Better in their words…

H1B hoax debunked; Chinese visas, tuition math, Trump signals; Epstein boomerang strikes; Summers collapses; Harvard roils; Plaskett deal; media’s Epstein ties; Couric warns Dems; Trump teases list.

Source: SLOW, THEN ALL AT ONCE☙ Wednesday, November 19, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS

C&C MORNING MONOLOGUE

Among many other long-discarded rules, when I was there, UF’s then-excellent College of Journalism (“J-school”) taught us to relentlessly remove the writer from the writing. For example, never write, “I think tariffs beat Taylor Swift.” Take out “I think,” and just start with “Tariffs…” Let it rip from there. Readers already know it’s what you think. Don’t be redundant, Sally.

Which is why, dear reader, I appreciate your kind patience over the last couple days, as we struggled together with the pernicious tentacles of media narrative. After spending time surfing yesterday’s surging comments, there are three categories of folks who are still resisting turning the corner.

First are the good people whose way of coping with their anxiety is by setting their expectations super low. Probably from reading or listening to doomers on social media, they worry Trump’s elevator is catastrophically broken, and they don’t want to be in the car when it hits the ground floor. To these folks: everything will be fine. All this negativity will pass. Stop following black-pillers.

Second, some folks have become firmly and honestly convinced that some particular political issue —often one that doesn’t even affect them directly— is more important than defeating the globalist world takeover. For them: touch grass. Remember how, just two years ago, the Democrats came this close to subordinating our Constitution to the tender mercies of the UN/WEF’s “pandemic emergency powers”— all while redefining “pandemics” to include things like farting in the bathtub (carbon emissions!).

Third, I discovered a few true malign influencers in the comments. They’ve crept back in. We’ve been infected, and we need an exterminator. I traced one particular account that had spammed yesterday’s comments with dozens of sly questions and snide insults. His account — dressed up with flags and fireworks, looking for all the world like a MAGA supporter— was set up one month after the election. But from day one (starting in December!) he did nothing but undermine the President.

I blocked the account— the first time I’ve done that since the pandemic. And I’ll keep an eye out for others. Everyone else: don’t feed the trolls. Agree to disagree and move on.

I’ll end this monologue by referring you to a great little anti-globalist YouTube account called Promethean Action. (I found it through the C&C comments.) It offers a terrific, positive take on current events along with a unique worldview; they argue persuasively that Great Britain is the secret coordinator of the globalist world takeover that Trump is rapidly dismantling. Plus, they are always optimistic.

Yesterday, Promethean ran a midweek update that sounded just like my recent post: “So many people are being disoriented right now due to British psyops,” they said. “A lot of people are saying Trump is not delivering on his promises. I say that he is.”

YouTube: Promethean Action | Russia Backs Trump in Fight Against British (16:47)

To counter the current negative narrative, the video reminded viewers of Trump’s bold 2023 campaign promise, when the President promised: “I will give you an end to this horrible globalism that’s killing this country. I’ll give you the return of the United States of America as the greatest and strongest industrial nation in the world. Together, we will dismantle the corrupt power structure that has feasted on American workers.”

That, she said, is the real goal. Jeffrey Epstein isn’t our problem— Epstein is a symptom. The solution isn’t exposing the now-ancient client lists. The solution is creating a world where a Jeffrey Epstein cannot exist. (Anyway, the Epstein disclosures are having an effect, as we’ll cover shortly.)

⛑️ Coda. I noticed a number of our valued commenters who responded to yesterday’s post by slightly shifting the goalposts. “Fine, you convinced us about the H1Bs, but now what about the Chinese student visas??”

In case you weren’t paying close attention, in the same Laura Ingraham interview everyone has been complaining about, Laura pressed Trump about why the Administration allegedly approved visas for Chinese students to study at US colleges. (300,000 over a two-year period, or 600K total.)

Trump explained it in simple economic terms: “if the U.S. cut those numbers in half, you would have half the colleges in the United States go out of business.” He pointed out that U.S. colleges typically charge foreign students the highest tuition rates— more than double or triple what U.S. students pay. Foreign students usually get no financial aid.

He’s right. For example, in state universities, foreign students often pay $35k–$55k per school year, compared to only $10k–$15k for in-state tuition. In some STEM-heavy schools (like Purdue, Illinois, and Michigan), foreign enrollment supplies between 40–60% of all graduate-tuition revenue.

Outside the floral walls of the Ivies, over 500 small private colleges have not yet recovered from pandemic stresses and remain financially distressed or in structural deficits. Many of those depend on foreign full-pay students for survival-level cashflow. If international enrollment fell by 40–50%, analysts estimate that up to 25% of private colleges would face immediate closure or merger, another 30% would face “acute financial strain,” and public universities would be forced to cut programs, faculty lines, and research output.

Maybe, hearing this, you think it would still be worth it. Cut them all! Let them fall! But that’s easy to say when nobody is pushing back on your ideas. President Trump is sitting in conference rooms packed with desperate college administrators who are begging for help.

By the way: public and private colleges outside the Ivies are Americans, too.

The hard truth is that foreign student visas probably cannot be cut quickly without horrifying economic bloodshed. It will have to be done more slowly. Probably, it is better to just screen out the communist bad apples for now.

That’s a hard truth, but there it is. And— Trump did not create this problem. Blame Congress.

⛑️ Still, Laura pressed Trump, insisting, “but they spy on us, they steal our intellectual property!” Trump responded rhetorically, by asking, “Do you think the French are any better?” Laura’s best point was when she argued that spots going to Chinese could instead go to American kids. But that is only true about funded PhD programs in STEM areas, a tiny cohort.

Remember what else I told you? Do your homework before launching Trump into outer space. Don’t just trust one Fox anchor. Let’s dig into the history of this controversial topic.

First, even going into the interview, the 600,000 figure was merely floating around media echo chambers. It is just a talking point. It’s just Trump saying stuff. There has been no actual change in US policy. Headline from the Times of India, end of August:

Remember how I told you to focus on what Trump does, not what he says?What do you think is really happening with numbers of Chinese student visas? Here’s a headline from two days ago published in the Business Standard:

See? Trump is talking about expanding Chinese visas, but his Administration is actually cutting them into ribbons of red tape. Chinese student visas are actually falling. The feds are carefully scrutinizing applications for security issues. For the first time.

While Trump is out talking to influencers, what’s his Secretary of State doing? Well, Laura should have known that the State Department has been savagingChinese student visas. Headline from the Associated Press, in late May:

“Under President Trump’s leadership, the U.S. State Department will work with the Department of Homeland Security to aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students,” Secretary Rubio said, “including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.” So.

Next, how about DHS? Well, for most of this year, Secretary Kristi Noem has been busily clubbing Ivy League schools with the threat of decertifying alltheir foreign visa contracts. Headline from Politico, late April:

International students are 27% of Harvard’s total enrollment. Nearly one-third. All of them paying two or three times what American students pay. So banning them was a dire financial threat.

Finally, how about China? Was China wildly encouraged by Trump’s interview with Laura? No. They were not. Headline from the South China Post (a CCP-connected paper), also two days ago:

⛑️ Which brings us to the much less important, but unhappily urgent question of why is Trump softening his tone on Chinese visas? The short answer is, we don’t know. The longer answer is: it’s easy to guess.

For Heaven’s sake! America is right now in an economic war with China. We just narrowly settled an “irresolvable” dispute over magnets (rare earths). It is probably not helpful for Trump to be going around saying mean things about Chinese students (see South China Post headline, above).

And also he’s been brutally negotiating with Ivy League schools, to bend them to his will on things like race-blind admissions for American students. We know that Trump used the visas as leverage (see Politico headline, above). It seems logical the President might’ve dickered with the universities, giving them a couple years of continuing full-strength foreign student visas.

Finally, I don’t know about half, but there are a lot of smaller schools that lack Harvard-sized endowments. If they lose foreign student tuition revenue, they will either fold, need bailouts, or be forced to double or triple Americanstudent tuition. That is a fact, and it doesn’t sound very affordable.

So, yes, we can easily conceive of plenty of reasons for Trump to be sounding softer on student visas just now. It’s not even controversial. I love Laura, but she should have known better.

Hopefully, this has helped readers who honestly couldn’t understand the China student visa issue. But please remember: if I haven’t covered a particular story, it isn’t that I’ve sold out, gone over to the “other side,” or collaborated with hostile space aliens. Assume my silence means I’ve looked and concluded it’s either a fake issue, isn’t ripe, is still a hot take, or is otherwise non-essential news.

I get it. We all want to know the plan. But we don’t need to know the plan. Let. The. Man. Work.

WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY

🔥🔥🔥

The Epstein boomerang is back, and it has started chopping off heads. Democrat heads. Let’s start with the news of yesterday’s vote. The first thing you need to know is that the New York Times did not cover the story anywhere on its web page this morning. Haha! The Grey Lady is already experiencing buyer’s remorse. But it did run the story inside, headlined, “Congress Overwhelmingly Approves Releasing Epstein Files.”

In the House, it was perhaps the most lopsided, bipartisan vote in history: 427-1. Representative Clay Higgins (R-La.), was the lone holdout. Then, the Senate immediately passed the Discharge Petition by unanimous consent, which doesn’t require a roll-call vote. Apart from Higgins, there wasn’t a single congressman willing to object to the petition.

Now it’s headed to Trump’s desk, with a bow and two decorative mint chocolates on it.

Immediately, even before the vote, blows began to land on progressives. The good news is, Democrats’ Epstein pain is only going to last for a very long time. Yesterday, during a White House meeting with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, Trump even said Democrats would be sorry about opening Epstein’s pandora’s box. Politico, yesterday:

“President Trump has nothing to hide, but the Democrats should be very scared because they have secrets to hide,” a White House official said. “Democrats only started talking about the Epstein files once they thought they could use it to score political points against President Trump,” a second official said. “That will prove to be a mistake for them.”

“Democrats and the media just fell into the same trap they set up,” said a third White House official. “They knew full well their own people conspired with Epstein, and now the chickens are coming home to roost.”

Are they? Let’s begin with the first chicken, Epstein Disclosure Victim “Patient Zero”: Larry Summers.

🔥 You’ve hardly ever seen a bigger Swamp Creature than Larry Summers. He’s an elite’s Elite.™ After becoming one of Harvard’s youngest tenured professors (at 28), from 1991-1992 he became the World Bank’s Chief Economist. He walked out of the World Bank straight into the Clinton Administration. From 1993-1995, Summers was Bill Clinton’s Undersecretary of the Treasury for World Affairs. From 1995-1999, he was Deputy Treasury Secretary. And he looks a lot like Mr. Burns from the Simpson’s.

In 1999, Summers was appointed by Clinton as the Secretary of the Treasury, where he crafted the infamous Mexico bailout. Critics say his financial-slash-social justice policies teed up the 2008 foreclosure crisis. Later, from 2009-2010, he ‘served’ as Obama’s Director of National Economic Council, where he helped bail out the same banks nearly destroyed by the crisis he helped create. Lather, rinse, repeat.

In the off years between 2001-2006, during the Republican Bush Administration, Summers hid out in a lucrative job as President of Harvard University. You get the idea: He is the classic top-tier, revolving-door permanent bureaucrat, squatting in safe Ivy League offices during Republican Administrations.

For now, Larry is a Harvard professor, and the director of Harvard’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government.

🔥 Last week, the world learned that Summers was also terrific buddies with that jet-setting International Man of Mystery, Jeffrey “Lolita” Epstein. I shall illustrate the fallout in a series of headlines from the last three days. First up, the New York Times, this morning:

He might not be a Harvard professor for very much longer. Next headline: Politico, from late last night:

Axios, this morning:

The Boston Globe, yesterday:

I’ll interrupt the headlines with the email from Lisa New (Summers’s wife) to Jeffrey Epstein in December 2015—well after his sex-trafficking conviction. Epstein gave her a bunch of money for poetry. Behold:

Harvard did a whitewashing investigation and report on itself in 2020, absolving the school from any financial ties to Epstein. But the Boston Globe reported that the major gift from Epstein to Larry Summers’s wife, creating a “major” Harvard poetry project, wasn’t mentioned in the 2020 report at all. “The omission,” the Globe said, “raises new questions about the thoroughness of that investigation, which Harvard has repeatedly cited when asked about its connections to Epstein.”

Whoops. Another Harvard scandal.

Onwards! Next headline: NBC News, yesterday:

When a deep-state Democrat loses Liz Warren and her tribe, you know it’s bad. The UK Guardian, yesterday:

The Harvard Crimson, on Monday, dishing some salacious details:

Note that Summers is married to the same Lisa New mentioned in the poetry scandal, above. They married in 2005. But sketchy Mr. Summers sent his “wing man” emails seeking advice about seducing (“getting horizontal with”) his menteé— in November 2018. That is, while he was married.

Needless to say, the menteé is the daughter of a high-ranking CCP official. “U r better at understanding Chinese women than at probability theory,” Summers wrote Epstein.

Finally, to illustrate the general mood toward the former progressive star, behold the Intercept, also yesterday:

Deep-state darling Larry Summers is cooked. He’s been taken off the political chessboard. Losing lifelong Swamp Rat and top economic voice Larry Summers leaves Democrats without their most credible economic mind, their most effective internal skeptic, and their go-to ballast for donor confidence. In pure political-physics terms, this scandal sets the Donkey party wobbling on its corrupt axis.

Summers is now the highest-profile American wiped out by his Epstein connections— even with no proof of crimes. Just his gross-ness.

But wait, there’s more.

🔥 Yesterday, Newsweek ran a story headlined, “Hakeem Jeffries stung by new Jeffrey Epstein revelations.” Hakeem Jeffries is the top Democrat in the House of Representatives, their Minority Leader. Now he has an evolving Epstein problem, though not yet as profound as Larry Summers’s.

“House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries faced fresh scrutiny Tuesday,” Newsweek reported, “after Republicans released newly obtained documents showing that a political firm working to boost his early congressional career once invited convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to a Democratic fundraising event.” The 2013 email offered “personal time” with Barack Obama.

Currently, Jeffries denies having known about any of it, and swears he never met Epstein. A single email could fry him like a Thanksgiving Turkey.

🔥 Yesterday, House Republicans tried and failed to censureVirgin Islands Representative Stacey Plaskett, who was shown collaborating with Epstein by text during a Trump impeachment hearing. Apparently, the Democrats successfully deployed a threat to also censure Cory Mills (R-Fl.), and it worked. Here’s Florida Representative Kat Cammack’s take:

Disappointing, but that’s politics. People are hot about the backroom dealing. Either way, it’s far from over— Stacey Plaskett’s Epstein problems are just beginning.

🔥 Finally, a whole raft of media heavyweights is surfacing as having wined, dined, or otherwise cozied up to the world’s most notorious pedophile afterhis 2008 conviction. The roster reads like a press-room who’s-who: ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, CBS’s Charlie Rose, Arianna Huffington, New York Times alum Michael Wolff, and America’s morning-show sweetheart, “perky” Katie Couric.

Most of these connections have been known in the background for years. Stephanopoulos and Couric even admitted attending Epstein dinners, and issued polite, quickly forgotten apologies as far back as 2021. But thanks to this latest burst of disclosures — and the Trump hurricane blowing through every newsroom — those uncomfortable admissions are snapping back into focus.

Don’t expect the media to cover it; professional courtesy runs deep. But the public is finally getting an unobstructed look at a grotesque menagerie of self-anointed elites who seem to prize money, status, and access far more than ethics. Indeed, Katie Couric herself made the point in a remarkable, Cassandra-like op-ed she posted yesterday, titled, “Why MAGA Is Obsessed With Epstein − and Why the Files Are Unlikely to Dent Loyalty To Trump.”

Couric interviewed Rutgers professor and “cultural anthropologist” Alex Hinton, who is plainly alarmed. He said, “if we go back to Pizzagate in 2016, there’s this MAGA conspiracy theory that there were Democratic elitists who were demonic forces who were sex-trafficking, and lo and behold, here’s Epstein doing precisely that.”

Professor Hinton then leaned into the theological framing: “If you look at notions of Christian morality, you also go to notions of innocence being afflicted by demonic forces. And it’s an attack on we the people by those elites; it’s a violation of rights. I mean, who isn’t horrified by the idea of sex trafficking? But again, especially in Christian circles, this is a huge issue.”

Remarkably, from the other side of the political spectrum, Professor Hinton agreed with C&C’s take: “I don’t think what is happening is indicative of a larger fracturing that’s going to take place with MAGA.” He even praised Trump’s abrupt reversal on Monday — agreeing to the Discharge Petition — as a strategic masterstroke. “He’s sort of like a chess player. He’s a couple of moves ahead of wherever, whatever’s running, and so in a way we’re always behind, and he knows where we are. It’s incredible that he’s able to do this.”

And he closed with a line you don’t often hear from academia: “Whoever says Trump is not charismatic doesn’t make sense. Trump is highly charismatic. He can move a crowd. He knows what he’s doing. Never underestimate him.”

Couric’s op-ed is so fascinating because she has personal skin in the Epstein game, yet she’s venturing into territory her peers are terrified to acknowledge: the sulphuric line running straight from Pizzagate to Epstein, from dismissed “nutjob conspiracy theory” to bona-fide elite depravity — and how that line intersects with deeply felt Christian moral intuitions, not just partisan point-scoring.

Couric is quietly warning Democrats that this isn’t just a “gotcha” story; it’s a spiritual and cultural reckoning that cuts far deeper than politics. The fact that she is the one saying it —not the chorus of media voices demanding DOJ’s Epstein files— tells you exactly how dangerous the scandal could become.

🔥 Yesterday, President Trump excoriated ABC reporter Mary Bruce for asking why, if he supposedly agreed with the Discharge Petition, he didn’t just authorize the DOJ to release the files. He patted his jacket and said he’d just received a list of all the Democrats to whom Epstein donated money:

CLIP: “You should go look at all the Democrats who got money from Epstein (2:55).”

“He never gave me none, zero, no money to me,” Trump said. “He gave money to Democrats.” Trump added, “I have nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein. I threw him out of my club many years ago because I thought he was a sick pervert.”

I wonder what the President plans to do with that list of Democrats who solicited Epstein donations?

(In fairness to Trump over his annoyance, Mary Bruce had just asked an unanswerable question intended to rankle the Crown Prince about a stale, years-old controversy (Jamal Khashoggi). Then she piled on with the Epstein question, which together provoked Trump’s tirade.)

🔥 As I keep saying, I do not know the plan. But let me ask you a hypothetical question. Suppose Trump knew that, if he unilaterally released the Epstein files on day one, Democrats would cry about him “hurting innocent people” who are briefly mentioned in the files but didn’t do anything wrong. The media would bury the story deeper than Hunter’s laptop, claiming concerns over procedural fairness and people’s privacy.

Oh, how they would have hollered. “He’s shattering norms!”, they would have cried. “Internal criminal investigatory materials are never just released wholesale to the public!” they would have shouted from the rooftops. “Innocent until proven guilty!” they would have sung in unison.

How could Trump turn that layer of institutional protection inside-out? How could he make the Democrats demand a full, unredacted release of the Epstein files, come what may? Would it be precisely how things actually played out? Did Trump know that, if he opposed disclosure, Democrats would jerk their knees and automatically take the opposite side? (Like always?)

Don’t miss this: Every single Democrat just voted to release the Epstein files. It is 100% bipartisan. So they can’t blame Trump for the collateral damage, or for doing it out of revenge, or anything else. (Ditto for Speaker Mike Johnson, who repeatedly said yesterday that he regretted it, because a lot of innocent people would get hurt, but what could he do? His hands were tied. Tied by Democrats.)

I find it fascinating that Trump keeps calling it a “Democrat Hoax,” but he’s never stopped to explain what the hoax is, beyond generalizations. And reporters never ask.

Larry Summers is gone. But Trump is still here and still defiant. His defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal continues. So far, it is all Democrats toppling like dominoes, one after another. They think the DOJ files will turn that around. We shall see.

Have a wonderful Wednesday! Unless more big news breaks, tomorrow I will post a lightning round with loads of terrific essential news and vital commentary.

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