When Trump Approves of Protests and Demonstrations

Donald Trump making the argument for protests.

"@ZANDIO: @realDonaldTrump where is the Leadership To Calm our senses as these protests continue? #StopDividingTheUSA"

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 10, 2014

Big protest march in Colorado on Friday afternoon! Don't let the bosses take your vote!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 14, 2016

Big protest march in Colorado on Friday afternoon! Don't let the bosses take your vote!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 14, 2016

Our great country has been divided for decades. Sometimes you need protest in order to heal, & we will heal, & be stronger than ever before!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 19, 2017

Many reports of peaceful protests by Iranian citizens fed up with regime’s corruption & its squandering of the nation’s wealth to fund terrorism abroad. Iranian govt should respect their people’s rights, including right to express themselves. The world is watching! #IranProtests

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 30, 2017

Big protests in Iran. The people are finally getting wise as to how their money and wealth is being stolen and squandered on terrorism. Looks like they will not take it any longer. The USA is watching very closely for human rights violations!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2017

The paid D.C. protesters are now ready to REALLY protest because they haven’t gotten their checks – in other words, they weren’t paid! Screamers in Congress, and outside, were far too obvious – less professional than anticipated by those paying (or not paying) the bills!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 9, 2018

The Paris Agreement isn’t working out so well for Paris. Protests and riots all over France. People do not want to pay large sums of money, much to third world countries (that are questionably run), in order to maybe protect the environment. Chanting “We Want Trump!” Love France.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 8, 2018

….Large protests all across Venezuela today against Maduro. The fight for freedom has begun!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 30, 2019

To the brave, long-suffering people of Iran: I've stood with you since the beginning of my Presidency, and my Administration will continue to stand with you. We are following your protests closely, and are inspired by your courage.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2020

National Security Adviser suggested today that sanctions & protests have Iran “choked off”, will force them to negotiate. Actually, I couldn’t care less if they negotiate. Will be totally up to them but, no nuclear weapons and “don’t kill your protesters.”

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 12, 2020

Brexit: Before and After

Who Does Donald Trump Follow on Twitter?

The @realdonaldtrump account follows 47 other accounts on Twitter. Twelve of these accounts, are Fox-related accounts and make up the largest group of accounts being followed by the President of the United States.

These include:

• Maria Bartiromo
• Tucker Carlson
• Jesse Watters
• Laura Ingraham
• Sean Hannity
• Diamond and Silk
• KATRINA CAMPINS
• FOX & friends
• Geraldo Rivera
• Eric Bolling
• Bill O’Reilly
• Greta Van Susteren

Other accounts include members of the Trump team, Trump businesses and family.

Of note, only 9% of these account belong to Republican leaders.

• Rep. Jim Jordan
• Vice President Mike Pence
• Ronna McDaniel
• Reince Priebus

Download here in pdf format a detailed list of all 47 accounts followed by @realdonaldtrump.Download

Brexit: a lot of energy is being expanded so that as much as possible remains the same.

On January 4th of this year, Liam Fox, Secretary of State for International Trade tweeted that the “IMF predicts 90% of growth will come from outside the EU”.

.@LiamFox says the IMF predicts 90% of growth will come from outside the EU in the coming years. DIT has chosen to hold the GREAT Festival of Innovation in Hong Kong – the crossroads of Asian markets #UKChina pic.twitter.com/kq6UA3khqZ

— Department for Business and Trade (@biztradegovuk) January 4, 2018

This obsession with “growth outside the EU” is an implicit admission that disruption to current free trade with the EU may negatively impact growth in the UK. Perhaps the Secretary did read in that same IMF report that projected growth for the EU in 2019 will reach 2% while it will be only 1.5% for the UK.

Two months later, on March 2nd, the Prime Minister made this threat explicit stating that “the reality is that we all need to face up to some hard facts.”

The hard facts may be that at least some sectors of the UK economy will be hurt when even a few barriers to trade and custom restrictions will reappear. How much pain there will be is still unclear because there are no details yet on any future trade agreements.

These hard facts could become even harder than those Theresa May hinted at in her “five tests”. The entire Brexit economic gamble rests on the notion that the UK will do better economically than if it had remained a member of the EU.

There are two main hurdles to this gamble.

The first is that two of the three largest world markets, the US (number one) and China (number three) are threatening to move towards more, not less protectionism. In this context, how much leverage the UK might have when asking the US and China to allow more access to UK goods and services?

Is there much negotiating might in saying “listen we just left the second largest trading area (the EU) so we need you to hurry up and sign a deal with us”?

This is particularly acute with the US given that the UK has a trade surplus and Donald Trump is not keen on losing “trade wars”.

Secondly, it may sound surprising to some that it is possible to export to China and be a member of the EU. In fact, the EU is China’s largest trading partner. Germany and France both export more to China than the UK. The question for the trade minister is this: what kind of trade deal with China might compensate, at least partly, for any loss of trade with the EU?

The balancing act for the UK is this: “what is the minimum level of change required to officially qualify as Brexit while minimizing any negative economic impact?”

No wonder a lot of energy is being expanded so that as much as possible remains the same.

 

USA-UK Trade Data in Two Charts

How important is the UK to the USA as a trading partner?

Here is the data from the US Census for Septembre 2017.

For the US, the UK represents a whopping 4% of total worldwide exports and 2% all imports.

Downlod the table USA-UK Trade Data

 

 

Using Extremist Politics to Make Money on Twitter

I was searching for “Sessions” and “Russia” on twitter and found a series a similar posts published within minutes of one another as you can see below from the time stamps.

Republicans push for Sessions' recusal from Russia probe https://t.co/MzOqsKp2FN pic.twitter.com/AE6o2SaX3S

— Breaking News Today! (@AmericaHotNews) March 2, 2017

https://twitter.com/NewsPoliticONE/status/837325795135610881

https://twitter.com/NowPolicy/status/837325794682687488

I then clicked on some of these and it turns out that not only these post are near identical, but that they have similar features: same posts, same links and same number of tweets (around 10.7k).

Crucially, if you click on the link viid.me…. it will take you to an advertisement. So it seems as though all these accounts are automated. They relay highly charged political news and bait people into clicking on those links to make advertising money.

Here is a video I recorded that summarises all of the above.

Trump’s Deflection Tactics

Earlier today Trump tweeted the following.

INTELLIGENCE INSIDERS NOW CLAIM THE TRUMP DOSSIER IS "A COMPLETE FRAUD!" @OANN

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2017

In other words, we are lead to conclude that the network AONN (One American News Network) has conducted its own independent research and that this investigation found that Trump dossier is false.

Trump does not provide a link to any story on AONN, not even the link to the channel itself, just the twitter account.

Indeed, if you search for “complete fraud” nothing that relates to the Trump dossier exists.

So the tactic is as follows, deflect attention to another source and hope that most people will not bother to search further.

One American News Network is owned by Herring Network Inc. According to Bloomberg, it has no key executives recorded. In other words we don’t know who is behind it.

Where is the fraud report?