Trump, Mnuchin Call For GM To Pay Back Federal Bailout

By Tyler Durden

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Update: Apparently, Mnuchin is regretting giving his twitter username and password to his aides at Treasury and/or his wife.

After retweeting a tweet from a Trump fan account Wednesday morning, Mnuchin has deleted the retweet and would like the world to know that this wasn’t an “authorized” tweeting.

The tweet was retweeted from Mnuchin’s account this morning, but the original was sent last night, which probably accounts for the incorrect timing given in the Treasury Secretary’s follow up.

* * *

President Trump made his frustration with GM abundantly clear on Tuesday when he threatened to cut all EV subsidies to the Detroit carmaker. But on Wednesday both the president, this time joined by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, took the administration’s attacks on GM to their next logical endpoint: Demanding that the federal bailout recipient return the $11.2 billion loss eaten by taxpayers from the federal bailout that the company received during the depths of the financial crisis.

GM

“If GM doesn’t want to keep their jobs in the United States, they should pay back the $11.2 billion bailout that was funded by the American taxpayer,” read a tweet from a Trump fan account that the president and Mnuchin retweeted. Trump also retweeted two tweets about illegal immigration.

GM shares slid after Trump’s tweets Tuesday afternoon, but GM stock futures showed little immediate reaction to Trump’s threat. GM received billions in bailout money to shore up its troubled financial arm GMAC in 2008. After spinning off the subsidiary (which now trades as Ally Financial), GM saddled the Treasury with a more than $11 billion loss.

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After meeting with GM CEO Mary Barra, Larry Kudlow told reporters on Tuesday that he had conveyed the president’s anger to Barra, and explained that Trump feels betrayed by GM, and that he believes the carmaker “turned their back on him” by announcing the layoffs and plant closures, particularly after the Trump tax cuts handed billions of dollars back to corporations and allowed them to repatriate overseas cash.

Politicians on both sides of the US-Canada border were outraged by GM’s Monday announcement that it would close 5 North American plants (and two foreign plants) and fire nearly 15,000 workers in the US alone. Trump blasted the company for opting for layoffs and closures in the US while plants in Mexico and China remained open.

While we await a response from GM management, shareholders are a little nervous:

 

Wait–Did Twitter’s CEO Just Share A Post Calling For ‘Civil War,’ Wiping Out The GOP, And How We Should Be Like CA?

By Matt Vespa

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Well, if there were any lingering doubts about Twitter’s perceived bias against conservatives, look no further than what CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted out last night. Apparently, a “good read” is a post co-written by a Center for American Progress senior fellow that calls for “civil war,” the destruction of the GOP, and the adoption of how California runs everything from sea to shining sea. Yeah, bipartisanship is dead, so mob rule is what’s needed.

Now, to be fair, the “civil war” will be won at the ballot box and demographic shifts, namely through the  so-called emerging Democratic majority, but the overall theme is quite explicit: conservative Republicans are not welcome until they reform. In other words, until they break to the power of progressivism. First, if California’s politics is the future of the country, I’d rather chug bleach.

Second, the whole post, which was written by Ruy Teixeira and Peter Leyden on Medium, is what you’d expect from the coastal elite. They say the tax bill is not popular; it is. Even BET’s founder said the bill has helped bring black workers back into the work force. Over 250 companies have doled out bonuses to their workers. Over three million workers have benefitted from this legislation. It’s a tax cut for the middle/working classes of America that Democrats universally opposed.

In all, the post notes the similarities between our first civil war and this one. We had two separate Americas. Two separate economic models in each sphere. Trump is apparently the harbinger of the GOP’s doom. How many times have people said this only to be proven incorrect? Remember when (now) two-time presidential loser Hillary Rodham Clinton was supposed to win 2016 in a landslide? Also the post cites California as the basis for this GOP collapse argument. California Republicans are a different breed; they’re not really conservative. It’s a deep-blue state. Are we shocked that the GOP doesn’t do well in such environments. And Arnold Schwarzenegger is hardly a prime example of those leading the conservative movement, though Terminator and Predator are some of my favorite movies of all time.

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Nothing alarming about social media mogul advocating to eliminate an entire side https://t.co/kULzaAr8CT

— Amy (@AmyOtto8) April 7, 2018

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In California, the GOP is pretty much a lighter version of the Democratic Party. So, if there is a liberal Republican and a liberal Democrat on the ballot, or a conservative Democrat and a Republican in a red state scenario, the latter in both cases will usually win. Why should a GOP voter entertain voting for a Democrat when there is a solid conservative running in an election?

Just look at Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island. He was a very liberal Republican Senator; so liberal that he’s now a Democrat. Yet, in 2006, Sheldon Whitehouse booted him because Democrats had a hard-core liberal on the ballot (and RI is a blue state), despite both Chaffee and Whitehouse being pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, and strongly against the Bush tax cuts. Yet, beyond this—there are many ways to skin the electoral cat. The Democratic base was not enthused by Clinton. I don’t think they will be enthused by their 2020 choices, many of which are no-names and have rigid regional appeal. And the so-called emerging permanent Democratic majority (because public opinion doesn’t change *eye roll*) was turned off by Trump—and he still won.

Well, here are parts of the post. Debate amongst yourselves:

Trump is doing exactly what America needs him to do right now. He’s becoming increasingly conservative and outrageous by the day. Trump could have come into office with a genuinely new agenda that could have helped working people. Instead, he has spent the past year becoming a caricature of all things conservative?—?and in the meantime has alienated most of America and certainly all the growing political constituencies of the 21st century. He is turning the Republican brand toxic for millennials, women, Latinos, people of color, college-educated people, urban centers, the tech industry, and the economic powerhouses of the coasts, to name a few.

The Republican Party is playing their part perfectly, too. They completely fell for the Trump trap?—?and that’s exactly what America needed them to do.

[…]

Now the entire Republican Party, and the entire conservative movement that has controlled it for the past four decades, is fully positioned for the final takedown that will cast them out for a long period of time in the political wilderness. They deserve it.

[…]

America is desperate for a functioning political supermajority that can break out of our political stasis and boldly move ahead and take on our many 21st-century challenges. The nation can’t take much more of our one step forward, one step back politics that gets little done despite the need for massive changes.

America today has many parallels to America in the 1850s or America in the 1930s. Both of those decades ended with one side definitively winning, forming a political supermajority that restructured systems going forward to solve our problems once and for all. In the 1850s, we fought the Civil War, and the Republican Party won and then dominated American politics for 50 years. In the 1930s, the Democratic Party won and dominated American politics for roughly the same amount of time.

America today is in a similar position. Our technologies, our economy, our geopolitics are going through fundamental changes. We are facing new challenges, like climate change and massive economic inequality, that must be addressed with fundamental reforms.

America can’t afford more political paralysis. One side or the other must win. This is a civil war that can be won without firing a shot. But it is a fundamental conflict between two world views that must be resolved in short order.

California, as usual, resolved it early. The Democrats won; the Republicans lost. The conservative way forward lost; the progressive way forward began. As we’ve laid out in this series, California is the future, always about 15 years ahead of the rest of the country. That means that America, starting in 2018, is going to resolve it, too.

Whatever the case, the conclusion to all of these posts about the end of conservatism/GOP should always be wait and see. We don’t know—and frankly for the people who thought the Obama years realigned the country, brought about a high mark for liberal politics, and the marked the end of conservatism were dead wrong. In 2010, the GOP retook the House. In 2014, they recaptured the Senate—all while expanding their power at the state and local level.

Enthusiasm is surely with the Democrats—and they could do well in 2018. But Democrats have tons of candidates and division among the Left. Civil wars erupting during primaries can happen. In Texas, it already has, showing the gulf between the establishment and progressive (i.e. Bernie-ite) wings of the party is wide and the wounds are still raw. It’s quite possible the Left fumbles the ball at the goal line come Election Day. We’re over 200 days way from the midterms. I’d take this with a grain of salt, but say you do read the whole piece and blood pressures go through the roof—I redirect you to Mr. Kurt Schlichter.

TRUMP WAS RIGHT: CHILDREN SMUGGLED, TRAFFICKED FROM MIGRANT CARAVAN

Trump Was Right: Children Smuggled, Trafficked From Migrant Caravan

Watch disturbing reports on global child smuggling rings

Infowars.com – NOVEMBER 27, 2018

Multiple mainstream outlets have reported that caravan members – including children – are being exploited by sex traffickers, which confirms President Trump was right when he warned this would happen.

In a tweet from Nov. 21, the president said there were “a lot of criminals in the caravan:”

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Correspondingly, local cartels are responsible for kidnapping at least 100 members of the caravan, including children, according to British media outlet The Independent.

“Around 100 members of a refugee and migrant caravan traveling towards the U.S. have reportedly fallen victim to organized crime as they moved through Mexico,” reads the report. “The Los Zetas cartel was likely to be behind the disappearances.”

Additionally, kidnappers have offered rides on fruit trucks to the traveling migrants, according to HuffPost Mexico.

“There we began to see that fruit trucks were coming to us, of those that carry 16 to 23 tons of food, they offered us transport, charging up to 150 pesos per person, we started to document plates to images of the drivers, alert the migrants that they did not do it, but in despair people took it in.”

“All I could do was try to open the boxes of the trucks, which were locked with padlocks.”

This also sheds light on how, over the past several years, international media has reported on the sexual abuse by U.N. peacekeepers:

However, the U.N. reportedly “cannot” punish peacekeepers from other countries, meaning that only a fraction of the alleged perpetrators have served jail time.

Video: Number of sex crimes against Swedish women and girls more than quadruples

By VOICE OF EUROPE 27 November 2018

As we reported earlier, things in Sweden are pretty bad. Based on a survey (NTU) from the Swedish Council for Crime Prevention (Brå) Since 2006, the number of women men have commit sex crimes against has increased from 2.5 per cent to 10.7 per cent in 2017.

More shocking, is when the data is broken down into specific groups, it reveals that sex offenders have commit an offence against one in three women aged 16-24 years old.

The number of sexual offences against this group has seen a surge from 7.1 percent in 2006 to 34.4 percent in 2017. More is explained in the video below.

Wow! Teacher Evacuates Classroom Because Student Is Wearing MAGA Hat — Calls Kid an “Assh*le” in Front of Class (VIDEO)

By Jim Hoft

WOW! Another teacher is caught berating the conservative in classroom–

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A teacher was caught on camera berating a student for wearing a Make America Great Again hat in class. The teacher lectures the classroom for several minutes.

Then at the three minute mark the teacher calls the student an “asshole” for wearing the hat.

This is your tax dollars at work — indoctrinating and abusing the conservative kids in class.

Hat Tip Andrew Marcus

From the video:

I filmed this. If you want want me to take it down ask me. No hate speech/release of personal information/threats of violence allowed in comments.

In my state, it is legal for a person to record a wire, oral or electronic communication if that person is a party to the communication, or if one of the parties has consented to the recording so long as no criminal or tortious intent accompanies the recording.

We will update when we find more information on the video.

Hungary wants to know how many migrants arriving in Europe were “paid” by the UN

By   

Hungary’s Fidesz-led alliance expects the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to respond in connection with the issue of “migrant cards”, the ruling parties’ group spokesman told press conference on Sunday.

Istvan Hollik said Hungary wanted “a straight answer”concerning how many migrants arriving in Europe were“paid” by the United Nations, how many types of cards were in circulation and funded by the UNHCR, how much money the organisation had paid out via the cards as well as how much money each migrant received.

He noted these questions have already been addressed to the European Commission president and the European Parliament’s LIBE committee without any response so far.

“I’d also like to know what the UN High Commissioner for Refugees thinks about the possibility that the money doled out through the cards can be used for people smuggling and financing terrorism,”

he added.

Hollik said the questions were relevant since the UN has a standpoint on migration and various UN leaders openly make pro-migration statements while attacking Hungarian anti-migration policy.

The spokesman said the UN is still working on adopting a migration pact whose aim is to make migration a fundamental human right.

“Fidesz, the Christian Democrats and the Hungarian government resolutely reject this,” he said, adding several other countries besides Hungary, including Austria, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and the United States, rejected the UN document.

White House To Pull Acosta’s Pass Again After Temporary Court Order Expires

By Tyler Durden

The White House will pull CNN correspondent Jim Acosta‘s press credentials again after a 14-day temporary court-order expires, according to the network, which has asked for an emergency hearing to defend Acosta’s access. 

“Friday’s court ruling means that a temporary restraining order is in effect for 14 days. But [White House] officials sent Acosta a letter stating that his press pass is set to be suspended again once the restraining order expires,” reports CNN’s Brian Stelter.

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CNN said in a statement that rescinding Acosta’s press pass again would threaten “all journalists and news organizations.” 

“The White House is continuing to violate the First and 5th Amendments of the Constitution,” the network said, adding: “These actions threaten all journalists and news organizations. Jim Acosta and CNN will continue to report the news about the White House and the President.”

Acosta’s press credentials were pulled after a heated exchange with President Trump in which the CNN Senior White House correspondent refused to relinquish the microphone – batting a White House intern’s arm away as she attempted to take it from him.

U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly last Friday granted CNN’s request to restore Acosta’s hard press pass through a 14-day temporary injunction that expires on Nov. 30.

The ruling was limited, however, with Kelly stating that only Acosta’s Fifth Amendment rights to due process were violated. The judge, who was appointed by Trump, did not issue a ruling on whether the correspondent’s First Amendment rights were violated.

“I want to emphasize the very limited nature of this ruling,” Kelly said Friday. –The Hill

Following the decision, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that officials would “temporarily” reinstate Acosta’s hard pass, telegraphing that it would likely be pulled again once the ruling expired.

“Today, the court made clear that there is no absolute First Amendment right to access the White House,” Sanders said. “In response to the court, we will temporarily reinstate the reporter’s hard pass. We will also further develop rules and processes to ensure fair and orderly press conferences in the future.”

In a Sunday interview with Fox News‘s Chris Wallace, President Trump had a few ideas of his own on Acosta, including throwing him out.

“I think one of the things we’ll do is maybe turn the camera off that faces them because then they don’t have any air time, although I’ll probably be sued for that and maybe, you know, win or lose it, who knows,” said Trump. “I mean, with this stuff you never know what’s going to happen.”

Calling Acosta “unbelievably rude to [White House press secretary] Sarah Huckabee, who’s a wonderful woman,” Trump said his administration is currently formulating “rules and regulations” for White House reporters. “And if he misbehaves, we’ll throw him out or we’ll stop the news conference,” the president added. –Fox News

 

‘They were starting to learn German in Paris before US came along’ – Trump taunts Macron

'They were starting to learn German in Paris before US came along' – Trump taunts Macron

President Trump continued his verbal spat with French leader Emmanuel Macron, taunting the French leader for his country’s losses to Germany in two world wars, and suggesting that Europe needs the US as a saviour.

After returning from Armistice Day commemorations in Paris over the weekend, Trump took to Twitter on Monday to savage the US’ European allies for failing to meet their defense spending targets and leaving America to foot much of NATO’s bill. On Tuesday, the president vented his frustrations again.

“Emmanuel Macron suggests building its own army to protect Europe against the U.S., China and Russia,” Trump tweeted.

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In a radio interview a week before the commemorations in Paris, Macron called for the establishment of an EU army that can defend the continent “without relying only on the United States.”

While Macron once enjoyed a close bond with president Trump, the leaders’ relationship has soured as of late. In a speech on Sunday, Macron emphatically denounced Trump’s brand of nationalism, comparing it to the forces that plunged Europe into conflict in the 20th Century.

“Old demons are resurfacing,” the French president warned. “History sometimes threatens to take its tragic course again and compromise our hope of peace. Let us vow to prioritise peace over everything.”

Macron also stuck close to German Chancellor Angela Merkel – herself a vocal Trump critic – throughout the weekend, with the pair posing in an embrace at the unveiling of a plaque near Compiegne, where Germany officially surrendered 100 years previously.

French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel hold hands in Compiegne, France on November 10, 2018. © Reuters / Philippe Wojazer

Whether Trump’s Tuesday tweet was meant as a jibe at Merkel and Macron’s closeness or not is unclear, but the president’s insistence that Europe pays its NATO dues is a call that he has voiced since he hit the campaign trail three years ago.

At present, only five NATO member states – the US, UK, Greece, Estonia, and Poland – allocate two percent of their GDP to defense spending, a requirement for membership. In 2017, the US spent $686 billion on defense, over double the expenditure of all 28 other states combined.

While Macron is now in Trump’s firing line over defense spending, the US president had singled out Germany in the runup to a NATO summit in Brussels in July. As well as savaging Merkel’s government for spending just over 1.2 percent of its GDP on defense, Trump said that Germany is “totally captive to Russia,” referring to its reliance on Russian gas.

While the US underwrites most of Europe’s defense bill, more EU leaders than Macron have expressed discomfort at relying on Trump in recent months. Liberal MEP Guy Verhofstadt – a long-time advocate for a federal Europe – echoed Macron’s comments on Saturday, when he tweeted that Europe cannot be “unprepared for the America First Policy.”

The idea of an integrated EU army might make Macron and Merkel excited, but it has been criticized by more people than just Trump. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg responded to Macron’s radio interview by warning the French president not to take over NATO’s job.

“Two World Wars and a Cold War taught us the importance of doing things together,” he said at a conference in Berlin on Monday. “The reality is that we need one strong and capable command structure, we can’t divide those resources in two.”

 

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