Posts on Sunday, February 16, 2025

Nissan CEO Makoto Uchida said President Donald Trump’s tariffs against Mexico could move automobile production out of the country. “From Mexico to the U.S., we are exporting a significant number of cars this fiscal year […] 320,000 units are exported from Mexico to the U.S., and if the high tariffs are imposed, we need to be ready for this, and maybe we can transfer the production of these models elsewhere if this were the decision, we will think how we can make it a reality while monitoring the situation,” Uchida said, according to Reuters. The suggested move could be devastating to Mexico, as Nissan produced roughly 670,000 vehicles

Muhsin Hendricks, a pioneering figure dubbed the world's first openly gay imam, has been shot dead in South Africa. The 57-year-old cleric ran a mosque in Cape Town intended as a safe haven for gay and other marginalised Muslims. He was killed on Saturday morning after the car in which he was travelling near the southern city of Gqeberha was ambushed. "Two unknown suspects with covered faces got out of the vehicle and started firing multiple shots at the vehicle," police said in a statement.

Much of Donald Trump’s popular appeal can be explained by the context in which he has ascended. For decades, the rules of the road in American politics have been set by a monolithic progressive establishment that has boasted something akin to a monopoly in political media, academia, Hollywood and the federal bureaucracy. This single-note chorus has not only produced a laundry list of myths, but threatened those who challenge it with professional and social ruin. “How dare you say that, bigot?” “How could you think that, rube?” Yet the supposed bigots and rubes always outnumbered the pedantic establishment, which enforced its orthodoxy through brute force. Enter Trump.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended Vice President JD Vance's speech in Germany slamming Europe's penchant for censorship on Sunday. Rubio clashed with CBS host Margaret Brennan on "Face the Nation" after she suggested that free speech had been "weaponized" to bring about the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. Brennan highlighted Vance's speech to the Munich Security Conference in Germany last week, which criticized European allies for adopting a "soviet"-style approach to censorship.

The White House slammed Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy as a "moron" on social media after the Connecticut lawmaker posted an expletive-riddled admonishment against a Lara Trump parody account he seemingly believed belonged to the president's daughter-in-law. "You are a moron, Chris. It is obvious this page is not affiliated with President Trump, his family, or the administration. We do, however, support your right to make such a statement, no matter how imbecilic it makes you look," the White House's X account, Rapid Response 47, said in a message posted on Friday.

The theme of President Trump’s next term is accountability. Gone are the days when the left and the uniparty could run amok, doing whatever the heck they pleased—whether it was coddling criminals, protecting illegals (same difference, really), while throwing hardworking Americans under the bus. And that brings us to this latest story involving AOC, who has completely abandoned her American constituents and is now pouring all her energy into helping illegals evade capture – which goes against everything the American people voted for in 2024.She actually had the audacity to put together a webinar for them. Take a look:

The Friday before Inauguration Day, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) illustrated the fiscal challenge facing President Trump and the new Republican Congress. In a short version of its annual Budget and Economic Outlook, CBO quantified the whopping $21.8 trillion in budget deficits the federal government faces in the coming decade. While the updated numbers only marginally constitute news — CBO has warned for years about our dire financial future, only for lawmakers to keep spending — one particular nugget illustrates the problem. The budget gnomes significantly increased their spending projections for Medicaid, as but one example of how entitlement programs continue to cannibalize the federal budget.

When a president builds his cabinet, the public tends to focus on the big names—the high-profile, flashy positions. (snip). But there are other roles that are just as critical—maybe even more so—but they slip under the radar because they don’t come with headlines or media hype(snip) The quiet nominations, like Elbridge Colby’s, fly way under the radar, making them easy targets for sabotage by GOP RINOs and the Deep State. And by the time we realize what happened—when Trump’s policies start failing, and when the betrayals start to stack up—it’s too late. (snip) That’s exactly what’s happening right now with Elbridge Colby.

Just a very short note on the circular money flow of pure corruption behind lawfare 2.0 and the judicial fight against the Trump administration spending freezes. (Snip) It is the American Bar Association which sets the ethical rules for lawyers, the code lawyers are supposed to follow to remain within professional ethical guidelines. But the American Bar Association is not a neutral guardian of ethics, especially when it comes to judicial lawfare waged in support of the vast fraud that is USAID. The American Bar Association has itself been a major recipient of USAID funding then dutifully issued a scathing denunciation of DOGE activities and the USAID spending freeze.

President Donald Trump is continuing his tour around the sports world. Trump is in attendance at the Daytona 500 at the Daytona International Speedway in Florida on Saturday, just one week after he attended Super Bowl 2025 at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, becoming the first sitting president to attend a Super Bowl. Trump, inside his black limousine dubbed “The Beast,” did a lap around the track along with his motorcade while delivering a message to the drivers. “This is your favorite president,” Trump said through a speaker from the limousine. “I’m a big fan, I’m a really big fan of you people, that you do this.

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) can continue its de facto audit of certain executive agencies, according to a ruling Friday in the District of Columbia. U.S. District Judge John Bates in Washington on Feb. 14 declined a request by unions and nonprofits for a temporary restraining order (TRO) to prevent the DOGE team from gaining access to records at the Department of Labor, the Department of Health and Human Services, as well as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. In denying the plaintiffs’ request for a restraining order, the judge noted that the plaintiffs failed to show a substantial likelihood of success on the merits of their claims,

Border czar Tom Homan recalled Sunday on Fox News how he had to educate Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez about the inner workings of border law after her recent public pushback telling him to “learn to read” the Constitution. In 2019, Homan stopped Ocasio-Cortez’s attack against him during a congressional hearing, where he had to inform her that border laws mirrored U.S. laws when discussing family separation. On “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo,” the Fox News host asked Homan for his response to Ocasio-Cortez, who had recently posted on X, stating Homan should “learn to read” and start with the Constitution ...

Democrats have cast the Trump administration’s ouster of eight senior FBI leaders as a “purge” and act of “retribution” from a weaponized Justice Department, some likening it to President Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre.” But former colleagues of the terminated “G-men” say this narrative is backward. FBI officials, past and present, have marshaled significant evidence via whistleblower complaints and testimony indicating that several terminated leaders routinely used their offices for partisan purposes. These include allegations that at least two of the fired officials, Jeffrey Veltri and Dena Perkins, manipulated the security clearance review process to personally and professionally punish conservatives, COVID-19 vaccine skeptics, and Jan. 6 whistleblowers who reported suspected bureau malfeasance,

Voters who helped deliver a crucial state to Donald Trump in November’s election have a message for the new president’s administration: Keep it coming. According to a report from Axios, all the swing voters the outlet included in two focus groups last week said they approved of the job President Trump is doing in his first month in office. In addition, they also said they were behind, for the most part, the job being done by “special government employee” Elon Musk at the Department of Government Efficiency. The Arizona focus groups, conducted by the Engagious and Sago polling firms, did not contain “a statistically significant sample like a poll,” Axios noted.

The Trump-is-Hitler crowd dismisses the 77 million Americans who elected Donald Trump to the Presidency, for the second time, as a cult. They aren’t suggesting that these 77 million people are a cult because they were opposed to another four years of Joe Biden’s drooling corruption. Rather, they’re suggesting that these people are card-carrying, Kool Aid-drinking Trump worshippers. Let’s put this in context. One of the defining characteristics of cults is that they idolize a charismatic, authoritarian leader. Such leaders get away with a lot.

Among the things at once hilarious and alarming to those who understand and support the Bill of Rights—all of it—are the efforts of anti-liberty/gun cracktivists. This includes not only the operatives of anti-gun groups whose normal discourse is shot full of inaccuracies and lies, but the Democrat/socialist/communist (D/s/c) media who usually haven’t a clue of the science and reality of guns, ballistics and every related topic. That doesn’t stop them from grotesquely and purposely misinforming the public on those issues. Every year at my home blog I update an article that illustrates the point. Years ago a reporter, one Gersh Kuntzman, wrote of the horrors of firing the most

When reviewing the production, it is important to remember – when Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks to an assembly in English, his audience is not in the room in Munich. Zelenskyy is speaking to America, through the scripted remarks. When Zelenskyy is scripted to speak to Europe, he speaks Ukrainian. When Zelenskyy is scripted to speak to America, he speaks English. .(snip)Acting as if he were a NATO member, he’s not, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy tells the European audience they need to plan for the U.S. to pull-back from NATO, and the European Union needs to assemble a collective “European Army.” (snip)., can send their soldiers into Ukraine to join the fight

The story of alleged cold-blooded killer Luigi Mangione has revealed—or should I say, further revealed—an ugly underbelly of leftist notions of morality and decency in the modern age. Despite the fact that there is video showing the 26-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate from a wealthy family gunning down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on the streets of New York City in December, there’s been a despicable amount of support for the young psychopath because, in their view, he did it for the right reasons. Namely, that he was objecting to the state of healthcare and the insurance industry. While it is a topic that many feel passionate about,

Everyone agrees that Vice President J. D. Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference on Friday was remarkable. I do not mean that everyone liked it. For example, Boris Pistorius, the German Defense Minister, sniffed—or perhaps “smoldered” would be a more accurate term—that Vance’s remarks were “not acceptable.” And then there is Bill Kristol, a sort of Greta Thunberg of the rancid former right, who thundered that Vance’s speech was “a humiliation for the U.S. and a confirmation that this administration isn’t on the side of the democracies.”“The democracies.” What do you suppose Kristol means by that?

CNN chief White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins apparently deleted a social media post after receiving backlash for appearing to promote a defense fund for Luigi Mangione, the alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO killer.In the post on X, Collins showed a link to a new website launched by defense lawyers for Mangione, who faces charges of first-degree murder in furtherance of an act of terrorism, stalking and other state and federal charges in New York and Pennsylvania for allegedly gunning down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan on Dec. 4, 2024. Thompson was a married father of two.

On Friday, the not-so-surprising news sailed across the transom that President Trump’s Department of Justice moved to dismiss the five-count bribery case against New York City’s fun-loving Mayor Adams. The DOJ cited concerns that the charges were retribution against Adams for criticizing the Biden administration’s immigration policies — and that they “improperly interfered with Mayor Adams’ campaign in the 2025 mayoral election.” Indeed, the DOJ letter stipulates that Adams’s case will be reviewed again by prosecutors after November’s ballot.

Sudan's Growing Crisis: Famine, Displacement, and Unprecedented Suffering Stopping Iran's growing foothold in Africa is not just about Israel's security — it's about protecting U.S. economic and military interests. The consequences of inaction will be felt at home, from higher energy prices to increased global instability. The time to act is now. "The war has lasted too long, cost too many lives, and caused immense suffering. What we seek to do, alongside our partners, is call for a humanitarian pause to allow aid to reach those in need." — Reem al-Hashimy, Minister of State for International Cooperation at the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs, February 14, 2025.

The White House Press Corps received a reality check to wrap up this week’s news. Daily Caller White House Correspondent Reagan Reese posted to social media platform X Friday a 3-page document that was handed out that day listing all of President Donald Trump‘s accomplishments for the week. (X) Reese noted the top two accomplishments being Trump’s record high approval rating, citing a CBS poll that states 70% of respondents believe he is making good on campaign promises. Second only to that accolade was Trump securing the release of teacher Marc Fogel.

In the 1960s when my husband and I first worked in Washington, D.C., according to the Office of Personnel Management, there were about 1,808,000 (which includes military; non-Department of Defense was 761,000) federal employees. At the start of President Trump’s second term there were 2.3 million, of which about 775,000 were military and Department of Defense employees. This astonishing bloat in the federal bureaucracy is even more inexplicable when you consider that in this same period so many of the jobs being performed by these people have been made strikingly more efficient with the creation and improvement of computers and the internet, requiring fewer personnel to accomplish more.

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow has once again found herself in hot water after making false claims about President Donald Trump giving Elon Musk a $400 million contract to buy armored Teslas. The liberal pundit, known for her questionable takes and liberal meltdowns, fabricated this narrative despite no evidence to back up the allegation. This latest misstep only adds to the growing list of inaccuracies from Maddow and other left-wing media figures attempting to distort the truth to discredit Trump and Musk.

The Trump administration has canned 20 “midnight” immigration judges the Biden administration tried to shoehorn onto the courts in its final days, The Washington Times has learned. Thirteen judges hired in late December and early January were ousted Friday, a Justice Department source said. Seven assistant chief immigration judges were also axed.The housecleaning matches one the Biden administration did when it took office in 2021, clearing out many Trump picks from the immigration courts. Among the new firings, according to the department source, was Kerry Doyle. She had been a critic of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement before she was appointed to be ICE’s principal legal adviser.

West Palm Beach, Fla. —President Donald Trump toured a Boeing airplane to check out new hardware and technology features and highlight the aircraft maker’s delay in delivering updated versions of the Air Force One presidential aircraft, the White House said Saturday. Trump visited the 13-year-old private aircraft parked at Palm Beach International Airport. “President Trump is touring a new Boeing plane to checkout the new hardware/technology,” said Steven Cheung, the White House communications director. “This highlights the project’s failure to deliver a new Air Force One on time as promised.” Air Force One is a modified Boeing 747. Two exist and the president flies on both of the more than 30-year-old planes.

Canadian hockey fans booed “The Star-Spangled Banner” — setting off a brawl-filled game that ended with a US win Saturday night. The game of the NHL-run 4 Nations Face-Off tournament could have been mistaken for a boxing event — with three fist fights breaking out between American and Canadian players following the widespread booing of the US national anthem by over 20,000 angry fans. As soon as the singer, Royal Canadian Air Force member David Grenon, began belting, “Oh, say, can you see,” the crowd at the Bell Centre in Montreal let out an aggressive and booming chorus of boos that nearly drowned out the anthem entirely.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, during a closed-door meeting on Wednesday, rejected an offer by the Trump administration to relinquish half of the country’s mineral resources in exchange for U.S. support, according to five people briefed on the proposal or with direct knowledge of the talks. The unusual deal would have granted the United States a 50 percent interest in all of Ukraine’s mineral resources, including graphite, lithium and uranium, as compensation for past and future support in Kyiv’s war effort against Russian invaders, according to two European officials. A Ukrainian official and an energy expert briefed on the proposal said that the Trump administration also sought Ukrainian energy resources.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy sent a message to employees saying he was “incredibly relieved” that Alexander (Sasha) Troufanov was released from Hamas captivity after being held hostage for nearly 500 days. “I’m incredibly relieved to share the news that our AWS teammate, Sasha Troufanov, who had been held hostage since the October 7, 2023, attacks in Israel, has been released from captivity,” Jassy wrote in a message to employees. Jassy says that the company had a team of experts working with Troufanov’s family “behind the scenes” to secure his release.

On Friday afternoon, CNN hosts Boris Sanchez and Brianna Keilar devoted a segment to letting gay-rights activist and fundraiser Stacy Lentz complain about the Donald Trump administration removing the word "transgender" from gay-related government websites. There was a lot of talk about getting "erased," when CNN airs one-sided segments that erase the conservative side of the debate. After a clip of gay rights protesters chanting in New York, co-host Brianna Keilar set things up by recalling that the National Park Service has replaced "LGBTQ+" with "LGB" on its websites, including the site for the Stonewall National Monument which commemorates gay rights.

CNN chief White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins apparently deleted a social media post after receiving backlash for appearing to promote a defense fund for Luigi Mangione, the alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO killer. In the post on X, Collins showed a link to a new website launched by defense lawyers for Mangione, who faces charges of first-degree murder in furtherance of an act of terrorism, stalking and other state and federal charges in New York and Pennsylvania for allegedly gunning down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan on Dec. 4, 2024. Thompson was a married father of two.

Vice President JD Vance gave an amazing speech in Germany on Friday, calling upon leaders to join America in the quest for greater freedoms and ending unfettered illegal immigration. Some of the European elites in the audience did not appreciate Vance’s finer points. During an appearance on FOX News on Friday night, conservative scholar Victor Davis Hanson explained why these EU leaders didn’t get it and his analysis was pretty funny. Partial transcript via the Western Lensman on Twitter/X:

Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived in Israel late Saturday night for his first trip to the Middle East in his new role. A State Department press statement said that Rubio will “travel to Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates from February 15-18. Secretary Rubio’s engagements with senior officials will promote U.S. interests in advancing regional cooperation, stability, and peace. The trip will center on freeing American and all other hostages from Hamas captivity, advancing to Phase II of the ceasefire agreement in Gaza, and countering the destabilizing activities of the Iranian regime and its proxies.”

No matter how bad your life is, be thankful you aren’t a Democrat. If you’re currently pinned under a tanker truck rapidly leaking fuel that is rushing toward a lit cigarette held by the person who hates you most in this world, be thankful you aren’t a Democrat. If you aren’t a Democrat, you still have hope; if you aren’t a Democrat, there’s a chance you still possess a functioning brain. If you aren’t a Democrat, you don’t have to spend your days defending government waste and worthless bureaucracies at the expense of whatever dignity you may have left –