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We opened today's FiveStac`k watching black smoke billow from the Sistine Chapel, marking the first vote in the Papal conclave with no new Pope selected. But don't worry – we quickly pivoted to the stories that actually matter.
5️⃣ CARNEY OUTPLAYS TRUMP: CANADA'S PM DELIVERS MASTERCLASS IN OVAL OFFICE
Mark Carney stood in the Oval Office yesterday and completely outmaneuvered Donald Trump while Trump had no idea it was happening. As we discussed on today's show: "Mark Carney destroyed Donald Trump in world record time yesterday. He was so efficient... absolute master class."
The brilliance was in Carney's opening statement, which we analyzed: "Thank you for your hospitality and above all, for your leadership. You're a transformational president..." Notice he didn't say "excellent leadership" or that the transformation was positive. Pure tactical ambiguity that sailed over Trump's head.
When Trump claimed America does little business with Canada, Carney countered: "If I may, we're your biggest client. $600 billion worth of trade." As we noted on air: "There are a lot of reporters who were like, 'Did we just watch the most masterful performance in the Oval Office or in Canadian diplomatic history?' And the answer is yes."
4️⃣ CRYPTO CONSPIRACY: TRUMP'S TRILLION-DOLLAR ENDGAME
As we analyzed on today's FiveStack: "The crypto thing, getting a ton of pub... is telling what's going on inside the Trump world. I think it's falling apart." We detailed the key players: "His inner circle... Zach Whitkoff, Eric Trump... Justin Sun, who has been convicted of SEC fraud, and his platforms have been used by Hamas companies and Hezbollah to fund terrorist activity."
We uncovered how "the money that he has already taken in... just on transaction fees alone, between $600 and $700 million for the Trump family." It's not just enrichment but potential control: "When crypto becomes the US dollar disappears, they can slide it into the Treasury. They just have to pump it up a little bit."
This scheme connects to the "PayPal mafia" including Peter Thiel, David Sachs, and Elon Musk, who we noted may have deeper ties: "There is word out there, and I tend to believe it... it's highly possible that Elon Musk is that guy [Satoshi Nakamoto]."
3️⃣ KARI LAKE REPLACES VOA WITH OAN AS 1,300 JOURNALISTS REMAIN SIDELINED
As we broke down on today's show: "Kari Lake is now running Voice of America, and she has decided to strike a deal with another news network to run their programming on VOA. It's so ridiculous. She is now allowing One America News, the most right-wing, the most extremist propaganda service in the entire world."
VOA has been offline for the first time since its 1942 founding. It's the equivalent of "firing all the teachers at a real school and saying, listen, there's not enough teachers here... So what we're going to do is we're going to bring in a whole bunch of people from prison."
This is "very, very Russian. This is very Chinese. This is very North Korean" as we discussed - destroying a legendary institution and replacing professional journalists with "dollar store versions of journalists that are there to grind out narratives for the alt right."
Kari Lake Hostile Takeover of VOA: Brings in OAN
America's global storyteller is being silenced and replaced by a propaganda machine. Kari Lake, failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate and newly appointed senior adviser to the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), has engineered what may be the most brazen media capture in modern American history.
2️⃣ TRUMP TURNS BORDER INTO "MILITARY ZONE," TRAPPING MIGRANTS WITH TRIPLE CHARGES
The Trump administration has transformed a 60-foot strip along New Mexico's border into a "national defense area." As we explored today: "What Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump have done on the southern border is extremely serious... they've now created this national defense area."
Over 200 migrants now face triple criminal charges with penalties up to a year in jail with $100,000 fines. We highlighted defense attorney Kenneth Del Valle's question: "What if they declared your backyard was a military base tomorrow, and from one day to the next you'd have soldiers there?"
The real concern goes beyond immigration enforcement: "The American military is not allowed to operate in the United States of America unless they're on a military base," but now they've created a dangerous precedent for deploying troops on civilian land.
1️⃣ BIDEN'S CANDID CONFESSION: "IT WAS HARD TO WALK AWAY"
Today we analyzed Joe Biden's revealing BBC interview, playing this key clip where he admitted: "I don't think it would have mattered. We left at a time when we had a good candidate... Things moved so quickly that it made it difficult to walk away."
While acknowledging "by every major metric, he was a top five president in presidential history" who "handed an economy to Donald Trump that was the envy of the world," we noted the physical reality: "But Joe Biden was too old to run for president."
The interview revealed a man coming to terms with a painful decision: "I'm really happy to hear him say in an honest moment that it was really difficult." As we discussed, Biden "should have done it" but "it wasn't very kind" how it happened after "that unbelievably disastrous debate."
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