News of the World

[kyonides]

‘The Only Crime That I’ve Committed
Is to Fiercely Defend Our Nation,’
Trump Says After Arraignment

Former President Donald Trump warned that the United States had sunk to the level of the “old Soviet Union” during a speech given from the ballroom of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach on April 4, hours after pleading not guilty to felony charges brought New York prosecutors.

“I never thought anything like this could happen in America,” Trump said.
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“The only crime that I’ve committed is to fiercely defend our nation,” he said.

Bragg’s 34-count indictment, made public at an arraignment on Tuesday, charges Trump with falsifying business records. Every count is a felony, carrying up to a four-year sentence.
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In his speech, Trump maintained his innocence, saying Bragg has “no case” against him.

“As it turns out, everyone who has looked at this case, including RINOs, and even hardcore Democrats, says there is no crime and it should never have been brought. Never have been brought.”

“It’s an insult to our country,” he added, “and the world is already laughing at us.”

He also alleged Bragg was a “criminal,” citing leaks of the indictment ahead of the arrangement.

“At a minimum, he should resign,” Trump said, drawing perhaps the loudest cheers during the former president’s 20-minute speech.
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Trump echoed this view, describing Bragg’s case, along with several other criminal and civil investigations against him, as “massive election interference at a scale never seen before in our country.”
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“From the beginning, the Democrats spied on my campaign,” he said.

He also referred to the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story prior to the 2020 presidential election, saying that it could have made a difference in that race.
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He also described the judge in his current case, Juan Merchan, as a “Trump-hating judge.” He noted that Merchan’s daughter worked on Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign.

Open Editorial

Well, he's sort of right when he says his opponents hate nationalism. I mean, they've been working really hard to destabilize the US like never before ever since the Great Depression. Trump did try negotiating a deal with China that the Chinese proved to be useless because they never reached the goals stated on it because they never intended to do so in the first place.

When he denounced China for it, many European countries started treating him like a lunatic. When Trump demanded Germany and other European countries to meet their NATO obligations, Germans hated him so much that never stopped criticizing him day and night. They got alarmed when he announced that he'd move some troops and weaponry to Poland. Of course, they didn't want to admit that Merkel kind of got along with Putin and the fact she defended the continual use of the NordStream pipelines.

And guess what? NATO had to station troops in Poland at the end of the day.  So why was Trump's plan so bad that Germany couldn't stand him anymore? Did they really had to get involved in the Ukraine War first to finally realize that the movilization was inevitable?

Was everything Trump did that great? No, not really. For instance, he never pardoned some of the January 6 protestors that hadn't commit any felony besides entering the Capitol that day. I gotta say that not all of them were arrested immediately, still, some of them had already appeared before a judge in the last days of his administration.

I disagree with the billions he spent trying to help people during the viral crisis, mainly because he never realized that some of them had already received money from their own state governments; especially the state of California that has spent billions and favored even petty criminals in the penitentiary system. As a consequence, some people simply refuse to find a new job because they're spending their lives at home, enjoying the benefits without working hard at all. Even in the East Coast you can find schools wasting money by paying raises to administrative staff and teachers that are underperforming, based on their own students' grades as proven by the corresponding US institutions.

At least he tried hard to get rid of "Fraudci" unlike Biden.

Trump Critics Worried About DA’s Charges: ‘Weaker Than I Thought’

Former White House adviser John Bolton said the charges against former President Donald Trump were “even weaker than I thought” during an interview on Tuesday, coming after the Manhattan District Attorney’s office charged the former commander-in-chief with 34 counts of falsifying business records, as other critics of Trump claimed the case is a “disappointment.”

“Speaking as someone who very strongly does not want Donald Trump to get the Republican presidential nomination, I’m extraordinarily distressed by this document,” Bolton told CNN Tuesday. “I think this is even weaker than I feared it would be.”

Bolton, a graduate of Yale Law School, said he fears the case could “easily” get dismissed before it even makes it to a jury trial. Bolton served under both Trump and former President George W. Bush in different capacities.

“And I just what I understood the District Attorney to say that he thinks there’s a New York election law involved here. All I can say is the Federal Election Campaign Act [of 1971] absolutely preempts any state or local law to the contrary. How could it be otherwise? You’ve got one law governing corporate finance and a presidential election at the federal level. You’re gonna have 50 state laws interfering with it, so he’s just wrong on the applicability of the New York statute,” Bolton said Tuesday.

The unsealed indictment said that Trump allegedly devised a scheme with his lawyer and the parent company of the tabloid National Enquirer to suppress stories that could have damaged Trump before the election in 2016. The former president has pleaded not guilty and later said at his Mar-a-Lago residence that it’s a Democrat-led bid to politically harm him ahead of the 2024 election.

El Salvador President Criticizes Trump Indictment
Saying It Undermines US Foreign Policy

El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, criticized the indictment of former President Donald Trump, arguing that it would be hypocritical for the United States to promote democracy abroad at this time.

“Think what you want about former President Trump and the reasons he’s being indicted,” Bukele said in a Tuesday tweet.

“But just imagine if this happened in any other country, where a government arrested the main opposition candidate. The United States ability to use ‘democracy’ as foreign policy is gone.”
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Trump Jr. also shared a Breitbart article that the daughter of Judge Juan Merchan, the judge overseeing Trump’s case, had worked on the Biden–Harris campaign in 2019.

Donald has also painted himself into a corner when it comes to Michael Cohen’s testimony because the recording corroborates that intent. Plus, there are 34 counts altogether—this is deadly serious.

Leonardo DiCaprio Says CCP-Linked Financier
Planned to Donate $30 Million to Obama’s 2012 Campaign

Malaysian financier Jho Low planned to donate up to $30 million to help former U.S. President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, according to actor Leonardo DiCaprio.

DiCaprio recounted a discussion he had with Low, whose given name is Low Taek Jho, while testifying during a federal trial in Washington.

“It was a casual conversation about what party he was in support of,” DiCaprio said, telling jurors that Low said he planned on giving “a significant donation” to the Democrat Party that was “somewhere to the tune of $20 to 30 million.”

“I basically said, ‘Wow, that’s a lot of money,'” DiCaprio added.

DiCaprio took the witness stand during the trial of Prakazrel “Pras” Michel of the Fugees hip-hop group, who, according to an indictment, conspired with Low to funnel money from the foreigner to Obama’s 2012 campaign.

Prosecutors say Michel received $21 million from Low and funneled the money to political committees through a series of straw donors, including various companies and people associated with the musician.

Low and Michel enacted the conspiracy “to gain access to, and influence with,” Obama, the U.S. Department of Justice has said. In one instance, an associate of Michel forwarded an email from Michel asking for financial contributions to Obama and told Low that funding would “guarantee you a maximum 15 minutes audience” with Obama.

Low’s father met and took pictures with Obama at one event in Washington but Low did not meet with the president, according to charging documents.

Michel also allegedly attempted to conceal the funding, which ran afoul of U.S. law that makes it illegal for foreigners to donate directly or indirectly to U.S. campaigns, and allegedly conspired with others to pressure the Trump administration to drop its probe of Low.

Michel has denied the allegations.

China ‘Encouraging Proliferation’ of Nukes in Iran, North Korea

“It’s rapidly increasing not only its nuclear warheads, but also its delivery systems and improving their effectiveness.”

The China regime’s efforts to expand and enhance its nuclear arsenal have come under scrutiny since November of 2021, following the publication of a Pentagon report that warned the regime would likely have 1,000 nuclear weapons by 2030.

That report also stated that China will have at least 200 land-based nuclear missiles capable of hitting the United States by 2026.

Weitz said that the CCP refuses to engage in nonproliferation discussions, however, no matter how harsh the blowback from the United States and other powers throughout the world.
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To that end, the regime also appears particularly interested in fielding nuclear capabilities that can target the U.S. homeland and its forces in the Indo-Pacific.

Indeed, the regime now fields more long-range, nuclear-capable missile launchers than the United States, according to Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), who acknowledged in February that China leapfrogged the United States in the number of its active intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launchers.
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[Member of the Hudson Institute Richard] Weitz noted that the CCP is now working to counter international sanctions against Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programs, despite previously supporting such actions. Likewise, he said, the CCP is obfuscating what attempts it is taking to prevent non-state actors from obtaining nuclear weapons.
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Chinese communist entities have also “exploited Iran’s alienation from the West to expand their ties with the Iranian government,” Weitz added, saying that the CCP is possibly assisting the regime’s nuclear program.

As Regional Tensions Mount, Iran Reports 2nd Drone Strike in Isfahan

Iranian air-defense systems have thwarted a drone strike on a military facility in the central city of Isfahan, Iran’s Tasnim News Agency reported on April 5.

According to Tasnim, the attack, which targeted the city’s Amir al-Momenin military complex, failed to cause any damage.

Speaking to reporters shortly afterward, Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi said the incident was still “under investigation.”
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On April 3, Tehran vowed to take “decisive measures” to protect its assets and personnel deployed in Syria.

In a letter to the UN Security Council, Amir Saeid Iravani, Iran’s permanent UN envoy, said Iran would “take decisive measures to protect its forces, interests, and facilities from any threat or unlawful act perpetrated by the United States or others.”

He also stressed that Iranian forces in Syria were there at the latter’s invitation, and were therefore “totally legal.”

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On April 4, Tehran appointed an ambassador to the United Arab Emirates for the first time since 2016. 

The next day, it announced that Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian would meet his Saudi counterpart later this week in Beijing—the first such meeting in more than seven years.

Johnson & Johnson Proposes $8.9 Billion to Settle Talc Cancer Claims

Pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson has proposed an $8.9 billion settlement to resolve thousands of lawsuits accusing the company of selling baby powder and other talc products that caused cancer.

The pharma firm shared details of the proposal in an April 4 statement announcing that it has re-filed its subsidiary LTL Management LLC for voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, a move it said could “equitably and efficiently resolve all claims arising from cosmetic talc litigation against the Company and its affiliates in North America.”

Johnson & Johnson created the LTL subsidiary in October to house its liabilities stemming from more than 40,000 lawsuits alleging the company’s baby powder and other talc products contained traces of asbestos, which has been blamed for causing ovarian cancer and mesothelioma, a deadly cancer that affects the lining of the lungs.

The LTL immediately filed for bankruptcy.

However, the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia in January dismissed the bankruptcy, ruling that neither J&J nor the subsidiary had a legitimate need for bankruptcy protection because they were not in “financial distress.”