☕️ THE FIRST SEAL ☙ Friday, April 4, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Tariffs terrify media; markets wobble; tech titans align; world leaders call Trump; NSA purged; Musk at CIA; FBI exiled west; Bongino winks; Fauci’s wife heads to Indian Country; more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Friday! In today’s mind-blowing roundup: tariffs terrify media and globalist parasites; stock market woes — or are they?; tech leaders coordinate with Trump proving things are going to plan; Trump announces world leaders calling to make deals; the astonishing implications of the carefully orchestrated Trump tariffs; purge at the National Security Administration; Musk goes to CIA; FBI agents reassigned to reservations; record FBI applications; Bongino teases stuff happening; and Dr. Fauci makes plans to smoke the peace pipe.

🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍

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Yesterday, Trump’s tariff plan evoked —as predicted— no less than mass hysteria. So we need to do a little more tariff spadework. But stick with me. The emerging picture will blow your mind. Again.

Trying to count yesterday’s tariff articles and headlines was like trying to count the grains of sand on Martha’s Vineyard beach. We’ll begin with Reuters’ frenzied submission, hysterically headlined “Trump tariffs sow fears of trade wars, recession and a $2,300 iPhone.” Goodness! Sounds bad.

Since foreign countries use a dizzying array of tricks to disadvantage the US, trade deficits are a simple, straightforward way to measure in dollars just how much advantage they’re taking. Reuters included a helpful deficits chart:

Reuters’ chart almost certainly understates the problem. But, despite Reuter’s overwrought predictions of doom, other countries did not react with a global trade war yesterday. Nor should they; they have a good reason to tread carefully. Treasury Secretary and economics professor Scott Bessent explained (1:04) in an interview that in trade wars, the surplus countries always be defeated, because the deficit country (here, the US) has the least to lose.

Go ahead, make my day.

Nor has Apple increased iPhone prices to $2,300. That will never happen, and Reuters knows it, despite its five-Pinnochio headline claim. That is not to say the markets didn’t react at all yesterday. The elites’ playground (the stock market) fell -1,600 points yesterday. It was notable, but it’s not time to leap from the 32nd-floor conference room window. To put it in perspective, the DOW Jones Industrial Average was up around 42,000, so the “massive” adjustment was only about -4%. A haircut.

💰 So we must now discuss the stock market. For years, market watchers have complained about its dangerously lopsided character, with a full fifth of the market’s total value (20%) held in five FAANG stocks. FAANG stands for Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google. If you add three more — Microsoft, NVidia, and Tesla — it reaches a stupifying 30%— or one-third of the market’s total value. (Collectively, the 7 top tech stocks are called ‘FAANG+’ or ‘the Magnificent 7’).

Chipmaker Nvidia alone hogs about 6% of total market value. This record-shattering predominance by a handful of tech stocks creates a massive risk. If something happens to them, it could trigger a new Great Depression or even worse, AOC might have to go back to bartending.

In other words, a tech adjustment was long overdue, and everybody knew it. But so far, nobody has been brave enough to tackle the problem.

Reuters called the -4% adjustment a “global meltdown.” But even that small swing was not as bad as it looked, since the FAANG+ stocks absorbed the biggest hit in panic selling. Apple, Amazon, and Meta (Facebook) all lost -9%, and Nvidia and Tesla were down -8% and -5.5%.

But the total US market still fell only -4% — suggesting that FAANG+ stocks were the adjustment’s main drivers.

I wasn’t the only one who noticed. Yesterday, Investopedia ran this headline (note: ‘Magnificent 7’ is another label for FAANG+):

But even if you do fret about these overvalued tech stocks’ fortunes, there’s a lot more to consider. Remember how all the tech oligarchs attended Trump’s Inauguration? He’s been working with them since the beginning. In other words, they knew this was coming.

Consider this remarkable Forbes headline from February:

Apple also pledged to hire 20,000 more Americans over the next four years. If iPhones are built here in the US, Appe pays no tariffs. It’s not just Apple moving back home, either. Consider this Fox headline, published almost two weeks ago — well ahead of this week’s tariff announcement:

Most of the other FAANG+ companies announced plans to soon spend multiple billions in the US. Amazon, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, Softbank, and Meta— together they announced last week over a trillion dollars in new domestic investment.

So … Trump’s tariff plan started working well before he announced it on Liberation Day. The FAANG+ tech leaders were already moving back toward more familiar shores. The hit would have been much worse if these moves weren’t already on the record.

Disruptions are inevitable. But this isn’t trade war fallout. It is supply chain triage. It’s not protectionism. It’s industrial self-defense. And it’s already rebuilding America. In other words, FAANG+ didn’t flee from tariffs: They ran home.

The useless, flatlined media is decrying Trump’s moves as reckless, ill-advised, and poorly thought-out, like he just dreamed it all up Monday after eating a bad taco, but the truth (as usual) is the exact opposite.

In context, the FAANG+ adjustment was not only long overdue, but it’s painfully clear it was fully expected and carefully planned for. The plan was already in motion.

💰 Yesterday, independent journalist (and former Democrat) Michael Schellenberger posted a very helpful tariff explainer that confirmed my take from yesterday. In his unflappable style, he calmly described the stakes as no less than saving civilization:

CLIP: Schellenberger explains how globalist parasites sell out the country (9:16).

He began by rightly noting how during the pandemic, we learned the hard way that our “international” supply chain is incredibly weak and easily disrupted. Remember toilet-paper hoarding? A plethora of evils sprouts like mushrooms from the same fetid soil. “Civilizations at this late stage,” he explained, “are morally hollow, and thus fragile and prone to abuses of power, like censorship, lawfare, and the weaponization of government agencies.”

Fixing it is a big job.

Like me, Schellenberger sees the nation’s “college-educated” elites as our most fundamental problem. “At this stage of development, a nation’s elites become parasites or renegades, alienated and contemptuous toward the culture that produced them.” After elites begin to believe their own virtue-signaling nonsense, they start feeling treasonous. “College-educated elites look down on the American working class and identify with other professional and managerial elites in Europe,” he explained, “a natural outgrowth of trade, cosmopolitanism, and snobbery.”

Hence, globalism. Globalism is the antithesis of nationalism, which is loyalty to one’s fellow countrymen. The parasitic elite class found its loyalties drifting to their bloodsucking European comrades instead, with whom they feel so much more in step.

“Elites,” Schellenberger continued, “are more concerned with tariffs' impact on their stock portfolio and the cost of their gadgets than they are with the downward pressure illegal migrants put on wages or with how nations manipulate their currency to retain manufacturing.” It was a side-effect of elite success. “Rising success creates decadence, complacency, and eventually contempt toward their people, and they start to identify more with elites in other nations,” he said.

I’d add arrogance to Schellenberger’s list. Their arrogance explains why they missed the big picture for so long. And now it’s too late.

💰 We must recognize this struggle is about much more than Nancy Pelosi’s stock portfolio. This morning, India’s Economic Times ran a story headlined, “Trump seeks 'phenomenal offers' he can't refuse from countries for tariff negotiations.

CLIP: Trump says the tariff plan is already working (1:04).

The President held a spontaneous press gaggle aboard Air Force One last night. The Times reported, “Trump signaled he is open to negotiating tariffs, if other nations offer something ‘phenomenal’ in return.” Reacting, New Delhi did not fire off a trade war. Instead, India vowed “to study the new opportunities that may arise from Trump's Liberation Day move.”

Even more encouraging, over the roar of the engines, Trump told reporters that it’s already working. “The tariffs give us great power to negotiate. Every country has called us.” In fewer than 100 days, Trump has begun conquering the world— without firing a single artillery round.

In one day, Trump captured the attention of the whole world. “The rest of the world wants to see if there is any way they can make a deal," he said.

He’s holding all the cards. “We’ve put ourselves in the driver’s seat,” Trump explained. “If we would’ve asked most of these countries to do us a favor, they would’ve said no,” the President said. “Now they’ll do anything for us.”

Anything?

Former House Speaker and Trump ally Newt Gingrich told USA Today, “Trump likes to negotiate. And he figured out sometime, I think probably during the four years in the wilderness, that we're the largest economy in the world, we have the greatest net advantage, and therefore in negotiations we will virtually always win.”

Now pay close attention. It’s impossible to overestimate the mind-blowing possibilities. Despite media’s fake claims, Trump has obviously wargamed this out for a long time, his four years in the wilderness. So … now he’s holding all the cards, what will he ask the world’s countries for? The possibilities are endless and potentially world-changing. Suddenly, he holds all the world’s leaders in the palm of his hand— including, or especially, the countries who helped his deep state enemies further RussiaGate and Crossfire Hurricane.

Might that be why he called it Liberation Day?

For obvious reasons, Trump’s not saying what he plans to ask for. But it seems safe to bet that, whatever it is, it will reinforce his emerging Swamp-draining agenda. To offer you one wild possibility to get your brain juices flowing: suppose President Trump told Great Britain’s Prime Minister Kier Starmer, “I want the evidence to convict the people who weaponized our CIA against a sitting President eight years ago.”

I made them an offer they couldn’t refuse.

The Tariff Plan gave Trump total, independent control over the global tariffs dashboard. Why wouldn’t he ask Starmer for that? Why would Starmer refuse?

💰 Each move Trump has made since he assumed the office moved the needle one dreadful stroke closer to macheteing the deep state down to a spent force and then feeding it into the woodchipper. Appointing Tulsi Gabbard, gutting USAID, starving the NGO’s, grabbing the Institute for Peace’s databases, installing DOGE at Treasury, Musk landing at CIA, the JFK files declass, mass federal layoffs, and now this.

It is all leading somewhere. It must be. It’s now too much to reasonably attribute to coincidence.

Since Inauguration Day, Trump’s not just been governing — he’s been rewiring the machine. Every appointment, every executive order, every “off-the-cuff” comment has been another click on the ratchet wrench, tightening down the bolts on the deep state’s lead coffin.

It’s not random. Trump has been progressively overloading the surveillance state — each new move adding pressure, forcing exposure, triggering overreactions, and collapsing confidence in the deep state’s invisible priesthood.

It’s beginning to look like all the lawfare over immigration and NGO funding is just a three-card-Monte distraction. While the elites argue over how many houses you can stack on Marvin Gardens, Trump bought the entire board, seized the bank, reshuffled the Chance card deck, and started charging Boardwalk rent on Baltic Avenue.

At some point, people will start asking the obvious question: Why didn’t any other U.S. President ever try this before? But this wasn’t something the President dreamed up over breakfast in Trump Tower’s penthouse. It wasn’t easy. This was a brilliant sequence of legal maneuvers, traceable all the way back to his first act as President: declaring a state of economic emergency on January 20th.

It took a dozen moves — each one snapping into place like tumblers in a lock — to reach this moment. Without Congress’s shocking, history-defying compliance, it would never have got off the ground. And now, as of this week, Trump — and Trump alone — holds the world in the palm of his hand.

At another precarious moment in world history, Winston Churchill once said, “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” The American President holds a drawn bow, and the rest of the world’s leaders are caught off-guard, toothless, unarmed, and blinking in the harsh sunlight.

I could be wrong. Trump may just be preparing to negotiate some very favorable trade deals. But — even if Trump isn’t explicitly asking — what world leader could resist offering Trump a little help dealing with his domestic enemies, to sweeten the deal into something really phenomenal? Either way, the deep-state termites who undermined Trump 1.0 must surely be sleepless and afraid.

They never saw this coming. And now, they’re all out of Get Out of Jail Free cards.

🔥🔥🔥

Following that thread, yesterday brought more deep-state purges. USA Today ran a story headlined “Trump fires top boss at NSA, nation's elite spy agency.” The headline was far too modest. Not only was NSA Director General Tim Haugh demoted, but his assistant and “five key NSA aides” were also removed.

WaPo claimed Haugh was removed because Laura Loomer didn’t like him and said so on Twitter. But Trump denied Loomer had anything to do with it (not that his denial meant anything to WaPo). But the paper also admitted that “the firings follow a controversy involving Waltz’s mistaken inclusion of a journalist in a group chat on Signal that involved a military strike in Yemen.”

So it’s more likely the housecleaning followed the Signal faux pas, which was completely swallowed up in the avalanche of tariff news. Or it was preplanned. Haugh led ‘Russian cyberintelligence’ during the 2020 election. Totally coincidentally, Joe Biden promoted Haugh to NSA Director in February, 2024.

It isn’t over. “More dismissals look to be in the offing,” WaPo reported. “People are incredibly anxious,” an unnamed ‘person familiar with the matter’ said. “They don’t know what to expect.”

Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) were outraged at Haugh’s removal. Corporate media ran dozens of high-profile articles yesterday. Representative Jim Himes (D-Ct.), who sits on the Intelligence Committee, complained he was “deeply disturbed by the decision.” I bet he was.

And on Tuesday, Elon Musk visited the CIA to discuss “government efficiency.” Just saying. And, maybe it’s just me, but it looked like a scene out of the Matrix:

An accidental Matrix metaphor? Do you remember what happened next, after that lobby scene?

Democrats were appalled, if not terrified. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer whined that Musk lacks security clearances to visit the CIA. (He’s wrong.)

🔥 Yesterday, Elkhorn Media Group ran a very encouraging story headlined, “FBI sends ‘surge’ of agents to Indian Country.” The U.S. Justice Department announced it will “surge FBI assets across the country to address unresolved violent crimes in Indian Country, including crimes relating to missing and murdered indigenous persons.”

They’re sending sixty FBI agents to Indian Country, in places like Montana and Utah. It’s a promotion for these hardworking men and women who served the Biden Administration so well. A promotion, right? Okay: Hahahahahaha!

I sure hope they don’t complain about their new assignments, since that would be racist or something. It would definitely not be woke.

There’s good news and bad news. The good news is Native Americans on reservations will soon receive some long-overdue law enforcement attention to their stale, unsolved cold-case crimes. The bad news, for them, is they are probably getting the entire DC field office. Or at least, I hope that’s the case. Anyway, I smell a new Netflix show series brewing. Suggest show names in the comments.

I suspect the Alaskan Inuits also have a backlog of unsolved crimes, in case more diligent FBI personnel need another plum assignment.

🔥 In even better news, two days ago, Fox reported, “FBI flooded with record number of new agent applications in Kash Patel's first month leading bureau.” Director Patel and Deputy Director Bongino “have put a major emphasis on restoring confidence in federal law enforcement and boosting new agent recruiting," FBI spokesman Ben Williamson told Fox on Wednesday.

Since January, the FBI has received more than 10,000 new agent applications. Sounds like a good start.

And two days ago, newly appointed Deputy Director Dan Bongino reposted this mysterious missive:

In other words, it’s happening.

🔥 Finally, get ready to laugh. Guess who’s joining all those hardworking FBI agents on the reservation? The Washington Times ran the story yesterday, headlined “Wife of Dr. Anthony Fauci reassigned from NIH to Indian health service’s regional posts.”

She’s going to help the Native Americans! “Christine Grady, the wife of Dr. Anthony Fauci,” the Times said, “was among several top officials who were notified they were being reassigned from the National Institutes of Health to regional offices of the Indian Health Service.” Well thank goodness. It’s about time the Indians got some decent medical care from the government. And the Eskimos, too.

Christine is still thinking about it. She and her co-workers “were given until Wednesday to decide whether to accept their new assignment, which is responsible for providing federal health services to American Indians and Alaska Natives.”

Politico’s headline was more blunt:

“The abrupt house-cleaning,” Politico complained, was “delivered to officials in early-morning messages and generated near-universal dismay across the public health landscape on Tuesday.” Not dismay! That is so un-woke of them. And racist. They should be embracing their new assignments that will help provide health equity to America’s underserved minority populations.

Apparently, the white coats are not as woke as they always claim. They didn’t even consider Christine would take the assignment. Politico confided, “the removals fueled suspicion among Fauci’s supporters that Kennedy was using the mass firings to rid the department of top Covid-era scientists and others close to Fauci.” In other words, they think Robert Kennedy is trying to force Fauci allies to quit.

Covid lunatic and loudmouth Dr. Eric Topol, a ‘public health expert’ and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, called it a “Fauci fixation.” He griped, “So many of these people are just dedicated, they really want to do good and now they’re losing their jobs senselessly.”

Apparently not dedicated enough, and not wanting enough to ‘do good,’ that they would lower themselves to work with Indians and Eskimos. But don’t worry about the greedy little bloodsuckers. They’ll get snapped up by Big Pharma and be back to scamming the government in no time.

It’s not reassignment. It’s accountability. Enjoy today’s terrific news.

And have a fabulous Friday! C&C will roll right back here tomorrow morning, off the reservatino as usual, with another heaping helping of essential news and commentary you just can’t get anywhere else.

Don’t race off! We cannot do it alone. Consider joining up with C&C to help move the nation’s needle and change minds. I could sure use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope, if you can: ☕ Learn How to Get Involved 🦠

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