(Corine Gatti, Headline USA) Sources close to President Donald Trump revealed that the former president was considering various characteristics to ensure his pick for a vice president is “loyal” and has “charisma,” the Daily Caller reported.
Trump insiders indicated that there have not been any formal talks with anyone.
Nevertheless, there are a few particular traits and qualifications that are highly sought after. One of the traits Trump will be focusing on is the candidates’ presentation skills—and finding someone who is also “TV ready.”
“We do know one thing about Trump, is that he puts a lot of weight on how well you present yourself,” the source said. “That really matters to him, so I suspect that will matter for his VP choice.”
They also emphasized the next VP will need to be loyal.
“That’s the necessary characteristic of anyone who wants to be VP,” the source said. President Trump and the movement was dragged down by disloyalty in the White House.”
The insider further explained that Trump is very much open to choosing a female running mate, but it would depend on her skills.
“I don’t believe in diversity for the sake of diversity when it comes to elections and political figures, but I think there are people out there that are female that would be good fits for him,” said the source.
“A female candidate will offer us a unique and valuable perspective when discussing the issue,” added the source. “With women representing a large proportion of the population, her presence could be an invaluable asset in this election cycle.”
“Whenever I’ve talked to people who worked in the Trump world, it’s always assumed to be someone like Stefanik or some other woman candidate,” the official said.
Stefanik, the House Republican Conference Chair, was among the first to throw her support behind Trump in 2022—the first member of GOP leadership to do so.
Most recently, she has stood by Trump during his public battle with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
(Robert Jonathan, Headline USA) Renowned actor Morgan Freeman went off script from the typical Hollywood identity politics narrative during an interview with a U.K. news outlet.
“Two things I can say publicly that I do not like,” he told the Sunday Times of London. “Black History Month is an insult. You’re going to relegate my history to a month?”
The 85-year-old movie icon went on to say that “Also, ‘African-American’ is an insult. I don’t subscribe to that title. Black people have had different titles all the way back to the n-word and I do not know how these things get such a grip, but everyone uses ‘African-American.’
“What does it really mean? Most black people in this part of the world are mongrels. And you say Africa as if it’s a country when it’s a continent, like Europe.”
Along these lines, Freeman “also argued that people talk about ‘Irish-Americans’ and ‘Italian-Americans,’ but not Euro-Americans,'” Fox News reported.
Freeman endorsed a comment recalled by the Times reporter made by superstar Denzel Washington, who once said that he is very proud to be black, “but black is not all I am.”
“I’m in total agreement,” Freeman asserted.
People still often talk about Morgan Freeman’s 60 Minutes interview back in 2005 when he expressed similar views, using almost identical words, about the month-long commemoration lacking sufficient inclusivity.
Black history month is “ridiculous,” he said on the long-running CBS TV news magazine.
In the sit down with the late Mike Wallace, the actor who is blessed with a powerful speaking voice surprised the liberal journalist when he rhetorically asked, “You’re going to relegate my history to a month?…Which month is white history month?”
“I don’t want a Black History Month. Black history is American history,” Freeman added.
He also insisted to Wallace that the way to rid the country of racism is to “stop talking about it.”
During the Obama administration, Morgan Freeman accused the GOP of racism for its opposition to the Democrat president’s agenda.
He put forth this allegation in a CNN interview with Piers Morgan (who had taken over Larry King’s timeslot).
(Headline USA) The House Judiciary Committee, led by Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, held a hearing on Monday evaluating the consequences of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s soft-on-crime policies.
The hearing, which was scheduled in response to Bragg’s political prosecution of former President Donald Trump, featured several victims who said their lives were upended by Bragg’s refusal to enforce the law.
One such witness was Barry Borgen, the father of a victim who was brutally attacked while walking to a pro-Israel rally near Times Square in May 2021. Borgen slammed Democrat leaders during the hearing, specifically calling out his fellow “Jewish New Yorkers,” Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., the committee’s ranking member, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., ABC7 reported.
“I called Mr. Schumer’s office, another Jewish New Yorker, numerous times. No one called us back,” Borgen told Nadler. “You have Jewish roots here, and behavior like this enables DA Bragg to just do whatever he wants to do. We wouldn’t vote for Mr. Schumer again. … And if I lived in Manhattan, I wouldn’t vote for you, either.”
Joseph Borgen was wearing a yarmulke when he was attacked and pepper-sprayed by a group of men who called him a “dirty Jew,” along with other anti-Semitic slurs. In response, Bragg offered one of Borgen’s assailants a plea deal that allowed him to serve just six months in prison.
Another witness, Madeline Brame, an Army veteran, told committee members about how Bragg failed to secure justice for her family after her son was killed in 2018.
“When Alvin Bragg came into office, he was handed a strong, trial-ready murder case and gang assault case against all four of these individuals,” she said. “He dismissed — completely dismissed — gang assault and murder indictments against two of the defendants clearly on video participating in the brutal, savage slaughter of my son. Hason was kicked, punched, stomped and stabbed nine times by four individuals whom he did not know, nor had he done them any harm.”
Madeline Brame, mother of a veteran who was murdered, on Dems bringing up Trump
“Victims can care less about anyone’s political ideology or party, neither do criminals. They don’t go up to a person & ask them if they’re Democrat or Republican before they bust them in the head” pic.twitter.com/YzxFRseBPT
In response to the victims’ testimonies, Democrats dismissed the hearing as a sham, with Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., going so far as to compare his GOP colleagues to “thugs.”
“If Republicans really wanted to stop violent crime, they would be in D.C. right now working with Democrats to pass commonsense gun legislation. Instead, like jackbooted thugs, they’ve descended on New York City, using violent crime as their pretext,” he claimed.
(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) As the end of Trump-era Title 42 approaches, agents working along the border say they received very little information on what to expect and how to prepare for the swarm of illegal immigrants preparing to cross.
The order, which mandates that immigrants who recently contracted COVID-19, ends on May 11. All other COVID-related emergency measures will expire as well.
Two anonymous agents spoke out about the lack of preparation, saying officials simply told to “brace for f***ing impact” and prepare to “weather the storm,” the Daily Caller reported.
Even with Title 42, record numbers of illegals continued to cross the border through 2022.
Officials in the Department of Homeland Security recently received an internal memo instructing agents to implement an “efficient cadence” for interviews that screen asylum claims and statements of fear, known as “credible fear interviews,” in preparation for the lifting of the order.
“Due to the expected lifting of the currently operative CDC order, USBP and component partners must have an efficient cadence in place to be prepared to ramp up to USCIS conducting up to 1,000 CFIs per day in USBP’s short-term holding facilities for NCs across the Southwest Border,” the memo read.
Another agent indicated that authorities do not have enough manpower at the border to maintain order.
“Most of the time, we are just told that Title 42 will end eventually and to be mentally prepared for the influx of migrants when it does,” the second agent explained. “Regular line agents don’t seem to be offered an outline or plan as to how we will actually deal with the large numbers at the processing level.”
The Biden administration has done very little to equip the border to handle another surge.
“There are thousands and thousands just waiting for Title 42 to end. I would say a fear is that the Biden Admin has no clue just how bad it’s going to get. We can barely actively patrol the border now,” the second agent continued.
“When Title 42 ends, all of our resources, all of our little manpower that we do have, are going to be focused on processing,” he added. “Field work will nearly cease to exist in my opinion.”
Most recently, the Biden administration attempted to cast the blame for the border situation on former President Donald Trump and other House Republicans.
The organization admitted that no one wants to deal with the packs of rats, but they still shamed citizens advocating for extermination despite their valid concerns over disease and contamination.
“The rats you see on the streets are still sensitive, intelligent animals and they deserve better than to be killed in gruesome, painful ways,” said PETA’s communications director, Ashley Byrne, who lives in the city herself.
According to the Daily Caller, Byrne argued that the rats are in the city “through no fault of their own” and the city is responsible for cutting off their food source.
“As long as the garbage is there and unchecked the rats will be there,” Byrne said “We have a disgusting human behavior problem, not a rat problem.”
Mayor Eric Adams faced public criticism over his mishandling of the problem, with citizens heckling him over his lack of action.
The city hopes to chemically sterilize the rats, instead of implementing measures for better trash pick up and cleaning up the city’s streets.
Adams recently appointed Kathleen Corradi as the citywide director of rodent mitigation, or “rat czar.”
“New York City has done a lot recently when it comes to fighting public enemy No. 1: rats. But it was clear we needed someone solely focused on leading our rat reduction efforts across all five boroughs,” said Adams said at a press event announcing the news. “… Kathy has the knowledge, drive, experience, and energy to send rats packing and create a cleaner more welcoming city for all New Yorkers.”
According to the now-removed job description, the position required “a general aura of badassery,” who was “somewhat bloodthirsty.”
Adams did not elaborate on how Corradi fit this particular description.
(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Exactly 30 years ago, the FBI was planning to raid a purported religious compound in Benton, Tennessee—but bureau officials aborted the plan after agents killed 76 people during the disastrous April 19, 1993, raid in Waco, Texas, according to a previously unpublicized document reviewed by Headline USA.
The FBI’s planned raid on the Tennessee-based “Order of St. John of Jerusalem” was part of a sweeping 1990s-era undercover operation called Patriot Conspiracy, or PATCON, which entailed undercover agents and informants infiltrating the right-wing militia movement.
Extremism researcher J.M. Berger has extensively covered PATCON, including the planned Tennessee raid. In an April 2012 article for Foreign Policy, Berger wrote that the FBI closed its investigation into The Order of St. John in July 1993 because officials were worried that agents were “only obtaining intelligence and not moving forward with the criminal investigation.”
But that’s not the whole story. Neither Berger’s research nor publicly available FBI documents indicate that agents had, in fact, planned a similar Waco-style raid in Tennessee.
This is only revealed in a March 2013 email written by former FBI informant John Matthews, who participated in PATCON. Matthews wrote the email to Jesse Trentadue—an attorney currently embroiled in litigation against the FBI over PATCON—who recently provided the record to Headline USA. The email has not received media attention until now.
Matthews’ email matches much of what’s written in publicly available FBI PATCON records.
Those records describe The Order of St. John as an extremist religious group led by a medical doctor named John Grady, who was calling for violence against the federal government. An April 1992 FBI memo said Grady, who also headed the American Rifle and Pistol Association, owned some 340 acres of land that he used to locate a sprawling compound.
“Survival and firearms training has been conducted on the OSJ and APRA property and men have been seen wearing camouflage units and carrying firearms,” the FBI memo said.
Matthews’ email described how he helped the FBI plan its raid. In the email, Matthews wrote that Grady “had bunkers all over his land.”
“I took pictures of them inside and out,” he said.
A diagram of an alleged extremist compound in Tennessee, which the FBI planned to raid but aborted following the Waco massacre of April 1993. Diagram taken from FBI records.
According to Matthews, the FBI had him bring another undercover government agent—”I believe he was from the Army (Delta Force),” he said—to conduct reconnaissance on the Tennessee property. Grady and his wife were gone for the night, Matthews said, giving him and his Delta Force partner the run of the place.
“Dr. Grady did not know I brought this guy in at night … He took notes on how wide the bunker walls were and how the doors were made … I already knew that a team was building up to hit Doc Grady’s place next. They had to know everything about the place in case of a standoff with his followers inside the compound,” Matthews wrote.
Matthews further said that “within hours of Waco” agents were already headed to Tennessee to plan the next raid.
But top officials apparently had second thoughts, as the Tennessee raid was called off amidst the negative attention federal agencies were receiving after the Waco massacre.
“Doc Grady was saved by Waco,” Matthews wrote. “Seeing Waco did not go over so well in the eyes of a lot of folks, they did not raid Doc Grady’s, for it would have opened a bigger can of worms and a war may have started from the groups across the country.”
Headline USA was unable to contact people who can corroborate Matthews’ story. The FBI has declined to comment on PATCON, while Grady died in 2018. The Order of St. John’s website is still active, but the group did not respond to an email seeking an interview or comment.
Grady reportedly denied all allegations of illegal activity when interviewed by extremism researcher Berger in 2012.
“Every statement that you’ve shown me is false,” Grady reportedly told Berger, disputing the contention in FBI documents that his religious and gun-rights groups were white supremacist in nature. To Grady’s point, the fact that the FBI called off its raid after receiving public backlash from Waco indicates that agents found no hard evidence of criminality at his compound.
Berger has also been quiet about PATCON in recent years. Whereas his early work exposed FBI malfeasance, journalist Matt Taibbi recently revealed in his Twitter Files reporting that Berger later became a contractor for the State Department’s “Global Engagement Center.” Berger created a tool that’s now being used by the GEC to push censorship on the internet, according to Taibbi.
28. The Hamilton 68 dashboard creator, J.M. Berger, was on the GEC payroll until June of 2017, just before the dashboard’s launch. Hamilton claimed the list was “the fruit of more than three years of observation.”
Matthews, for his part, is unavailable because he has been off the grid since around 2014, when he was going to testify as a witness for Trentadue in his lawsuit against the U.S. government. Matthews changed his mind about testifying the night before he was supposed to take the stand, leading to Trentadue alleging that the FBI engaged in witness tampering and threatened Matthews.
Trentadue’s allegations have been subject of a court-appointed investigation for the last nearly eight years. The investigation has been conducted behind closed doors, with gag orders on all parties.
Trentadue told Headline USA he believes Matthews’ story to be highly credible, as the former PATCON informant has provided accurate information about numerous other secret FBI operations.
The FBI also finds Matthews to be highly credible.
As Newsweek noted in a 2011 article about the informant-turned-whistleblower, the bureau honored Matthews for his service after serving as an informant throughout the ‘90s, giving him a plaque that says the following: “John W. Matthews: In appreciation and recognition for your outstanding efforts in assisting the FBI to combat domestic terrorism throughout the United States: March 28, 1991–May 30, 1998.”
(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) Kash Patel, former deputy director of national intelligence and former chief of staff at the Pentagon, questioned the validity of the Pentagon leaks and claimed that a single man doing this on his own was “just not possible.”
According to Breitbart, Patel said he does not believe “for a single second, this guy—a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman—ran this operation alone.”
Patel explained that it is impossible that the suspected leaker, Jack Teixeira—who is currently in FBI custody—could not have accessed the leaked documents unless someone from within the Department of Defense gave him either access or the information itself.
Patel said it is still unlikely he would have had the information, despite Teixeira’s position in the information technology department.
“You can be the biggest IT person in DOD, and you are still compartmented off of the actual information,” he explained. “Almost never does an IT person need to know, as we say, the substance of the intelligence. Their job is to provide the secure informations systems around it to protect any disclosures.”
Continuing, Patel made it clear that there are very few people who do have access to the information given to Teixeira.
“This is crazy sensitive stuff. Ninety-nine percent of people who have a Top Secret/SCI clearance don’t have access to this information,” he said. “And me, as the former deputy DNI and chief of staff of the DOD and publisher of the [Presidential Daily Brief], with the highest security classification, knows that, literally, there is not a lot of people in the U.S. that have access to this kind of intel. It’s done for a reason. So this doesn’t happen.”
The Air Force confirmed that Teixeira was an Airman First Class, the third-lowest rank in the Force. He also worked as an IT technician, or a “cyber transport systems journeyman,” on the Otis Air National Guard Base in Massachusetts.
Patel argued that Teixeira did not act alone.
“Whether he’s in IT or not, is irrelevant. The way it was produced, the way it was put out there — pages, printed photographs taken, published online — that is a methodical way of releasing classified information illegally,” he said.
The former chief of staff also said that the situation smells of a cover up.
“This is an extensive cover-up,” Patel said of Teixeira’s arrest. “It’s going to go on for some time, and they needed a quick victory. This kid should be prosecuted, no questions asked, no questions about it in my mind — he broke the law and needs to be prosecuted.”
“It’s a CYA operation, for sure. Because we haven’t gotten to the worst of it,” he added. “We’re not there yet. There’s more stuff. And you know, there’s probably more stuff floating around in these chat rooms and whatnot, but they want to talk about him, the kid, and not the [verified intelligence].”
(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg once more brought up the problem of racist roads in America, suggesting that it was to blame for many traffic fatalities, Fox News reported.
Buttigieg made his latest claims in an MSNBC interview with left-wing activist Al Sharpton.
“A lot of people don’t understand, even down to road fatalities, it is not equal,” Sharpton said, suggesting a more equitable outcome in the number of deaths should be a transportation priority rather than an overall reduction.
In reply, Buttigieg said that he will continue to try to raise public awareness of the racist roads.
“It’s something that deserves more attention, which is why I’m working to bring more attention to it,” he said.
“We have a crisis when it comes to roadway fatalities in America,” he continued. “We lose about 40,000 people every year.”
He also noted that there were “racial disparities” in communities heavily populated with minorities.
“Black and brown Americans, tribal citizens and rural residents are much more likely to lose their lives whether it’s in a car or as a pedestrian being hit by a car,” he continued.
For Buttigieg, America’s street lights and crosswalks might also be distributed in preference to white neighborhoods. Because of street light inequality, he noted, the federal government must act.
“There are a lot of reasons related to discrimination and related to even the ways that roads are designed and built, who has access to a safe street design that has crosswalks and good lighting, who doesn’t have that access that can drive disparities, and we have a responsibility to act on that,” he said.
Buttigieg and the Black Caucus have both long griped over the racist roads of America.
Initially, Buttigieg commented that many highways were built “for the purpose of dividing a white and a black neighborhood.”
He has even gone so far as to give the city of Detroit a grant to dismantle Interstate 375, a 1-mile depressed freeway that was built by demolishing black neighborhoods 60 years ago.
(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) California Rep. Judy Chu, a Democrat, has been linked to a Chinese Communist Party organization.
Chu was previously listed as the “International Federation of Chamber of Commerce,” an organization that cross-pollinates with the California-based 501(c)(6) nonprofit U.S.-Chinese General Chamber of Commerce, the Daily Caller reported.
The IFCC is meant to create an international alliance for the Chinese Chamber of Commerce to promote Chinese business around the globe. Chu’s participation suggests that her personal interests may extend beyond the interest of California and America.
Chu, who has been a member of the House since 2009 and currently represents California’s 28th district, has granted numerous congressional awards to several individuals with ties to suspected Chinese Communist Party front groups suspected of spying on American citizens.
The Forums nominated Chu as “honorary chairwoman” at the group’s 34th inauguration ceremony. At the ceremony, Chu served as a witness and oversaw the transfer of the organization’s seal.
Chinese intelligence experts confirmed that the group is a Chinese intelligence operation, connected with the UFWD.
And though the Daily Caller previously dug up photo evidence of Chu’s ties to the organizations, the representative denied all allegations by playing the race card.
“Unfortunately, these efforts to tie Chinese Americans, including myself, to the Chinese Communist Party simply because of our ethnic background is a common and dangerous tactic that has persisted for decades,” she wrote.
Since her election, Chu wished for China and Taiwan “to become one family.” However, she appeared to walk this back just before former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s diplomatic trip to Taiwan, saying she “always supported” Taiwan’s independence.
Feinstein, who is nearly 90, has missed multiple votes for health reasons, and her cognitive abilities are in a sharp decline.
Her absence has made it particularly difficult for Democrats to do anything with a narrow Senate majority. However, radical leftist already had been angered by her for maintaining a spirit of bipartisanship during the confirmation hearings of now-Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
Cries to remove Feinstein due to her advanced age and cognitive decline have others thinking about a potential Democrat ousting of Biden.
“How electable will Mr. Biden be 19 months from now?” Kimberley Strassel wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.
“Might Democratic voters—already feeding into the president’s low approval ratings—prove unwilling to turn out for the party’s anointed yet faltering nominee?,” Strassel continued. “What happens if Mr. Biden announces a run yet by next spring is incapable of following through, leaving the party in disarray?”
Democrats, according to the report, have “kept mum about Mr. Biden’s predicament in the 2020 election,” noting that “the party establishment remains loath to entertain a 2024 primary fight.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been at the forefront of forcing out older Democrats, positioning himself as a potential Biden primary challenger while staying neutral, for now, on the Feinstein matter.
However, Newsom recently promised to appoint a black woman to Feinstein’s seat, if the opportunity presents itself, according to a Los Angeles Timesreport.
Leftist activists are prepared to ensure that Newsom sticks to his word.
“Making good on a commitment is a serious thing to the most critical base of Democratic Party voters,” said Aimee Allison, president of She the People.
“The governor could complicate his legacy and push [b]lack women, who in this state are a significant and critical voting bloc, to view him skeptically as someone who’s unwilling to support us when it counts,” Allison said.
