Trump picks Massad Boulos to serve as adviser on Arab, Middle Eastern affairs

 U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday said Lebanese American businessman Massad Boulos would serve as senior adviser on Arab and Middle Eastern affairs.

Trump made the announcement on Truth Social. Boulos, the father-in-law of Trump's daughter Tiffany, met repeatedly with Arab American and Muslim leaders during the election campaign.

It was the second time in recent days that Trump chose the father-in-law of one of his children to serve in his administration.

On Saturday, Trump said that he had picked his son-in-law Jared Kushner's father, real estate mogul Charles Kushner, to serve as U.S. ambassador to France.

In recent months, Boulos campaigned for Trump to drum up Lebanese and Arab American support, even as the U.S.-backed Israel's military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Boulos has powerful roots in both countries.

His father and grandfather were both figures in Lebanese politics and his father-in-law was a key funder of the Free Patriotic Movement, a Christian party aligned with Hezbollah.

His son Michael and Tiffany Trump were married in an elaborate ceremony at Trump's Florida Mar-a-Lago Club in November 2022, after getting engaged in the White House Rose Garden during Trump's first term.

Boulos has been in touch with interlocutors across Lebanon's multipolar political world, three sources who spoke to him in recent months say, a rare feat in Lebanon, where decades-old rivalries between factions run deep.

Particularly notable is his ability to maintain relations with Hezbollah, they say. The Iranian-backed Shi'ite Muslim party has a large number of seats in Lebanon's parliament and ministers in the government.

Boulos is a friend of Suleiman Frangieh, a Christian ally of Hezbollah and its candidate for Lebanon's presidency. He is also in touch with the Lebanese Forces Party, a vehemently anti-Hezbollah Christian faction, the sources say, and has ties to independent lawmakers.

Aron Lund, fellow at the Century Foundation think tank, said Boulos was well placed to influence Trump's Middle East policy after playing a small but significant role in expanding Trump's appeal to Arab American and Muslim voters during the campaign.

"Boulos' Lebanese political past gives no real indication of a geostrategic or even national vision, but it demonstrates ambition and a set of political allies that will stand out in Trump's circle like a sore thumb," Lund wrote.

MICHIGAN WIN

Boulos, a billionaire with extensive business ties in Nigeria, was born in Lebanon, but moved to Texas as a teenager, where he attended the University of Houston, earned a law degree and became a U.S. citizen.

His son and Trump's daughter, whose mother is Trump's second wife Marla Maples, met on the Greek island of Mykonos, at actor Lindsay Lohan's club, People Magazine reported in 2022.

Trump's election win in Michigan came in part because of Boulos' help flipping some of the 300,000 Arab Americans and Muslims in the state who overwhelmingly supported Biden in 2020 but opposed Biden's policies in Israel, Gaza and Lebanon, Trump campaign officials and supporters told Reuters.

"Boulos played a big role in the outreach to Muslim voters," said Rabiul Chowdhury, co-founder of Muslims for Trump.

Beginning in September, the Trump campaign held weekly meetings in person and via Zoom with dozens of Arab American and Muslim civic leaders and business executives.

Boulos spent weeks on the ground in Michigan, Pennsylvania and other states with big Arab American and Muslim populations, assuring audiences in private lunches and dinners that tapped his own connections to Lebanese American businessmen that Trump was committed to ending the wars in the Middle East.

The Trump campaign spent tens of millions of dollars on the effort to mobilize Arab American and Muslim voters, Boulos told Reuters in an interview shortly after the election.

Trump won endorsements from Muslim imams and the Muslim mayor of Hamtramck, another town near Detroit with a large Arab American population, as well as the large Bangladeshi community, and courted Iraqi Americans, Albanian Americans and others.

While the events on the ground in Lebanon played a factor, the economy did too. And conservative Arabs and Muslims were concerned about what they saw as the Democrats' "far left ideology," including support of transgender rights, Boulos said.

Boulos met with members of the 150,000 strong Albanian community in Michigan.

POLITICAL AMBITIONS?

The new role could offer Boulos the kind of political clout he could not achieve in Lebanon. He had a brief run for Lebanon's parliament in 2018 alongside pro-Hezbollah candidates, but since then he has not consistently aligned himself with any particular party, sources in Lebanon said.He hails from a Greek Orthodox family. In Lebanon's sectarian powersharing system, that would cap his chances at a senior role in government at the level of deputy speaker of parliament. The post of president - the highest Christian role in the country - is reserved for Maronite Catholics.

While he used to travel to Lebanon frequently, he has not visited in the last four years, one of the sources said.

Some people in Lebanon were hopeful about the prospects of having a friendly face in Trump's inner circle even before the announcement on Sunday.

"It's a nice thing - and hopefully he will work for Lebanon. And Trump maybe is of the type who makes a promise and could possibly be more loyal to it than others," said Hamdi Hawallah, a Lebanese man in his late 70s.

"So we're optimistic about him. These days we hold on to a piece of driftwood just to be optimistic."

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/trump-says-massad-boulos-serve-160240036.html

Trump nominates Florida sheriff Chad Chronister to lead the DEA

 President-elect Trump on Saturday nominated Florida sheriff Chad Chronister as administrator of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).

"For over 32 years, Sheriff Chad Chronister has served the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office, and received countless commendations and awards for keeping his community SAFE," Trump wrote in his announcement moments before he nominated Kash Patel to replace Christopher Wray as FBI director. 

"A proud graduate of the FBI National Academy's 260th Session, Chad is Co-Chairman of the Regional Domestic Security Task Force for Region IV Tampa Bay, Council Member of the Florida Attorney General’s Statewide Council on Human Trafficking, Chairman of the Criminal Justice Sub-Committee, Vice-Chairman of the Hillsborough County Public Safety Coordinating Council, and Vice-Chairman of the Hillsborough County Public Schools Citizen Oversight Committee," he continued.

President-elect Trump on Saturday announced he was nominating Hillsborough County Florida Sheriff Chad Chronister as administrator of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). (Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office)

Trump said Chronister would work with Pam Bondi, his nominee for attorney general after Rep. Matt Gaetz withdrew as nominee, to "secure the Border, stop the flow of Fentanyl, and other Illegal Drugs, across the Southern Border, and SAVE LIVES."

Congratulations to Chad, his wife Nikki, and two wonderful sons!" he added. 

Chronister called his nomination the "honor of a lifetime" in a statement posted to social media. 

"I am deeply humbled by this opportunity to serve our nation," he added. 

Chronister was appointed by then-Florida Gov. Rick Scott to head the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office in 2017, and has been re-elected twice. 

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-nominates-florida-sheriff-chad-chronister-lead-dea

The MAGA Majority

 This year’s election should have dispelled any and every doubt as to America’s favored (even only) political movement: MAGA. The logic of this, which has been countervailed by legacy news outfits like CNN and the New York Times for years now, wanting the public to believe MAGA is “far right” or “fringe,” should have always been intuitive. Make America Great Again, put simply, is rooted in common sense. No quintessentially American movement would be anything but MAGA. This is because the movement has always represented a revival of American values; of the rule of law; of due process; of impartial and fair justice. It has been oriented around the American Dream – focusing on American business, American industry, and American prosperity. This is not anathema to our principles – it represents a wholehearted embrace of them.

No nation in history, besides one with a suicide pact, would ever prioritize the interests of the foreigner over that of the home-ground citizen. That is such a simple, self-evident truth that it needs no further explanation. Nations are like families. They require careful cultivation and attention over years, even generations, in order to bear plentiful fruits. Caring for one’s own over the foreigner or outsider is not immoral in any sense of the term, it is perfectly natural. This is not simply an American principle, either. A universal law for all nations – indeed, in order to have a nation in any meaningful sense to begin with – requires agreement on a common morality, a sense of national identity, and a healthy and vibrant culture that bonds disparate peoples together under one roof. Political reality necessitates that national identities do not work without strict borders, accompanied by a rigid vetting process to select only those peoples naturally receptive to liberty and self-governance. That is the American tradition.

Modern people far too often take for granted our constitutional birthright of liberty. In the vast scheme of history, liberty is not something that comes natural to most peoples or times. That inexorable fact is what makes America exceptional. We are a liberty-bearing and loving people and have been able to pass that down one generation after the next. We are that partly because it is considered a fundamental value enshrined in our constitutional form of government. Separately, but no less important, is the fact that in previous generations we knew the toils and labors – often firsthand – required to preserve liberty, and how precious and fleeting a republican government that entrusted its people to govern themselves by and large was. In fact, the American project was the first attempt at practicing republican government on a grand scale since ancient Rome. The reasons our Founding Fathers wrote under pen names like “Publius” and “Cincinnatus” was to pay direct homage to that ancient heritage, and to underscore how unique constitutional government was in modern times.

Today’s Americans have largely forgotten their ancient heritage – and crucially how important and rare a small-r republican form of government is. Our clownshow of a Congress, replete with abominable individuals like Nancy Pelosi, AOC, and Jamie Crockett (each one worse than the previous) who our Founding Fathers never would have dreamed occupying the halls of power, in part detracts from our sacred birthright – and disillusions those who might otherwise take interest in and preserve – that venerable heritage from taking meaningful action towards its restoration. This is why as a country we came so close to losing it all – and by the grace of God were given perhaps our last chance ever at revitalizing our constitutional way of life with Donald Trump’s resounding victory a few short weeks ago.

The mandate he received (and make no mistake about it, mandate it was) is encouraging, for it evidences that America’s dynamic spirit has not been totally vanquished. There are still remnants of a will to survive, on a civilizational level, even though we veered unnervingly close to all-out collapse. Now the work begins.

Though we should make good use of the holiday season to rest and reflect on what we have accomplished, hundreds – if not thousands – of J6 demonstrators remain political hostages to a despotic government. Many still languish behind bars, away from their families, having missed seeing their children grow up over their formative years of youth and adolescence, all because the current regime would prefer to scapegoat these people merely to consolidate their power and permanently vanquish political dissent. What has been done to the J6 political prisoners these last four years is a deep and tragically still-abiding evil. It is not enough to simply release or pardon these hostages, who have been persecuted for simply exercising an inalienable right, enshrined and guaranteed under the First Amendment, to peaceably assemble and speak out against injustice committed by a regime deeply in the throes of tyranny. These people deserve to be made whole again. That starts with a formal apology from their government but must continue with so much more. It is not an overstatement to say that the injustices committed against the J6 political hostages amount to the most egregious violation of civil rights exacted by the federal government against any discrete minority group in American history, given the unrelenting concentration of the firepower directed against them, and the outsized obsession among our political elites to punish them.

From the relentless gaslighting to demonize them by the media, to the lives destroyed through arbitrary, capricious, and bankrupting litigation, to the countless incarcerations – and complete disregard for their rights along the way – these people have been tortured nonstop by their government over the last four harrowing years. The evils committed are unspeakable and have lifelong consequences for the defendants, their families, and the institutions that persecuted them. Truly, should we ever come to our senses as a country, this age will be seen by future historians as one of the darkest in modern history, and certainly one of the most violative of human rights — and outright evil — observed in any era in American history.

One of the many aspects of our birthright that our people, and that includes most conservatives, must reclaim is a reverence for justice, in its true and original formulation, and specifically how justice ought to be administered by political institutions throughout society. Justice is an aspect of virtue and must be administered in that light. Most lawyers, including, tragically, far too many self-identified conservative attorneys and judges, fail to demonstrate a deep-rooted understanding of justice in their words and practice. This involves an appreciation of civic morality, and from there, the rightful persecution of crimes. At the same time, true justice entails proper administration of judicial procedure. This means how certain acts deemed intolerable by society ought to be prosecuted – efficient and timely (albeit fair), so as to not impugn the legitimacy of the institutions which prosecute them, nor the dignity of man.

That final precept involves a reminder, ultimately, of where man’s essential dignity comes from. That in turn requires us to keep our sights on Biblical morality. All men are made in the image and likeness of God. That is the cornerstone of justice – both its ethical structure and administration. Men are only permitted to administer justice against wrongs because they are distinct from the beasts of nature and made in the light of God’s infinite wisdom and grace. At the same time, men are not gods themselves, and thus must always remember their essential limits, downstream of which implicates the fundamentally limited nature of justice and guides its practical administration. In short, this is a roundabout way of saying that the kernel of justice is humility – and with that humility, sufficient perspective into man’s fundamental duties and inherent limits. The virtuous judge should never fear administering punitive justice when it is required, especially against those who would otherwise lay waste to justice altogether. At the same time, he must be attentive to its guardrails, unlike the judges which have administered the J6 trials, and ensure that the punishment always matches the crime – and that the crime is a legitimate one, not one based on political malice or invective.

Liberty cannot exist without justice – nor can constitutional government, at least in the American form. Donald Trump’s political mandate was a reminder that the majority of American people still cherish these things and want this next administration to save them because they recognize their indispensability to republican government. If America forfeits the administration of justice to tyrants, it will forgo its very identity – and continue down the road to not just serfdom but oblivion. That has been the standard these last four years. Now presents a wakeup call. This is an inflection point in history that requires those who have been given political authority to make good on their countrymen’s plea – so that liberty might be saved, not just for us over these next four years, but for future generations as well.

https://amac.us/newsline/economy/the-maga-majority/

The Establishment Takeover of Bitcoin Creates New List of Risks

 

• ‘Bitcoin OGs no longer have control,’ says longtime investor
• ETFs now hold about as many Bitcoin as Satoshi’s wallet

Bitcoin exchange-traded funds have been such a smashing success in the US that they now hold more than 1 million of the tokens, or about 5% of what currently exists. That’s in the same ballpark as the amounts that have long been frozen in the wallet of the market’s original whale: The cryptocurrency’s anonymous and enigmatic creator known as Satoshi Nakamoto.

Another buyer of equal size potentially may arrive on the scene, as a Senate ally of Donald Trump’s pushes to pass a bill that would require the Federal Reserve to sell some of its gold in order to fund the purchase of 1 million Bitcoin for a US government stockpile. In the corporate world, Michael Saylor’s software company MicroStrategy is sitting on about $38 billion worth of the tokens and has been tapping capital markets to buy more.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-12-01/the-establishment-takeover-of-bitcoin-creates-new-list-of-risks

Vessel "Attack" Reported Near Critical Sea Chokepoint As Regional War Risks In Mideast Flare Up

 World War III may not erupt all at once. Instead, multiple regional conflicts could escalate into full-blown wars—an alarming trend already unfolding from Ukraine to the Middle East.

In recent days, the Syrian proxy war, which never truly ended, has flared up again. Armed jihadist insurgents led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) have captured central and northwestern parts of Aleppo, Syria's largest northern city.

On Sunday morning, the British military's United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Center (UKMTO), which monitors Middle Eastern waterways, reported an "attack" on a vessel approximately 80 nautical miles south of Aden, Yemen.

UKMTO stated that government authorities are investigating the incident but did not specify whether Iran-backed Houthis were involved. Furthermore, no details were provided regarding the type of vessel attacked.

X accounts focused on open-source intelligence show several fixed-wing US or allied military assets operating in the skies near the incident area. Whether these aircraft are part of the investigation into the vessel incident or were coincidentally in the region conducting intelligence-gathering missions ahead of allied strikes in Yemen remains unclear.

In prediction markets, the rising risks of regional wars have sparked volatility in these Polymarket contracts.

*Developing... 

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/vessel-attack-reported-near-critical-maritime-chokepoint-regional-war-risks-middle

Stowaway who evaded JFK security to stay in France after disturbance on return flight

 The woman who evaded multiple security checkpoints at JFK Airport to board a Paris-bound flight is now stuck in France — and it’s unclear when the stowaway will be brought back to New York to face charges, according to law enforcement sources.

The sneaky flyer was supposed to arrive at JFK Saturday afternoon but was instead kicked off the would-be return flight following a disruptive outburst in Paris, sources told The Post.

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The female stowaway caught a free flight from New York to Paris before getting caught in the bathroom.REUTERS

Upon her return to the Big Apple, the woman is expected to be arrested and charged by multiple law enforcement agencies after the headline-making Tuesday incident, according to sources.

She will remain in custody at Charles de Gaulle Airport until a new flight is set.

The stowaway, a 57-year-old with a Russian passport and a US green card, eluded multiple layers of security without a boarding pass or identification before sneaking aboard a Delta flight to the City of Lights during one of the busiest travel days of the year.

Multiple investigations are currently ongoing to determine how the passenger was able to evade not only the Transportation Security Administration’s passport and boarding pass screeners, but also Delta’s boarding checkpoint at the airline’s terminal without raising any alarms, sources said.

While the TSA noted the individual “did not pose a threat to civil aviation,” Delta Airlines, along with law enforcement, is conducting an investigation into the security breach.

“Nothing is of greater importance than matters of safety and security,” a Delta spokesperson said in a statement.

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The sneaky flyer was found when flight attendants noticed her jetting between in-flight lavatories.robjacksonnyc/Instagram

“That’s why Delta is conducting an exhaustive investigation of what may have occurred and will work collaboratively with other aviation stakeholders and law enforcement to that end.”

Flight attendants were tipped off when they noticed the vagabond passenger rotating between bathrooms during the fully booked flight, according to ticket passengers who witnessed the troubling incident.

“We somehow flew all the way from New York to Paris with a stowaway,” a first-class passenger documented on Instagram.

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A first-class passenger documented the shocking discovery on Instagram.robjacksonnyc/Instagram

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The mystery stowaway will be sent back to the US on a Delta flight, where she is expected to be arrested and charged by multiple law enforcement agencies.AFP via Getty Images

“This woman somehow got on the plane and hid in a lavatory during takeoff and wasn’t detected until we were about to land.”

Federal authorities launched an investigation after the aircraft landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport.

The mystery woman was detained by French authorities and denied entry to Paris after she begged for — and was denied — asylum, sources said.

Port Authority officers are expected to arrest her when she returns to New York for theft of services, plus a host of other charges.

She will also face federal charges that are to be determined, according to sources.

https://nypost.com/2024/11/30/us-news/female-stowaway-that-evaded-jfk-airport-security-will-remain-in-france-after-causing-disturbance-on-return-flight-to-us-sources/