lawmakers also received their copy of the 6-page complaint Wednesday afternoon after criticizing the White House and Department of Justice for complying with Office of Legal Counsel guidance and handling recommendations. The declassified complaint, consisting of hearsay and political media spin, is expected to be released to the public today.
C-Span Livestream Link – PBS Livestream Link – CBS Livestream Link

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Details are beginning to surface about the deep state Whistleblower complaint.  It is possible in the next few days the 6-page complaint, which utilized media reports to construct the supportive evidence for the phone call accusation against President Trump, will be made public.
That said, within a heavy propaganda report from the New York Times there are details about the Intelligence Community Inspector General that show the tell-tale fingerprints of the ICIG supportive intent (emphasis mine):

[…] Mr. Atkinson, a Trump appointee, nevertheless concluded that the allegations appeared to be credible and identified two layers of concern.

The first involved a possible violation of criminal law. Mr. Trump’s comments to Mr. Zelensky “could be viewed as soliciting a foreign campaign contribution in violation of the campaign-finance laws,” Mr. Atkinson wrote, according to the Justice Department memo. (read more)

Does the “foreign campaign contribution” angle sound familiar?  It should, because that argument was used in the narrative around the Trump Tower meeting with the Russian Lobbyist Natalia Veselnitskaya.  More specifically, just like FARA violations the overused “campaign contribution” narrative belongs to a specific network of characters, Lawfare.
The center of the Lawfare Alliance influence was/is the Department of Justice National Security Division, DOJ-NSD.  It was the DOJ-NSD running the Main Justice side of the 2016 operations to support Operation Crossfire Hurricane and FBI agent Peter Strzok.  It was also the DOJ-NSD where the sketchy legal theories around FARA violations (Sec. 901) originated.
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The political planets are aligned to provide a considerably interesting day today.
If events happen as outlined in recent media reports, the White House will release the transcript of a call (underpinning a hearsay whistleblower complaint) between U.S. President Trump and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine (pictured below).
Additionally, the Intelligence Community Inspector General is expected to release research documents from his office showing a concerning political motive behind the hearsay whistleblower; a person who complained about the Trump-Zelenskyy phone call while not actually hearing the call, or reading what the call content was all about.

Exactly when the call transcript and ICIG documents are going to be released is an unknown. President Trump has a 12:10pm bilateral meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.  PM Abe is a very good friend of President Trump and together they have recently agreed to a set of sector specific trade deals; with more stuff in the works.
At 2:15pm things really get interesting, as President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy will be holding their own bilateral meeting at the UNGA.  Media cameras are generally present for a short Q&A at the start of every Bilat, and obviously the #1 topic will be this mysteriously alarming phone call; with an opportunity for President Zelenskyy to address the U.S. political narrative therein.
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Today Nancy Pelosi made an announcement with forethought, optical planning, teleprompter script, and a presentation intended to look serious.  But what she announced was simply a continuation of the status quo wrapped up in newly packaged lingo.
Pelosi stated she was herewith announcing an “official impeachment inquiry“. Everything remains ‘as is’, albeit with enhanced optics and new titles for the narrative engineers.

The Democrat stage managers forgot the trumpets…

Essentially she announced House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler will continue doing what House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler was already doing; only now House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, will start doing what he was doing with a new lingo.
There is not one thing different from today than yesterday, except the optics and new language to help the media hype something that doesn’t exist.   Speaker Pelosi did not announce her intent to hold a house vote to authorize an impeachment investigation; she didn’t even mention the word vote at all.   In essence what Speaker Pelosi has done is just satiate her base of Democrats with the fancy optics of something that doesn’t exist.
What’s the difference from Nadler’s “impeachment inquiry” yesterday, and Pelosi’s “official impeachment inquiry” today?…  Nothing.
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There has been so much we have documented about the corrupt intents of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), that it doesn’t take a deep-weeds political follower to see where this is going.
SSCI Chairman Richard Burr and Vice-Chairman Mark Warner now inject the Senate into the process of advancing Adam Schiff’s Ukrainian “whistleblower” narrative.  In a letter today Burr and Warner write to the attorney representing the “whistleblower”:

(Document Link)

As with the Trump-Russia investigation, Warner and Burr now insert themselves into position in order to advance the Trump-Ukraine investigation.
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A Judicial Watch FOIA Lawsuit has resulted in the release of a May 16, 2017, memo written by then Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe.  [Link Here]  Current media are focused on Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein willingness to wear a wire into the Oval Office to record the President; however, the memo content actually reveals much more.

There are three aspects to the McCabe memo that warrant attention: (1) Rosenstein’s willingness to wear a wire. (2) Evidence that Rosenstein took Mueller to the White House on May 16, 2017, as a set-up to interview Mueller’s pending target; and (3) the CURRENT redactions to the memo indicate CURRENT efforts by the CURRENT AG Bill Barr to protect the corrupt intent of Rod Rosenstein.  While all three points are alarming; the last aspect is concerning in the extreme.
In order to show the significance of this FOIA release CTH is going to present the McCabe memo in two different ways.  First, by highlighting the raw memo release; and then secondly, to highlight the important context by inserting the memo into the timeline.
First, here’s the McCabe memo:
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President Trump meets with President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi of Egypt at the United Nations General Assembly. The two leaders discussed the conflict in Libya and reaffirmed their commitment to supporting the development of a unified and democratic Libyan government able to stand against terrorism.
President Trump and President Al Sisi also discussed the recent attack on critical energy infrastructure in Saudi Arabia and the need to work together to safeguard global commerce and regional stability. [Video and Transcript Below]

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[Transcript] – PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, thank you very much. It’s an honor to be with my friend, the President of Egypt. And he is a real leader. He’s done some things that are absolutely amazing in a short period of time. When he took over not so long ago, it was in turmoil. And it’s not in turmoil now.
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