U.S. forces are being pushed out of yet another African nation in the Sahel region, with some of its already small force of around 100 troops in Chad to be reduced. Like many other African states, Chad has turned away from the U.S. and towards Russia for security assistance.
The Biden regime is attempting to downplay the withdrawal. “USAFRICOM (United States Africa Command) is currently planning to reposition some U.S. military forces from Chad, a portion of which were already scheduled to depart,” said Pentagon press secretary Major General Pat Ryder.
Maj. Gen. Ryder has suggested this is a “temporary step.” However, Chad is strongly signaling its hostility to the U.S. presence. Earlier this month, Air Force Chief of Staff Idriss Amine Ahmed told the U.S. attache U.S. forces should cease their activities on Adji Kossei Air Base. He argues they have failed to justify their presence.
ANOTHER DOMINO.
These developments in Chad follow confirmation the U.S. will be forced out of Niger. A much larger force of over a thousand troops and recently finished two new drone bases are currently hosted there.
Like neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso, Niger has been taken over by a military junta. They are essential to U.S. interests in the Sahel, which spans the southern Sahara from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. However, all have now realigned with Russia.
The steady stream of geopolitical losses in Africa is a major embarrassment to Joe Biden and his national security team. The U.S. has long sought hegemony in the Sahel. It was expected that diplomatic and economic sanctions against Russia following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine would weaken Moscow’s regional influence. Instead, it has grown, while that of the U.S. and its regional allies, particularly France, has waned.
Niger’s realignment also poses significant challenges to Europe, facilitating an increase in illegal immigration from sub-Saharan Africa.
U.S. forces are being pushed out of yet another African nation in the Sahel region, with some of its already small force of around 100 troops in Chad to be reduced. Like many other African states, Chad has turned away from the U.S. and towards Russia for security assistance.
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The prosecutors behind the ‘hush money’ lawfare trial against former President Donald Trump are emphasizing an obscure term — “catch and kill” — in an attempt to sway the jury and portray Michael Cohen‘s payments to Stormy Daniels as some grand conspiratorial scheme orchestrated by Trump himself.
The corporate media continues to parrot the phrase as if it were some well-known tactic deployed by Trump and his allies to cover something up. That’s entirely the point of the repetition, especially in front of the jury. “Catch and kill” — sounds bad. Catch? Fine. Kill? Sounds illegal. It’s not, of course. But there are two sides to the “catch and kill” industry that emanates out of Hollywood and features several regular, unsavory characters who have made their names and fortunes off the practice, often at the expense of celebrity figures.
LEXICON.
Its first Wikipedia entry was only in 2018, when the original page appears to have been created to malign Donald Trump and farcically connect him with Harvey Weinstein. Part of the reason why a fair jury has been so impossible in New York is the long-standing tainting of the jury pool via internet artifacts like these, alongside the ongoing hoaxes peddled by the corporate media.
The term has almost no internet search history.
“Catch and kill” appears to have been introduced into the political lexicon by Trump opponents just as the 45th President was first taking office. The Wall Street Journal was the first major publication to mention it in 2016, followed almost immediately by the Washington Post. For two unrelated newspapers to repeat such a phrase in close succession suggests they were fed the line. Murdoch’s WSJuses anonymized sources under the euphemism “people familiar with the matter” a journalistically bizarre seven times in their 2016 story.
BETTER CALL… KEITH?
One regular character in the saga is Keith M. Davidson, a Beverly Hills lawyer and frequent Democrat donor. At the time, Davidson was representing Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal in their attempts to strong-arm Trump out of cash. Davidson has represented a number of unsavory characters in the same vein – portrayed by the Hollywood Smoking Gun blog as a Saul Goodman-style grifter who has been on the receiving end of numerous complaints from clients and critics alike, suggesting immoral behavior bordering on the unlawful.
The Smoking Gun noted of Davidson in a massive 2018 story that he is “the attorney to hire if you are seeking to monetize a celebrity sex tape or compromising information about public figures like Trump, Charlie Sheen, Tiger Woods, and Kanye West. Davidson specializes in extracting payments in exchange for the quashing of incriminating videos and/or details about sexual indiscretions, STDs, and all manner of regrettable behavior.”
In other words, “catch and kill” shakedowns appear to be the modus operandi, finding its way into the political press after representatives for Daniels and McDougal briefed D.C. and New York reporters.
“The Smoking Gun has revealed that the attorney–who has practiced since 2000–has also apparently engaged in the kind of activities that result in severe disciplinary sanctions, such as directing clients to lie, splitting legal fees with non-lawyers, defying a judicial injunction, and practicing law while under suspension.”
The Los Angeles Times had similar reporting in 2018, noting: “Most Beverly Hills lawyers are seldom accused of extortion. For Keith M. Davidson, however, it’s not so rare: He is fighting three civil suits by television personalities alleging extortion. Davidson is the attorney who negotiated payments to porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal during the 2016 presidential race to keep them quiet about their alleged affairs with Donald Trump. Both wound up firing Davidson and hiring new lawyers to get their nondisclosure deals voided.”
A fairly scornful start to another story which shed some light on the Hollywood shakedown industry. The Times went on:
In 2012, Davidson was caught up in an FBI sting operation for trying to get Hulk Hogan to pay a client $300,000 for a secretly taped video of the wrestling star having sex, law enforcement records show. Davidson met Hogan in a Florida hotel room — unaware it was wired with recording devices monitored by FBI agents in an adjacent room.
As soon as Hogan’s lawyer, David Houston, handed Davidson the first installment, a phony check for $150,000, FBI agents stormed in and detained him, according to the law enforcement records.
“I was amazed that there was a lawyer actually making a living doing this,” Houston said.
…
Davidson’s law license was suspended for three months in 2010 after he admitted to professional misconduct — failing to keep a client informed of important matters in a medical malpractice case and not showing up for a court hearing, among other things.
“Catch and kill,” in fact, was not a phrase used by AMI, the National Enquirer, or “star” prosecution witness David Pecker, according to his own testimony on Thursday.
Instead, it’s a little-known Hollywood industry term further popularized by journalist Ronan Farrow’s 2019 book of the same name, which details his efforts to cover the allegations of sexual abuse and rape against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.
“The first time you heard the phrase was from a prosecutor, correct?” asked Trump attorney Emil Bove.
“That’s right,” Pecker responded.
Pecker also mentioned he believed Michael Cohen was acting in a personal capacity — not on behalf of the Trump campaign — and implied that Trump was personally unaware of Cohen’s activities.
In other words – much like most of the hoaxes peddled against President Trump – almost all of it has happened without his involvement, knowledge, or even awareness of the fringe figures in his life attempting to make a quick buck off his name.
Ed Kozak, Will Upton, and Jack Montgomery contributed to this report.
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The prosecutors behind the 'hush money' lawfare trial against former President Donald Trump are emphasizing an obscure term — "catch and kill" — in an attempt to sway the jury and portray Michael Cohen's payments to Stormy Daniels as some grand conspiratorial scheme orchestrated by Trump himself.
show more
War Roomhost and former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon has predicted Brexit leader Nigel Farage will return to frontline politics and become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom after the governing Conservative Party loses the next British general election to Labour.
“I’ve been a huge supporter of Nigel’s to get back in this thing in some official capacity. I think Nigel Farage will be Prime Minister after Sir Keir [Starmer],” Bannon said, referring to the Labour leader. Labour is on course for a landslide victory in the next election.
“My advice to [Farage] is after the slaughter [the Conservatives] are going to have at the polls [due to] not really standing for anything, that’s time for Nigel,” Bannon continued. However, he suggested Farage should not seek high office via the Reform Party, his current affiliation, but instead take over the Conservatives.
‘GRASSROOTS UPWARDS.’
“I was a big advocate of not starting a third party after the 2020 election was stolen,” Bannon explained. He highlighted the MAGA movement’s “precinct strategy” of taking over the Republican Party from the grassroots upwards.
“In the last four months, we essentially removed Mitch McConnell as the minority leader in the Senate,” said Bannon. We took out the Republican Party senior apparatus, all of them gone,” he said, referring to what National Pulse editor-in-chief Raheem Kassam called the “McLeadership.”
“And we fired a sitting Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, for the first time in the history of the Republic, and right now, we have a second Speaker in our gunsights,” he added, referring to Speaker Mike Johnson. Johnson faces criticism for allowing aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan to go through without meaningful border security measures. He also faces criticism for drawing fire away from Joe Biden over Gaza.
“I would tell our brothers and sisters in the United Kingdom, you can do this at the grassroots level,” Bannon stressed. “Nigel Farage is a populist; Nigel Farage is a nationalist. You need to put Great Britain first, the United Kingdom first, and you need, particularly, to put your citizens first,” he said.
War Room host and former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon has predicted Brexit leader Nigel Farage will return to frontline politics and become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom after the governing Conservative Party loses the next British general election to Labour.
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During the Supreme Court arguments on the Trump immunity case on Thursday, DEI justice Ketanji Brown Jackson signaled her dismay with the U.S. Constitution, seemingly angered by the fact that it doesn’t allow for the random political prosecutions of political figure, as if America were Burkina Faso. Like clockwork, the New York Times has followed […]
Joe Biden‘s 2025 budget proposal could raise the federal capital gains tax to as high as 44.6 percent for many Americans. When combined with state-level capital gains taxes, the rate could exceed 50 percent in some of America’s most populous states. Two provisions in the budget are responsible for the increase: one that raises the tax rate across the board and another that bumps the rate further on high-income earners.
A footnote in the Biden budget details the rate hike: “A separate proposal would first raise the top ordinary rate to 39.6 percent … An additional proposal would increase the net investment income tax rate by 1.2 percentage points above $400,000.” The footnote continues: “Together, the proposals would increase the top marginal rate on long-term capital gains and qualified dividends to 44.6 percent.”
Americans for Tax Reform (ATR)’s analysis of Biden’s budget further notes that “California will face a combined federal-state rate of 59 [percent], New Jersey 55.3 [percent], Oregon at 54.5 [percent], Minnesota at 54.4 [percent], and New York state at 53.4 [percent].” According to the tax group, if Biden‘s budget were enacted, the effective capital gains rate would be more than double that of CommunistChina.
The Biden capital gains plan would result in the highest rate ever enacted in the United States, exceeding the 40 percent rate under President Jimmy Carter. Additionally, ATR notes the budget proposal would also remove “stepped-up basis” when a parent dies, effectively enacting a second Death Tax. This would result in a mandatory capital gains tax realized at death. When Congress attempted to end the “stepped-up basis” in 1976, they had to reverse the decision before the law took effect as it was completely unworkable.
Joe Biden's 2025 budget proposal could raise the federal capital gains tax to as high as 44.6 percent for many Americans. When combined with state-level capital gains taxes, the rate could exceed 50 percent in some of America's most populous states. Two provisions in the budget are responsible for the increase: one that raises the tax rate across the board and another that bumps the rate further on high-income earners.
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