Roger Stone Banned From Twitter For Attacking CNN

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Peso Plunges As White House Plans NAFTA Withdrawal Executive Order

The Mexican Peso is tumbling (and Loonie extending yesterday"s timber-tariff-driven losses), as Politico reports, the Trump administration is considering an executive order on withdrawing the U.S. from NAFTA, according to two White House officials.

Politico reports that a draft order has been submitted for the final stages of review and could be unveiled late this week or early next week, the officials said. The effort, which still could change in the coming days as more officials weigh in, would indicate the administration’s intent to withdraw from the sweeping pact by triggering the timeline set forth in the deal.

The approach appears designed to extract better terms with Canada and Mexico, and judging bvy the FX market"s reaction, they agree...

Trump in recent weeks has stepped up his rhetoric vowing to terminate the agreement all together.

“NAFTA’s been very, very bad for our country,” he said in a speech last week in Kenosha, Wis.

“It’s been very, very bad for our companies and for our workers, and we’re going to make some very big changes or we are going to get rid of NAFTA once and for all.”

Peter Navarro, the head of Trump’s National Trade Council, drafted the executive order in close cooperation with chief White House strategist Steve Bannon. The executive order was submitted this week to the staff secretary for the final stages of review, according to one of the White House officials.

All this rhetoric, however, is sending the dollar surging - something Trump expressed just a few days ago was not great...

White House Blocks CNN, NYT, and More from Press Briefing

(COMMONDREAMS) Just hours after President Donald Trump launched his latest rhetorical (and predictable) attack on the press during a speech to right-wing activists, CNN and other outlets have reportedly been blocked from attending Friday afternoon’s press briefing at the White House.

CNN reports:

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“The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Politico were also excluded from the meeting, which is known as a gaggle and is less formal than the traditional Q-and-A session in the White House briefing room.

“The Associated Press and Time magazine boycotted the briefing because of how it was handled. The White House Correspondents Association is protesting.

“The conservative media organizations Breitbart News, The Washington Times and One America News Network were allowed in.”

The cable news outlet reported that its correspondents who were barred entry were offered “no immediate explanation” from White House staff about why they had been denied.

The move, described as “unprecedented” by reporters and journalism experts, comes a day after CNN reported that White House chief of staff Reince Priebus had attempted to get the FBI to push back against reporting by several outlets, including the Times and CNN, that there had been consistent communications between members of the Trump campaign and transition teams and Russian government officials.

In a statement, the White House Correspondents’ Association decried the move.

“The WHCA board is protesting strongly against how today’s gaggle is being handled by the White House,” said Jeff Mason, the group’s president. “We encourage the organizations that were allowed in to share the material with others in the press corps who were not. The board will be discussing this further with White House staff.”

During his earlier speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland, Trump repeatedly attacked the news media and called reporters supplying negative or critical coverage of his administration an”the enemy of the people.”

[Editor’s note: This breaking news story may be updated]

Creative Commons / Common Dreams / Report a typo

Politicians Are Now Making Plans in Case the Public Turns Against Them Violently

February 9, 2017   |   James Holbrooks

(ANTIMEDIA) Washington, D.C. — As protests continue to break out all around the nation over President Donald Trump’s desire to scrap Obamacare, Politico reported Tuesday that many politicians are beginning to worry about their own personal safety — to the point where some are having private sessions to discuss the matter.

Citing sources who were in the room, Politico writes:

“House Republicans during a closed-door meeting Tuesday discussed how to protect themselves and their staffs from protesters storming town halls and offices in opposition to repealing Obamacare.”

Some of the suggestions, the news outlet reports, include “having a physical exit strategy at town halls, or a backdoor at congressional offices to slip out of, in case demonstrations turn violent; having local police monitor town halls; replacing any glass office-door entrances with heavy doors and deadbolts; and setting up intercoms to ensure those entering congressional offices are there for appointments, not to cause chaos.”

While protests are popping up all over, the Republicans’ private session was no doubt prompted by events that happened over the weekend. While speaking before a raucous crowd in Roseville, California, Representative Tom McClintock had to be escorted from the stage and away from the event by local police officers.

McClintock, who held town hall meetings during the politically volatile days of both the Tea Party and Occupy movements, told The Hill he’s never seen anything like it:

“This was something very different. After an hour, the incident commander for the Roseville Police Department advised us the situation was deteriorating and felt it necessary to get me out of the venue. That’s never happened before.”

This sentiment appeared to be echoed at Tuesday’s closed-door session. Commenting on the meeting, Republican Study Committee Chairman Mark Walker of North Carolina stated:

“The message was: One, be careful for security purposes. Watch your back. And two, be receptive. Honor the First Amendment, engage, be friendly, be nice. Because it is toxic out there right now. Even some of the guys who have been around here a lot longer than I have, have never seen it to this level.”

Sources told Politico that the potential for violence is serious enough, in fact, that the House sergeant-at-arms has asked congressional offices to report any threat. That office is also passing out manuals on best practices to keep staffers safe.

Ironically, the backlash over the possible repeal of Obamacare that Republicans are facing now is similar to the backlash faced by Democrats years back as they were trying to force Obamacare into law.

“It’s not that you run from protesters,” Representative David Reichert of Washington said during an interview after the meeting, “but if someone presents some sort of physical threat or are espousing a verbal threat that could lead to a physical threat, if you feel that you’re in danger and your staff is in danger, call 911 and leave and go out the back door.”

In other words…run. Call the cops and run.

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This article (Politicians Are Now Making Plans in Case the Public Turns Against Them Violently) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to James Holbrooks and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article to edits@theantimedia.org.

WikiLeaks Confirms Mainstream Media Takes Marching Orders from Clinton’s Army in the DNC

We’re within 48 hours of deciding who will be the next leader of the United States, and Wikileaks has just upped the ante in the high-stakes presidential election by releasing yet another batch of hacked Democratic National Committee emails. This time, Julian Assange’s organization has provided an even clearer picture of who’s in bed with the Clintons, and the revelations might surprise a lot of people.

In one email exchange between the DNC’s Mark Paustenbach (National Press Secretary & Deputy Communications Director) and the DNC’s Luis Miranda (Communications Director), Politico’s Peter Vogel appears to have passed along a story about Hillary Clinton’s fundraising campaign. While the content of Vogel’s story is unimportant, questions now arise as to why the Politico reporter felt the need to share his pre-published story with the DNC before sending it to his editor in chief.

Paustenbach wrote, “Vogel gave me his story ahead of time/before it goes to his editors as long as I didn’t share it. Let me know if you see anything that’s missing and I’ll push back.”

Was it because he was wanting permission to publish the story? Was he fact-checking with the DNC before running it? Or was he likely colluding with the DNC to paint Clinton and her campaign in a favorable light? These questions and more are now being raised about the apparently cozy relationship Vogel maintained with the DNC. Paustenbach even implied he had the potential to sway the article by using the words “push back.”

In another telling email, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer received questions to be asked of Donald Trump in an interview just a few days ahead of Trump’s foreign policy speech. Yes, the Democratic National Committee crafted the questions Blitzer was supposed to ask Trump. Many members of the DNC contributed questions to Blitzer’s interview of the billionaire Republican presidential nominee, adding credibility to critics’ claims CNN is actually the Clinton News Network. Here’s a sampling of the questions Blitzer was charged with asking. “Who helped you write the foreign policy speech you’re giving tomorrow?,”  and, “What would you do if the military refused to listen to you?” And according to yet another email, it was

Many members of the DNC contributed questions to Blitzer’s interview of the megalomaniacal billionaire Republican presidential nominee, adding credibility to critics’ claims CNN is actually the Clinton News Network.

Here’s a sampling of the questions Blitzer was charged with asking. “Who helped you write the foreign policy speech you’re giving tomorrow?”  Also, likely playing to Trump’s dictatorial instincts in an attempt to trip him up, CNN asked, “What would you do if the military refused to listen to you?”

According to yet another email, it was CNN who was reaching out to the DNC for those questions. Lauren Dillon, the DNC’s Research Director, wrote, “CNN is looking for questions.”

The latest Wikileaks email dump is trending on Twitter with the hashtag #DNCLeak2, and is taking off like a wildfire. More details may emerge as the country moves closer to Tuesday evening’s election hours.

As The Free Thought Project has reported, it used to be a conspiracy theory that a secretive project called “Operation Mockingbird” was responsible for disseminating government sponsored talking points to the media, to be used in an echo chamber and repeated to various news outlets. But as of September 2016, the project is no longer secret and no longer hidden, and it could be that the aforementioned members of the mainstream media are all members of said project. With the FBI not bringing charges against Clinton, it appears she’s now the official government-sponsored candidate to win the election of 2016, by any means necessary, including working with the mainstream media to do so.

As the Free Thought Project covers the presidential candidates and their various blunders, depending on which candidate we criticize, we are accused of supporting the ‘other guy.’ It is important to note that the Free Thought Project does not and has not endorsed any individual candidate. If you look through our archives, you will find that we have exposed dirt on all of them.