☕️ TRUMPED ☙ Tuesday, February 4, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠
Desperate Dems deploy dirty tricks brigade to save USAID, but it's too late; Trump handily negotiates tariff deals; Missouri closes in on China judgment; softball Gates interview teases list; more.
Good morning, C&C, it’s Tuesday! The transformation of the United States of America continued apace yesterday. Our roundup today: more USAID news as Democrats start panicking harder and rolling out the dirty tricks brigade; dems’ dirty tricks brigade targets innocent tech geniuses; why USAID is done no matter what happens next; Trump negotiates temporary tariff deals with Mexico and Canada and sets to work on refinancing America; Missouri set to obtain first award anywhere against China for its role in the pandemic; and Gates softball interview hints at very good things to come.
🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍
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Yesterday, eclipsed by other news, the USAID takedown receded from corporate media front-page headlines. But the burgeoning story continued to develop. The AP ran an article late yesterday headlined, “Trump and Musk move to dismantle USAID, igniting battle with Democratic lawmakers.”
Social media regulars are well aware the Democrats howled in protest yesterday over the closing of an “independent” agency that nobody outside government circles ever paid any attention to before now. USAID is an insider joke, a wink-wink, nudge-nudge, know-what-I-mean kind of thing. It’s a perq for progressives who tow the globalist line.
To the literati, if you could say “my non-profit just got authorized with USAID,” it meant welcome to the club and enjoy your ride on the gravy train. But it’s over. Regardless of what happens next, that particular perquisite for government insiders has been shattered forever.
You might even say the entire world is breathing a tremulous sigh of relief.
The USAID drama reached a shrill, feverish pitch yesterday. A coterie of Congressional Democrats led by party low-lights Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Ilhan Abdullahi Omar (D-Minn.), along with a few dozen hastily assembled “protestors,” showed up at USAID’s shuttered HQ, and filmed themselves indignantly demanding access.
What they planned to do if they actually got in is anybody’s guess. Probably insurrection.
Two bored security guards refused entry, so the furious progressives delivered speeches to each other on the sidewalk using USAID HQ as a prop. Trump is blowing his nose on the Constitution! It’s a coup! Nobody elected Elon! Et cetera and so forth.
More significantly, President Trump appointed Secretary of State Marco Rubio as the new Acting Director of USAID. Secretary Rubio then assigned an unnamed manager, who Democrats darkly suspect to be a known USAID hawk. “USAID has a history of acting like it’s a global charity,” Rubio explained in an interview. “It ignores the national interest of the United States, but these aren’t donor dollars; they’re taxpayer dollars.”
The Democrats’ Dirty Tricks brigade showed up in force, too. It’s not clear yet where it started, possibly Wired magazine. But the hellish fever swamps of progressive mania discovered DOGE’s core team of ex-Musk employees. There are six, and they are all extraordinary young men between the ages of 19 and 25.
One, for example, once won an award for using AI to decipher a 2,000 papyrus scroll that experts couldn’t make any sense of. The names and addresses of the young men were instantly leaked to media and the Internet, and of course the death threats began immediately on BlueSky, which is the vaunted new home of the intellectual, peace-loving, and tolerant left.
Fortunately, interim District of Columbia U.S. Attorney Ed Martin quickly clamped down on the doxxing and threats. Rolling Stone ran a snide, resentful story last night headlined, “Musk, Trump Prosecutor Targeting People Who Divulge Identities of DOGE Staff.” The sub-headline groused, “The self-described free speech champion is not pleased that the public has learned the identities of his young henchmen.”
As a lawyer, it seems likely to me that the six young men will soon have highly lucrative defamation cases against far-left news outlets with deep pockets. A key category of commercial defamation, considered so injurious it requires no proof of damages (which are presumed), is when the defamatory statement tends to injure the person in their chosen trade or profession.
Rolling Stone called them “babies” and strongly implied they were totally unqualified. Even worse for the media assassins, the DOGE men are not public figures, despite Rolling Stone’s efforts to make them famous. As private citizens, their defamation cases will be much easier to prove.
And lest we forget —but how could we?— in 2021, Democrats re-defined “insurrection” to mean non-violently interfering with government operations. So, I hope Rolling Stone’s insurrectionists are not trying to interfere with DOGE’s operations. We know what to do with insurrectionists.
🔥 You can read the hundreds or thousands of shrill missives decrying these courageous young men, and still have no clear idea of exactly what horrible crimes Democrats think they are committing. Don’t waste our time suggesting the crime is “accessing private data”; after all, Democrats were quiet as churchmice when Biden presided over the biggest leaks of American’s private information in history.
So … what are Democrats really so upset about?
Who knows. If anything, USAID’s long-overdue public exposure picked up steam yesterday. In one stellar example, Elon pointed out that USAID funded the Wuhan coronavirus experiments. In doing so, Elon accidentally (and correctly) called covid a bioweapon, which confirms that the space billionaire is really getting it.
We might finally be getting somewhere. One of the most mysterious and least understood facets of the pandemic was how, within a few short weeks, every single country in the world but one fell into line with US pandemic policy. They all adopted the same draconian solutions, the lockdowns and the mandates, without any democratic debate or even a single vote in any congress, parliament, or legislature anywhere.
I will not be surprised if we soon discover that USAID was the tool that was used to co-opt the world’s democracies during covid.
🔥 Somehow, despite moving at turbo speed, Trump has kept Congressional Republicans on board. The fact that the only folks complaining about the demolition of USAID are Democrats is very telling. If anything, the USAID battle seems to have loaded more lead into Republicans’ pencils. For example, yesterday Senator John Kennedy told reporters that anybody upset about USAID should “call somebody who cares” — and they should get ready for what’s coming next.
🔥 The Democrats may have just begun to fight their battles to save USAID, but Trump has already won the war. USAID has always been hard to kill. Republicans have been sounding the alarm about USAID for years. For example, back in 2017, Florida Representative Francis Rooney complained to reporters that USAID funds the World Economic Forum, even though “everybody arrives in a Gulfstream G5.”
Rooney wasn’t even close to being the only one to raise the alarm about the rogue agency. But the “independent humanitarian agency” was too just wonky and too complicated for the public to ever fully grasp the danger. So, like flying cockroaches after a nuclear war, USAID survived in dark corners of obscurity and under rotting logs of confusion.
But now —thanks largely to Democrats’ hysterical response— the klieg lights of sharp public scrutiny have been aimed squarely into the windows of the deep state’s global laundromat. Everyone can see it now. There is no conceivable way USAID can skitter back into the shadows. It is done. The era of USAID as the globalists’ tool of destabilization is over. The brand has been nuked. They’ll have to build a new cockroach farm.
The genius of Trump’s strategy was not so much in pulling out USAID’s money plug, as effective as that was, but in creating the massive controversy over the little-known agency. Think of it—how else could they have gotten the public and all the lawmakers to give USAID the necessary attention? Genius.
As for Musk’s six intrepid young DOGE geniuses who are helping save America, the Democrats’ deplorable efforts to assassinate them may just backfire, and their careers might be rocket-fueled instead. We shall see.
🔥 Finally, give a moment’s thought about how USAID’s liquidation has freed the entire world, especially those poor souls in destabilized countries in Africa and Eastern Europe who were valiantly battling hordes of progressive NGOs funded by U.S. tax dollars. At minimum, they are now enjoying a welcome reprieve. But maybe this means they’ll get their countries back.
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Despite dark Democrat predictions of doom and financial apocalypse, the Trump tariffs did not result in a global trade war yesterday. The AP ran the story headlined, “Trump agrees to pause tariffs on Canada and Mexico after they pledge to boost border enforcement.” It was that easy.
The “deal,” if you can call the short stay of execution a deal, involved substantial commitments from both North American countries to deepen their investments in border security in exchange for a one-month delay in the tariffs.
What may really be happening is that, having gotten Mexico and Canada to their first “yes,” Trump plans to continue renegotiating the main trade agreement from his first term, the USMCA, which replaced the previous long-standing agreement, NAFTA. The negotiations have to be framed in terms of emergency border protection and drug enforcement, so Trump can keep using his emergency powers to dicker about the money.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the tariff standoff with China was not resolved yesterday. Not yet. The AP’s related story carried the headline, “China counters with tariffs on US products. It will also investigate Google.” Unless there’s a deal, cell phones, which already cost more than a five-day Caribbean cruise, will soon come with mortgage applications.
But China’s counter-tariffs could perhaps be more properly viewed as “negotiating.” According to the AP, “Trump plans to talk with Chinese President Xi Jinping in the next few days.” So we’ll see.
Democrats had hoped for something more … dramatic to complain about. Not this time. The narrative has shrunken to something like, yeah, but anybody could have done that.
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Speaking of China, late last week, Missouri’s Heartlander News ran a fascinating story headlined, “Missouri asks judge to ding China for $25 billion for hoarding COVID-19 protective gear after unleashing virus.” Missouri’s excellent Attorney General might be on the verge of obtaining the first judgment in the world against China for its role in the pandemic.
Last Monday, a Missouri court held a bench trial on the state’s lawsuit against China. It was a short trial. China never showed up, thereby defaulting. My guess is China weighed the pros and cons and elected not to participate in discovery.
According to the story, at the trial, the judge questioned the AG over whether the state had jurisdiction to collect on a judgment. Missouri’s Attorney General Andrew Bailey offered evidence that China owns sufficient property within the state to satisfy the judgment.
It is a very good sign when a judge asks about collections. It strongly hints that he’s already thinking past his decision to impose liability.
If Missouri’s case succeeds, it will prove a template that every other state can use. And it gives President Trump more negotiating leverage. Trump could help China by resolving its liability for all 50 states in a single deal.
President Trump and President Xi have a lot to talk about.
As I’ve told you many times before, accountability is slow. It comes in fits and starts. But it does eventually come, one way or another.
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Page Six ran a very curious story last week headlined, “Bill Gates admits he was ‘foolish’ to spend time with Jeffrey Epstein — which contributed to Melinda Gates divorce.”
There wasn’t much more to the story. In short, the Wall Street Journal interviewed Gates in a friendly puff piece about Bill Gates’ upcoming book. You might be wondering why Gates would write a book, and why now? The answer is almost certainly that it is for public relations and damage control. And it was almost certainly ghostwritten by an expensive PR firm.
An even better question is, why did Gates agree to answer any questions about his relationship with the Deep State’s suicided sex trafficker and blackmail engine? And why would Gates admit to making a mistake? The most intriguing possibility is that the Microsoft billionaire and global health tycoon might soon be anticipating an exposé.
I have speculated before that, even if Epstein is (allegedly) worm food, the Deep State still has its blackmail hooks buried deep in its victims’ flesh. Victims, if you can call him that, like Gates.
So: Is Gates’ new public relations initiative —including his Epstein “mistakes”— a hint that the long-awaited “List” might be in the mail, soon to arrive in the public in-box? You’ve got mail!
I wouldn’t bet against anything at this point.
Have a terrific Tuesday! Tomorrow morning will bring a fresh, exciting, and highly caffeinated roundup for your entertainment and education. Be sure to tune in for more great news and fun.
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Did anyone read El Gato Malo’s stack yesterday? A brilliant breakdown of DOGE’s deep state demolition of USAID and others. I say it every day…I can’t stop smiling! If my smile gets any bigger, I’m going to need a bigger face! https://open.substack.com/pub/boriquagato/p/doge-and-the-budget-audit-of-doom?r=19oj26&utm_medium=ios
"Two bored security guards refused entry, so the furious progressives delivered speeches to each other on the sidewalk..." And, I'm dead. Thanks.