Kristen Welker interviewed President-elect Trump at Trump Tower Friday for Sunday's Meet the Press. (Scroll down with the center trackbar for details.) [NBC News]
Trump’s Laissez-Faire FTC Pick – President-elect Trump Tuesday selected Andrew Ferguson to lead the Federal Trade Commission, The Wall Street Journal reports, noting he “is likely to abandon the Biden administration’s liberal approach to policing mergers while keeping the heat on big technology companies.” Ferguson is one of two Republicans on the five-member commission and will replace Lina Kahn, described in the WSJ report as a “progressive hero who sought to flex the FTC’s enforcement muscle in ways not seen in decades.”
The one issue we have with the WSJ’s report is the assertion Ferguson will keep “the heat” on Big Tech, which is ready to move into the White House with Trump – while he frees the reins of bitcoin -- and is led by Department of Government Efficiency chiefs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
Food fight … Speaking of FTC chair Kahn, she may count as a departing victory denial of the $24.6 billion merger of the Kroger and the Albertsons grocery store chains by a federal judge and a King County, Washington, judge. The FTC argued the merger would have raised prices by eliminating competition, and weaken union bargaining power, Forbes reports.
The two grocery chains had argued their bigger competition comes from Walmart, Costco and Amazon. Merger plans would have sold off a combined 579 stores nationwide to “preserve competition.”
The two had spent $1 billion on the merger, which could have been used to lower food prices, Capitalist Tool Forbes notes.
Meanwhile … Albertsons now is suing Kroger for failing to do enough to secure regulatory approval, The Associated Press reports.
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Prosaic Injustice – A federal bankruptcy judge late Tuesday rejected The Onion owner Global Tetrahedron’s winning bid for Alex Jones’ Infowars, NPR reports, saying the sealed-bid auction lacked transparency and left money on the table for Sandy Hook shooting victims who are owed $1.4 billion from their defamation case against Jones. Judge Christopher Lopez’s ruling came just four days before the 12th anniversary of the Sandy Hook, which took the lives 26 children and educators in Newtown, Connecticut.
Far-right conspiracy theorist Jones made claims the shooting was a “staged” TV event, which resulted in harassment of the victims’ families by Infowars followers. Global Tetrahedron had plans to re-establish Infowars in January as a sort of Colbert Report-style parody of right-wing conspiracies.
Global Tetrahedron CEO Ben Collins said in a message to NPR’s Morning Edition that The Onion’s parent “will continue to work to purchase Infowars.”
Global Tetrahedron’s $1.75-million bid had the backing of Everytown for Gun Safety, and was valued at $7 million, including Sandy Hook victims’ families who backed Global Tetrahedron’s bid with potential earnings from the defamation judgment against Jones toward the purchase.
The losing bid of $3.5 million was by First United American Companies, which is connected to Alex Jones.
“We can celebrate the judge doing the right thing,” Jones said late Tuesday on Infowars.
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TUESDAY 12/10/24
Netanyahu on Trial – Eight years after police began investigating Israel’s longest-serving prime minister and four year after his trial began, Benjamin Netanyahu took to the stand Tuesday in Tel Aviv facing charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. Meanwhile, Netanyahu continues to oversee Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, occupation of Southern Lebanon and recent air strikes against Syria, The New York Times notes.
On the stand, Netanyahu minimized cases against him and focused on his legacy as Israel’s protector, according to Haaretz. The prime minister has claimed the trial is a “deep state witch hunt” designed to topple Israel’s right-wing rule.
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Hegseth Rising – President-elect Trump’s allies in the Senate appear more amenable to confirming Pete Hegseth as Defense secretary, Politico reports, including Sen. Joni Ernst, who appeared “more open” to the nominee after meeting with Hegseth a second time Monday, though the Iowa Republican did not explicitly say she’s support him. The notion of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as a backup nominee apparently is off, as Trump has employed his signature modus operandi of making life “extremely uncomfortable” for “anyone who dares oppose him,” according to Politico’s report.
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Bad News for Ukraine – The House Republican Steering Committee Monday recommended Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), an opponent of US aid to Ukraine in its war with Russia, to be the next chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, CQ Roll Call reports. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) made the surprise announcement. Roll Call describes Mast as an Army veteran “with a sharp tongue and grievance politics.”
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MONDAY 12/9/24
Syria Frees Itself – … with help. The US maintains about 900 troops in Syria and struck Islamic State targets there, after the mostly peaceful and orderly ouster of brutal dictator Bashar al-Assad Saturday, NPR’s Morning Edition reports. President Biden said the US will maintain its presence to protect Syrian citizens as they try to put together a new government. That leaves open the question of whether the US will continue that in-country support after January 20.
The issue here is that the liberating force that first took over Aleppo last week, then moved on to the capital, Damascus, from where Assad has since escaped to Moscow, was Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which the US still considers a terrorist group. HTS disavowed ties to al-Qaida in 2016.
Assad’s brutal regime, which turned back the Arab Spring attempted peaceful revolution of 2011 and whose army killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in 2013 according to the UN, was propped up by Iran and Russia and lost much of that support in recent months as Iran fought Israel via Hezbollah and Russia invaded Ukraine.
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Habba to White House – President-elect Trump Sunday named his personal attorney and “fierce media surrogate,” Alina Habba to be White House counsel, The Hill reports. No doubt her many television appearances in defense of Trump over the summer did not hurt. Habba represented Trump in New York Attorney Gen. Letitia James’ civil fraud trial, which resulted in a nearly half-billion-dollar judgment against Trump (which now may be reversed) and in former advice columnist E. Jean Carroll’s defamation and sexual assault lawsuit.
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Trump’s Retribution Coming? – That, apparently, is up to President-elect Trump’s nominee for attorney general, Pam Bondi, and his nominee for FBI director, Kash Patel. Asked by NBC News’ Kristen Felker in her exclusive interview on Meet the Press whether Trump would direct the Justice Department and FBI to punish members of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (a long title we may never forget), the once and future president said; “No, not at all. I think they’ll have to look at that, but I’m not going to -- I’m going to focus on drill, baby, drill.”
So, there’s that oil production promise in the name of lower fuel prices. Trump told Welker he planned to make a lot of economic moves on day one, and that he still finds “tariff” the most beautiful English word, though he is uncertain whether he could “guarantee American families won’t pay more” as a result of them.
Trump followed that up by getting all existential about it, adding “I can’t guarantee anything. I can’t guarantee tomorrow.”
He said he intends to end birthright citizenship and that he may deport legal US citizens who have illegal family members. Also, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary-elect will investigate the discredited association between vaccines and autism.
Trump will “most likely pardon” 1/6 Capitol rioters. He won’t fire Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell (whose term is up in 2026, so this is simply not an economic priority so long as the Fed doesn’t significantly increase interest rates). And Trump believes Pete Hegseth can be confirmed as Defense secretary.
Kinzinger responds … “If Donald wants to pursue this vindictive fantasy, I say bring it on,” ex-Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), one of two members of the House Select Committee on the January 6th Capitol Attack writes in his Substack newsletter. “I’m not intimidated by a man whose actions on January 6th showed a cowardly disregard for democracy and the rule of law.”
--Contributed and edited by Todd Lassa