PRESIDENT FELON: The judge in Donald Trump’s  New York criminal fraud case denied the President-elect’s request to have his 34 convictions vacated because he is about to return to the White House.

  Judge Juan Merchan ruled that Trump’s claim to presidential immunity does not apply. The former president was convicted of business fraud in covering up hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. Prosecutors argued that the scheme involved a personal and political crisis that predated Trump’s election to the presidency in 2016.

  Merchan has delayed sentencing three times and Trump is not officially a convicted felon until sentencing, which is not scheduled. 

ORANGE ALERT: Donald Trump gave his first post-election news conference yesterday, citing bogus data linking vaccines to autism, vowing to slash taxes and resume construction of his border wall. He accused the Biden administration of hiding the truth about recent drone sightings on the East Coast.

  About the drones Trump said; “Look, our military knows where they took off from. If it’s a garage. They can go right into that garage. They know where it came from and where it went.”

  Trump heaped praise on Pete Hegseth, his nominee for secretary of defense, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to be secretary of Health and Human Services. He said that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis would “make the right decision” about whether to appoint Lara Trump, his daughter-in-law, to replace Marco Rubio in the Senate if Rubio is confirmed as Secretary of State.

  Speaking to reporters, he called the press “very corrupt” and promised to keep suing news organizations that he believes have not quoted him correctly. He said he plans to sue the Des Moines Register for having a pre-election poll that turned out to be wrong. 

  Trump also said that billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will cut $2 trillion out of the $6.8 trillion annual federal budget and “it’ll have no impact on people.” The NY Times points out that if you protect Social Security, Medicare and defense as Trump has promised, cutting $2 trillion would require shutting down almost the entire federal government. 

DRONE ON: If you want to know how the Salem witch hysteria could have happened, pay attention to what’s happening with drone sightings on the East Coast. And Salem happened before the internet. 

  One of the latest theories out there is that the drones are government operated and searching for nuclear material planned for use in a dirty bomb. One poster on Twitter/X said, “They’re looking for gamma rays from a dirty bomb which is now here to wipe us out thanks to the democrats open borders.” 

  Another said, “I saw a post on X saying the drones were from the US military to detect nuclear material because the deep state is threatening to detonate a dirty bomb prior to Trump’s inauguration.”

  And still one more comment; “People have shot at them in the sky and the bullets go straight through them. Yes, the government is lying, this is for sure.”

  Georgia Rep. MAGA Taylor Greene, who has claimed a “Jewish space laser” conspiracy and that the government controls the weather, posted that, “The government is in control of the drones and refuses to tell the American people what is going on. It really is that bad.”

  Donald Trump opined that the drones have been right over his Bedminster, New Jersey golf club. “I think maybe I won’t spend the weekend in Bedminster,” he said. “I decided to cancel my trip.”

  Maryland’s former Republican Gov. Larry Hogan posted a video he took one clear night of what he described as a drone swarm, “what appeared to be dozens of large drones in the sky above my residence in Davidsonville, Maryland.” He said, “People are rightfully clamoring for answers, but aren’t getting any.” 

  Some galactically savvy observers whose intellects are planted firmly on planet Earth looked at Hogan’s video and identified his drone swarm as the constellation Orion.  

THE SHOOTING GALLERY: Police in Madison, Wisconsin have identified a 15-year-old female student as the shooter who killed another student and a teacher yesterday with a pistol at the Abundant Life Christian School. Natalie Rupnow, the shooter known as “Samantha,” also wounded six others before turning the gun on herself.

CHICKEN RUN: Syria’s deposed former dictator Bashar al-Assad now says in a social media post that he wanted to stay and fight the rebels who took over the country but was removed to exile by Russian forces.

  The murderous al-Assad said that he did not “consider stepping down or seeking refuge.” And that he had remained in Damascus “carrying out my duties” until early on December 8th when he said rebels began to infiltrate the capital. At that point, he moved “in coordination with our Russian allies” to the Syrian coastal city of Latakia, where Russia has a nearby military base. He was evacuated to Russia when that base came under attack.

   Al-Assad said that Syria had fallen into the “hands of terrorism,” but that his bond with the Syrian people remained “unshaken.” 

  The horrors of the al-Assad regime are coming fully to light as journalists roam the country, showing the towns and cities destroyed by the regime in its fight to stay in power and meeting the thousands of people looking for family members gone missing after their arrest.

  Assad’s “people” have shot holes in his portrait and torn down statues erected in a dictatorial cult of personality. Any Syrian 53 years old or less is enjoying freedom for the first time in their life.

THE SPIN RACK: A bomb planted in a scooter by Ukrainian operators in Moscow killed Gen. Igor Kirillov, the chief of Russia’s radioactive, chemical and biological defense forces. Ukraine’s security service say Kirillov was responsible for the “massive use of banned chemical weapons” in Ukraine.

BELOW THE FOLD:  Scientists have determined that 50,000 years ago humans mated with Neanderthals, which explains a lot of things about human behavior.

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