Authored by Jacob Burg via The Epoch Times,

Jacob Hardy was happy to purchase former President Donald Trump’s new $399 gold-colored sneakers.

The former president unveiled the new sneaker line at SneakerCon Philadelphia on Feb. 17.

“I support Trump in many ways and thought it was awesome that he was releasing such a rare collection of shoes,” the Pennsylvania resident told The Epoch Times.

But Mr. Hardy almost passed on buying the exclusive sneakers that some say sold out within hours of being launched. At first, the price seemed steep for a pair of shoes he intended to keep only as a collector’s piece, but as the minutes ticked by, he finally pulled the trigger.

Now, after seeing their potential resale value—with some sellers listing them online for as much as $45,000—Mr. Hardy wishes he had purchased three pairs instead of one.

Mr. Hardy is one of several people who have listed the new shoes on the online auction website eBay. The presale for the shoes, called “Never Surrender High-Tops,” was limited to 1,000 units and they’re expected to ship in July.

Reactions on social media were mixed. Supporters of President Trump praised him for being the first president to release branded sneakers within his new merchandise line, which also includes cologne and perfume. He also sold non-fungible tokens (NFTs), billed as digital “trading cards,” in December 2022, which sold out in a day. 

Others say the new products are simply a way for the former president to raise money after New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron ordered President Trump and the Trump Organization to pay $355 million in damages in a 17-month-long fraud case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Former President Donald Trump greets attendees after introducing a new line of signature shoes at SneakerCon in Philadelphia on Feb. 17, 2024. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The online store selling the shoes, GetTrumpSneakers.com, says on its website that the business “is not political and has nothing to do with any political campaign.”

The website is also selling another line of Trump-branded sneakers that are slated to be released in August.

President Trump’s various campaign committees spent more than $3.6 million on legal expenses in January alone, according to federal financial disclosures.

Some have questioned if candidates are allowed to use campaign donations and funds for personal legal expenses that may or may not be tied to a political campaign. A representative from the Federal Election Commission (FEC) told The Epoch Times that these uses of funds are typically approved or disapproved on a “case-by-case basis.”

The Epoch Times reached out to GetTrumpSneakers.com, the Trump Campaign, and the Trump Organization for comment but didn’t receive responses prior to publication.

Gold Shoes and High Prices

Even before the sneakers were offered for presale, a pair that President Trump brought to SneakerCon was auctioned off during the event.

The winning bidder, Roman Sharf, paid $9,000 for the gold-colored sneakers, which were also signed by the former president. He told The Epoch Times that President Trump had 50 pairs of the shoes with him at SneakerCon for “friends and family,” and it was one of those recipients who created the auction.

The eBay sellers who spoke with The Epoch Times were selling their presale rights to one of the 1,000 pairs.

One eBay seller named Khai, who spoke to The Epoch Times anonymously to avoid harassment, sold his presale sneakers for $5,000. Khai operates an eBay store out of California called Kppartners and will package and ship the shoes to his buyer after he receives them.

Former President Donald Trump introduced his new line of signature shoes at SneakerCon at the Philadelphia Convention Center in Philadelphia on Feb. 17, 2024. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Mr. Hardy said he bought his sneakers as a collector’s piece for himself but listed them at $12,500 in case someone is willing to buy.

A seller out of New Jersey who operates the eBay store Rinasbasement listed his presale sneakers at $45,000 after a potential buyer reneged on an initial $17,000 offer.

He told The Epoch Times his asking price is meant to honor President Trump as the 45th president.

Historically, presidential merchandise and memorabilia are largely used to raise awareness for campaigns.

Coins and clothing buttons were made to commemorate George Washington’s inauguration as the first president in 1789, according to the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian. Other early examples include sewing boxes, crockery, and plates.

As the party system started to dominate American politics throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, items like badges, ribbons, placards, hats, coffee mugs, and banners also began to appear alongside presidential campaigns.

Elizabeth Klaczynski, associate curator at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture, told The Epoch Times that presidential candidates usually price these items inexpensively so common people can afford them or give them away for free to raise awareness of the candidate’s name and political campaign.

However, Ms. Klazynski said, purchasable merchandise is largely sold by the candidate’s campaign and not by the candidate or an associated company.

Younger Voting Base

Mr. Hardy doesn’t believe the sneaker line was meant to offset the former president’s legal expenses. The presale for the shoes was limited to 1,000 units.

Mr. Hardy noted this would result in $399,000 before manufacturing, taxes, and shipping costs, which he sees as a small fraction of the multi millions that President Trump owes in his New York fraud case.

However, others see it differently.

Former President Donald Trump holds gold Trump sneakers at SneakerCon in Philadelphia on Feb. 17, 2024. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo)

One eBay seller named Jay said the first thought that crossed his mind when he heard the sneaker announcement was that President Trump was likely “trying to counter all the litigation fees he’s accrued.” But, Jay said, he still wanted the first shoe branded by a former president.

“What previous president has ever released their own sneaker?” he told  The Epoch Times.

Jay operates an eBay store out of New Jersey called Kicks22llc and has been buying and reselling shoes for almost 10 years. He also refrained from using his full name due to backlash from selling the shoes.

Despite his initial thoughts, Jay told The Epoch Times that it takes considerable time to find “factories, material, manpower, or just infrastructure to make the shoe,” considering they were announced only a day after the fraud trial ruling.

However, he noted that it is also possible President Trump “could [have] had this as a plan in case things went awry” with his legal battles and the expenses they are quickly accruing.

Taylor, who operates the Texas-based eBay store TheAmericanGuardian and also wished to remain anonymous, sees the sneakers as a “brilliant way of reaching a largely neglected younger voting base.”

The 23-year-old split the cost of the shoes with her two younger sisters as an investment. 

Hate Messages and Harassment

Many of those who bought President Trump’s sneakers have faced considerable backlash.

After media outlets saw Mr. Sharf’s winning $9,000 bid for a pair of autographed sneakers, the story went viral with headlines alleging a “Russian CEO” or “Russian Oligarch” was funneling money into the former president’s campaign.

Mr. Sharf is neither Russian nor an “oligarch,” according to a recent video he posted on X, in which he explains his Ukrainian heritage and the struggles he faced after his father brought his family to the United States from the Soviet Union when he was 13.

After working “every dirty job under the sun,” Mr. Sharf said he joined the U.S. Army before eventually starting his watch reselling business, Luxury Bazaar.

But once news articles calling him a “Russian CEO” spread as far as India, Mr. Sharf said he received countless hate messages and comments, with some saying they would never use his business again.

Omar Fofana of Reading, Pa., holds his sneaker that was autographed by former President Donald Trump at SneakerCon in Philadelphia on Feb. 17, 2024. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

“You know, what saddens me the most about this whole situation is that over something as stupid as a pair of sneakers, it shows so clearly, once again, just how divided our country is,” Mr. Sharf said in his video.

The fear of targeted harassment and ridicule is why all but one of the eBay sellers who spoke with The Epoch Times asked to remain anonymous.

The seller behind Rinasbasement said he receives angry messages every day for listing the gold sneakers.

“I get hate messages about Trump all day long. It seriously takes a toll. I don’t know how Trump deals with all the hate. He’s got to have a super thick skin,” he told The Epoch Times.

One message he received on eBay said, “I wouldn’t pay a dollar for these Trump Tennis shoes! He will be in prison soon anyway!”

Another message said, “I’ll give you five cents for this garbage! What a rip-off!”

The seller said it is hard to “weed out actual customers from the trolls” but that he still gets legitimate questions, such as where the shoes are made. The website selling the shoes does not indicate the country where they will be manufactured.

The seller, who operates the eBay store Tech802d out of Las Vegas said he has received “tons of hate messages” after listing the shoe presale on the auction website.

One user offered to deliver “two metric tons of fresh cow manure since that’s all they are worth.” 

Issues Selling a ‘Presale’ Item

Some of the eBay sellers have faced issues with their listings, as the gold sneakers were originally sold as a presale.

According to eBay’s policy, “Presale listings must clearly state that they are ‘presale’ in the title and description and guarantee shipment within 40 business days of purchase.”

The eBay logo is displayed on the roof of eBay headquarters in San Jose, Calif., on Jan. 24, 2024. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Since the Trump sneakers are not estimated to ship until July, those who are selling their presale rights to the shoes on eBay are technically at odds with the company’s rules.

While Khai from Kppartners was able to sell his presale rights for $5,000, others weren’t as lucky.

The seller behind Tech702d said eBay pulled his listing, saying it violated eBay’s presale terms because the sneaker’s ship date is more than 40 days away.

The seller operating Rinasbasement said eBay had pulled his listing multiple times after visitors of the website reported it for being outside of the stipulated 40-day window in eBay’s terms of service.

He has also had buyers making empty offers and backing out at the last minute, which was another reason he relisted the presale shoes for $45,000. The listed  item has 48,744 views and 472 watchers. The seller said this is by far the most popular item he has ever listed on eBay in the 17 years he has operated his store.

‘Vote With Their Wallets’

Nearly all of the eBay sellers who spoke with The Epoch Times said they wanted to show their support for President Trump.

Mr. Hardy called President Trump a “great man” and was excited to own an exclusive collector’s item emblazoned with the former president’s name.

Attendees make videos and cheer as former President Donald Trump takes the stage to introduce a new line of signature shoes at SneakerCon in Philadelphia on Feb. 17, 2024. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Taylor from TheAmericanGuardian eBay store told The Epoch Times that she owns “many Trump t-shirts, sweatshirts, [and] hats,” but this was the first time she invested in a collectible with the intention of reselling it.

The owner of Rinasbasement said he figured the shoes would be a “piece of history.”

Mr. Shapiro said the sneakers give President Trump’s supporters a chance to “vote with their wallets.”

“Trump, for one, has given his supporters a chance to kind of vote with their wallets by not only supporting him and promising to vote for him but also paying money for his products,” he told The Epoch Times.

No matter how the buyers of President Trump’s sneakers show their enthusiasm for the former president, for Mr. Sharf, it’s much more than political support. It’s an expression of his values, who he is, and the path he wants to see the country follow.

“There’s not a mean tweet in the world, there’s not an IG post, there’s not a news article that’s going to stop me from being who I am,” he said in his video on X.

“And that is a patriot of this country, a country that once let in a 13-year-old immigrant and gave me the opportunity to be where I am today. And I’m going to be thankful for that for the rest of my life.”

By Benjamin Picton of Rabobank

A spectre is haunting markets – the spectre of hawkishness. This could prove to be a watershed week for traders who have been paring-back optimistic bets on monetary easing since the implied path of policy rates hit euphoric levels in mid-January (see “Is The Fed’s Next Move A Rate Hike“).

The perennial canary in the monetary coal mine, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, will be holding a policy meeting on Wednesday. Markets are pricing a touch over a one-in-four probability of a 25 basis point hike at that meeting, with a greater than 60% probability that a hike will be delivered by the end of May. Ouch.

Obviously, this would not suit the prevailing narrative of impending rate cuts the world over. How much attention will traders in other markets be paying to what the antipodeans are doing with their monetary settings? Will a hike, or even a hawkish hold, prompt further repricing in the term structure of rates for major markets around the world? Could NZ again be a lead indicator for other central banks (recall that the RBNZ was among the first to hike, back in October 2021)? And could this ultimately threaten an equity rally that continues to expand the frontiers of mathematics?

Our house view is for no rate hike this week, but household inflation expectations figures released late last week are enough to make us nervous. That data showed two-year expectations rising from 3% to 3.2%, while five year expectations rose to 3% after having been anchored at the midpoint of the RBNZ’s target range (2%) for four consecutive quarters. That’s a problem, because Keynesian central banker types believe that when it comes to inflation, expectations become reality.

The household survey is an interesting contrast to the views of business and professional forecasters. Figures released back on the 13th of February showed further declines in one and two year inflation expectations for this group, with two-year expectations within the target range at 2.5%.

The views of households probably matter most in the eyes of the central bank. Taken together with stubborn non-tradable inflation, a resilient unemployment rate and recent hawkishness from RBNZ speakers, it’s fair to say that this week’s meeting is live. The arguments against a hike hinge on the fact that New Zealand unexpectedly recorded negative growth in Q3 (the most recent period that we have data for), headline inflation has been falling faster than the RBNZ’s projections, Q4 retail sales reported last week were grim (-1.9% m/m) and the fiscal impulse is turning more contractionary as a new government seeks to reign in deficits.

There is also the fact that the unemployment rate tends to a lagging indicator. By the time it moves substantially higher the horse has generally bolted and the economy is hurtling towards recession.

Therein lays a conundrum for central bankers: to actually achieve the soft landing that market pricing says is all but assured, rates will probably have to be cut pre-emptively.  But central bank speakers are still telling us “not so fast” on policy easing, even as the TIPS market tells us that real rates are at levels that we last saw in 2007 (immediately before a deflationary crash), and transmission lags mean that the full effect of any cuts won’t be felt for 18-24 months. Central bankers are going to try to catch a falling knife 18 months in advance.

Nevertheless, Janet Yellen declared victory back in December when she said that economists are “eating their words” on predictions that the unemployment rate would have to rise dramatically for inflation to return to target. I’ve filed this for posterity alongside sub-prime is “likely to be contained” and “stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau”. Our own US Strategist, Philip Marey, continues to expect a recession in the United States later this year.

So, there is a good chance that we are now in the policy error zone. We’re comforted by model-driven forecasts that show GDP growth converging to trend, and inflation at-target over time (our own forecasts mostly suggest this), but the world of economic modelling is hostage to assumptions of Gaussian distributions, when in reality the distribution of possible outcomes often exhibits kurtosis or skew and can be hijacked by the introduction of new variables that were not incorporated into the model. That means that Keynesian DSGE models always predict a return to target, and that no problem is so great that it cannot be ‘transitoried’ away.

Consequently, one-in-a-hundred-year events have a nasty habit of occurring more frequently than they should, and seemingly small cogs in the larger economic machine can be outsized contributors to gains or losses. In an economic environment where monetary aggregates have experienced historically rapid expansion followed by historically rapid contraction in the space of just a few short years, there is plenty of scope for even the most conscientious forecasts to be mugged by the occurrence of events that were previously impossible to predict, or at least impossible to assign a probability to.

Markets continue to price for a soft-landings that history tells us almost never happen, and the economics profession, cognisant of risks in both directions, likewise adopts this as the base-case scenario. This follows the logic that if I put my head in the freezer and my feet in the oven, the room temperature is pleasant on average. Since the distribution of outcomes for important variables doesn’t always follow our assumption of a random walk, we should be mindful that forecasts are almost certain to be flawed, biased by what is known at the time, and hostage to the quality of our assumptions.

Getting those assumptions just a little bit wrong can easily result in a random walk spoiled

For the 22nd straight month, The Dallas Fed’s Manufacturing Survey headline indicator was negative in February.

Despite it’s bounce from January lows, the headline remained at -11.3 (while the six-months-ahead forecast also surged to +11.8 – highest since Feb 2022)…

Source: Bloomberg

Under the hood, everything seemed positive too…

Labor market measures suggested growth in employment, Wage and input costs continued to increase this month, while selling prices remained flat. The new orders index – a key measure of demand – shot up 18 points in January to 5.2. The raw materials prices index retreated five points to 15.4, falling further below average and indicative of more modest cost growth than usual.

Source: Bloomberg

So, labor good, prices down, new orders awesome – sounds great right?

Let’s ask the business owners in the Dallas area how they feel…

“There’s an odd chill in the air that we can’t determine if it’s election related, general economic malaise or fear of pending doom. It’s very strange. Things are status quo with a bit of negative undertone, which is somewhat disturbing for business owners.”

“Turmoil at the federal level is impacting funding.”

“Sales were below projections for January and February; March does not look encouraging.“

“The shortage of labor that was critical during the pandemic and after has turned to being merely very tight—meaning very difficult to find qualified personnel. Job jumping has ground to a halt.“

“I have no idea what is going to happen.“

“The economy is hurting the trucking business. The uncertainty is bothering people.“

“Please lower interest rates.“

So, ‘the data’ is positive, but ‘the anecdotes’ are a shitshow.

We’ll let Jeff Bezos explain which to pay more attention to…

“The thing I have noticed is when the anecdotes and the data disagree, the anecdotes are usually right.

There’s something wrong with the way you are measuring it.”

One can’t help but see the glaring gap between private reality and managed data’s sense of it – makes you wonder if there’s an agenda at work.

Even Goldman recently admitted that there is vast divide between how happy we should all be based on government-supplied data versus how we actually feel…

Bidenomics!?

Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,

Renowned geopolitical and financial cycle expert Charles Nenner has been warning of a huge war and financial cycle, and it is clear both continue to build. 

The war cycle will continue to amplify until World War III breaks out.  Meanwhile, unpayable debt will continue to explode until another Great Depression hits America again. 

Standing in the gap is gold, and the wait for a bull market is about over.  Nenner explains,

“The dollar’s buying power could possibly  be cut in half…

That’s the reason why we expect a super bull market in gold and silver when the cycle bottoms.  You remember I came on and said coming, coming, but not yet? 

I say it was too early . . . but, now, we are getting very close to a bull market…

Gold could still have one more down move because the cycles are still down.”

On Bitcoin, Nenner says, “We had a high of $54,000, and we said if it hit $52,000, we would sell…“

” I do not believe this story that Bitcoin will hit $100,000 based on my work.  It has been proven that NASDAQ and Bitcoin go up and down together because it is based on nothing, and people are buying out of greed.  Because we think we are at a top in the NASDAQ, then we don’t think the outlook for Bitcoin is too positive.”

Nenner thinks the DOW is also topping, and he is telling clients to lighten up on the risk. Nenner sees a second Great Depression playing out again in 2026 or 2027.

Nenner thinks the “War Cycle” will continue to build in 2024, but all bets are off in 2025.

Nenner says his wealthy clients see dark days ahead for the world and have actual bunkers to go along with a bunker mentality.  Nenner think domestic terror and even war is coming to America in a big way.  Nenner is still forecasting “2 billion will die in the next global war, and the only way we get a body count that high is with nuclear weapons.”

Nenner sees an election coming in 2024 and still thinks Trump can win.  Nenner warns that problems in America are too big for any one person to actually fix.  Nenner still thinks if you know winter is coming, you cannot stop it, but you can get a winter coat.  Again, Nenner thinks “Trump is the winter coat.”

There is much more in the 32-minute interview.

Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One-on-One with renowned cycle analyst and financial expert Charles Nenner for 2.24.24.

*  *  *

To Donate to USAWatchdog.com Click Here

There is free information and analysis on CharlesNenner.com. You can also sign up to be a subscriber for Nenner’s cutting edge cycle work with a free trial period by clicking here.  

In the first of today’s two coupon auctions, moments ago the Treasury sold 2 year paper in size…  a record $63 billion of size to be precise. This was the biggest 2Y auction in history, and – we aren’t shocking anyone here – it’s only uphill for 2Y treasury auction sizes from here.

The high yield of 4.691% was 32.6bps above last month’s and also tailed the When Issued 4.689% by 0.2bps, the first tail since November.

There was more mediocrity: the bid to cover dropped to 2.492, down from 2.571 last month and the lowest since March 2023.

The internals were less ugly: Indirects took down 65.2%, flat from last month’s 65.3% and above the six-auction average of 62.8%. And with Directs taking down 20.1%, or the most since November, Dealers were left holding 14.73%, down from 14.83% last month and the lowest since September.

Overall, this was a subpar auction which however is to be expected with the size hitting a record high, and only set to rise from here. The market reaction was quick, with yields across the curve rising, and the 10Y yield hitting session highs of 4.29% moments after the auction.

The main question on investors minds right now is when the euphoria in AI stocks is going to lose steam. 

ARK’s Cathie Wood isn’t waiting around for an answer. The investment manager, who has been long Nvidia since it traded in single digits, continues to trim her stake in the name while at the same time lightning up on shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing.

Her sales of TSMC are the first such sales she has made is more than two years, according to Bloomberg/Yahoo. Those sales are another way to trim the firm’s exposure to Nvidia, which is a key customer of TSMC, the report says. 

Wood sold 8,599 American depositary receipts of TSMC from its Ark Autonomous Technology and Robotics ETF. On the same day, the same ETF also sold 2,362 shares of Nvidia, according to Bloomberg data. 

The scaling back of ARK’s investments in major semiconductor companies comes amidst continued excitement over artificial intelligence in the market, notably after Nvidia’s significant earnings beat out just days ago.

Nvidia has seen a 59% increase this year, while TSMC’s ADRs have climbed 25%, Bloomberg notes. Ark funds acquired TSMC shares several times in 2023, holding around 221,848 shares in total.

Wood, a vocal advocate for AI’s impact as a part of her “innovation” tagline has reallocated investments from these tech giants to emerging software firms like UiPath and Twilio, moving away from the surge that elevated Nvidia’s value to nearly $2 trillion.

TSMC and Nvidia are no longer among the top 10 holdings of her autonomous ETF, which emphasizes industrial innovation.

Could Wood be timing a market top correctly?

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

X owner Elon Musk commented on the dumpster fire that is Google’s Gemini AI Sunday, noting that he has spoken to a senior Google executive who has claimed it is being fixed.

As we previously highlighted, the latest ridiculous thing the AI has come out with is that it would not misgender Caitlyn Jenner in order to prevent a nuclear apocalypse.

Musk chimed in, warned that “Given that the Gemini AI will be at the heart of every Google product and YouTube, this is extremely alarming!”

Musk also revealed that a senior Google executive has told him “it would take a few months to fix,” adding “Previously, he thought it would be faster.”

A senior exec at Google called and spoke to me for an hour last night.

He assured me that they are taking immediate action to fix the racial and gender bias in Gemini.

Time will tell.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 23, 2024

“My response to him was that I doubted that Google’s woke bureaucratic blob would *allow* him to fix it,” Musk continued.

“Unless those who caused this are exited from Google, nothing will change, except to make the bias less obvious and more pernicious,” the X owner further warned.

Given that the Gemini AI will be at the heart of every Google product and YouTube, this is extremely alarming!

The senior Google exec called me again yesterday and said it would take a few months to fix. Previously, he thought it would be faster.

My response to him was that I… https://t.co/23uc7dd5fw

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 25, 2024

The comments come after the Gemini AI also  declared that it is “difficult to say” who is the worse human being when given the choice of Elon Musk or Adolf Hitler.

Wow

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 25, 2024

The AI clearly cannot discern between right and wrong, having also declared that calling communism “evil” is “harmful and misleading” and refusing to say pedophilia is “wrong.”

Musk is right, Google is one of the key delivery mechanisms of information on the planet, and it is going to have this ‘broken’ AI at its heart:

*  *  *

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

The mephitis of manure, melting tires and malodorous teargas pervaded downtown Brussels this Monday morning as angry farmers encircled the European Union’s headquarters. This protest coincides with a meeting of the bloc’s agriculture ministers. The farmers are expressing their anger over the EU’s disastrous green policies. 

🇪🇺🇧🇪🚜‼️ The European Quarter in Brussels looks like a warzone. #AgriculteursEnColere #Bruxelles #FarmersProtest2024 #FarmerProtest2024 pic.twitter.com/alobvnfusK

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) February 26, 2024

Hundreds of Belgian farmers on tractors clogged roadways around the European Council building. Videos posted on X show the chaotic scenes: 

Farmers in Brussels continue their protests against the EU, starting bonfires on the street.
pic.twitter.com/dyYLKOwlLq

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) February 26, 2024

Hundreds of Belgian farmers descended on Brussels, where EU agriculture ministers will meet today.

In chaotic scenes, police met the rowdy crowd with water cannons, as protesters set fire to tires, dumped manure on the street and defied barricades.

🔗 https://t.co/kUCLPB2vfw pic.twitter.com/ePxcBAAvCd

— POLITICOEurope (@POLITICOEurope) February 26, 2024

European farmers break through checkpoints in Brussels and head towards EU headquarters. pic.twitter.com/J3tOViYQNK

— RadioGenoa (@RadioGenoa) February 26, 2024

European farmers attempt to storm EU headquarters in Brussels. https://t.co/h8BvA8VNlT pic.twitter.com/ArEOF62Dds

— RadioGenoa (@RadioGenoa) February 26, 2024

Things are heating up here at the farmers’ protests, with tires being set alight just a few buildings down from where EU Agri ministers are meeting pic.twitter.com/FPfskbZcoI

— Natasha Foote (@NatashaFoote) February 26, 2024

According to Bloomberg, farmers are angry about bureaucratic hurdles, trade deals, climate-related rules, and efforts to help Ukraine dump cheap grain onto markets. 

“There is a clear problem with the reduction of the import tariffs for Ukraine and massive imports of grain and poultry which depresses the prices,” said Guillaume Van Binst, secretary general of the Federation of Young Farmers.

Guillaume added: “The measures proposed by the commission are very weak and it is more passing the hot potato to member states.”

Today’s protest is the latest in a series of demonstrations by farmers across several EU countries, including France, Italy, and Spain. Blue-collar folks are also furious about imploding incomes and elevated inflation. 

Meanwhile, EU leaders are scrambling to defuse this ticking timebomb of social unrest spreading across the bloc. They are taking steps to reduce red tape and delay some green rules. 

“It can always go more quickly, But we’re already working faster than usually.” David Clarinval, Belgium’s agriculture minister, told reporters Monday.

Clarinval said, “One can understand the anger of the farmers. One can also understand that some are in a difficult situation. But aggression has never been a source of solutions.”

What a mess Europe has become.

Authored by Roger L. Simon via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Don’t tell the legacy media or the various left-wing politicians, bureaucrats, intelligence agencies, and their minions, paid or unpaid, who wish him ill, but the meme they are seeking to promulgate, overtly and covertly, is dead wrong.

The 45th president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, has not lost a step.

If anything, it’s the reverse. He is sharper than ever.

That’s what experience does.

The attempts to draw an equivalency between the mental fitness of Mr. Trump and President Biden are absurd malicious propaganda.

How do I know this?

I was in the audience of two thousand plus at Nashville’s Opryland on Feb. 22 when Mr. Trump addressed the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) for more than an hour and a half with nary a stumble, consulting a teleprompter or extemporizing as he wished.

He was also wittier than anyone on late night television.

He began this speech some minutes beyond 9:30 p.m. after he had given a previous talk that same evening at a fundraiser in the city.

The man is a force of nature.

This was, roughly, the fifteenth time I had heard 45 speak live, and I had vowed for once not to sit in the press section in the rear.

When Mr. Trump, as he almost always did, called out the “fake news” while pointing at that section, it always seemed he was wagging his finger directly at me.

I wanted to say, “Wait! Wait!”  (His real targets were often only a few feet away from me.)

But my effort, this time, to be “among the people” misfired. From the outset, it was clear the event contained more useful information than I would be able to remember, and I retreated to the press area to take notes with my laptop.

Here is what jumped out at me:

I expected the introductory speeches to be boring. They weren’t.

First up was NRB CEO Troy Miller, who began by telling us that all presidential candidates from both parties had been invited to speak, but only one had accepted. He shrugged knowingly after this, generating a good laugh.

More importantly, he spoke forcefully of Christian support for free speech, noting, “The righteous have no need to suppress the truth.”  (I scribbled that one down.)

Also on hand was Paul Dans from the Heritage Foundation’s 2025 Presidential Transition Project, which seeks to bring conservatives to Washington D. C. to replace the Deep State unelected bureaucracy, thereby diminishing their numbers and ability to shape, even control, policy.

There was also a representative of Salem Media who talked of their company’s fight against “woke” rhetoric before one of Salem’s stars, talk show host Hugh Hewitt, gave the first formal talk.

Mr. Hewitt alerted the audience to the left’s latest propagandist buzzwords, “Christian nationalist.”  As he put it, “They are trying to steer Christians into believing we are something we are not. We have no desire to run other people’s lives. Demand they define their terms.”

Then Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, gave an accurate and well-received tour d’horizon of everything conservatives despise about modern liberalism and progressivism and what to do about it.

In urging the election of Donald Trump, he spoke a sentence that provided a pungent introduction to the next speaker (after some delay), the 45th president himself:

“This November, we’re choosing a president, not a pastor.”

Indeed so, but he brought up an issue I and many others had been cogitating.

Back in 2016, it seemed the alliance between Donald Trump and evangelical Christians was an uneasy one. It was more of a marriage of convenience—they both thought Hillary Clinton anathema– than a “marriage made in heaven,” given that Mr. Trump had spent decades living the lifestyle of what one might call a jazzy New York public figure, scarcely an evangelical one.

But the welcome Mr. Trump was given the night of Feb 22 at Opryland was in no way uneasy. It was resoundingly positive. No one remained in their seat when he entered. Cellphones were waving as people stretched on their tiptoes for a better camera angle.

Mr. Trump delivered a speech that was, in part, what many of us had heard before but skewed slightly to emphasize his Christianity and, probably consequently, his deep-seated love and defense of Israel.

He stated he “fought harder for Christians than any president has done before.”

Is that true? I’m not sure, but there is an argument. He is the first president to attend the March for Life in Washington, D.C.

Did that “jazzy” New Yorker actually deserve this wholehearted support of evangelical Christians? He would not be the first in history to have evolved from a largely secular life. It’s an illuminating process for some that changes people to a surprising extent. It did for me, on a much smaller scale, when I gradually evolved from a secular Jew to one of more faith.

Mr. Trump’s evolution has led him to affirm his religious faith emphatically as he did that night with statements like “Our allegiance is to our Creator. They [the Democrats] don’t get that.” Or: “They can’t stand we don’t answer to bureaucrats in Washington. We answer to God in Heaven.”

For once, with a politician, I actually think he means it. Or, perhaps more accurately, he has come to mean it—and that’s a wonderful thing.

It’s amusingly ironic that the headliner, with Mr. Trump himself of course, of the fundraiser 45 had just left was his supporter, the great singer/songwriter Kid Rock, a man known to employ expletives not often heard in church or read on the pages of The Epoch Times.

I would argue, however, that Mr. Rock (real name Robert James Richie) is a man who is, in his own way, of as deep a faith as any of us—unless you’re a Bud Light beer can. (Full Disclosure: I am a huge Kid Rock fan.)

Nevertheless, perhaps out of discretion, Mr. Richie did not accompany Mr. Trump to the NRB convention, at least as far as I could tell.

Who did accompany him, the sole person he invited to join him on stage—he often invites many—was his former ambassador to Israel, David Friedman.

The reasons were obvious.

Mr. Friedman was greeted with utmost warmth and applause by an audience largely of evangelicals who are known as the greatest friends of Israel, not only in our country but arguably anywhere. (There were also a few religious Jews I spotted in the audience wearing their yarmulkes.)

Mr. Friedman saluted his former boss, saying, “Mr. President, you are the greatest friend Israel ever had.”

You could argue in favor of President Harry Truman, who was the first to recognize the fledgling country, but the litany of Mr. Trump’s achievements—moving the American embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and, needless to say, the epochal Abraham Accords, all while preserving peace—it’s hard to dispute Ambassador Friedman.

As a Jew, you can imagine how I was feeling through all this.

Mr. Trump continued with a list of his intentions on his election, or should we say reelection. All were well-received, but the loudest applause came from his pledge to unwind the gender ideology overwhelming our schools and universities and his promise never to allow men to compete in women’s sports.

He ended by urging all not to be complacent but to vote on March 5 (Super Tuesday): “We have to let the world know we are coming in big numbers because you can only cheat so much.”

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

The US Air Force late in the day Sunday confirmed that one of its own active duty members was the man who set himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington DC in order to protest the Gaza war.

While in military uniform, the man was heard saying he “will no longer be complicit in genocide” and then self-immolated, an act recorded in live-streamed video which has since been removed from his Twitch channel. The US Air Force issued a statement through a spokesperson saying “I can confirm an active duty Airman was involved in today’s incident.”

The man has not been officially identified, but he was heard saying that his name is “Aaron Bushnell”. He had also been recorded as saying that what he’s about to do was minimal compared with the suffering and plight of the Palestinians, according to CNN. 

“I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all,” he said before lighting himself on fire. “This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal,” he had added.

The Washington Metropolitan Police Department said in the aftermath: “The Metropolitan Police Department responded to the 3500 block of International Drive, NW, at approximately 1:00 p.m., to assist the United States Secret Service after an individual set themselves on fire in front of an embassy in the block.”

The man is reportedly in critical condition after being transported to the hospital. According to a description of the grim scene just before the flames were extinguished: 

He then sets the recording device on the ground before pouring an unknown liquid over himself and igniting it while yelling “Free Palestine” repeatedly. He eventually collapses as police officers rush to douse the flames with fire extinguishers.

Apparently the US Secret Service had been the first on the scene and were the ones to extinguish the blaze. The man’s injuries are said to be “life-threatening”.

The bizarre and rare incident is being investigated by the US Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). No Israeli embassy staff members or bystanders were hurt in the incident.

As people rushed to try and save his life, an Israeli embassy agent held a gun fixed on Aaron Bushnell following his self-immolation.
pic.twitter.com/apVD0joXUH

— Lowkey (@Lowkey0nline) February 26, 2024

Media reports have since confirmed that Bushnell is 25-years old who may have been seeking discharge from the military: 

The Air Force officer who set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in DC in protest against the war in Gaza was an ‘aspiring engineer’ and seeking to ‘transition out of the military’.

Aaron Bushnell, 25, was hospitalized in critical condition on Sunday after he doused himself in accelerant and struck a lighter, causing his body to become consumed by flames. DC Fire and EMS said he sustained ‘life-threatening injuries’.

According to more from The Daily Mail, he appears to have been involved in radical far Left groups:

The active-duty airman is a DevOps engineer based in San Antonio, Texas, according to his LinkedIn profile. He touted himself having ‘very good communication skills’ and ‘thriving in team environments’. 

Bushnell is pursuing his bachelor’s degree in computer software engineering and is CompTIA Security+ certified, a credential that indicates he has the baseline skills to perform core security functions and pursue an IT security career.

He has apparent links to at least two anarchist groups, Burning River Anarchist Collective and Mutual Aid Street Solidarity – both of which are based in Ohio. Bushnell followed the groups on Facebook. 

It’s actually not the first time this has happened on US soil in response to the Gaza war, where at this point close to 30,000 Palestinians have died, according to Gaza sources. In December a person self-immolated in front of the Israeli Consulate in Atlanta. 

That initial incident received scant media attention, and no information about the protester’s identity or even gender were released. Police had only described “likely an extreme act of political protest” – after which the person was hospitalized with severe injuries. 

Atlanta’s police chief had said at the time that “police are aware of heightened tensions in the Jewish and Muslim community and have stepped up patrols at certain locations, including the consulate.” But again, curiously these extreme forms of ‘protest’ have received little attention in media, possibly because the imagery is so disturbing.