This is a Running Record of Trump & Company Statements and Actions. Hard to Believe, But It's All Real
To search for a term on a page press ctrl/f, enter term, press enter-all instances will be highlighted.
12.30.22-AND SHE WAS SUCH AN OBVIOUS McLIAR-Former White House Communications Director Alyssa Farah Griffin gave a scathing assessment of her Trump administration colleague Kayleigh McEnany during her interview with the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. “Kayleigh is a liar and an opportunist,” Griffin said in her April interview with the panel, according to a transcript released Thursday. “She’s a smart woman. She’s a Harvard law grad. She knew we lost the election, but she made a calculation that she wanted to have a certain life post-Trump that required staying in his good graces. And that was more important to her than telling the truth to the American public.”
12,28.22-LAKE THE FLAKE-Kari Lake Will Have To Pay More Than $30K Because Of Her Election Lawsuit. Courts "should not be used to harass political opponents and sow completely unfounded doubts about the integrity of elections," the complaint read.
12.27.22-OF COURSE the Republican establishment knew about George Santos' lies. His work background, his education, his religion, his animal charity, his property ownership, etc. Another Republican hack. He even faced hostility on Fox News over the lies he told to get elected to Congress.
12.26.22-TRASHY TRAITORS TO DEMOCRACY-Right-wing Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) won a significant new fan — Kremlin state TV — for refusing to stand and applaud Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky when he spoke to Congress in Washington, D.C., last Wednesday. It hailed her as “brave” for failing to honor Zelensky, who has led his nation against a bloody, brutal invasion by Russia. The broadcast also gave shout outs to Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) and far-right Fox News host Tucker Carlson for dissing the leader considered a hero by his country.
12.19.22-THE WORMS ARE WAITING TO SEE WHICH WAY TO TURN-After the Jan. 6 House committee voted to recommend the Justice Department bring criminal charges against him. Leading Republicans largely avoided the historic criminal referral Monday, while others pressed to weigh in offered muted defenses — or none at all.
12.18.22-TRICKLE DOWN HAS NEVER WORKED-Trump pledged to fix U.S. infrastructure as president. He vowed to take on China and bulk up American manufacturing. He said he would reduce the budget deficit and make the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes. Yet after two years as president, it's Joe Biden who is acting on those promises. He jokes that he's created an "infrastructure decade" after Trump merely managed a near parody of "infrastructure weeks." His legislative victories are not winning him votes from Trump loyalists or boosting his overall approval ratings. But they reflect a major pivot in how the government interacts with the economy at a time when many Americans fear a recession and broader national decline. Gone are blanket tax cuts. No more unfettered faith in free trade with non-democracies. The Biden White House has committed more than $1.7 trillion to the belief that a mix of government aid, focused policies and bureaucratic expertise can deliver long-term growth that lifts up the middle class. This reverses the past administration's view that cutting regulations and taxes boosted investments by businesses that flowed downward to workers.
12.17.22-SHE GOT THE 'BITCH' PART RIGHT-Kari Lake tweeted :“They messed with the wrong bitch.” She spoke at Mar-a-Lago, spewing venom.
AND THIS:
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE!-The House panel investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol is considering recommending the pursuit of three criminal charges against former President Donald Trump.
12.16.22-GOOD ONE NANCY!-Outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) sat down with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) at a restaurant for a joint interview with CNN’s Jamie Gangel. And when asked by Gangel what a second Trump presidency would mean, Pelosi zinged: “I don’t think that we should talk about him while we’re eating.”AND THIS:
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) is all for the Republican Party “moving on” from Donald Trump following his attempts to subvert the 2020 election. The GOP governor referred to Trump as “crazy” earlier this year,
12.15.22-FAUCI HITS QELON-“I don’t respond to him. I don’t pay any attention to him because that’s merely a distraction. And if you get drawn into that and, I have to be honest, that cesspool of interaction, it’s … there’s no value added to that, it doesn’t help anything,” he added.
AND THIS:
Trump touted the release of “digital trading cards” with his likeness on Thursday after teasing a “major announcement” earlier this week. The digital cards or NFTs (non-fungible tokens aka digital artwork that can be traded and logged online) cost a steep $100 a pop — and in this economy, no less!
12.14.22-QElon-Sell your Tesla, dump Twitter, use Blue Origin, not SpaceX, remove any Powerwall solar equipment. take an Uber instead of a Boring Tunnel, cancel Musk!
12.11.22-TRASH PICKER OPENS GARBAGE MOUTH AGAIN-The White House on Monday condemned Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) for her recent boast that if she’d been in charge of organizing last year’s violent attack on the U.S. Capitol, people would have shown up armed and “won.” Greene’s remarks, deputy White House press secretary Andrew Bates said in a statement, are a “slap in the face” to the law enforcement officers who risked their lives to keep members of Congress safe during the attack.
12.10.22-SERIAL LIAR-Far-right Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio has made a career of telling half-truths and whole lies while in the House. He was true to form Thursday, telling one of his most egregious lies of the year. During a House hearing, Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., confronted Jordan over a now-infamous tweet committee Republicans posted saluting Twitter CEO Elon Musk, former President Donald Trump and rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West. “That tweet was not our account and that tweet has been removed,” Jordan said. Literally a half-truth. That tweet absolutely was on the House Judiciary GOP’s account — and yes, it was removed … almost two months and several racist scandals too late.
12.06.22-WHERE ARE THE REST OF THE REPUBLICANS?- Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) borrowed one of Donald Trump’s favorite nicknames for his critics when asked about the ex-president calling for the “termination” of the U.S. Constitution over the weekend. “Well, the Republican Party is the Constitution party,” Romney told reporters on Capitol Hill on Monday. “So when he calls to suspend the Constitution, he goes from being MAGA to being RINO.”
ANDERSON COOPER ON TRUMP:-“It is like having a drunk relative who yells out obscenities or incredibly inappropriate things, and you don’t know what to do about him and so people just ignore him. Soon he’ll be wandering around with an onion tied to his belt, talking about [how] movies used to cost a nickel.”
12.05.22-THE NUMBER ONE ENEMY OF THE CONSTITUTION-Trump faced rebuke Sunday from officials in both parties after calling for the “termination” of parts of the Constitution over his lie that the 2020 election was stolen.
12.03.22-WAS THERE EVER ANY DOUBT?-Trump approved a key aspect of a tax fraud scheme orchestrated by several top executives at his family business, prosecutors said on Friday in their closing arguments at the company’s trial, an explosive claim as the jury prepares to deliberate next week. Prosecutors have not charged Trump with participating in the scheme, through which, they say, the executives were compensated in off-the-books perks so that they could evade taxes. But on Friday, Joshua Steinglass, a prosecutor, told the jury that Mr. Trump had signed off on part of the scheme, and that one document proved it.
12.01.22-YE IS SICK-He has a history of praising Hitler and Nazis. CNN reported in October that rapper has an "obsession" with Hitler and even wanted to name an album after him, and NBC News reported he paid a settlement to a former employee who witnessed "more than one incident in which Ye praised Hitler or Nazis in business meetings." Former TMZ staffer Van Lathan also alleged that during a visit to the TMZ offices in 2018, Ye said, "I love Hitler. I love Nazis." Ye also defended Nazis on InfoWars after Jones called them "thugs" who "did a lot of really bad things," with the rapper shooting back, "They did good things, too. We've got to stop dissing Nazis all the time."
11.30.22-EVEN MORE-Jimmy Kimmel on Monday mocked the “meeting of the mindless” between Trump, antisemite rap star Ye and notorious white nationalist Nick Fuentes at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago home.
11.29.22-MORE ON THE RACIST TRUMP-Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) measured the depths of Trump’s audacity after the former president met with antisemitic rapper Ye and Holocaust-denying white nationalist Nick Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago. “I think it has been clear that there’s no bottom to the degree to which President Trump will degrade himself and the nation,” Romney told reporters on Monday after calling Trump’s meeting with the two figures “disgusting.”
11.26.22-AND THIS GUY WAS ONCE PRESIDENT?-UGH!-Trump dined this past week with white nationalist Nick Fuentes and rapper Ye — formally known as Kanye West — at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
11.25.22-CHUMP VS. CHUMP-Ex-Trump Official Predicts How And Why Trump Would Lose In 2024. “It’s Trump versus Trump and one of the people who can beat Trump is Trump," said Mick Mulvaney.
11.21.22-TRUMP'S MANIACAL RANTINGS:
The newly appointed special counsel is “totally controlled by President Obama and his former A.G., Eric Holder.” This was a new claim Trump rolled out via social media last night, and it’s ugly. Not only is Smith a highly respected prosecutor, there’s nothing to suggest he has any meaningful connections to Obama and Holder, neither one of whom had anything to do with his appointment. It was almost as if stupid went out of his way to whine about two Black men for no apparent reason.
The precedent that doesn’t exist. Trump again insisted other modern presidents “kept documents,” adding, “In one case, they had it in a Chinese restaurant with broken windows. And in another case they had a Chinese restaurant connected to a bowling alley. This is where the documents were kept. They took documents with them. President Obama took documents.” All of this has been thoroughly reviewed and discredited.
11.20.22-ANOTHER WORM TURNS-Former U.S. Attorney General William Barr said in an interview that aired Friday on PBS that his former boss, Trump, should “stand aside” and forego his campaign for another presidential term because he doesn’t have what it takes. Barr also said it appeared “increasingly more likely” that the Department of Justice will indict Trump for the hoard of classified documents from the White House that the FBI found stashed at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. And the Justice Department “probably” has what it needs for “legitimately indicting” him, Barr added.
11.19.22-I HAVE FRIENDS AND RELATIVES WHO DRANK THAT KOOL-AID. SAD. A federal judge on Friday raised the specter of Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler as he noted similarities in the mindset of U.S. Capitol rioters mesmerized by a “demagogue.” Senior U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton pointed to the chilling comparisons as he handed down a three-year sentence in his District of Columbia courtroom to rioter Dustin Thompson of Ohio, who had blamed Trump for his involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol in the former president’s waning days in office. Walton said he was struck that the college-educated Thompson fell into the “rabbit hole” of conspiracy theories and embraced lies spread by Trump that the 2020 presidential election had been rigged against him. “We saw it happen in Nazi Germany. A very educated, intelligent population was able to be swayed to engage in the atrocities that took place in Germany based upon a demagogue,” Walton noted, according to Business Insider. “It seems to me you bought into that same type of mentality,” he added. Walton called it “utterly scary that we still have millions of people ... still buying a lie that’s not based on anything other than someone who’s unhappy because they didn’t get what they want.” Thompson had testified that he believed he was following “presidential orders” when he stormed the Capitol with a mob intent on disrupting Congress as it met to certify the electoral votes for Joe Biden.
11.17.22-TRUMP IS DONE-Click
5 GOP Megadonors Distance Themselves From Trump: Not 'A F**king Nickel' The Republican heavies are calling for “fresh faces” and leaders who “are rooted in today and tomorrow, not today and yesterday.”
11.16.22-MAGAGA-What else is there to say?
11.14.22-SCUM REJECTS SCUM-Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), a onetime loyalist to Trump who spoke at the Jan. 6 rally that led to the assault on the U.S. Capitol, trashed the former president in a new interview. “It would be a bad mistake for the Republicans to have Trump as their nominee in 2024,” Brooks told AL.com amid reports Trump will declare his candidacy on Tuesday. He added: “Donald Trump has proven himself to be dishonest, disloyal, incompetent, crude and a lot of other things that alienate so many independents and Republicans."
11.12.22-CHEATERS CHEAT-One of Trump’s top moneymen admitted Thursday to breaking the law to help fellow Trump Organization executives avoid taxes on company-paid apartments and other perks, including by preparing misleading tax returns and failing to report the benefits to tax authorities. Senior Vice President and Controller Jeffrey McConney testified at the company’s criminal tax fraud trial that he filed false tax returns on behalf of a father-son executive duo whose Manhattan apartment rents were paid by the Trump Organization. McConney, who was granted immunity to testify as a prosecution witness, also testified that a few years before Trump became president, the company’s accountant raised concerns about the way it paid out holiday bonuses — a topic that has consumed hours of trial testimony. According to McConney, the accountant warned that the Trump Organization’s dubious and since-discontinued practice of splitting bonus payments between an executive’s salary and one-time independent contractor payments from subsidiaries could jeopardize the law license of one such executive: its top lawyer.
11.09.22-ORANGE TURNS TO BRIGHT RED-Trump is apparently not in good spirits after Tuesday night’s midterm upset. According to CNN’s Jim Acosta, an aide to the former president said he was “livid” and “screaming at everyone” on Wednesday after what Republicans hyped up to be a red tsunami turned out to be more of a ripple. As of Wednesday afternoon, Republicans appeared poised to win control of the House, but the fate of the Senate still hung in the balance. And though Trump wasn’t on the ballot, more than one-morning headline dubbed him the election’s biggest loser. Democrats outperformed Republican nominees he endorsed, and voters largely rejected candidates who parroted his election-denying rhetoric.
11.08.22-NOBODY LIKES THIS CLOWN-EVEN THE STUPID TRUMPERS-Houston Astros fans gathered in the city’s streets on Monday to honor the team’s World Series victory. However, some people seemed more enthusiastic about booing Sen. Ted Cruz than they were about cheering the Astros’ victory. For some reason, the Texas Republican rode in a car in the parade ― a move that didn’t score many points with fans. Numerous videos taken at the parade show Cruz being brutally booed by thousands.
11.07.22-THIS PIECE OF TRASH IS DISGUSTING-Even in a midterm marked by misinformation, conspiracy theories and false or misleading attacks, nobody does it like Trump. In a burst of campaigning for Republican candidates while he readies his own third bid for the White House, is honing a stump speech based around juxtaposing current conditions with those during his presidency — a contrast he heightens by misrepresenting and exaggerating on both ends. His speech Thursday at a rally in Sioux City, Iowa, contained at least 58 false or misleading statements, and he added at least another 24 distinct falsehoods at a Saturday speech in Latrobe, Pa., according to a Washington Post analysis. Many of the inaccuracies were repeat offenses for Trump and consistent with his exhaustively documented record of dispensing with the truth. But lately his speeches have also become a clearinghouse for the vast array of rumors, memes and myths that spread in right-wing media and fill up many other Republicans’ campaign speeches and ads.
11.05.22-WOW! GOD MADE TRASH-Florida’s GOP Gov. DeSantis released his latest campaign ad Friday, and it’s out of this world. After creating light, the sun, the moon, stars, Earth, plants, animals and normal humans, God made “fighter” DeSantis, according to the eye-popping campaign pitch. “On the eighth day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, ‘I need a protector,’” intoned a God-like voice on the black-and-white video.
11.04.22-HAHA-ERIC AND DON JR., NOW YOU KNOW-At a rally in Iowa, Trump bragged about changes to the estate tax passed into law during his presidency that allowed the wealthy to leave more money to their kids ― or as the former president put it, the kids they like. “I always say, ’If you don’t like, leave it to charity,” he said, then added: “Some of us have horrible children!”
11.03.22-THIS TRASH HATES OUR COUNTRY-Trump turned to his social media platform over the weekend to whine in a rather provocative way. “The Witch Hunt continues, and after 6 years and millions of pages of documents, they’ve got nothing. If I had what Hunter and Joe had, it would be the Electric Chair. Our Country is Rigged, Crooked, and Evil — We must bring it back, and FAST. Next stop, Communism!” Notable was the idea that we’ll soon fall victim to “Communism” — a line he echoed yesterday by publishing a follow-up missive that said, “We really are living in a Communist Country." Evidently, it only took a couple of days for us to collectively reach the “next stop.” But of particular interest was Trump’s assertion that the United States is “rigged, crooked and evil.” What would the reaction might be if a former Democratic president made such criticisms against his own country. A former American president described the United States — his own country — as “evil,” in writing, on a platform he controls.
11.02.22-WAY TO GO 'O'-Barack Obama rebuked the election-denying GOP Nevada secretary of state nominee as he campaigned for Democrats on Tuesday ahead of next week’s midterms. At a rally in Las Vegas, Obama mocked Republican Jim Marchant for staunchly defending Trump’s lies about the 2020 election with a scathing football analogy. Obama pointed out how Marchant has tried to ”one-up all Republicans peddling lies about the 2020 election” by claiming that all elections in Nevada have been “fake” for the last 15 years. Marchant was “not someone you want” overseeing an election, said Obama. He continued: “It’d be like if the Raiders played the Chiefs and you noticed that instead of the refs who’ve been calling games for 20 years, somebody said, ‘Hey, how about that guy over there wearing the Chiefs gear who’s been tailgating for the last three hours, drinking some brews and ranting about how the Chiefs actually beat the Bucks in the Super Bowl last year, they look impartial, let’s put them in charge.’” “If you wouldn’t do that for a football game, why would you do it for an election?” Obama added.
10.27.22-TODAY'S FUNNY BUT TRUE-Jimmy Kimmel has an offer for Eric Trump, son of Trump, but it’s probably not one he’ll ever have a chance to accept. Over the weekend, Eric Trump told a rally crowd that his father had been subpoenaed by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol that was carried out by Trump supporters. “Who wants to pop a beer, make some popcorn and watch Trump talk about election fraud in the United States of America?” he asked. Kimmel raised his hand. “I do, too! I would like to see that,” he host said of the notion of listening to Trump answer questions while under oath. “But Daddy’s lawyers definitely don’t want them. They want him to be quiet so he doesn’t go to jail and you don’t have to work at a car wash for the rest of your life.”
10.26.22-TODAY'S STUFF
--Trump urged Arizona GOP Senate nominee Blake Masters to repeat baseless 2020 presidential election fraud claims. “Look at Kari,” he said. “Kari is winning with very little money and if they say, ‘How is your family?’ she says, ‘The election was rigged and stolen." Trump told Masters.“You’ll lose if you go soft, you gonna lose that base.” Masters’ divisive rhetoric has been condemned by the best man at his wedding and even his own former classmates.
--The Florida Republican Party paid thousands of dollars over the summer to a far-right activist who attended the white nationalist “Unite the Right” rally in 2017 and later charged at a crowd of anti-racist demonstrators with a Confederate flag.
--Jacques Berlinerblau, a professor of Jewish civilization at Georgetown University, explained how he believes Trump has created his own brand of antisemitism. Trump is a “true thought leader, influencer and innovator in the Judeophobic space” who has made “subtle innovations in antisemitic rhetoric” while “deploying time-tested, old school, anti-Jewish tropes,” Berlinerblau wrote. Trump’s anger “is based on the fact that the overwhelming majority of Jews did not cast their ballots for Trump,” the professor said.
10.25.22-DUMB AND DUMBER-Trump has reportedly spoken to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who spoke at a white nationalist event earlier this year, as his possible running mate should he seek the presidency in 2024. “Could you imagine that?” Jimmie Kimmel asked. “The only thing those two should be running together is a Hooters in Fort Lauderdale.”
10-24-22-THIS DISGUSTING PIECE OF TRASH-Trump suggested that the best way to get reporters to spill the beans about their confidential sources is to lock them up in prison where they can be raped by other inmates.
AND THIS
Legendary Watergate journalist Bob Woodward sounded the alarm on Trump Sunday, releasing eight hours of interview recordings he says show the ex-president as a serious “threat to democracy.”
10.20.22-TRUMP HEADLINES:
--Mike Pence indicated Wednesday that he might not be inclined to vote for Trump in 2024 should he launch another White House bid
--Trump inquired whether a documentary filmmaker recording an interview with him last year was a “good Jewish character."
--Trump signed a document swearing under oath that information in a Georgia lawsuit he filed challenging the results of the 2020 election was true even though his own lawyers had told him it was false, a federal judge wrote on Wednesday.
10.19.22-ANOTHER TRUMP FAILURE-A jury on Tuesday acquitted on all counts a think tank analyst accused of lying to the FBI about his role in the creation of a discredited dossier about Trump. The case against Igor Danchenko was the third and possibly final case brought by Special Counsel John Durham as part of his probe into how the FBI conducted its own investigation into allegations of collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and the Kremlin. Despite hopes by Trump supporters that the prosecutor would uncover a sweeping conspiracy within the FBI and other agencies to derail his candidacy, and then his presidency, the investigation over the course of more than three years failed to produce evidence that met those expectations. The sole conviction — an FBI agent admitted altering an email related to the surveillance of a former Trump aide — was for conduct uncovered not by Durham but by the Justice Department’s inspector general, and the two cases that Durham took to trials ended in across-the-board acquittals.
10.18.22-MORE OF THE SAME LIES-Trump’s hotels charged Secret Service “exorbitant” rates, House committee says. The Trump Organization billed the agency more than $1.4 million for agents’ stays at its hotels while they protected the former president and his family, sometimes asking for as much as $1,185 per night, according to the House Oversight Committee. The documents released by the committee contrast with claims made by Trump and his son Eric, the organization’s executive vice president, that the fees charged to the Secret Service were minimal.
AND NOW THIS:
Will Wilkerson, one of Trump Media & Technology Group’s first employees, alleges the company violated securities laws and that Trump pressured executives to hand over their shares to his wife. He shared a cache of internal documents with The Post and federal investigators that he says support his claims.
10.17.22-NUTTY NARCISSIST-Trump said American Jews don’t appreciate him enough and that they need to “get their act together” and show more gratitude for his past policies toward Israel “before it is too late.” His repeated demand for more credit for his policies was quickly called out as antisemitic. [HuffPost]
10.15.22-TODAY'S WTH? HEADLINES:
--As many as nine boxes that Trump’s aides hauled from his home in Florida this year to his New Jersey resort are raising new questions about the ex-president’s hoarding of secret government documents.
--A former GOP primary challenger to far-right U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert in Colorado took the bold move this week of endorsing her Democratic rival in the 2022 election. In an op-ed Wednesday for the Montrose Daily Press, Republican state Sen. Don Coram painted Boebert as a liar who “claims credit for things she had absolutely nothing to do with.”
--GOOD NEWS!-The formerly fawning Wall Street Journal scorched Trump in a flaming editorial Friday for his “dereliction of duty” by failing to take expedient action to quell the violence that threatened the U.S. government early last year.
--Herschel Walker, the GOP nominee for a U.S. Senate seat in Georgia, was reprimanded by a moderator for flashing a “prop” police badge in his debate Friday against Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock. During a response to a question about crime, Warnock criticized Walker for falsely claiming in the past that he had once worked in law enforcement.
--Moderators of the second debate between Republican Sen. Ron Johnson and his challenger in Wisconsin, Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, tried to end the event on a positive note Thursday, asking each U.S. Senate candidate to say something nice about the other. But Johnson, a loyalist to Trump, just couldn’t bring himself to do it — and ended up getting booed by the audience, who’d already laughed at one of his wilder claims that day
--Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth on Friday called for military leaders to “stand up for women” amid a roiling Defense Department controversy over how to respond to vicious criticism of female soldiers by Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
10.14.22-THE START OF THE BIG LIE-The House Jan. 6 committee on Thursday shared evidence that showed close advisers to Donald Trump called for him to declare victory on Election Day 2020, even before votes had been fully counted, as part of a strategy to claim victory no matter what happened. Trump ultimately did just that, saying in a nighttime speech at the White House after polls closed, “Frankly, we did win this election.”
10.12.22-MONEY IS ONLY PART OF THE JUSTICE THESE FAMILIES SHOULD RECEIVE. TOO BAD JAIL TIME IS NOT IN THE CARDS FOR THIS SCUM-A Connecticut jury has found that conspiracy theorist Alex Jones must pay $965 million to several family members of those killed in the Sandy Hook school shooting for spreading lies that the shooting was fake. Jurors deliberated for three days in a trial that lasted five weeks. Multiple Sandy Hook family members, as well as an FBI agent who responded to the 2012 school shooting, sued Jones for his continued claims that the massacre of 20 children and six adults never happened. It did. Testimony in the Connecticut trial ― which took place just 20 minutes from where the shooting happened ― revealed the inner workings of Jones’ media company and highlighted the cruelty family members faced from harassers. It was the second such trial in three months, with a Texas jury finding Jones must pay more than $45 million to a pair of Sandy Hook parents in August. He’ll have to face trial in Texas again for his final Sandy Hook defamation case at a date to be determined.
10.11.22-TRUE WORDS-John Giles, the GOP mayor of Mesa, Arizona, on Sunday eschewed Trump’s appearance at a rally for the hard-right Republican gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake. Instead, Giles spoke at a campaign event for Lake’s Democratic rival Katie Hobbs. In a video that Hobbs’ campaign shared on Facebook, Giles framed the upcoming contest as “a choice between sanity and chaos.” He also slammed 2020 election denier Lake as divisive and “dangerous for Arizona.”
10.10.22-TRUE COLORS-GOP SENATOR MAKES RACIST COMMENT EQUATING BLACK PEOPLE TO CRIMINALS Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville asserted that Democrats support reparations for the descendants of enslaved people because “they think the people that do the crime are owed that.” Tuberville is falsely suggesting that Democrats promote crime and that only Blacks are the perpetrators. In fact, crime has slowed in the last year and most crimes are committed by whites, according to FBI data. [AP]
10.09.22-HERSCHEL WALKER-NEED I SAY MORE?
10.08.22-TODAY'S HEADLINES-MORE REPUBLICAN MORONS
--New Hampshire GOP Senate nominee Don Bolduc told supporters this week that he thinks the future of abortion rights “belongs” to Republican “gentlemen” state lawmakers, who he claims know best how to give women a voice on their reproductive rights
--Mehmet Oz Gives Speech Near Hitler's Car And Causes Furor On Twitter
The Pennsylvania Senate candidate spoke in front of the vehicle, which sports a swastika on the side, during a fundraiser in California.
--A new campaign ad for Kari Lake, the hard-right Donald Trump-backed GOP nominee for governor in Arizona, features stock video of Russian soldiers marching in a victory parade
--A Republican secretary of state candidate in Arizona who claimed last month he goes to the polls in person to vote has a roughly 14-year history of voting mostly by mail, according to Arizona journalist Dillon Rosenblatt.
10.06.22-TRASH REPORT!-Tim Miller, a former spokesperson for the Republican National Committee, minced no words in naming and shaming the Republican he’s worked with who is just “the worst.” In an interview with Vox this week, Miller slammed Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.). “She flips on a dime,” he said, noting how in 2018 she went from being a moderate Republican to a Trump loyalist. She is “now literally indistinguishable from a MAGA troll.” Miller, author of the new book “Why We Did It,” quit the GOP following Trump’s nomination in 2016 and has become a fierce critic of the party. Stefanik, he said, is “the worst” because “it’s just the most brazen.” “It also is the worst at some level because it’s paying off for her,” he continued, saying he “truly” thinks she could be a potential running mate for Trump should the former president run again in 2024. “And if not that, I think she’s on a speaker of the House trajectory,” Miller added. (check her out here)
10.05.22-PERFECT PUT-DOWN-At a Michigan rally Saturday for Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene griped that “Democrats like Pete Buttigieg want to emasculate the way we drive and force all of you to rely on electric vehicles.” Fox News host Neil Cavuto asked Buttigieg what he thought of the comment. “I literally don’t even understand what that means,” Buttigieg replied. “My sense of manhood is not connected to whether or not my vehicle is fueled by gasoline or whether it’s fueled by electricity.” “It was a strange thing to say,” he added. “You know, to be honest, there are other members of Congress that I pay more attention to when I’m thinking about opinions that really matter or ideas that are going to be critical to engage with.”
10.04.22 HEADLINES
--CPAC IS A FASCIST ORGANIZATION-The Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday parroted pro-Kremlin talking points that suggested Russia’s recent illegal annexation of Ukrainian regions was legitimate, and criticized the United States’ ongoing support of Ukraine.
--SO EASY TO DO-“The best way to take down Trump is by mocking him,” said Keenan, citing the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner when then-President Obama and comedian Seth Meyers mercilessly poked fun at Trump, much to the reality television personality’s chagrin. “The single best way to get under his skin is to do that,” continued the author of the new book “Grace: President Obama and Ten Days in the Battle for America.”
--ON HIS WAY RO ANOTHER DEFEAT IN COURT-Trump sued CNN for defamation on Monday, seeking $475 million in punitive damages and claiming the network had carried out a "campaign of libel and slander" against him. Trump claims in his lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, that CNN had used its considerable influence as a leading news organization to defeat him politically.
10.03.22-MAGA MORON-The U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene Monday in a defamation lawsuit against MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell filed by Dominion Voting Systems. Lindell had asked the high court to consider his appeal of a federal judge’s August 2021 rejection of a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. The voting machine company hit Lindell, a staunch ally of Trump, with a $1.3 billion suit in February 2021 over his repeated false claims casting doubt on Trump’s 2020 election defeat. Lindell’s baseless accusations of “fraud, election rigging and conspiracy” caused the company enormous harm, Dominion said, and Lindell repeated them to sell pillows, even though he knew they were false.
10.02.22-NO SURPRISE-The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has sent a letter to the House Oversight Committee claiming that they have still not received some records from the former Trump administration, potentially adding a new layer to the investigation as legal proceedings into the former president continue to heat up.
10.01.22-TODAY'S HEADLINES(huffpost.com)
--A new poll released Friday has found that 51% of registered voters believe Trump should not be allowed to serve a second term because of ongoing investigations into his conduct. Only 35% said he should be allowed to run for president, given “what we know about the ongoing investigations,” according to the new Yahoo News-YouGov poll. The rest, 14%, said they were not sure whether Trump should be allowed to run again or not.--Trump on Friday night resorted to violent rhetoric once more as he suggested Mitch McConnell has “a death wish” for supporting “Democrat sponsored Bills.” Trump, in a post on his Truth Social platform, also racistly referred to McConnell’s Taiwan-born wife Elaine Chao as “China loving wife, Coco Chow!”
--WTH?-Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, stood by the false claim that the 2020 election was fraudulent during an interview Thursday with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, the panel’s chairman said.
09.28.22-ANOTHER STUPID MAGA REPUBLICAN-Kari Lake said she had uncovered “some really painful, hurtful news” about her Democratic opponent, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, that would presumably shake up their gubernatorial race. “My team is triple-confirming its true,” the Republican wrote on Twitter. “Tomorrow I will be releasing. Bad stuff!” A day later, after the apparent triple-confirmation, the far-right candidate dropped her political bombshell: Hobbs, claimed Lake, fought to keep the Pledge of Allegiance, the national anthem, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution out of Arizona’s public school classrooms. The Republican seemed quite excited about the apparent revelation, releasing a video that went on and on about Lake’s patriotism and Hobbs’ outrageous record, complete with on-screen evidence. Lake got the story wrong. As The Arizona Republic’s Laurie Roberts explained, the only thing the GOP candidate proved was that “Kari Lake doesn’t know how to read a bill.” Democratic legislators, including Hobbs, balked at the idea of pushing religion in public school classrooms, but even a rudimentary review of the proposal shows that it would not have pushed the Pledge of Allegiance, the national anthem, the Declaration of Independence, or the Constitution out of schools. The entire line of attack was the result of an apparent mistake by the Lake campaign.
09.27.22-CHRIS, YOU SHOULD REALIZE BY NOW THAT TRUMP IS DEMENTED-Chris Christie (R) said if Trump keeps making “nonsense arguments” on TV about the Justice Department investigation into his handling of classified documents, he might just find himself facing a “self-inflicted indictment.” “I think these are all self-inflicted wounds by Trump,” Christie said during a panel discussion on ABC about the chances the former president could be indicted in the case. “And you know, one of the things that I always say to clients is, you know, don’t out-loud fight with the Department of Justice. Like, you know, we’ll fight in court and do the things we need to do. He’s doing the exact opposite.” “His lawyers aren’t fighting any of this in court,” he continued. “They’re really not. They’re not putting forward any of these arguments. He’s putting forward all these arguments on television. There comes a point where prosecutors are human too. And you want to keep daring them, they may just actually do it.” (huffpost.com)
09.26.22-JUST NOW REALIZING THIS, GERALDO? Fox News media personality and conservative Geraldo Rivera on Sunday scorched Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) for his wildly outlandish claim that Trump won the 2020 presidential election. The claim by Cruz — and Sen. Josh Hawley (R- Missouri) and Trump — is so wildly preposterous that it ranks with the claim that the Earth is flat, despite all conceivable evidence to the contrary, scoffed Rivera in a tweet. Because of the outlandish lie by the senators — who Rivera is convinced should know better — “everything they say should jam the bullshit filter,” he warned.
09.25.22-BE READY TO LIVE BY THE RULE OF CHRISTIANS-In response to Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) who is campaigning on a promise to turn the US into a "Christian nation, former GOP campaign strategist Rick Wilson says: "If you stretch back to the Mayflower, this is a country that was founded on fleeing from the religious persecution of an official state religion. And when the constitution was being framed, we had states and we had leaders who all understood that this country was going to have a pluralistic approach to religion, which was to say, the government would neither condone nor suppress any religion. This is a fundamental part of American history," he lectured. "My recommendation to these folks, if they want to live in a country that is governed by the church, that is governed by a religious body, I would recommend that they move to Iran -- that is exactly the kind of government they want," he added. "There are people in that movement, there are people in that subculture who really believe that's how America should be. They have completely divorced themselves from individual liberty. They're completely divorced from religious liberty."
09.24.22-HE LEARNED FROM THE WORST-GUESS WHO? The property management subsidiary of Jared Kushner’s family real estate business has agreed to fork over $3.25 million to the state of Maryland to settle a lawsuit alleging the company has “victimized” financially vulnerable tenets “at all stages of offering and leasing,” ProPublica reported on Friday. “This is a case in which landlords deceived and cheated tenants and subjected them to miserable living conditions,” state Attorney General Brian Frosh said at a press conference announcing the settlement with Westminster Management, according to ProPublica. “These were not wealthy people. Many struggled to pay the rent, to put food on the table, to take care of their kids, to keep everybody healthy, and Westminster used its vastly superior economic power to take advantage of them.” (Rolling Stone)
09.23.22-CAUGHT IN A LIE-U.S. District Judge Raymond Dearie, who is acting as a special master in the Mar-a-Lago documents case, demanded that Trump’s lawyers substantiate another one of the former president’s claims: that the FBI “planted” records. Dearie ordered Trump’s legal team to submit by Sept. 30 a list of specific items in the Justice Department’s 11-page inventory of documents taken from the Mar-a-Lago resort — including top secret files — that “plaintiff asserts were not seized from the premises.” They must also submit a list of any items seized that were not on the inventory, the order states. Dearie said. Trump has claimed repeatedly that FBI agents “planted” records. Yet Trump also said that he and his family members watched on surveillance cameras as agents searched Mar-a-Lago and removed materials, raising the question of how the FBI could have secretly planted evidence simultaneously. Two lawyers for Trump were also at Mar-a-Lago during the search, and one signed off on a list of boxes and “miscellaneous top secret documents” that were removed.
09.22.22-Today's Headlines:
-TRUMP:-“If you’re the President of the United States, you can declassify just by saying ‘it’s declassified’ - even by thinking about it.:
-MORE LIES TO COME-Virginia Thomas agrees to interview with Jan. 6 panel
-UNANIMOUS DECISION INCLUDING TWO TRUMP-APPOINTED JUDGES-A federal appeals court allowed the Justice Department to resume using sensitive documents that were seized from Trump.
-HANDMAIDS TALE?-Trump-Backed House Candidate Argued Against Women's Right To Vote. John Gibbs, the GOP nominee for a House seat in Michigan, said women should take care of children, and leave governing and voting to men.
-BE AFRAID TO BE OLD! -House Republicans are apparently set to announce a policy platform that criticizes Democrats’ popular prescription drug cost reductions and opens the door to Social Security and Medicare cuts, according to a document that leaked online Wednesday.
-LOONEY TUNES-Trump Tells Stunned Hannity FBI Were Looking for Hillary’s Deleted Emails in Mar-a-Lago Raid
09.20.22-0F COURSE TRUMP FIGURED THAT HE COULD IGNORE THE LAW-A former lawyer for Trump warned the ex-president late last year that harboring government documents at home could put him in legal jeopardy, sources told The New York Times in a report published Monday. Onetime White House attorney Eric Herschmann emphasized the importance of returning the material, three people familiar with the conversation said. Trump thanked Herschmann for the counsel but was “noncommittal” about giving back the files, according to the three sources. The reported discussion bolsters evidence that Trump knew there could be consequences of taking home government materials. He allegedly squirreled away top-secret files that reportedly included sensitive nuclear information. It is not clear whether Herschmann, who did not work for Trump at the time of the reported conversation, had knowledge of the contents of the documents in the former president’s possession, according to the Times. (NYT)
09.18.22-ALL THEY NEED ARE BROWN SHIRTS AND WE WILL BE BACK IN THE LATE 1930s. In what’s likely the eeriest of countless eerie scenes at a Trump rally, the former president on Saturday lamented the ugly chaos of these times while supporters raised one finger in an overhead salute reminiscent of the “heil Hitler” gesture. Trump ticked off his imagined list of current horrors in a kind of dirge with music playing in the background. Several supporters, some with heads bowed, stood quietly in the audience with a single finger raised above their heads. Some viewers speculated that it referred to the nationalist “America first” slogan, while others claimed it was a symbol of QAnon, which Trump is increasingly espousing. Some in the audience were employing a modified white supremacy “OK” hate sign with only the index finger extended. (huffpost.com)
09.17.22-THE WORMS START TO TURN-By Steve Benen, MSNBC-As the primary season wrapped up, voters have seen plenty of flip-flopping from Republican candidates recently, and there’s no shortage of examples of GOP candidates downplaying — and occasionally erasing — earlier far-right views. But I’ll confess to being surprised by the sheer brazenness of the party’s newest U.S. Senate nominee. The New York Times reported: Like a driver making a screeching U-turn, Don Bolduc, the Republican Senate nominee in New Hampshire, pivoted on Thursday from his primary race to the general election, saying he had “come to the conclusion” that the 2020 presidential election “was not stolen,” after he had spent more than a year claiming it was. Bolduc, fresh off his primary victory this week, appeared on Fox News yesterday, claimed to have done some “research” in recent weeks, and concluded that the 2020 presidential election “was not stolen” after all.
09.15.22-DANGER AHEAD IN NOVEMBER-On Wednesday's edition of MSNBC's "The ReidOut," conservative analyst Charlie Sykes warned that Trump's brand of conspiracy theories and attacks on democracy have metastasized into the entire Republican Party, from the bottom up. "What a strange and wild ride," said Sykes. "It is like your crazy uncle that you kept in the basement has now suddenly appeared and is running the show ... it's almost as if we've gone post-Trump here, where the craziness has morphed into this mass psychosis where it's not just a few scattered anecdotes anymore, it is state after state where you are seeing, you know, some of the most extreme election deniers, not people running on some conservative or right-wing agenda, but people who have embraced the most bizarre conspiracies." Among the factors inflaming things further, Sykes noted, are Trump increasingly endorsing the QAnon movement directly and calling into a D.C. jail rally for the high-level January 6 offenders.
09.14.22-DISGUSTING USE OF PRESIDENTIAL POWER-Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) informed Attorney General Merrick Garland on Monday that the Senate Judiciary Committee is investigating allegations from former U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman Trump and his Justice Department appointees tried to interfere with prosecutorial decisions, to punish Trump's critics and spare his allies, Berman writes that Barr suggested in 2019 that SDNY drop its prosecution of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and a related investigation into possible campaign finance violations. Berman also says Justice Department officials pressured his office to prosecute former Secretary of State John Kerry and told Berman's deputy to charge prominent Democratic lawyer Gregory Craig before the 2018 midterm elections, "to even things out," as DOJ official Edward O'Callaghan reportedly told Berman's deputy, referring to the SDNY's recent prosecution of two prominent Trump loyalists. When Berman's team declined to go after Kerry, the Justice Department asked another U.S. attorney's office, which also refused, he writes. The U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., did indict Craig; a jury acquitted him in less than five hours.
09.13.22-MAGA MANIAC-Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) wants Trump to be the nation’s “MAGA King.” Jackson, who has openly embraced some of Trump’s favorite lies and conspiracy theories, tweeted: Retweet if you want the MAGA King back now!! The phrase is a play on President Joe Biden’s critical nickname for Trump earlier this year, when he dismissed the former president by sarcastically referring to him as “the great MAGA king.” But if anyone is ready to embrace that title for Trump, it may be Jackson, the former White House physician so gaga for the former president that he once declared Trump might live to 200. Now, he’s taking it even further. Jackson’s critics on Twitter were quick to point out that few things are less American than kings.
09.11.22-THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING-NEXT WILL BE WHAT WE DO AND READ IN OUR HOMES-Between 2021 and 2022, there were a considerable number of books banned or challenged in the United States. Most of the targeted books have to do with race, gender, and sexuality. Unlike most book challenges in the past, whereby parents or other stakeholders in the community would engage teachers and school administrators in a debate over a title, local groups have received support from conservative advocacy organizations working to nationalize the efforts focused on certain subjects. They have also been more likely to involve legal and legislative measures rather than just conversations in local communities. Journalists, academics, librarians, and others commonly link the coordinated, often well-funded book challenges to other reactionary efforts to restrict what students should learn about systemic bias and the history of the United States. Hundreds of books have been challenged, including high-profile examples like Maus by Art Spiegelman and New Kid by Jerry Craft. (wikipedia)
09.09.22-WE ALL KNEW THIS BUT NICE TO HAVE VALIDATION FOM SOMEONE CLOSE TO THE DEMON- Ty Cobb, a former White House lawyer who served as special counsel to Trump in 2017 and 2018, called the disgraced former president “a deeply wounded narcissist” in an interview with CBS News reporter Major Garrett on the “Takeout” podcast. “My personal view is that it’s less a character issue than a personality defect,” Cobb told Garrett. “I believe former President Trump to be a deeply wounded narcissist, and he is often incapable of acting other than in his perceived self-interest, or for revenge.” Cobb told Garrett that narcissism and revenge were “the two compelling instincts that guide his actions” and inherently prevented Trump from admitting he lost the 2020 election — and from listening to his own advisers. (huffpost.com)
09.07.22-LICENSE TO BE CORRUPT--Elie Mystal, an attorney and legal reporter for The Nation, accused a Trump-appointed judge of bias and corruption Monday after she appointed a special master to review documents seized from his home by the FBI. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, nominated by Trump in 2020, made the move over the objections of the Justice Department., “How on Earth could a judge who made it through law school think that Trump can take the property of the government, the federal government, take it home and then have to have a special master decide whether they can investigate him?” Joy Reid asked Mystal of MSNBC.’ To which Mystal replied: “Because she’s biased and corrupt. ... I’ve been saying this since he took office: When you allow Republicans to control the courts, you get nothing. Trump judges do not believe in the rule of law. They do not believe in precedent. They do not believe in facts. They do not believe in logic. They just believe in whatever’s going to help Trump and they’ve proven it again and again and again. So, when I say you cannot trust Trump judges, I don’t know what more evidence you need for that fact.” Mystal dismissed Trump’s claim of executive privilege. “Privilege goes to the current president,” he said. “We only have one president at a time. So, it’s not Trump’s privilege to have.” (huffpost.com)
AND
William Barr Calls Judge's Decision To Grant Trump's Request For 'Special Master' 'Wrong' Barr, who argued the DOJ should appeal the decision, said a special master appointment would not impact the outcome of the investigation.
09.06.22-THIS AWFUL WOMAN-New reports indicate that Ginni Thomas, who’s married to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, was even more involved than we knew in systematic efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory over Donald Trump. We knew that she had sent a barrage of texts to Trump’s White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in an effort to overturn the 2020 election. We knew she’d reportedly emailed the aide of a prominent conservative in the U.S. House of Representatives and said his group needed to be “out in the streets.” We knew that she’d reportedly sent emails to John Eastman, one of Trump’s attorneys, who provided a roadmap for the fake electors scheme. We knew she’d attended the rally that occurred right before the riot on Jan. 6, 2021. According to past reports, she emailed 29 Republican lawmakers in Arizona urging them to contest Biden’s win there. The latest development is that she also contacted Wisconsin lawmakers in an effort to overturn the election. (msnbc.com)
09.05.22-TRUMP IS DESPERATE AND IS SEEKING SUPPORT FROM MORE OF THE CRAZIES-Trump appeared to boost QAnon, the far-right conspiracy theory, by sharing social media posts related to the theory that has seen a resurgence amid heightened tensions between Trump and President Joe Biden. QAnon is a far-right conspiracy theory, and its followers believe that Trump, as president, would arrest and execute a "cabal" of satanic pedophiles, including many high-profile Democrats and celebrities. The theory has widely been discredited, and has not been backed up by any substantial evidence. Early last week, Trump shared more than 50 posts on Truth Social, including dozens of "retruths" in a 24-hour timespan. Several posts he shared either originated from QAnon-related accounts, or posts that featured QAnon language. (msnbc.com)
09.04.22-THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING-A jaw-dropping assignment in a Florida public school district is peddling Trump’s lie that the presidential election he lost was rigged. The assignment at R. Dan Nolan Middle School in Bradenton presented sixth-grade students with a fact: “President Trump made claims that the 2020 election was stolen.” But calling his claims false — which they are — would be an example of “bias” in the media, according to the lesson. “The media is often biased and will add words that persuade you to think one way or another,” warned the assignment. The sentence stating that the former president made the election claims “is just giving you information,” it said, but calling the claims false “leads you to believe he is wrong before you have all the facts.”
09.03.22-LIAR CONDEMNS LIAR-Trump’s attorney general Bill Barr seemed today to be trying to get whatever is left of the Republican establishment to abandon the former president. He told two different Fox News Channel programs: “I…think for them to have taken things to the current point, they probably have pretty good evidence…. I think the driver on this from the beginning was…loads of classified information sitting in Mar-a-Lago. People say this was unprecedented, well it’s also unprecedented for a president to take all this classified information and put them in a country club.” “I can’t think of a legitimate reason why they…could be taken…away from the government if they’re classified.” He added that he was “skeptical” that Trump had declassified the documents. “I think it’s highly improbable, [and]...if in fact he sort of stood over scores of boxes, not really knowing what was in them, and said ‘I hereby declassify everything in here,’ that would be such an abuse and…shows such recklessness it’s almost worse than taking the documents.”
09.02.22-TODAY'S HEADLINES-All True.
1, The Murdoch Family Exposes Its Hypocrisy in Lawsuits Over Fox News, In separate defamation suits in the U.S. and Australia, the owners of Fox News contradict themselves by trying to avoid the punishment they seek to inflict on others.
2. DeSantis has officially turned Florida into a global embarrassment
A United Nations committee released a report voicing concerns about racist discrimination facilitated by Florida's anti-protest law, House Bill 1.
3. WTH?-Peter Doocy of Fox News complained that President Joe Biden encouraged Americans to vote in his speech Thursday.
4, Republicans are very mad that President Joe Biden had the gall, in a prime-time speech on Thursday, to denounce Republicans who support the overturning of elections.
09.01.22-BUT WILL ANYTHING ACTUALLY HAPPEN TO TRUMP"? Legal experts and analysts were stunned by the Justice Department’s August 31st late-night filing detailing the sensitive documents found at Trump’s home as well as efforts by the former president and his attorneys to stymie the investigation. The 36-page brief included an image of some of the documents discovered when the FBI executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago earlier this month, and counters many of the claims made by Trump’s attorneys. “This factual recitation has him dead to rights, there’s no question about it,” conservative attorney George Conway said on CNN. Conway, a longtime Trump critic despite his marriage to Kellyanne Conway, who served in the Trump White House, added that the filing shows the former president is “guilty as sin.”
08.31.22-CRACKERS GRAHAM-Lawrence O’Donnell on Monday declared that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) had hit “rock bottom” and there was no cure for him after the lawmaker threatened “riots in the streets” if Trump were to be indicted. “Lindsey Graham has hit rock bottom,” the MSNBC host said on his show. “Rock bottom is the sad term that AA uses for the spot where people who drink too much have to find themselves before they can help themselves or be helped. But there is no cure for what has sunk Lindsey Graham to his own very dangerous rock bottom.” Graham was “threatening the deaths of others,” the anchor added and slammed Graham for what he believed was a dishonorable first. “No senator in history has ever predicted or threatened riots in the streets if a friend of that senator was prosecuted,” O’Donnell continued, per Yahoo. “The so-called friend in this case is Donald Trump, who is an actual friend to no one, as Lindsey Graham so tragically knows.” O’Donnell reviewed Graham’s shifting allegiances with Trump and noted that even Trump’s followers are mostly peaceful and would not resort to political violence. “Lindsey Graham is also lying about Trump supporters, and he is insulting them,” O’Donnell said, according to Yahoo. “If Donald Trump is indicted, 74 million Trump supporters will do exactly what they did when Donald Trump lost the election: nothing.”
08.30.22-WE MUST INDICT AND CONVICT THIS MONSTER-Trump tries Mobster-In-Chief Role with attacks on law enforcement. He is ready to "burn down the republic" if need be to stop prosecutors from going after him, according to a former GOP congressman. America can have peace and tranquility. Or it can have a criminal prosecution of Trump. It cannot have both. Presenting this mob-like ultimatum appears to have become the former president’s strategy as the FBI and the Department of Justice close in on Trump’s possession of and refusal to return top secret documents he took with him to his Florida social club. “Nice store you got here. Be a shame if something happened to it,” said Glenn Kirschner, a federal prosecutor who spent more than two decades in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., comparing it to “protection rackets” used by organized crime. “Nice country you got here. Be a shame if a civil war destroyed it.” In near-daily statements on his social media platform, in fundraising emails, and in interviews, Trump has called law enforcement officials corrupt, illegitimate, and reminiscent of Soviet Russia as he demands that prosecutors drop their investigations.
08.29.22-NOTES ON MAR-A-LAGO:
Mar-a-Lago has long been a lure for foreign operatives seeking intelligence and access to Trump and other U.S. political leaders even as the former president haphazardly stored top secret information at the unsecured resort, a former FBI official warned Sunday.
“Any competent foreign intelligence service, whether those belonging to China, those belonging to Iran, to Cuba, certainly including Russia are ... and were interested in gaining access to Mar-a-Lago,” Peter Strzok, former deputy assistant director of counterintelligence at the FBI, told MSNBC host Katie Phang.
The National Archives and Records Administration has become yet another target of threats in the wake of attacks by Trump after the FBI seized government documents from his Mar-a-Lago residence, sources have told The Washington Post.
U.S. officials are investigating a Russian-speaking Ukrainian immigrant and “self-confessed grifter” who pretended to be a wealthy heiress as she infiltrated the highest echelons of Mar-a-Lago, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports.
08.28.22-The Trump White House coordinated a pressure campaign for the FDA to authorize the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine to fight COVID-19 after it was shown to be ineffective and potentially dangerous, a new House investigative report charges. The FDA denied the request. Peter Navarro and Steven Hatfill courted outside groups and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) to apply pressure on FDA officials while coordinating with officials including White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon and conducting official business on private email accounts. Hatfill advocated for launching federal investigations into public health officials who opposed hydroxychloroquine. Trump political officials also blocked FDA COVID vaccine guidance that called for at least two months of surveillance data, because of concerns it would keep the FDA from authorizing a vaccine before the presidential election. The FDA subsequently released informal briefing materials instead. The pressure also included President Trump expressing dismay over “roadblocks” to the FDA’s authorizing of convalescent plasma as a treatment, after NIH officials raised concerns about insufficient efficacy data.
08.27.22-THIS LUNATIC WAS ACTUALLY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES-UGH!-Bill Barr was up close and personal with Trump a lot when he served as attorney general. And while Barr has opened up a good deal about his time in the Trump administration, there's one leading awkward moment that stands out, he told journalist Bari Weiss on her podcast, "Honestly," during an extensive interview. "The president was bellowing at a number of his Cabinet secretaries and especially the military guys, the DoD secretary and chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and calling all of us f-cking losers at the top of his lungs," Barr said. Barr appears to be talking about the incident on June 1, 2020, when the Cabinet was debating what to do about protesters across the US who filled the streets after Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd. The details of that meeting were first laid out in "A Sacred Oath," a book by former Defense Secretary Mark Esper. Esper wrote that Trump wanted to shoot racial justice protesters in the legs, and threw a fit when Gen. Mark Milley, the then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told him he didn't have command authority over active duty or national guard forces.
08.26.22-TODAY'S HEADLINES:
1. AMEN! Biden Slams ‘Extreme MAGA’ Movement, Says It’s ‘Like Semi-Fascism’. President Joe Biden appealed to Democrats and Republicans alike to vote in November to protect a slate of civil liberties.
2. BUSINESS AS USUAL. Trump's Truth Social Reportedly Faces Major Money, Trademark Woes. A major vendor claims it was stiffed by Trump's social media operation, suggesting finances are in "significant disarray," reported Fox Business.
3. HYPOCRITE # 1. Trump University Founder Dares to Rail About Students Getting 'Fleeced.' Trump squawked about scammed students in his attack on college loan forgiveness after paying $25 million to settle Trump University lawsuits.
4. HYPOCRITE #2. White House Puts Republicans' Loan Forgiveness Hypocrisy on Blast. The White House spilled the tea on Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, and other House Republicans who received major concessions on PPP loans.
5. HE IS DESPERATE. Former President Donald Trump greeted the Friday release of a heavily redacted affidavit used to secure a search warrant for his Mar-a-Lago home earlier this month with his usual dose of anger, misdirection, and falsehoods.
6. HYPOCRITE #3. Curt Schilling Bashes Student Debt Relief Despite Defaulting On $75M Govt. Loan. Twitter users mocked the former baseball pitcher, whose video game company defaulted on a $75 million loan from the state of Rhode Island in 2012.
7. OZ IS A FRAUD. Anti-Oz Doctor Group Condemns His 'Disgusting' Attacks on Fetterman's Health. The group of doctors said Dr. Oz "has made clear that he will put enriching himself above all else."
08.24.22-ANOTHER PHONY REPUBLICAN, BUT A DANGEROUS ONE-A former U.S. Navy pilot is calling out Ron DeSantis for his new “Top Gun”-themed campaign ad in which the Republican Florida governor calls himself “Top Gov.” “It’s not just cringey,” said Ken Harbaugh. “It’s literally Navy pilot cosplay.” In the widely mocked ad, DeSantis donned aviator shades and a bomber jacket and plopped into what appeared to be the pilot’s seat of a fighter jet as he talked about taking on the “corporate media.” Harbaugh said “This tough guy act is pathetic, especially from someone like Ron DeSantis. This campaign ad from Ron DeSantis is just one more example of a Republican politician appropriating the honor of others because he has none.”
08.23.22-HITLER, ER, I MEAN TRUMP, WANTS TO BECOME A DESPOT! -Ousted Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers characterized Trump and his supporters’ efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election as “fascism” — and is stunned that it’s his Republican Party that has declared war on the U.S. Constitution, he told The Guardian in an interview. “The thought that if you don’t do what we like, then we will just get rid of you and march on and do it ourselves — that to me is fascism,” Bowers said in the interview published Sunday. “The constitution is hanging by a thread,” Bowers warned. “The funny thing is, I always thought it would be the other guys. And it’s my side. That just rips at my heart: that we would be the people who would surrender the constitution in order to win an election. That just blows my mind.”
08.22.22-FROM THE MOUTH OF A HYPOCRITE-With less than a week remaining before Election Day 2016, many took note of the apparent antipathy the FBI had for Hillary Clinton and her candidacy. One of Donald Trump’s top spokespersons responded at the time with a memorable quip. “When you’re attacking FBI agents because you’re under criminal investigation, you’re losing,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders wrote on Twitter. Nearly six years later, it’s amazing how relevant that simple observation remains.
08.20.22-THE ONLY FRAUD IS DeSANTIS-Ron DeSantis’ new fraud unit charged twenty Floridians with the crime of voting while being a convicted felon, out of 11 million voters. “This entire display was pretty disgusting and even more so when you consider the context.” And that this isn’t “voter fraud," as such. An operating theory of Republican politics in the Trump era has been that there’s a rampant effort to cast votes illegally on behalf of unwitting actors. This is people casting votes on their own behalf who are simply having their votes thrown out. It is to “election fraud” what overstaying a visa is to “illegal immigration.” There has been actual voter fraud alleged in Florida. Four people who live in the conservative, senior-oriented community of the Villages have been arrested for committing fraud. DeSantis did not hold a press conference to celebrate that triumph of law enforcement.
08.19.22-DANGEROUS RHETORIC FROM ANOTHER REPUBLICAN LUNATIC-Republican House candidate Carl Paladino suggested on a radio show that Attorney General Merrick Garland “probably should be executed” following the FBI search of Trump’s Florida estate last week, according to The Buffalo News. Garland “should not only be impeached, he probably should be executed,” Paladino said in an interview with a Breitbart radio host last week, according to the outlet.
08.17.22-OUR LOCAL FASCIST-Indiana Representative Jim Lucas is receiving criticism for a quote found on his Facebook page. Indiana Democrats say Representative Lucas briefly changed the cover photo on his personal Facebook page to a quote from Joseph Goebbels, the chief propagandist of the Nazi Party. According to a screenshot from Lucas’ Democratic opponent in the upcoming election, Chad Harmon, the quote posted by Lucas is a statement from Goebbels describing the state using propaganda to lie. The quote said the following: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its power to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” The screenshot features a heading saying the name of the author of the quote, as well as a link to a page titled “On the Jewish Question.”
08.16.22-THE DANGER HERE IS THAT THE REPUBLICANS MIGHT NOMINATE A SMARTER TRUMP-Fox News host Laura Ingraham, usually a staunch supporter of Trump, said a conflict-weary nation might be ready to move on from the former president. And she indicated it could be time to start looking for someone who has Trump’s politics, but not the baggage, should he decide to run again in 2024. “The country, I think, is so exhausted,” she told podcaster Lisa Boothe, per The Hill. “They’re exhausted by the battle, the constant battle, that they may believe that, well, maybe it’s time to turn the page if we can get someone who has all Trump’s policies, who’s not Trump.” Ingraham said Trump has been a friend for 25 years, “but, you know, we’ll see whether that’s what the country wants.”
08.14.22-THESE PEOPLE JUST HAVE TO LIE AND LIE AND LIE!-One of Trump’s lawyers signed a statement in June declaring that all documents marked “classified” held at Mar-a-Lago had been returned to the government, sources told The New York Times. Yet classified information was found more than two months later by FBI agents in their Monday search of Trump’s Florida home and golf resort. he declaration, the Times noted, could be a sign that Trump or his team were not “fully forthcoming” about the information. The declaration about the classified information was signed following a visit June 3 to Mar-a-Lago by Jay Bratt, the top counterintelligence official in the Justice Department’s national security division, the Times reported.
08.13.22-THIS WON'T STOP THE LIES-Trump’s attorney has revealed that he and Trump family members watched nearly the entire FBI search of Mar-a-Lago on surveillance cameras, further dashing the former president’s claims that agents likely “planted” any evidence that was taken. “The folks in New York — Trump and his family — probably had a better view than I did. Because they had the CCTV, they were able to watch,” the former president’s attorney Christina Bobb said in an interview on Real America’s Voice on Thursday. The Trump family was “actually able to see the whole thing,” she said. “They actually have a better idea of what took place inside.”
08.10.22-THIS IS NOT DONE WITHOUT PROBABLE CAUSE-A search warrant was signed by a federal judge after establishing FBI agents had shown probable cause of a federal law breach. A person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press that the FBI notified the Secret Service just before serving the warrant; in turn, the Secret Service contacted the Justice Department, and after the warrant was validated, let FBI agents into Mar-a-Lago.
08.08.22-TODAY'S DISGUSTING TRUMP NEWS
--“Look, I don’t want any wounded guys in the (my) parade,” Trump allegedly told John Kelly, noting with “distaste” that visibly injured veterans were featured in a French parade. “This doesn’t look good for me.”
--Trump reportedly complained about his generals not being loyal enough to him, at one point lamenting they did not act enough like Adolf Hitler’s generals in World War II, according to a new book.
--Newly released photos appear to lift the lid on allegations that Trump ripped up documents and flushed papers down White House toilets.
--Trump targets top Wisconsin GOP lawmaker for not overturning election. Wisconsin State Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R) refused to invalidate the 2020 general election results.
08.04.22-THIS IS NO SURPRISE-REPUBLICANS HAVEN'T REPRESENTED THEIR CONSTITUANTS REAL VIEWS FOR A LONG TIME-AS IN-70% OF THE PEOPLE SUPPORT GAY MARRAIGE. 55% OF REPUBLICANS SUPPORT IT AND MOVING UP. Tuesday, Kansas shocked the nation when voters in the conservative state beat back an attempt to remove constitutional protections for abortion rights. Abortion rights activists seemed to have an uphill climb. Democrats have not won the state in a presidential election since 1964. While the governor, Laura Kelly, is a Democrat, Republicans dominate the state legislature.
08.03.22-THESE FOOLS KNEW FROM THE START!
Two Republicans in Arizona worried a plan by Trump’s lawyers to create a slate of fake electors to keep him in office would be “treasonous,” according to emails obtained by The New York Times. Kelli Ward, chair of Arizona’s Republican Party, and state Sen. Kelly Townsend (R) both were recruited by Trump allies as part of a sweeping plan to overturn the then-president’s 2020 defeat. Trump's allies plotted to create slates of alternative electors in battleground states that could then falsely claim he had won.
08.02.22-ANOTHER REPUPUBLICAN LUNATIC-The Republican Party’s nominee for Maryland attorney general hosted a series of five radio shows in 2006 devoted to arguing in support of 9/11 conspiracy theories questioning if the terror attack was the work of an “elite bureaucrat” who had demolition charges in every building in New York City and even suggesting if those who died after a hijacked plane hit the Pentagon were killed elsewhere. Michael Peroutka, a candidate best known for his ties to neo-Confederate organizations, made the remarks on The American View, a radio show he co-hosted, in October 2006 while discussing the fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack.
08.01.22-LET'S NOT TELL THEM-Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton warned Republican primary candidates that they are “risking political suicide” if they align themselves too closely with the former president. “Trump’s fixation on himself and the 2020 election are poisonous to independent and undecided voters,” Bolton said in a statement last week after the John Bolton Super PAC released the Trump-ominous findings of its political survey. “Independents’ opposition to Trump could give Democrats outright Senate control,” the PAC warned in a statement last Thursday.
07.31.22-SCUM ALERT-As Roger Stone prepared to stand trial in 2019, complaining he was under pressure from federal prosecutors to incriminate Donald Trump, a close ally of the president repeatedly assured Stone that “the boss” would likely grant him clemency if he were convicted, a recording shows. At an event at a Trump property that October, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) predicted that Stone would be found guilty at his trial in Washington the following month but would not “do a day” in prison. Gaetz was apparently unaware they were being recorded by documentary filmmakers following Stone, who special counsel Robert S. Mueller III had charged with obstruction of a congressional investigation. “The boss still has a very favorable view of you,” said Gaetz, stressing that the president had “said it directly.” He also said, “I don’t think the big guy can let you go down for this.”
07.29.22-ANOTHER LOONEY TUNES CHARACTER WHO CAUGHT A BAD DOSE OF TUMPISM-A prominent Colorado election conspiracy theorist, Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, will get a recount after all, state officials announced Thursday, now that she has raised $256,000 to pay for the review of her loss in the Republican primary for secretary of state. Peters demanded a recount after losing her race by more than 85,000 votes, baselessly alleging fraud.
07.28.22-WHEN WILL THE REPUBLICANS DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS PIECE OF TRASH? At a rally last weekend in Tampa, Gaetz had mocked abortion rights activists, calling them “disgusting” and overweight. Olivia Julianna, 19, criticized his characterization and reminded him that he has sex trafficking allegations against him. Gaetz then tweeted a photo of Julianna alongside a news story of his comments. Unsurprisingly, many Gaetz followers jumped at the chance to harass a 19-year-old girl, with his tweet garnering a lot of support. But Julianna took the opportunity to announce a fundraising campaign on behalf of Gen Z for Change, a pro-abortion rights group. Her newfound fame led to about $115,000 in donations in just one day.
07.27.22-hahahahahahahahaha-HE HAS ALREADY LOST EVERY CORT CASE CONCERNING VOTER FRAUD-Trump on Wednesday said he planned to file a lawsuit against CNN, alleging the network has repeatedly defamed him dating back to his 2016 campaign for the presidency. The letter goes on to cite dozens of examples, many of which relate to the network’s coverage of Trump’s repeated claims that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent. CNN coverage frequently referred to those claims as “lies,” “false narratives” and “baseless theories,” among other terms. The lawsuit alleges those descriptions are “false and defamatory.”
07.25.22-PEOPLE LIKE THESE TWO ARE COMING TO FORCE THEIR RELIGION DOWN YOUR THROAT -Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene offered a full-throttled embrace of Christian nationalism over the weekend while attending the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit in Florida. As for Republican representative Lauren Boebert: The far-right congresswoman, just a couple of days before her GOP primary, spoke at a religious service and told attendees, “The church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church. That is not how our Founding Fathers intended it.” Boebert added, “I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk that’s not in the Constitution.” This is, of course, total bullshit! The first amendment states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
07.24.22-DEFIANT FOOL! -Trump’s former White House strategist Steve Bannon “drank his own Kool-Aid,” and is now struggling to figure out how a judge and jury didn’t swallow his bluster, said a journalist who has written a book on Bannon. “He started this process last October, when he was hit with a subpoena” by the House Jan. 6 panel, “vowing to ‘go medieval’ on his enemies — that was his quote,” Bloomberg Businessweek reporter Joshua Green. “He said he would make it a ‘misdemeanor from hell’ for the Biden administration. But he wound up not even taking the stand in his own defense” — and was found guilty on two contempt of Congress charges, added Green. It shows the bubble he’s been living in.” He “drank his own Kool-Aid in the end and didn’t understand — or didn’t want to face the fact — that he is in a court of law and that sort of thing isn’t going to fly. The judge made that clear, the jury made that clear,” said Green. The “idea that he would be allowed to skate, or that he wouldn’t have to face any accountability for spurning the subpoena, just defies reason,” but Bannon believed it, the journalist added.
07.23.22-PERFECT DESCRIPTION-In the early afternoon of Jan. 6, 2021, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) flashed a fist pump of encouragement at a growing mob outside the U.S. Capitol. Hours later, in never-before-seen surveillance footage released Thursday, the senator, now looking quite timid, is seen literally running away from the same mob. The striking footage didn’t sit well with Michael Fanone, a D.C. Metropolitan Police officer who was beaten, electroshocked and nearly killed by the insurrectionists. “Josh Hawley is a bitch. And he ran like a bitch,” the 20-year police veteran told Politico in an interview after the Jan. 6 House select committee hearing where the surveillance footage was shown. “The fist pump, combined with what he did in the immediate aftermath, just shows [his] true character ― or lack thereof.”
07.22.22-Trump struggled to tape video condemning rioters in outtakes shown at Jan. 6 hearing. A day after an angry mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, then-President Donald Trump filmed a three-minute video in the East Room of the White House condemning the violence. It took him nearly an hour to tape the message. Too little, too late-187 minutes.
07.21.22-A DEPICTION OF UNHINGED DESPERATION-Wisconsin State Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R) said on Tuesday that Trump called him last week to discuss overturning the state's 2020 presidential election results. Vos told WISN's Upfront he and Trump spoke after the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that most absentee ballot drop boxes in the state are illegal. Trump, he said, "is very consistent. He makes his case, which I respect. He would like us to do something different in Wisconsin. I explained it's not allowed under the Constitution. He has a different opinion, and then he put out the tweet. So that's it." (Trump called him a RINO) The court's ruling "does not go back and say what happened in 2020 was illegal," Vos told Upfront. "It just says going forward it can't happen." He added, "I think we all know Donald Trump is Donald Trump. There's very little we can do to control or predict what he will do."
07.20.22-WOW! WHAT A COINCIDENCE-The Secret Service said it may not be able to recover a batch of erased text messages from phones used by its agents around the time of the attack on the Capitol last year, a development that comes amid intensified scrutiny over lapses in the agency’s accounting of its actions during the riots. The January 6 committee had subpoenaed the missing text messages and other material from the Secret Service after it was told by the inspector general for the service’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, that the agency was unable to produce some text messages from its agents’ phones from Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, 2021.
07.18.22-THESE PEOPLE JUST KEEP LYING-A Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Maryland has been arrested on charges of making a false report of child trafficking. Ryan Dark White, 54, was jailed at the Harford County Detention Center following his arrest on Friday, the county sheriff said in a statement. White is running under the alias Jon McGreevey in Tuesday’s GOP primary seeking to challenge Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who also faces a primary contest.
07.17.22-FACTS DON'T MATTER TO TRUMP AND HIS ALLIES-A nationwide AP survey of state election officials found no cases where the expanded use of drop boxes led to fraud, vandalism or theft that could have affected the results. Why it matters: The findings from both red and blue states run contrary to claims by Trump and his allies, AP's Anthony Izaguirre and Christina A. Cassidy report. State of play: Most election officials consider drop boxes to be secure. The boxes have been used for years by states across the spectrum.
07.16.22-THIS MAN HAS BEEN MENTALLY INCOMPETENT FOR YEARS AND SOMEHOW WAS ELECTED TO BE THE PRESIDENT-GO FIGURE! Trump’s psychologist niece said Friday that the drumbeat of damning information against the former president coming from the “compelling” Jan. 6 House select committee hearings is taking a painful toll on his already “deteriorating” mental health. And he’s likely making everyone around him more miserable than ever because of it, Mary Trump said “He is addicted to being at the center of attention. I’m sure he’s as riveted by these hearings as we are but in completely different ways,” she said. “And for him to feel that the focus is shifting away from him or that he’s losing power will make things even worse because he won’t confront that and process it and deal with it ... and therefore worsen his situation.” More than ever, his “temper, the out-of-control narcissism, must be just unspeakably difficult for people around him to deal with. Not that I have any compassion for any of them at this point,” she said. “But, yeah, it’s only going get worse from here.”
07.15.22-TRUMP, THE BIGGEST LIAR/LOSER-On the evening of October 31, 2020, Steve Bannon told a group of associates that President Donald Trump had a plan to declare victory on election night—even if he was losing. Trump knew that the slow counting of Democratic-leaning mail-in ballots meant the returns would show early leads for him in key states. His “strategy” was to use this fact to assert that he had won, while claiming that the inevitable shifts in vote totals toward Joe Biden must be the result of fraud, Bannon explained. “What Trump’s gonna do is just declare victory. Right? He’s gonna declare victory. But that doesn’t mean he’s a winner,” Bannon, laughing, told the group, according to audio of the meeting obtained by Mother Jones. “He’s just gonna say he’s a winner.”
07.14.22-DISGUSTING! -Some Republicans, including Jim Jordan and Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost called the reports of a pregnant 10-year-old girl who was raped, a lie. Well, they arrested the man and he raped her twice. Jim Jordan has demonstrated a pattern of calling rape victims liars.
07.12.22-TODAY'S SICKNESS
1. I MIGHT THROW UP-Pat Cipollone thinks Pence should get the Presidential Medal of Freedom for not committing a crime. Sick!
2. AND AGAIN-Peter Navarro, former trade adviser to Trump, accused Pence of treason for refusing to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election ― a power the vice president does not have.
3. ONCE MORE-Far-Right Figure Called For 'Red Wedding’ On Jan. 6 Following Trump Tweet. "Red Wedding" refers to a notoriously violent scene in "Game of Thrones" by the same name.
07.11.22-THIS KIND OF GOVERNANCE IS COMING HERE-The 2022 Conservative Political Action Conference will play host to Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. The most influential Republican ideas conference lending the podium to Europe’s most notorious nationalist is yet another troubling sign of the right’s embrace of authoritarianism. Orbán, who recently won reelection for his fourth term as Hungary’s prime minister, has become a darling of the American right by transforming Hungary into an autocratic regime through aggressive nationalist policymaking and the use of executive power to curb criticism and opposition. Orbán’s Hungary is a far-right wet dream, featuring hardline crackdowns on immigration, increased government control of the press, and courts that cater to the powerful.
07.09.22-A REAL LOSER SPEAKS-Trump attorney Jenna Ellis, said "Fittingly, Biden awarded his presidential medals to fellow losers, Biles and Rapinoe." Simone Biles won 19 World Championship Golds, 4 Olympic Golds and is the most decorated gymnast in US history. Megan Rapinoe won 2 World Cups, an Olympic Gold and was named Best Player in the World in 2019. She lost 63 lawsuits and got farted on by Rudy Giuliani.
07.07.22-IS ANYONE SURPRISED? -Democrats and Republicans in Congress on Thursday expressed alarm that the IRS under Trump may have targeted two of his political enemies with tax audits, joining in rare unity to call for an investigation into the matter.
07.06.22-Today's Nut Cases:
--Tucker Carlson says young men become mass shooters because women “never stop lecturing them”, and they’re all on antidepressants.
--Conspiracy theorist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) claimed this week’s mass shooting at a parade in Illinois could have been a secret operation carried out by gun control advocates.
--Mysterious Georgia granite monument bombed, destroyed after GOP candidate called it 'Satanic'
07.05.22-MAYBE GEORGIA WILL GIVE THESE CRIMINALS WHAT THEY DESERVE! -A Fulton County grand jury has issued a slew of subpoenas to seven people, including Rudy Giuliani, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and conservative lawyer John Eastman, as part of an investigation surrounding Trump. The Fulton County grand jury is tied to a probe launched by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and is looking at whether there were attempts to unlawfully influence the 2020 election by Trump and his allies.
07.04.22-ON THIS FOURTH OF JULY-HERE IS AMERICA:
--A 10-year-old girl just over six weeks pregnant had to travel to Indiana to obtain an abortion after she was denied the procedure in her home state of Ohio.
--Boston’s mayor lashed the “cowardly” masked members of the white supremacist Patriot Front after a surprise march Saturday.
--An increasing number of Arizona election officials are leaving their positions because of threats and hostility.
--Pediatrician, Dr. Lisa Gwynn: "On the same day that we began administering COVID-19 vaccine to infants and children under 5, I was removed from the Florida Healthy Kids Board for advocating for equitable access for the underserved and for pediatricians."
--At least six people were killed, and 24 others transferred to the hospital after a shooting that interrupted a Fourth of July parade in an Illinois town.
07.02.22-THESE FAKE ELECTORAL COLLEGE VOTES ALSO HAPPENED IN OTHER STATES-The FBI issued subpoenas to Arizona Senate President Karen Fann and state Sen. Kelly Townsend. The subpoenas are part of the probe into Trump’s pressure campaign to overturn Joe Biden's win. Fann and Townsend are only the most recent Arizona Republicans in recent weeks who’ve received subpoenas stemming from this investigation. The list includes the chair of the Arizona GOP and multiple people who signed and sent fake electoral college votes to the federal government. This is a sign that Arizona could be as big a legal threat to Trump World as any state in the country. Fann is from the same hyper-conservative Arizona enclave — Prescott — as far-right Rep. Paul Gosar (to give you a sense of her politics). As Arizona Senate president in 2020, she authorized the phony post-election “audit” Trump and his campaign demanded after he lost in Arizona. That pseudo-investigation found no evidence of widespread voter fraud, despite being run by a right-wing advocacy group.
07.01.22-PLEASE LET THIS HAPPEN! -Stunning new revelations about Trump’s fight to overturn the 2020 election have exposed growing political vulnerabilities just as he eyes another presidential bid. A former White House aide this week described Trump as an unhinged leader with no regard for the safety of elected officials in either party as he clung to power on Jan. 6, 2021. The testimony from the congressional panel investigating the Capitol attack provided a roadmap for prosecutors to potentially charge Trump with a crime, some legal experts say.
06.30.22-THIS IS A UNITED STATES CONGRESSPERSON! -Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) says she is “tired” of the long-standing separation between church and state in the U.S., adding that she believes “the church is supposed to direct the government.” In a Sunday ahead of her primary election on Tuesday, Boebert argued that “the government is not supposed to direct the church,” saying that dividing religion from the system of government was not what the Founding Fathers intended. “I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk — that’s not in the Constitution. It was in a stinking letter, and it means nothing like they say it does,” Boebert said.
The concept of a separation between church and state is derived from the establishment clause in the Bill of Rights, which says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”
06.28.22-DON'T BE FOOLED. THESE PEOPLE HAVE NOT CHANGED THEIR IDEALOGY, ONLY WHO THEY MIGHT SUPPORT- Fox News host Brian Kilmeade attacked Trump on Sunday and said he has seen no evidence that proves the former president’s claims of election fraud. Kilmeade joined the growing chorus of criticism from the staunchly Trump-supporting Fox News amid reports that owner Rupert Murdoch is turning his back on Trump in favor of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) for a possible White House run in 2024. Neither Trump nor DeSantis have announced that they’re running.
06.27.22-THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING OF AN EFFORT TO SILENCE JOURNALISTS AND ANYONE WHO SPEAKS OUT AGAINST THE RIGHT-WING LIARS-Justice Clarence Thomas on Monday indicated that he believes the Supreme Court should reconsider a ruling that makes it more difficult to sue media organizations, saying he disagreed with the court's decision to turn away an appeal in a defamation case. Why it matters: The case in question, Coral Ridge v. SPLC, was designed to overturn the landmark New York Times v. Sullivan case, which established the precedent that a public figure must prove a defendant acted with "actual malice," or intentionality, in defaming a person. In recent months, district courts have reinforced this precedent, most notably during Sarah Palin's defamation suit against the New York Times. The district judge and the jury determined that the plaintiff, Palin, failed to prove actual malice. With its decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last week, the Supreme Court has proved that it is willing to overturn long-standing precedents. What they're saying: "I would grant certiorari in this case to revisit the 'actual malice' standard," Thomas wrote in his dissent.
06.24.22-ONE OF MANY ABSURD CLAIMS BY REPUBLICAN POLITICIANS. WHAT DID THESE PEOPLE DRINK OR SMOKE?-Of all the fantastical false claims of fraud and vote manipulation in the 2020 presidential election, “Italygate” was one of the most extreme. And Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) was at the heart of bringing it to Donald Trump’s attention. This particular allegation of fraud centered around what one former Justice Department official described Thursday as an “absurd” claim: that an Italian defense contractor had conspired with senior CIA officials to use military satellites to flip votes from Trump to Joe Biden. As The Washington Post has reported, the theory was pushed by a Virginia horse-country socialite who once gave an extended television interview from a 22-bedroom mansion that she repeatedly described as her own, even though it was not.
06.23.22-NOBODY EVER SAID THAT MCCARTHY WAS SMART-The four hearings held in the past few weeks by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, with their clear, uninterrupted narratives about Trump’s effort to undercut the peaceful transfer of power, have left some pro-Trump Republicans wringing their hands with regret about a decision made nearly a year ago. Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader, chose last summer to withdraw all of his nominees to the committee — amid a dispute with Speaker Nancy Pelosi over her rejection of his first two choices — a turning point that left the nine-member investigative committee without a single ally of Mr. Trump.
06.22.22-OMG! -Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum on Tuesday called out the “stunning” absence of proof to support Trump’s election-fraud claims during the latest hearing on the Jan. 6, 2021 attack, The Hill reported. MacCallum said a rift among Republicans over whether to buy into the former president’s continued allegations of cheating will be exploited by the Democratic-dominated House panel investigating the Capitol riot, according to the news outlet. “The lack of evidence is the huge stunning clear moment here where these people are saying, ‘Look I supported you, please give me something to work with,’ and it simply doesn’t materialize,” MacCallum said, per The Hill.
06.21.22-WE CAN ONLY HOPE!-Former Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman said there is a rock-solid case against Trump in the Georgia criminal probe into the former president’s demand that a state official “find” him more votes after the 2020 election. During an interview on MSNBC’s “The Katie Phang Show” on Sunday, Akerman said Trump could likely face an indictment as a Fulton County grand jury investigates his attempt to steal the vote in Georgia. In a recorded call from Trump to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger ahead of the official 2020 vote certification, Trump told the election official to “find” the 11,780 votes needed to reverse his loss to Joe Biden in the state.
06.20.22-THAT MEANS A LOT OF REPUBLICANS-58% of Americans Want Trump Charged for Insurrection: Poll. The ABC News/Ipsos poll also found that 60% of those surveyed believed the House select committee is conducting a "fair and impartial" investigation. Another 17% believe Trump bears “just some” responsibility. That's 75% that hold him accountable, to some degree.
06.19.22-HOPEFULLY, THAT MORON WILL TALK HIMSELF RIGHT TO JAIL- Trump Incriminated Himself In 'Illegal' Election Plot Yet Again: George Conway. Talking about Trump's recent speech-'From a prosecutor’s standpoint, let him keep talking, He basically is still admitting that he put pressure on Mike Pence to do something that was completely illegal.” “Somebody should tell him that he has the right to remain silent and anything he says can and will be used against him in a court of law,” added Conway.
06.16.22-I'LL BET THERE IS MORE TO COME-MASSIVE CONFLICT OF INTEREST AND MAYBE A CRIME?-Members of the committee investigating the Capitol riot have said they don't believe Virginia "Ginni" Thomas played a major role in the Trump team's attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election—but new evidence may have come to light. Sources tell the Washington Post that the panel has obtained emails between Thomas—wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas—and John Eastman, a former Thomas clerk who supported Trump's election fraud claims and spoke at the Jan. 6 "Stop the Steal" rally. The Post's sources say the emails show Thomas' efforts to overturn the election were more extensive than previously known.
06.15.22-DOOMSDAY SCENARIO-Trump-backed election denier wins GOP Secretary of State primary in Nevada. Jim Marchant, who spread lies about 2020 and helped organize a national slate of election-denying candidates, nears goal to oversee elections in the key state.
06.14.22-BUT, LOTS OF GOPers STILL BELIEVE IT-A Trump White House attorney derided election conspiracy theories by Trump allies as “nuts” in videotape testimony played at a hearing Monday by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Eric Herschmann, who defended Trump at his first impeachment trial, was appalled by schemes to overthrow the presidential election. He particularly lambasted the incredible scenario of voting corruption pitched by long-time Trump henchman Giuliani and lawyer Sidney Powell. They concocted a confusing scheme that somehow had dead Venezuela dictator Hugo Chavez manipulating Dominion Voting System machines to affect the vote in America. “What they were proposing, I thought, was nuts — in theory, was also completely nuts, right? It was a combination of Italians, the Germans, and different things that had been floating around as to who was involved ...Chavez, the Venezuelans. She has an affidavit from somebody who says they wrote a software [program], and something with the Philippines — just all over their radar,” he added with disgust.
06.13.22-SCUM REPORT! -U.S. Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) joked about President Joe Biden’s demise during a recent church event in Colorado Springs, Colorado. While speaking at the Family Camp Meeting event at Charis Christian Center, Boebert said she “prays for our President” while butchering the Psalms 109:8 Bible verse, “May his days be few; may another take his place of leadership.” Instead of saying, “another take his place of leadership,” Boebert jokingly said, “another take his place of office,” amid laughter and applause from the attendees. Boebert then shouted, “Hallelujah! Glory to God!
06.12.22-HERE COMES THE MORALITY POLICE-BE SCARED! -Florida Gov. DeSantis is considering using child protective services to investigate parents who bring their children to see drag performances. During a Wednesday press conference, DeSantis said he’d consider investigating parents, just as Florida Rep. Anthony Sabatini (R) proposed, to “terminate the parental rights” of an adult and hit them with a felony charge if they bring their children to watch drag shows.
06.11.22-GOP=LIES-Fact checker called out Republican leaders Friday over newly resurrected claims that Trump was not responsible for a no-show by the National Guard during the Jan. 6 insurrection last year. Trump has repeatedly blamed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for blocking some 10,000 members of the Guard that day. But Pelosi had no control or jurisdiction over the National Guard in the District of Columbia. Trump did.
06.08.22 THE GOP BELIEVES IN EVIL-Republican House candidate Carl Paladino praised Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s ability to rouse “the crowds” and declared Hitler “the kind of leader we need today” in a February 2021 interview on the radio station WBEN in Buffalo, New York. Paladino, a businessman and leading GOP figure in New York state who was the party’s gubernatorial nominee in 2010, is running for the Republican nomination to replace the retiring Rep. Chris Jacobs (R-N.Y.).
06.08.22-LOONEY TUNES-Blake Masters, the Republican Senate candidate from Arizona, met with conservative activists at a Phoenix IHOP this spring and was asked whether he would support investigating US intelligence operations to uncover the federal government’s “nefarious activities.” Masters replied, “Absolutely,” and then floated the conspiracy theory that the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol actually may have been a false-flag operation set up by the FBI, according to a recording of the March 30 meeting obtained by CNN. “Don’t we suspect that like one-third of the people outside of the Capitol complex on January 6 were actual FBI agents hanging out,” Masters asked at the GrassRoots Tea Party Activists of Arizona event. “What did people know and when did they know it? We got to get to the bottom of this.”
06.07.22-HOW PROUD WILL THEY BE IN PRISON UNIFORMS? -Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, the former longtime chairman of the extremist group Proud Boys, was indicted on a new federal charge of seditious conspiracy with four top lieutenants on Monday. The charges expand the Justice Department’s allegations of organized plotting to oppose through violence the certification of President Biden’s election victory, culminating in the attack on the Capitol by a mob on Jan. 6, 2021.
06-05-22-TRUMP-YOU ARE NEXT-The no-frills FBI arrest of Trump’s former trade adviser Peter Navarro for defying a subpoena is likely a “hard message” from the Department of Justice that it’s not “fooling around,” a former federal prosecutor said Saturday. Navarro was charged with two criminal contempt of Congress counts for defying a subpoena to appear before the Jan. 6 House committee and failing to provide demanded documents.
06.04.22-A LIAR IS THE LEAST OF WHAT JORDAN IS-The father of a victim in the mass school shooting in Parkland, Florida, tweeted at Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) “you’re a liar” over his claims on Thursday that Democrats haven’t done their job on gun control legislation. During a House Judiciary Committee hearing, Jordan accused Democrats of “political theater” in their “Protecting Our Kids Act” legislation saying they failed earlier to reach out about “markups” or changes in the proposed legislation. “Democrats never once reached out to us to seek our input on the legislation we are considering here today,” Jordan claimed. But Fred Guttenberg — whose 14-year-old daughter, Jaimie, was one of 17 people killed in 2018 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School — pointed out that he and others testified three months ago about the proposals, but Jordan skipped most of the hearing. “Perhaps had you not spent most of the time out of the hearing, you would remember,” Guttenberg snapped in a tweet.
06.03.22-REPUBLICAN MADNESS-A Republican congressman running to represent Missouri in the U.S. Senate released a five-point platform on Thursday that is highly, highly unlikely to ever be successful ― unless its goal is simply to troll Twitter users. Rep. Billy Long’s platform is a doozy and relies on a very improbable plan of getting Vice President Kamala Harris to resign so that President Joe Biden can appoint Trump as her replacement — and then resign so that Trump can take office once again.
06.02.22-MAYBE WE SHOULD JUST IGNORE THIS MORON-Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) blasted My Pillow founder Mike Lindell as a lunatic following the Trump disciple’s latest baseless claim of 2020 election fraud. This time Lindell insisted that Cheney’s home state of Wyoming, which voted for Trump in a landslide, had thousands of votes stolen. “We have a name for this in Wyoming. Lunacy,” Cheney tweeted this week. Cheney’s campaign team doubled down on her takedown of Lindell, who’s been sued for furthering Trump’s absurd claims that he won the 2020 election. Campaign manager Tammy Hooper on Wednesday dubbed the pillow magnate “an unhinged conspiracy theorist” and “out-of-state wacko.”
06.01.22-THIS WAS ALWAYS JUST A WITCH HUNT-A lawyer for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign was acquitted Tuesday of lying to the FBI when he pushed information meant to cast suspicions on Trump and Russia in the run-up to the 2016 election. The case against Michael Sussmann was the first courtroom test of special counsel John Durham since his appointment three years ago to search for government misconduct during the investigation into potential ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign. The verdict represents a setback for Durham’s work, especially since Trump supporters had looked to the probe to expose what they contend was egregious bias by law enforcement officials who investigated the former president.
05.31.22-TODAY'S HEADLINES
1. A group of lawyers known as "The 65 Project" is attempting to disbar Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and other lawyers who worked to keep Trump in power after losing the election.
2. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) is warning supporters that the government is planning to monitor their eating habits and “zap” them until they eat fake meat grown in a “peach tree dish.”
3. Ex-football hero Herschel Walker just won the Republican Senate primary in Georgia and wants credit to go where it is due. And he said that doesn’t include former Trump. “So, I’m mad at him, because he never asked, but he’s taking credit that he asked,” Walker said.
05.30.22-OUR REPUBLICAN POLITICIANS ARE GUTLESS-Shattered parents and gun control advocates went into action in 1996 after a former Scoutmaster fatally shot 16 children and their teacher at an elementary school in Dunblane, Scotland. After they battled to effectively ban handguns for civilians in the U.K. (automatic weapons were outlawed after a previous mass killing), there hasn’t been another mass school shooting in the U.K. since. Now, Mick North, father of 5-year-old Sophie, who was killed in the Dunblane attack, and one of the founders of the Gun Control Network, is stunned Americans can’t get it together to protect their children. (because of the N.R.A.)
05.28.22-MAFIA MAN-The Georgia probe into Trump’s bombshell demand that a state official “find” him more votes after the 2020 presidential election is now ramping up, and could expand into consideration of racketeering charges over various GOP attempts to upend the vote. As many as 50 witnesses are expected to be called before a special grand jury criminal investigation into Republican election interference after Trump lost the presidential election in the state.
05.27.22-From The Intercept-Fox News has sunk to a new low in their coverage of the horrifying school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. They blamed teachers for not being armed. They blamed the school for not having tall enough fences and not locking classroom doors. They blamed immigrants, floating the false theory that the shooter was an undocumented immigrant fleeing border control. They even blamed the kids themselves for failing to warn authorities for fear of being labeled a “school snitch.” They blamed everything, except the right-wing politicians who’ve blocked any attempt to rein in America’s out-of-control gun culture. But it’s not enough to criticize the likes of Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham. For too long, mainstream media outlets have treated the network’s owners, the Murdoch family, with kid gloves. At The Intercept, we believe that journalists need to call things by their names — and that means when covering Fox News, naming not just the hosts who speak the words that inspire violence, but also the family who approves of these words and pays for them to be spread from coast to coast.
05.26.22-IT STILL WON'T MAKE A DIFFERENCE-THEY HAVE NO CONSCIENCE-Jimmy Kimmel began his show without an audience on Wednesday and delivered an emotional monologue about the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas that left 19 children and two teachers dead. Kimmel said most Americans support common-sense gun laws, but legislation had stalled “because our cowardly leaders just aren’t listening to us ― they’re listening to the NRA.” Then he went to town on those “cowardly leaders,” particularly Texas GOP lawmakers such as Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn and Gov. Greg Abbott, who’ve called for more armed police and teachers in schools rather than gun control.
-THIS IS COUNTRY YOU LIVE IN-A defiant (lunatic and disgusting conspiracy freak) U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene easily defeated five fellow Republicans on Tuesday in a primary race that showed her conservative Georgia constituents standing steadfastly beside her after a turbulent freshman term.
AND
Trump reportedly suggested that, after learning chants of “Hang Mike Pence!” during the January 6th attack on the Capitol, Pence should be hung and complained about Pence’s safe exit from the Capitol building.
05.24.22-UH, WHAT ABOUT THIS TRUMP? -The Michigan Bureau of Elections recommended disqualifying half of the candidates in the Republican primary for Michigan governor because of invalid signatures on their candidate petitions. The bureau, in a report dated Monday, named 36 people who circulated candidate petitions who “submitted fraudulent petition sheets consisting entirely of invalid signatures.” If the bipartisan Michigan Board of State Canvassers votes to accept the bureau’s report on Thursday, five of the 10 candidates in the Aug. 2 GOP gubernatorial primary will be disqualified.
05.23.22-SHE MAY BE POLLING LOW BUT THIS ATTITUDE WILL CONTINUE TO SPREAD-BE AFRAID! -GA GOP Gov candidate Kandiss Taylor today: “We’re gonna do a political rally and we’re gonna honor Jesus .. They’re not gonna tell us ‘separation of church and state.’ We are the church! We run this state! .. The church runs the state of Georgia!”
05.22.22-SOME OF THOSE VOTERS MADE TWO MISTAKES-Americans in counties that voted heavily for Trump in 2020 were 2.26 times more likely to die of COVID-19 than in counties that voted for Joe Biden, according to a new analysis of data. The extra toll in Republican counties is significant, especially given that one million people have now died of COVID-19 in the U.S.
05.21.22-WTHIGO-Part 2-In the weeks after the 2020 presidential election, Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, twice lobbied the speaker of the Arizona House and another lawmaker to effectively reverse Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s popular-vote victory and deliver the crucial swing state to Trump.
05.20.22-WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON? -Trump’s pick for a Michigan state Senate seat is promising to ban all birth control if she gets the chance. “I guess we have to ask ourselves, would that ever come to a vote in the Michigan state legislature? And if it should, I would have to side with it should not be legal,” Republican Jacky Eubanks said in a recent interview with the site Church Militant.
05.18.22-GOOD LUCK ON THAT LIZ-Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) on Monday urged House GOP leadership to "renounce and reject" white supremacy in remarks that followed a racially-motivated shooting in Buffalo, New York this weekend. In a tweet, Cheney said that House Republican leadership has "enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and antisemitism," and that "history has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse." Her message quickly racked up thousands of retweets and replies.
05.17.22-TODAY'S HEADLINES-WTH? This is Crazy:
1. Lawsuit accuses 10 Trump supporters of engaging in fraud and conspiracy for filling out paperwork claiming to be “duly elected” electors
2. Tucker Carlson has faced fierce scrutiny over his support of the "great replacement" idea cited in a racist screed allegedly left by the Buffalo gunman.
3. “No one should waste their breath on the men in makeup at Fox when Rupert Murdoch is responsible for everything that they say and do," said an MSNBC anchor.
4. Laura Ingraham on Monday ridiculously claimed that the non-right-wing media were the “real accomplices” in the Buffalo mass shooting.
5. Lauren Boebert suggested that companies suddenly offering to pay for employee abortions are doing so just to avoid paying for maternity leave. Cheaper to kill the baby... true evil personified.”
6. The Supreme Court's politicization is no longer something justices can hide, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch noted.
7. Arizona’s Republican-controlled Senate will investigate GOP state Sen. Wendy Rogers over a social media post that seemingly suggested the gunman in Saturday’s deadly mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, was a federal agent.
8. Right-wing Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) was denounced by her local newspaper for touting the racist “great replacement theory” just months before an accused mass killer used it to justify a racist massacre in Stefanik’s state. “How low, Ms. Stefanik?” the editorial in the Albany Times Union asked in September.
05.16.22-DEMENTED LUNATIC SPEAKS-Trump very briefly referred at a political rally to the racist shootings in Buffalo that claimed 10 lives — then instantly switched in a wild non sequitur to Afghanistan, where he falsely claimed there was no loss of life. Few details were likely verified at the time on Saturday when Trump commented on the Buffalo violence at the rally in Austin, Texas. But he was clearly aware “numerous people” had been killed and expressed no sadness nor offered condolences. Trump: "I think they had a tragic event in Buffalo with numerous people being killed. In 18 months in Afghanistan, we lost nobody, which is not true. It was strange to compare a murderous domestic hate crime to a war zone." Trump also lied about deaths in Afghanistan. There was no 18-month period of time during the Trump administration when there was no American loss of life, according to Pentagon statistics. During Trump’s last year in office, 22 U.S. service members were killed in Afghanistan.
05.14.22-TODAY'S HEADLINES:
--THE WORM TURNS-Pence will campaign with Georgia’s incumbent Republican Gov. Brian Kemp the day before this month’s GOP primary in his most significant political break with Trump to date.
--DISGUSTING-Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), who describes herself as “pro-life,” blamed the White House and mysterious “pedo grifters” on Friday for America’s infant formula shortage — and called for denying formula to migrant’s babies.
--IRONY+-Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) mocks *other Republicans* for kissing up to Donald Trump while campaigning for PA Senate candidate Dave McCormick (R).
05.13.22-ANOTHER MEMBER OF TRUMP'S MAFIA-Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee asked the Justice Department on Wednesday to investigate whether a Trump administration interior secretary engaged in possible criminal conduct while helping an Arizona developer get a crucial permit for a housing project. The criminal referral says David Bernhardt pushed for approval of the project by developer Michael Ingram, a Republican donor and supporter of Trump, despite a federal wildlife official’s finding that it would threaten habitats for imperiled species.
05.12.22-GOOD ONE CHRISTIE-Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) poked a sore spot of Trump’s on Wednesday after the former president attacked him and two sitting GOP governors as “RINOs” for supporting Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R). “Insightful commentary about three Republican Governors who were overwhelmingly re-elected by their people from a former president who lost to Joe Biden,” Christie tweeted. “Maybe the “R” in RINO really stands for re-elected.”
05.11.22-Headlines:
1. Trump demanded the reactivation of retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal and retired Navy Adm. William McRaven so they could be court-martialed. They had criticized him.
2. Trump repeatedly asked national security aides if China had secret technology or weapons that could create hurricanes and shoot them at the U.S.
3. Lindsay Graham after Jan 6: “Yeah, totally, he’ll be maybe the best person to have, right? I mean, how mad can you get at Joe Biden?”
4. NO SURPRISE-A Florida circuit court judge determined on Wednesday that a new congressional map championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis is likely unconstitutional.
05.09.22-AMERICA ELECTED A LUNATIC IN 2016-Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Sunday that he regularly had to “swat” down dangerous ideas while he served under Trump, including military action against Venezuela, strikes in Iran and a potential blockade of Cuba. In an interview with “60 Minutes,” Esper said he felt like he and other military leaders in the White House had to frequently prevent calamity. “It’s important to our country, it’s important to the republic, the American people, that they understand what was going on in this very consequential period. The last year of the Trump administration,” Esper said. “And to tell the story about things we prevented. Really bad things. Dangerous things that could have taken the country in a dark direction.” “These ideas would happen, it seemed, every few weeks,” he added. “Something like this would come up and we’d have to swat ’em down.”
05.05.22-OF COURSE HE DID-Former acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf inappropriately interfered with a 2020 intelligence assessment that Russia was trying to meddle in the 2020 election, delaying and making changes to the report that "appear to be based in part on political considerations," according to a report by the department's inspector general released Tuesday.
05.04.22-THESE PEOPLE LIE JUST LIKE THE FOOL THAT NOMINATED THEM-Comments on abortion rights made by the recent conservative additions to the Supreme Court during their Senate confirmation hearings are under fresh scrutiny" after the leak, ABC News reports, reviewing some of the comments by the three judges appointed by former President Donald Trump — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. All of them affirmed Roe as an important precedent, though Barrett said it is not, in her view, a "super-precedent." "If this leaked draft opinion is the final decision and this reporting is accurate, it would be completely inconsistent with what Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh said in their hearings and in our meetings in my office," Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said Tuesday morning. Collins was the deciding vote on Kavanaugh's confirmation, and she has said he assured her in private that Roe was "settled law."
05.03.22-THE HOTEL CORRUPT-Fifteen months after Trump left town, the crown jewel of his unprecedented and out-in-the-open corruption schemes as president is disappearing as well, with his namesake hotel closing down and changing hands. Trump International Hotel, just down the street from the White House, was for four years the place where both domestic and foreign lobbyists mingled with administration officials, with every dime of profit from the many millions of dollars spent on food, alcohol and lodging there flowing directly into Trump’s personal bank accounts. “It is astonishing that just a few blocks from the White House, Trump opened a conduit for corrupt cash to flow from special interests, including foreign governments, into his own pockets,” said Norm Eisen, an ethics lawyer in the Obama White House. No previous president created such an arrangement to personally profit from entities seeking the favor of his executive branch, which had the cooperation of most of his appointed Cabinet officers in making the hotel, its featured restaurant and its lobby bar the administration’s de facto storefront for access.
05.02.22-THIS GUY IS A JOKE, BUT NO JOKE IF HE WINS-U.S. Senate candidate has promoted dubious health products. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has reported that Herschel Walker, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination in the U.S. Senate election in Georgia, has promoted dubious health products for many years. Walker, who is a retired professional football player, also amplified a false tweet from performer Nikki Minaj that COVID-19 vaccinations caused swollen testicles. [Jackson D. Herschel Walker spent years promoting health products with dubious claims. Atlanta Journal-Constitution, April 28, 2022]
04.30.22-READ ABOUT GOP'S PUTIN WING-Click
and read about Trump's election theft allies-Click
04.29.22-UPDATE-05.22.22-HE'S GONE! THIS GUY IS TOTALLY OUT OF CONTROL-Republican North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn may have violated federal insider trading laws during a reported pump-and-dump scheme. Multiple watchdog groups told the Washington Examiner that Cawthorn posed for photographs at a party with James Koutoulas, the hedge fund manager behind “Let’s Go Brandon” cryptocurrency, a meme coin set up to mock President Joe Biden. A day after the photograph was taken, the coin’s value skyrocketed, raising red flags about Cawthorn’s potential involvement, the outlet reported. Republican senator Thom Tillis demanded a probe by congressional ethics investigators.
Other recent Cawthorn craziness:
--tried to get a gun through airport security
--cited twice for speeding
--driving with a suspended license
04.28.22-CRAZED LUNATIC-Has Marjorie Taylor Greene even read the Bible? She certainly has some opinions about it. The notorious Republican congresswoman from Georgia recently gave an interview in which she asserted that American church groups that assist migrant refugees are "not adhering to the teachings of Christ" but instead are the result of "Satan's controlling the church."
04.27.22-Today's Headlines-OMG
--Tucker Carlson declares Kevin McCarty "Puppet of the Democratic Party.
--Rick Perry lied about having ideas for overturning Trump’s defeat.
--Sean Hannity took directions from the White House on the day of the 2020 election.
--GOP standing ovation for liar McCarthy.
--Republicans cheer as congressional candidate demands Fauci's execution by firing squad.
--Ex-FBI Assistant Director accuses Tucker Carlson of aiding and abetting terrorism.
04.26.22-CONTEMPT BY THE CONTEMPTIBLE-In a stinging rebuke of former President Donald Trump’s treatment of the legal system, a state court judge held Trump in contempt of court Monday, essentially for failing to comply with subpoenas issued by the New York attorney general’s office. Justice Arthur Engoron ordered Trump to pay $10,000 a day until he either hands over documents that respond to the subpoena or swears under oath that he has no documents related to the subpoena.
04.25.22-EVEN THIS MUCKRAKER SEES TRUMP AS PATHALOGICAL-British journalist and one-time Trump fan Piers Morgan revisited his recent tense interview with the former president, calling him “pathological.” Morgan had claimed — and stood by that claim Sunday — that Trump walked off the set after Morgan confronted him over his lies that the presidential election was rigged against him. Trump last week released partial audio of the interview that appeared to indicate the interaction ended on a friendly note. Trump claimed that a 30-second teaser released for the interview had been “unlawfully and deceptively” edited to make him look like he had stormed off in a huff. But Morgan insisted that Trump did walk off angry and “fired up.” Morgan called the former president “pathological” about his insistence during the interview that he wasn’t a loser in 2020. “It was uncomfortable,” Morgan told Howard Kurtz. “I’ve never seen him like that. He was very angry. Quite profane, in fact.” Morgan said Trump blew up when confronted about his election lies. “At that point, the fuse kind of went with him,” Morgan recalled. “He started insulting me, called me a fool seven times. I was very respectful back. I accepted if he wanted to call me that, that’s fine. But he wasn’t going to change my mind … He couldn’t accept that. He has a kind of blind, pathological belief that it [the election] was taken from him.”
04.24.22-JUST ANOTHER CONVICTED REPUBLICAN LUNATIC-Longtime political “dirty trickster” and Trump confidant Roger Stone said at a Utah campaign rally that he believes God convinced the former president to pardon him for his multiple federal felonies. He also called Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee a “great American patriot.” (And he called Trump the greatest president since Abraham Lincoln.) Stone told the crowd that he asked the Rev. Franklin Graham to talk to Trump about pardoning him. Graham said if Stone confessed and put himself in the “hands of the Lord” Graham would “guarantee” he would be delivered from his persecutors, according to Stone’s account. “I’m convinced to this day that God gave Donald Trump the strength and the courage to pardon me in an election year and free me from this vile political persecution,” said Stone. God also speaks directly to Stone, he insisted, and Stone claimed he very specifically wants Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) out of office. “God came and told me he needs to removed from the U.S. Senate,” Stone recounted.
04.23.22-TRUMP=TRAITOR-Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) vowed that the upcoming hearings on the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection will “tell a story that will really blow the roof off the House.” Raskin called the bid to overthrow the results of the 2020 election the “most heinous and dastardly political offense ever organized by a president and his followers and his entourage in the history of the United States.” He called it a “coup.” It was “not a coup directed at the president,” Raskin said Thursday. “It was a coup directed by the president against the vice president and against the Congress,” he added. “No president has ever come close to doing what happened here in terms of trying to organize an inside coup to overthrow an election and bypass the constitutional order — and then also use a violent insurrection made up of domestic violent extremist groups, white nationalist, racist, fascist groups, in order to support the coup,” the lawmaker added. “That will be the story that people hear.”
04.21.22--COWARDS COWER! -Via The New York Times’s Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin, “In the days after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol building, the two top Republicans in Congress, Representative Kevin McCarthy and Senator Mitch McConnell, told associates they believed Trump was responsible for inciting the deadly riot and vowed to drive him from politics. McCarthy went so far as to say he would push Trump to resign immediately: ‘I’ve had it with this guy,’ he told a group of Republican leaders. but within weeks both men backed off an all-out fight with Trump because they feared retribution from him and his political movement. Their drive to act faded fast as it became clear it would mean difficult votes that would put them at odds with most of their colleagues.” (backed up by recordings)
04.20.22-SCUM SUPPORTS SCUM-Trump will be joined at his rally next week in Nebraska by Republican gubernatorial candidate Charles Herbster, who has been accused by eight women of uninvited touching. Herbster’s appearance means that both headliners at the April 29 rally in Greenwood will be accused sexual assailants. Trump, of course, has been dogged by allegations raised by dozens of women.
04.19.22-NOW A SYCOPHANT, VANCE HAD IT RIGHT-Ohio Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance is happily touting his new endorsement from Trump — even though he once wondered whether Trump is “America’s Hitler,” according to a Georgia state lawmaker who attended law school with Vance.
04.18.22-POLITICS-UGH! -Nearly a quarter of all expenditures this year by a Trump-supporting super PAC reportedly paid for a single lavish event at — wait for it — his golf resort Mar-a-Lago. New York Times reporters Kenneth Vogel and Shane Goldmacher wrote about the February event earlier this year, describing it as an “elaborate forum” for candidates endorsed by Trump and donors who gave as much as $125,000 per person to the super PAC Make America Great Again, Now Goldmacher has the receipts. The get-together cost an eye-popping $318,000, which was nearly a fourth of the PAC’s total expenditures so far this year, he noted. The super PAC’s single largest line item for the first quarter of the year was the money to Mar-a-Lago for “event expense: facility rental and catering services,” Politico noted.
04.16.22-THEN TELL THE WORLD!-Conservative U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton has characterized the former president as a “charlatan” who’s undermining our system of government by prioritizing pursuit of power over democracy. At this point, some will probably assume that Walton is a liberal jurist appointed by a Democratic president. He is not. Walton was first chosen for the D.C. Superior Court by Ronald Reagan, and he was tapped for the D.C. District Court by George W. Bush. By most measures, Walton has generally earned a reputation as a conservative. He's just a conservative who's taking a stand in support of democracy and the rule of law — which has turned him into a notable critic of Trump.
04.15.21- BUT HE REALLY IS A STUPID S.O.B.-As she gears up for her next gig, outgoing White House press secretary Jen Psaki is looking back on her publicly adversarial relationship with Fox News reporter Peter Doocy. At a live taping of the “Pod Save America” podcast Thursday, Psaki was quick to shift the blame for Doocy’s actions to his employer when she was asked if the journalist really was “a stupid son of a bitch.” “He works for a network that provides people with questions that ― nothing personal to any individual, including Peter Doocy ― but might make anyone sound like a stupid son of a bitch,” she said, drawing laughter from the audience.
04.14.22-ALWAYS A PHONY-Mike Pence has been a politician adrift ever since he was cast from Trump’s inner circle for refusing to help overthrow the government in January 2021. These days, he is a pariah in the mainstream conservative movement Trump leads, leaving him floating from group to group in search of anyone who will accept him. On Tuesday, he found refuge in a bunch of college kids who asked him to deliver a speech at the University of Virginia. Pence took to his surroundings pretty quickly and did everything one would expect of a first-year student: He adopted slang that made him sound foolish, he straight-up lied, and he overstated his past experiences to make himself look cool.
04.13.22-FOOL SPEAKS-Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) has been an outspoken critic of President Joe Biden’s immigration policies ― but her latest social media jab was a spectacular misfire. On Monday, the Republican senator tweeted that “Tennesseans want a wall on our southern border.” Her comment drew a chorus of jeers, with many Twitter users pointing out that Tennessee is located more than 1,000 miles away from the U.S. southern border.
04.12.22-HYPOCRACY OVERLOAD-After relentless Republican complaints and about Hunter Biden’s international business work while his father was vice president, critics find it particularly rich that the Saudis invested a massive $2 billion in a Jared Kushner fund shortly after he left his senior adviser role in a Trump administration remarkably accommodating to the Saudis. Walter Shaub, director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics in the Obama and Trump administrations, told Bloomberg “The real concern here is that the public has no way of knowing exactly what favors someone like Kushner may have done for the Saudis.”
04.11.22-THEN LET'S DO IT! -The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol has enough evidence to refer Trump for criminal charges, the vice chair of the panel, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), said Sunday. “It’s absolutely clear that what President Trump was doing, what a number of people around him were doing, that they knew it was unlawful. They did it anyway,” Cheney told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”
04.10.22-DUMP THIS LYING TRUMPER-A federal appeals court has revived a constitutional challenge to Rep. Madison Cawthorn’s (R-N.C.) right to run for reelection because of his support for insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ordered earlier this week that a hearing against an injunction halting the challenge obtained by Cawthorn be held May 3. The Republican primary in Cawthorn’s district is May 17. (the 14th amendment is being used here)
04.08.22-SCUM JR. - Two days after the 2020 presidential election, as votes were still being tallied, Donald Trump’s eldest son texted then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows that “we have operational control” to ensure his father would get a second term, with Republican majorities in the US Senate and swing state legislatures, CNN has learned. In the text, which has not been previously reported, Donald Trump Jr. lays out ideas for keeping his father in power by subverting the Electoral College process, according to the message reviewed by CNN. The text is among records obtained by the House select committee investigating January 6, 2021. “It’s very simple,” Trump Jr. texted to Meadows on November 5, adding later in the same missive: “We have multiple paths We control them all.”
04.07.22-LET'S NAIL THIS JERK- New York’s attorney general asked a court Thursday to hold Trump in contempt and fine him $10,000 per day for failing to comply with a subpoena for documents in her ongoing civil investigation into his business practices. Attorney General Letitia James argued in court papers that Trump should be fined “a sum sufficient to coerce his compliance” after he missed a March 31 court-imposed deadline to turn over the documents.
AND
Justice Dept. to investigate Trump’s 15 boxes of records from Mar-a-Lago
04.06.22-THE GOP IS TRULY PUTIN'S PARTY- The House on Thursday evening passed a nonbinding resolution reaffirming its "unequivocal support for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as an alliance founded on democratic principles," The resolution passed 362 to 63, with all 63 no votes coming from Republicans. Weakening or destroying NATO is believed to be one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's top goals.
04.05.22-DISGUSTING TRASH! -Conspiracy theory-endorsing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) faced fierce backlash on Monday for a vile attack on three fellow Republicans. Greene used her congressional account to tweet the baseless accusation that GOP Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Susan Collins (Maine) and Mitt Romney (Utah) are “pro-pedophile” because they said they will vote to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. More of what this witch said- “You are either a Senator that supports child rapists, child pornography, and the most vile child predators,” Greene said in a Twitter thread. “Or you are a Senator who protects children and votes NO to KJB!”
04.04.22-OF COUSE THEY ARE MISSING! -Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said lawmakers on the Jan. 6 House select committee are deeply interested in the 7-hour gap in Trump’s White House phone logs on the day of the Capitol riot, saying it seems to be “suspiciously tailored” to the period when the unprecedented assault took place.
04.02.22-MORE LIES-Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) now insists his controversial video message to a white nationalist conference was due to a “miscommunication” by an aide, Politico reported. Gosar finally spoke out five weeks after his videotaped address to the America First Political Action Conference triggered a furious backlash. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) spoke in person at the conference, which was organized by controversial far-right leader Nick Fuentes.
04.01.22-THE BIGGEST APRIL FOOL-TRUMP
(also, a traitorous liar!)
03.31.22-THEY SHOULD MARRY RUSSIA-Tucker Carlson and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s defenses of Russian President Vladimir Putin have evidently landed them comfortably in the Kremlin’s good graces. During a broadcast on Russian state television this week, Gabbard was apparently referenced in very friendly terms by one of Putin’s most prominent propagandists, Vladimir Soloviev. He introduced Gabbard, a Democratic primary candidate for the 2020 presidential race, as “our girlfriend Tulsi,” according to a translation by Russian media analyst Julia Davis, a columnist for the Daily Beast. A clip was then aired of Gabbard’s appearance on Monday’s episode of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” in which she suggested President Joe Biden was secretly plotting to remove Putin from power. After the clip aired, a panelist reportedly asked, “Is she some sort of Russian agent?” According to Davis’ translation, Soloviev said she was.
03.30.22-Headline Day Mehmet Oz goes full climate denial, says carbon dioxide isn't a problem. (Oz is a phony) Trump's Truth Social app has plummeted in sign-ups and traffic since its technically challenged launch last month. (Predictable) Putin may be accused of slaughtering children and overseeing other war crimes in Ukraine, but that’s not stopping Trump from asking him for political help again. He is now asking Putin to find damaging information on his successor’s son. (Traitor Trump) Koch Industries refuses to close Russian plants. (Another traitor)
03.29.22-SCUM REPORT-Ohio Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance on Monday supported Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) speaking engagement at a white nationalist conference last month, insisting: “She did nothing wrong.” Greene spoke in person at the America First Political Action Conference, whose organizer complained to the audience that the nation had forgotten “young white men.” Participants hailed Russian President Vladimir Putin as a hero and chanted his name.
03.26.22-TRUMP'S KINDA GUY-In Trump’s GOP, shamelessness can be a kind of superpower. But in Missouri, Eric Greitens is testing the limits of his party’s post-shame politics. Forced to resign from the governorship after a lurid sex scandal, Greitens is nevertheless the leading Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate. And there has been speculation that an endorsement from Trump himself might be forthcoming. Greitens also now faces allegations from his ex-wife that he “was physically abusive and demonstrated such ‘unstable and coercive behavior’ that steps were taken to limit his access to firearms.”
03.25.22-GOOD ONE JOE! -President Joe Biden on Thursday said he’d relish a 2024 rematch with his predecessor, Trump. “I’d be very fortunate if I had that same man running against me,” Biden told reporters at an emergency summit with NATO leaders in Brussels to tackle Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Biden’s shade toward Trump followed a question about concerns in Europe that the coordinated response to the war could come undone if Trump wins back the White House.
03.24.22-A HUMAN CANCER-Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., keeps peddling pro-Russia, anti-Ukraine talking points. Unfortunately for the far-right conspiracy theorist, she has zero credibility on the matter.
03.23.22-TRUMP THE LUNATIC-Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) on Wednesday issued a blistering response to Trump's decision to unendorse him in the Alabama Senate race, accusing Trump of asking him to remove President Biden from the White House following the 2020 election despite his protests. "President Trump asked me to rescind the 2020 elections, immediately remove Joe Biden from the White House, immediately put President Trump back in the White House, and hold a new special election for the presidency," Brooks said in a statement. "As a lawyer, I’ve repeatedly advised President Trump that January 6 was the final election contest verdict and neither the U.S. Constitution nor the U.S. Code permit what President Trump asks. Period."
03.22.22-STUPID CRUD-Cruz began his opening statement at Monday's Supreme Court confirmation hearing for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson by telling Jackson and the cameras that "Supreme Court confirmations weren't always controversial." In fact, he said, "Bushrod Washington, when nominated to the Supreme Court in 1798, was confirmed the very next day." It is true that Washington, a favorite nephew of George Washington, was confirmed by voice vote one day after his nomination by President John Adams. "He was definitely controversial, largely because of his actions as an enslaver." For one thing, Washington brought enslaved African Americans back to Mt. Vernon after he inherited the Washington estate in 1802, upon the death of Martha Washington, who had freed the remaining slaves. That wasn't overly controversial in the Senate itself, where more than half the 31 senators at the time were also slaveholders, the Post reports. But when he sold 54 of those enslaved people for $10,000 to pay off his debts, and they were marched in chains to Louisiana, newspapers called his actions "excessively revolting."
03.19.22-HEADLINE DAY-WHEN WILL THIS END?
Trump accused of campaign finance violation for 2024 race in FEC complaint.
Mark Meadows investigated for possible voter fraud in North Carolina.
Top Putin Flack Serget Lavrov praises Fox news.
Sean Hannity sympathetically quoted word for word a personal attack on Joe Biden by one of Vladimir Putin’s henchmen as a springboard for his own dig at the president.
03.17.22-MISSED OPPORTUNITY-Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) called the White House during the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection and threatened to have Trump removed from office if he didn’t aggressively condemn the rioters, according to a new book. Graham phoned White House counsel Pat Cipollone as the Capitol attack unfolded and said, “We’ll be asking for the 25th Amendment,” authors Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns wrote in “This Will Not Pass.” Axios published an excerpt.
03.16.22-RAND PAUL IS STILL ON HIS WITCH HUNT BECAUSE HE COULD NOT BULLY DR. FAUCI-Sen. Rand Paul introduced an amendment Monday that would eliminate Dr. Anthony Fauci’s position as the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, marking the latest escalation in his feud with the physician who gained national fame during the pandemic. Paul wants to scrap the singular role of NIAID director and replace it with three separate directors of newly created institutes: a National Institute of Allergic Diseases, a National Institute of Infectious Diseases and a National Institute of Immunologic Diseases.
03.15.22-THESE ARE GOOD WORDS-NOW VOTERS NEED TO TAKE ACTION-The Winston-Salem Journal pulled no punches with a blistering critique of Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), shredding the Trump apologist as “deplorable” and “North Carolina’s gift to Crazytown.” Cawthorn’s widely condemned criticism of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “a thug” amid Russia’s invasion of Zelenskyy’s country had the newspaper “truly seeing red.” The paper also listed some of the extremist lawmaker’s other controversies, from his racist dog whistles to support of the pro-Trump mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol. “The communities in our state’s 11th Congressional District have their share of problems, including the opioid crisis that has affected every other segment of society, underfunded educational resources and the challenge of drawing economic opportunities to help them thrive,” the newspaper wrote. “They would do better to elect a representative who addresses those issues rather than one who repeats Russian talking points and distracts them with culture wars.”
03.14.22-ANOTHER NASTY FOX NEWS LIAR-Fox News host Maria Bartiromo was put through the wringer after she absurdly claimed without evidence that the Biden administration sees Russian President Vladimir Putin more as a partner than an enemy. During an appearance on “Fox & Friends” Sunday morning, the Trump apologist criticized President Joe Biden’s response to Russia’s war on Ukraine as “underwhelming and not enough.” She declared that unnamed sources told her they “feel” that the administration is cozy with the Russian dictator. “Some people have told me over the weekend that they feel that at the end of the day this administration does not see Putin as the enemy; they see him as a partner on many issues,” Bartiromo said. The assertion was baffling to many online commentators, given Bartiromo’s unwavering support for Biden’s predecessor, who notoriously fawned over Putin during his presidency. As Russian aggression mounted last month, Trump sparked furor for praising Putin as “savvy” and “genius” in surrounding Ukraine. Trump declined to condemn the autocrat or walk back the adulation, even after Sean Hannity fed him multiple prompts to do so last week.
03.11.22-DISGUSTING RIGHT-WING EXTREMIST-As the crisis in Ukraine continues, most elected officials in the United States have expressed support for their allies in Kyiv. There are, however, some notable exceptions Rep. Madison Cawthorn told a group of supporters this past weekend that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a “thug” leading an “evil” government. “Remember that Zelenskyy is a thug,” Cawthorn said in a video obtained by WRAL. “Remember that the Ukrainian government is incredibly corrupt and is incredibly evil and has been pushing woke ideologies.” GOP voices have curtailed such talk in the wake of the Russian invasion. When Rep. Liz Cheney complained about the GOP having a “Putin wing,” her comments didn’t come out of nowhere. Other lawmakers are already taking note of Cawthorn’s rhetoric. Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego of Arizona tweeted, in reference to the North Carolina Republican, that it’s “disturbing that he sits in our classified briefings on Russian Ukraine war. Not sure now that is a good idea.” We probably haven’t heard the last of this.
03.10.22-EVIL TWINS-THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AND DESANTIS-The Miami Herald called out the GOP’s “terrifying tolerance of white supremacy and extremism” in a damning editorial following the indictment this week of far-right Proud Boys leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio for his suspected role in helping direct the U.S. Capitol riot. The newspaper’s editorial board noted that the arrest of Tarrio in Miami was “just the latest in a series of extremist connections to Florida, and to Republicans.” The “message of tolerance” for extremism has been spread, the board wrote, with Florida’s own Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis seeking to downplay the Jan. 6 insurrection and the participation of Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) in a white nationalist conference in Orlando. “Republicans will, no doubt, continue to deny they have a white supremacy problem,” the editorial concluded. “And we can add this episode to the shameful list of extremist connections already distinguishing Florida.”
03.09.22-PENCE HOBNOBS WITH RACISTS IN WEST BANK-CLUELESS PENCE. SO STUPID HE IS DANGEROUS-Former Vice President Mike Pence (R) met with two prominent Jewish extremists during a visit to the Palestinian city of Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Wednesday. Matt Duss, a foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), compared Pence’s meeting with the two men to a “foreign leader coming to the U.S. and hanging out with the Proud Boys,” a U.S. far-right gang. The pair represent the most violent and racist factions of the Jewish settler movement in the occupied West Bank, where Jews have the benefit of Israeli citizenship and Palestinian residents lack real political rights. Until 2020, Ben-Gvir featured in his home a photo of Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish settler who murdered 29 Palestinians while they were praying in 1994.
03.08.22-IS THIS NAZI GERMANY?-The Idaho House voted 51-14 to approve legislation with the potential to fine librarians $1,000 and send them to jail for a year for checking out material to a minor that could harm them. Opponents say the law is so undefined and subjective as to be unconstitutional. The bill's Republican sponsor refused to answer whether a classic young adult novel by Judy Blume that included masturbation could land a librarian in jail.
03.07.22-CRAZY STUPID-Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) attempted to blame Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Joe Biden Monday, only to be brutally humiliated by an acknowledged expert on the situation: Retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman. It started when the controversial lawmaker posted a tweet on Sunday claiming “Biden’s poor decision making leading up to Putin declaring war on Ukraine.” But Vindman, who as a former national security aide offered key testimony in Trump’s 2019 impeachment for dealings with Ukraine, refused to let Greene’s statement go by without a fact check. “Nope. It’s because you and your pro-Putin party encouraged Putin to invade, by cheerleading him,” Vindman responded. "The American people will not forget." Vindman’s wife, Rachel Vindman, also chimed in, calling Greene “crazy stupid” and asking, “why do you insist on telling us over and over?”
03.06.22-CHUMP--GO DIRECTLY TO JAIL-DO NOT PASS GO-The right-wing attorney who authored “coup memos” for Trump and supporters on how to scuttle the presidential election lost a court battle Friday to hold back his documents from the House select committee investigating last year’s Jan. 6 insurrection. Lawyer John Eastman claimed the situation had turned him into a “pseudo-defense attorney for the former president” — so the emails are thereby protected by attorney-client privilege. Eastman warned in his civil suit that granting the committee access to his emails involving the former president could amount to a historic legal finding that Trump may have committed a crime while he was a sitting president. “Were this Court to sustain the defendants’ claims, it may be the first formal finding of Presidential criminality by a federal court in United States history,” Eastman wrote. The committee argued Wednesday that Eastman’s records are indeed likely to show evidence of multiple crimes committed by both him and Trump, which would thereby trigger the “crime-fraud exception” to attorney-client privilege. The explosive filing alleged that Trump and key allies conspired to defraud the U.S. and obstruct an official congressional proceeding: the certification of electoral votes.
03.05.22-NASTY TRUMP SYNCOPHANT-Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) on Friday repeated Trump’s 2020 election lie on live television and received a short, sharp fact check in response. Gaetz, during an interview with WEAR-TV, echoed Trump’s baseless claims of stolen votes and electoral corruption with his declaration that Trump was the actual victor over Democratic rival Joe Biden. “So, you’re still maintaining the 2020 election was stolen? Are we still going with that?” Solarski asked Gaetz. “Listen, I believe that Donald Trump won the 2020 election. I believe that he won the Electoral College,” Gaetz replied, even though Trump clearly did not win either the popular vote or the Electoral College. Solarski countered: “You can’t say that without saying there was a gigantic conspiracy across this country and supervisors and election offices to make this happen and we haven’t still seen any evidence that proves that.” Gaetz, who is reportedly currently the subject of a federal investigation, responded with a rambling answer about judges not having “the courage” to take up legal challenges to the result.
03.04.22-FLORIDA BULLY-Gov. Ron DeSantis scolded a group of teenagers on Wednesday for wearing masks while they stood behind him during a press conference at the University of South Florida. The Florida Republican told the students to take off their masks as he took the podium to speak about funding cybersecurity education opportunities through the university. The students were in high school. “You do not have to wear those masks. Please take them off,” a visibly annoyed DeSantis told the students, all of whom were wearing masks. “Honestly, it’s not doing anything. We’ve got to stop with this COVID theater. So, if you want to wear it, fine. But this is ridiculous.” The comments were followed by some of the seven students taking their masks off. Several of the teens chose to keep their masks on for the press conference.
03.03.22-RACIST SCUM-Tucker Carlson on Thursday continued his outrage over Biden’s commitment to appoint a Black woman to the Supreme Court, this time questioning the qualifications of his nominee, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, and insulting her name. “So is Kentanji Brown Jackson ― a name that even Joe Biden has trouble pronouncing ― one of the top legal minds in the entire country?” the Fox News host said, mispronouncing Ketanji. “We certainly hope so. It’s Biden’s right. Appointing her is one of his gravest constitutional duties.” “So it might be time for Joe Biden to let us know what Kentaji Brown Jackson’s LSAT score was,” he said, mispronouncing her name again. “Wonder how she did on the LSATs? Why won’t he tell us that? That would settle the question conclusively as to whether she is a once-in-a-generational legal talent, the next Learned Hand.” As many legal experts pointed out, the LSAT, the law school admission test, has little to no relevance as a measure of proficiency in the legal field.
03.02.22-MORON TRUMP-Trump’s grasp on the geography of Russia wasn’t exactly first class, according to his former national security adviser John Bolton. Trump “barely knew where Ukraine was” and once asked if Finland was part of Russia. Bolton recalled Trump’s stunning lack of knowledge while countering Schmitt’s claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin did not invade Ukraine during Trump’s presidency because Trump took a “very tough stance” on the country. It's just not accurate to say that Trump's behavior somehow deterred the Russians" Trump “did not” take a tough stance on Russia, responded Bolton. The Trump White House did sanction Russia, he continued, but “in almost every case” the restrictions were imposed “with Trump complaining about it, saying we were being too hard.” “It is just not accurate to say that Trump’s behavior somehow deterred the Russians,” Bolton said. “I think the evidence is that Russia didn’t feel that their military was ready.”
03.01.22-MORE RACIST REPUBLICAN CRAP-Three Republicans in the U.S. House were the only votes against a bill that would make lynching a federal hate crime. The Emmett Till Antilynching Act, named after a 14-year-old Black boy beaten and lynched in Mississippi in 1955, passed the House with an overwhelming vote of support, 422-3, on Monday. The bill would make lynching a federal hate crime punishable by up to 30 years in prison. The only three representatives to vote against the bill were Republicans Andrew Clyde (Ga.), Thomas Massie (Ky.) and Chip Roy (Texas). In a series of tweets, Massie explained he voted against the bill in part because “passing this legislation falsely implies that lynching someone does not already constitute criminal activity.” The bill doesn’t imply that. Instead, it gives federal authorities the power to prosecute lynchings as hate crimes.
02.27.22-FOLLOW-UP FROM 02.26.22-REAL REPUBLICANS-DO SOMETHING! Trump shouted out Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) during a speech Saturday, one day after she was the surprise speaker at a white nationalist conference. As he began a rambling speech at the 2022 Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida, Trump included Greene in a list of Republicans he highlighted including Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell. On Friday, Greene spoke at the third annual conference in Orlando, organized by white nationalist figurehead Nick Fuentes. She spoke to a crowd that featured prominent right-wing figures and was followed by a series of racist and homophobic diatribes from prominent extremists. Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel called white supremacy, neo-Nazism, hate speech and bigotry “disgusting” in a statement about Greene’s appearance. McDaniel did not explicitly mention Greene or the America First conference (coward).
02.26.22-THE WORST KIND OF TRASH-Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) spoke at a white nationalist conference in Florida on Friday evening. Greene, a QAnon conspiracist and rabidly anti-trans Republican, was the surprise speaker at the third annual America First Political Action Conference in Orlando, organized by white nationalist figurehead Nick Fuentes. Fuentes, an antisemite and racist who was recently subpoenaed for his involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, excitedly introduced Greene as the featured speaker from behind a lectern inside the Marriott Orlando World Center, according to a livestream of the event. (HuffPost was denied entrance to AFPAC.) In her speech, Greene referred to the assembled AFPAC crowd — among them prominent right-wing extremists who have been photographed giving the Nazi salute and reciting the infamous “14 words,” a white supremacist slogan — as “canceled Americans.” “You’ve been handed the responsibility to fight for our Constitution and stand for our freedoms and stop the Democrats who are the communist party of the United States of America,” Greene said. She also took time to attack transgender people, claiming Democrats have destroyed “gender” and “pronouns.” Her speech was immediately followed by a series of virulently racist and homophobic diatribes from prominent extremists.
02.25.22-TEXAS WANTS TO GO BACK TO 1950-A push by Texas politicians to criminalize health care for transgender children does not have the support of the medical community there. The American Academy of Pediatrics, the Texas Pediatric Society and the Texas Nurses Association have all come out against efforts by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and state Attorney General Ken Paxton, who want parents to be investigated if their sons or daughters are trans. Earlier this week, citing a non-binding opinion authored by Paxton, Abbott directed the state’s child welfare agency to consider gender-affirming treatments, such as puberty blockers and hormone therapies, as a form of “child abuse.” Under the directive, any licensed professional who has “direct contact with children” could face criminal charges for failing to report these treatments to the state. The Texas Nurses Association, the largest state nursing association in the country, roundly condemned the effort.
02,24,22-THIS %#@&* TRAITOR Tucker Carlson, downplaying Russia-Ukraine conflict, urges Americans to ask, ‘Why do I hate Putin?’ Carlson’s pro-Putin act is so helpful that Russian state television has been rebroadcasting it with Russian subtitles. Carlson “urged Americans to turn against their government on the grounds that higher costs for them, in exchange for a pointless stand against Putin, is a ‘terrible deal for you,’” as Will Saletan summed it up in a Bulwark story comparing him to Charles Coughlin, the WWII-era radio host who defended the Nazis and painted Jews as a conniving force pushing the United States into the European conflict.
02.23.22-PAY ATTENTION BOOK BURNERS! -A poll finds that 83 percent of Americans say books should never be banned for criticizing U.S. history; 85 percent oppose banning them for airing ideas you disagree with; and 87 percent oppose banning them for discussing race or depicting slavery. What’s more, 76 percent of Americans say schools should be allowed to teach ideas and historical events that “might make some students uncomfortable.” And 68 percent say such teachings make people more understanding of what others went through, while 58 percent believe racism is still a serious problem today. Finally, 66 percent say public schools either teach too little about the history of Black Americans (42 percent) or teach the right amount (24 percent). Yet 59 percent say we’ve made “a lot of real progress getting rid of racial discrimination” since the 1960s.
02.21.22-MORE LOONEY TUNES-A Republican House candidate claimed Saturday that college education turns young people into “radical, leftist, hating-America atheists.” “We know how important the youth are to our future because you can raise them the right way. You can work your butts off every day to put food on the table, send them off to college, and then what ends up happening?” said Christian Collins, a Republican candidate for Texas’ 8th Congressional district, at a rally just north of Houston at the Grace Woodlands church. “They go off to college not knowing what they believe sometimes, and their teachers, their professors, try to deconstruct everything that you’ve taught them. And they go off with the college that you paid for and come out radical, leftist, hating-America atheists, and they don’t have any usable skills to get employed. And then they’re even more cynical.” Collins has the support of some of the most vocal pro-Trump Republicans in Congress, including Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) and Madison Cawthorn (N.C.), both of whom attended his event. He also has the endorsement of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
02.20.22-ANOTHER CRIMINAL ACT-A furious Trump again complained Friday of being unfairly picked on by the Democrats and said that the uproar over the classified documents he spirited away to Mar-a-Lago was nothing more than an “ordinary” and “routine” presidential records process. The National Archives and Records Administration confirmed Friday that there were classified documents — some top secret — among at least 15 boxes of retrieved White House records Trump had taken to his Florida residence when he left office. By law, all of it was supposed to be handed over to the National Archives.
02.19.22-Trump was just trying to help. Instead, he just handed investigators more ammunition. On Monday, Trump’s lawyers filed documents alleging that he “denies knowledge”—and doesn’t even know enough “to form a belief”—about the way he allegedly slapped a 30-percent brand premium on some business properties in 2014. But the very next day, Trump said the complete opposite when he issued a lengthy statement to counter news that his long-time outside accounting firm, Mazars USA, had suddenly ditched him. He took the opportunity to show off his supposed previous net worth of $5.7 billion in 2014—and, more importantly, noted that it didn’t include the typical boost from the “enthusiasm” of the Trump brand. On Wednesday, prosecutors contended in a letter that Trump can no longer play clueless; he had just revealed that he knows “exactly what OAG is investigating.” “His answer is more than merely legally deficient: it plainly contradicts his public statements,” they wrote. That self-own was compounded on Thursday, when a state judge ordered him to turn over evidence about shady real estate values in a case about the Trump Organization’s alleged bank and tax fraud. Trump’s incessant need to boast ended up revealing he had more evidence to turn over.
He said too much—at just the wrong time.
“We’re talking about a guy who’s so in the habit of shooting his mouth off. I think this is quite damaging, and also unusual. Usually, people refer everything to their attorney,” said Daniel L. Feldman, a former attorney at the AG’s office who now teaches at the City University of New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
And now that New York State Judge Arthur F. Engoron issued an order on Thursday compelling Trump to turn over documents, the New York AG’s lawyers can specifically ask for the information they now know exists.
02.18.22-To plead the Fifth, or not to plead the Fifth? That is the question Trump may face after a New York judge ordered him to testify in a long-running state civil investigation into his business practices. Trump’s lawyers are almost certain to appeal Judge Arthur Engoron’s ruling Thursday that Trump and his two eldest children, Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr., have 21 days to comply with a subpoena seeking their testimony in a probe by New York Attorney General Letitia James. Barring a successful legal challenge, Trump would face a decision between answering questions under oath or remaining silent and invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination — a tactic he has equated with evidence of guilt. “The mob takes the Fifth,” Trump told a campaign crowd in Iowa when running for president. “If you are innocent, do not remain silent,” Trump tweeted in 2014, offering free advice as Bill Cosby faced a flurry of sexual assault accusations. “You look guilty as hell!”
02.17.22-PEOPLE KNEW AND LET IT HAPPEN-A Republican member of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus who had advanced knowledge of Trump’s Jan. 6 plans reportedly sent an alarming message to the White House in the days before the attack on the U.S. Capitol. “If POTUS allows this to occur… we’re driving a stake in the heart of the federal republic,” the unnamed lawmaker wrote to then-chief of staff Mark Meadows on Jan. 1 or Jan. 2, according to The Washington Post. On Wednesday, Post reporter Carol Leonnig said on MSNBC that the “particularly foreboding” message raises serious questions. “What exactly did that Freedom Caucus member mean by ‘this’?” she asked in comments highlighted by Raw Story. Leonnig said that it was possible the lawmaker was referring to the pressure on then-Vice President Mike Pence to block the certification of the 2020 election in Congress (which he ultimately refused to do). “But what else could the ‘this’ be?” she asked. “How grim and chilling a piece of information is this, if this lawmaker knew something Trump was plotting beyond what we all know now?”
02.16.22-DESPERATE LIARS-During a segment on Tuesday on Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to invoke emergency powers to quell anti-vaccine mandate protests in Ottawa, Pirro griped that Trudeau “is now going to listen to” U.S. President Joe Biden. “Biden now has the final word on what you should do if someone is protesting peacefully. Biden, the same guy who in the summer of 2020 decided he would allow people to burn down streets and businesses and create all kinds of problems,” she said. Biden was a private citizen in 2020. Trump was president when the police killings of George Floyd and other Black men and women spurred nationwide protests against racial injustice that summer. Despite Pirro’s claim they created “all kinds of problems,” the protests against police violence and racism were overwhelmingly peaceful, according to Harvard research, though rioting and fires broke out in some cities after clashes between police and demonstrators.
02.15.22-GOOD NEWS-An accounting firm’s decision to cut ties with the Trump Organization spells very bad news for former President Donald Trump, according to conservative attorney George Conway. Trump’s longtime accounting firm, Mazars USA, sent a letter on Feb. 9 to Trump Organization executive vice president and chief legal officer Alan Garten notifying him of the firm’s decision to drop the business as a client. It also said that the financial statements it prepared for Trump between 2011 and 2020 “should no longer be relied upon.” Those statements are at the center of two investigations into whether Trump illegally inflated the values of his assets to defraud lenders. According to Conway, having a decade’s worth of financial statements pulled by accountants is “just about the most calamitous thing” that could happen to any business with outside financing or investors. “This is worse for him than being impeached twice,” he added.
02.11.22-THIS IS TODAY'S REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE-Jim Lamon, a Republican candidate for senator in Arizona, drew widespread condemnation on Thursday for a campaign ad in which he shoots at actors portraying President Joe Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.). Lamon plays a gun-slinging sheriff who blasts weapons out of the Democrats’ hands in the Western movie-style spot. The 70-second commercial dubs Biden “Old Joe,” Pelosi “Crazyface,” and Kelly “Shifty.” “The good people of Arizona have had enough of you. It’s time for a showdown,” Lamon says in the video that will reportedly air on television statewide on Sunday, including during the Super Bowl. Arizona has had enough of the DC Gang’s open borders, high gas prices, and shifty politicians pushing us around. Blake Masters and Michael McGuire, two of Lamon’s GOP rivals in the race, led the chorus of criticism. “Absurd and desperate,” Masters told The Arizona Republic. “Fits his campaign.” “Real violence and use of deadly force is no laughing matter,” said McGuire. “Violence in America is real and it isn’t funny. This ad shows poor judgment and isn’t reflective of the values of the Second Amendment. This ad will do more to boost Mark Kelly’s fundraising than to help Republicans.”
02.10.22-CRAVEN CRUZ-MSNBC’s Chris Hayes tore into Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) for again downplaying the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol. Hayes said it’s all because of an “utterly humiliating” appearance on Fox News in which Cruz had to “beg for forgiveness” from Tucker Carlson for calling the assault a “terrorist attack.” Now, Hayes noted, Cruz is going even further to please Carlson. “Today, he is, of course, out attacking Mitch McConnell, which is the point of all of this conditioning that those folks are up to, hoping Trump or Tucker’s watching, and will tell him that he’s a good boy,” he said. This week, McConnell described the Jan. 6 attack as “a violent insurrection.” Cruz, in turn, accused McConnell of repeating “the political propaganda of Democrats.”
02.09.22-Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) has engineering degrees from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but that didn’t stop him from being schooled by Twitter users on Wednesday. It happened after the conservative Kentucky congressman attempted to criticize “Medicare for All” by using a really, really dubious analogy. “Over 70% of Americans who died with COVID, died on Medicare, and some people want #MedicareForAll?” he asked rhetorically.
Sort of like saying: "100% of Americans who breathe air eventually die -- and some people actually want air?"
02.08.22-WHICH MITCH IS THIS? -Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday rebuked the Republican National Committee over its censure of Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) last week. “The issue is whether or not the RNC should be sort of singling out members of our party who may have different views from the majority. That’s not the job of the RNC,” McConnell said at a weekly press conference. “Traditionally the view of the national party committee is, we support all members of our party, regardless of their positions on some issues,” he added. McConnell also told reporters that the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol was a “violent insurrection” meant to stop the peaceful transition of presidential power.
02.06.22-RNC CONFIRMS IT IS CRAZY! -The conservative National Review magazine on Saturday savaged its usual ally the Republican National Committee as “morally repellent” and “politically self-destructive” for how it recently addressed last year’s violent attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters. The magazine slashed the RNC for censuring Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) on Friday for daring to serve on the House select committee probing the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Particularly startling, in censuring the lawmakers, the RNC described the attack on the Capitol as “legitimate political discourse.” Some 140 police officers were injured when the mob stormed the Capitol that day and more than 740 people have been arrested in conjunction with the riot. “The action of the mob on January 6 was an indefensible disgrace,” the Review flatly declared in its editorial. “It is deserving of both political accountability and criminal prosecution. Aspects of it are also fit subjects for a properly conducted congressional inquiry. It is wrong to minimize or excuse what happened that day.” The RNC’s massive misstep in labeling the Capitol action “legitimate political discourse” is “political malpractice of the highest order coming from people whose entire job is politics,” the Review noted. It will be “used against hundreds of elected Republicans who were not consulted” in the drafting of the wording and “do not endorse its sentiment,” the magazine added.
02.04.22-WHY DOES THIS PERSON EXIST? -Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) received a free lesson in U.S. history after posting her latest tweet about the Constitution. “The Constitution is not evolving,” she wrote on Twitter. “To say that spits in the face of every single one of our founders.” In reality, the framers of the Constitution not only wrote it so that it could evolve, via amendments, but began using that process almost immediately with the passage of the Bill of Rights. At least three Democratic lawmakers pointed out the evolution of the Constitution is why women couldn’t vote when the document was written, but can today:
02.02.22-THIS IS A LUNATIC CRITICIZING A HYPOCRITICAL MORON-Trump was quick to label Lindsey Graham a “RINO”—Republican in name only—after learning that the South Carolina senator, one of the former president’s staunchest defenders, mildly criticized his suggestion that he’d pardon those prosecuted for participating in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol if he were to retake the presidency in 2024. “Well, Lindsey Graham’s wrong,” Trump told Newsmax on Tuesday when presented with Graham’s comments that the idea of pardons for insurrectionists was “inappropriate.” “I mean, Lindsey’s a nice guy—but he’s a RINO,” Trump said, adding that “Lindsey Graham doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about if he says that.” It was the latest turn in the strange friendship between the two men. As a 2016 presidential candidate, Graham famously compared the choice between Trump and Ted Cruz to being “shot or poisoned.” The South Carolina senator also once called Trump a “xenophobic, race-baiting, religious bigot.” But things dramatically shifted when Trump entered the White House, and Graham swiftly refashioned himself into one of the president’s most impassioned supporters. He told The View in 2018 that he no longer considered Trump a “xenophobic, race-baiting, religious bigot—as president.”
02.01.22-FLORIDA SCUM-The Miami Herald delivered a blistering rebuke of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday, slamming him over his failure to outright condemn neo-Nazi demonstrations in Orlando over the weekend. The newspaper’s editorial board ripped DeSantis for downplaying the far-right group as “jackasses” and for then spinning questions about the protests into an attack on President Joe Biden and Democrats. “Denounce the Nazi demonstrators in Orlando, Gov. Ron DeSantis. It’s that simple. Say they are abhorrent. Say they are despicable. Say they have no part in this society or this state. But no,” the board wrote. When DeSantis “had his chance to condemn these demonstrators, when he could have simply said Nazis are bad people, when he could have made sure he didn’t give cover to those who hate, well, he didn’t,” the board added. “And all the manufactured anger at Democrats can’t cover up that telling silence.”
01.28.22-WHY DO THESE LIARS OPENLY LIE? ARE THEY JUST STUPID?-Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) has found a new conspiracy theory to peddle about the effective and safe COVID-19 vaccines: that somehow, uncovered by the media, and silenced by government health officials, hordes of athletes are dropping dead on the field after getting the jab. First things first: They’re not. Johnson, the U.S. Senate’s resident COVID-19 truther, falsely told right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk that there have been 22,000 deaths related to the vaccine — a number that appears to come from an inaccurate and misleading report from anti-vaccine advocates that draws from an official public government database where anyone can report adverse health effects from vaccines. Then Johnson repeated a persistent conspiracy theory from anti-vaccine activists that professional athletes are literally dropping dead on the field because of the COVID-19 vaccine. “The Faucis of the world are just blowing it all off, the Biden administration [says] nothing to see here,” Johnson said. “Of course we’ve heard story after story, I mean, all these athletes dropping dead on the field. But we are supposed to ignore that.” This claim, which has been spread online through misleading videos, has been repeatedly debunked.
01.27.22-JAIL TIME COMING? -I HOPE! Dozens of local and state Republican leaders who showed their loyalty to Trump by casting fake electoral votes for him a year ago may now face prison time in return for that devotion. Because as the House select committee investigating the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, starts to look into the origins of the scheme to send “alternate” ballots to Congress from states narrowly won by Joe Biden, the 59 ersatz Trump electors who claimed to be “duly elected and qualified” could face federal charges ranging from election fraud to mail fraud, in addition to a range of state-level charges. And in two of the states, the Democratic attorneys general are openly calling on the Department of Justice to act. “I believe it’s critical that the federal government fully investigates and prosecutes any unlawful actions in furtherance of any seditious conspiracy,” said Josh Kaul, attorney general of Wisconsin, where 10 Republicans filed papers claiming to be the state’s electors even though Biden narrowly won there. “This is a crime,” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel told reporters earlier this month, adding that calling the elector slate “alternate” did a disservice and that it should be called a “false, counterfeit, fake slate of electors.”
01.26.22-15th CENTURY WITCH HUNT, WHAT'S NEXT-BURNING AT THE STAKE? -Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s (R) tip line seeking reports of what he describes as “divisive practices” in schools — such as the teaching of critical race theory ― has been hit with fake complaints. Singer-songwriter John Legend, meanwhile, urged Black parents to flood the Virginia line “with complaints about our history being silenced.”
01.24.22-YOU CAN LAUGH AT THIS ONE BUT THERE ARE MANY OTHER THREATS BY LEFT-WING CRAZIES, WHICH IGNORE THE CONSTITUTION-Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich is facing criticism from some in his own party after suggesting over the weekend that members of the House committee investigating the U.S. Capitol insurrection “face a real risk of jail.” On Sunday, Gingrich joined Fox News to talk about his op-ed in Newsweek, titled “The Wolves Will Become Sheep,” in which he compared the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot to Cuba’s “Castro brothers torturing, imprisoning and exiling political opponents.” He went further on Fox News, threatening jail for those committee members if Republicans retake control of Congress in this year’s elections.
01.22.22-PRESIDENTIAL TRAITOR TO THE CONSTITUTION-A draft executive order obtained by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection shows Trump considered seizing voting machines across the country after he lost the 2020 election, using debunked conspiracy theories as a pretext. Following the seizure, to be overseen by the secretary of defense, Trump would have then appointed a special counsel to pursue “all criminal and civil proceedings as appropriate,” a copy of the document obtained by Politico shows.
01,21,22-LOW AND HIGH
LOW-Giuliani Reportedly in Charge of Fake Electors Who Filed Fake Certificates for Trump. This is "not protected speech,” said Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel. “It’s an attack on the very fabric of our system of government.”
HIGH-Onetime White House strategist Steve Bannon and former chief of staff Mark Meadows are in “deep doo-doo” now that the Supreme Court has ruled against former President Donald Trump’s claim of executive privilege to shield documents sought in the U.S. Capitol riot probe, warned law professor Neal Katyal.
01.20.22-HIGHS AND LOWS
HIGH! -Georgia DA Asks for Special Grand Jury to Investigate Trump Election Interference. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said that her office “has received information indicating a reasonable probability" that Georgia’s administration of elections in 2020 "was subject to possible criminal disruptions.”
HIGH! -Supreme Court Rejects Trump Request to Keep Records from Jan. 6 Committee. In an 8-1 decision, the court agreed that Trump cannot stop the release of White House records to lawmakers investigating the attack on the Capitol.
LOW! -Eric Trump Pleaded the Fifth More Than 500 Times in Deposition, Court Filing Says. The former president's son was interviewed by the New York attorney general's office in its civil probe into the Trump Organization.
01.19.22-UNBELIEVABLE, BUT THIS IS PART OF INSIDIOUS RIGHT-WING THINKING-MORE WILL COME-The Florida Department of Health on Tuesday placed a top official on administrative leave after he allegedly encouraged employees to get vaccinated against the coronavirus. Raul Pino, director of the Florida Department of Health in Orange County, sent an email to employees earlier this month that was critical of the agency’s vaccination rate. Pino, a leading figure in the public response to the pandemic in the Orlando area, noted that only 77 of the 568 staffers had received booster shots and 219 employees had gotten two doses of coronavirus vaccines, according to WFTV, which first reported the story.
01.18.22-THIS GUY COULD BE WORSE FOR THE CONTRY THAN TRUMP-Florida governor proposes special police agency to monitor elections. The proposed Office of Election Crimes and Security would be part of the Department of State, which answers to the governor. DeSantis is asking the GOP-controlled legislature to allocate nearly $6 million to hire 52 people to “investigate, detect, apprehend, and arrest anyone for an alleged violation” of election laws. They would be stationed at unspecified “field offices throughout the state” and act on tips from “government officials or any other person.” “There’s a reason that there’s no office of this size with this kind of unlimited investigative authority in any other state in the country, and it’s because election crimes and voter fraud are just not a problem of that magnitude,” said Jonathan Diaz, a voting rights lawyer at the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center. “My number one concern is that this is going to be used as a tool to harass or intimidate civic-engagement organizations and voters.”
01.17.22-I HOPE, I HOPE, I HOPE-Should Trump run for the White House again, an obscure Reconstruction-era law could keep him off the ballot in six southern states, including North Carolina, Georgia and Florida, because of his incitement of the Jan. 6 insurrection. The third section of the 14th Amendment prohibits people who swore to defend the Constitution, but who subsequently took part in an insurrection against the United States, from holding state or federal office. Other language in that post-Civil War amendment, though, makes many experts believe that only Congress can enforce the ban, which means Senate Republicans could block any such action. But the 1868 law that readmitted the six states put the burden on them to keep those who have been involved in insurrections from seeking office — potentially making it considerably easier to keep Trump off their primary and general election ballots. “It’s still on the books,” said Gerard Magliocca, a law professor at Indiana University who studies the Reconstruction period. He added that the language could help those seeking to disqualify Trump and other candidates who appeared to encourage the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol. “The law is still there. And it could be appealed to. ” The six states affected by the 1868 law — North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and Florida — together have 88 electoral votes, or 33% of the total needed to win the presidency. Trump won all of them in 2020 except for Georgia, which he lost by 12,000 votes.
01.16.22-POLITICAL TRASH MAN Trump and his administration demonstrated “unprecedented” engagement in the census process in a brazen bid for Republican political gain, according to a newly released memo written by a frustrated Census Bureau official. The scathing memo from September 2020 appeared to be written by Census Bureau Deputy Director Ron Jarmin and sent to two other top Bureau officials as Trump was desperately pressing to end the population count weeks early in an attempt to manipulate it in favor of him and the GOP. The memo It complained about attempts to breach the privacy of census respondents, the use of estimates to fill in data, pressure to take shortcuts, and attempts to identify undocumented immigrants. Ultimately, the Trump administration was attempting to hijack an independent system governed by statistical science to serve Trump and the Republican Party, Jarmin suggested. Much of the meddling was aimed at population estimates used for reapportionment to calculate the allotment of seats in the House of Representatives. The Trump administration was particularly insistent that the Census Bureau separately tally the number of undocumented immigrants in each state, the memo noted.
01.15.22-DISGUSTING TRUMP SYNCOPHANT AND HYPOCRITE-The Washington Post tore into House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) refusal to cooperate with a House select committee’s investigation into the U.S. Capitol riot. “No patriotic American should oppose such a probe,” the newspaper’s editorial board wrote. The Post called for the subpoena of key Trump ally McCarthy, a move it described as “unprecedented” but necessary because “his behavior amounts to a dereliction of his oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” “In his quest to become the next GOP House speaker, Mr. McCarthy has instead thrown in his lot with the enemies of democracy,” the editorial declared.
01.14.22-MORE REPUBLICAN CRIMINAL ACTS-Trump’s allies sent the government fake second sets of Electoral College documents in 2020 that falsely declared the then-president to be the recipient of the states’ electors. “They sent them in to the government as if they were real documents,” she added. “It wasn’t one state, it wasn’t three states where they did this — it was at least five states where we have now obtained forged documents created by Republicans,” MSNBC's Rachael Maddow said. The documents were signed by Trump supporters who claimed to be the rightful electors in states that Democrat Joe Biden won, even though they did not have backing or sign-off from any election officials. The documents were meant to challenge the states’ official slates of electors, who represented the Electoral College votes favoring Biden, with alternative lists of people who would back Trump.
01.13.22-LOW INFORMATION MORONS-A couple hundred protesters appeared outside the Washington state Department of Health on Wednesday, after "disturbing" COVID-19 vaccine-related falsehoods began spreading on social media late last week, The Seattle Times reports. The rumors claimed the state Board of Health was on the verge of authorizing "local health officials and police to round up people for refusing to get coronavirus vaccines and forcibly lock them up in quarantine facilities," writes the Seattle Times. Though there was in fact no such plan, the misinformation was seized upon by "anti-vaccine activists, some conservative radio hosts and at least three Republican congressional candidates."
01.12.22-HOW OFTEN DOES THIS HAVE TO HAPPEN FOR ALL THE FOOLS TO WAKE UP? -GOP Activist Who Opposed COVID-19 Vaccine Rules Dies After Virus Complications. Kelly Canon had celebrated receiving a vaccine exemption and appeared to have attended a recent anti-vaccine "COVID symposium."
01.11.22-DOPE ALERT-White House press secretary Jen Psaki was forced to explain some basics about vaccines on Monday after Fox News reporter Peter Doocy tried to corner her with a question about breakthrough COVID-19 infections. “I understand that the science says that vaccines prevent death,” Doocy said from the briefing room. “But I’m triple-vaxxed, still got COVID. You’re triple-vaxxed, still got COVID. Why is the president still referring to this as a pandemic of the unvaccinated?”
“There’s a huge difference between that and being unvaccinated,” she said. “You are 17 times more likely to go to the hospital if you’re not vaccinated, 20 times more likely to die. And those are significant, serious statistics. So, yes, the impact for people who are unvaccinated is far more dire than for those who are vaccinated.” Hospitalizations in the U.S. have been driven largely by unvaccinated COVID-19 patients in the past six months, placing preventable strain on health systems.
01.10.22-FOX NEWS?-Trump received a dose of truth from an unexpected place on Sunday: Fox News. “In life, you have to learn to lose,” the network’s Brian Kilmeade told “Media Buzz” host Howie Kurtz when asked about Trump’s complaints of the 2020 election. Kilmeade, one of the hosts of “Fox & Friends,” also bluntly dismissed Trump’s cries of election fraud, telling him to put up or shut up. “If you did, in fact, get screwed out of this election, put together an A-team list of lawyers ― not the ones we witnessed ― and show us the districts and show us how,” Kilmeade said. “I have not seen any of that.”
01.09.22-INDIANA FOOL-Republican Sen. Scott Baldwin has backtracked on his shocking instructions to a history teacher during a legislative hearing this week not to criticize Nazism or fascism to his students. During the hearing Wednesday, teacher Matt Bockenfeld noted that his class was “learning about the rise of fascism and the rise of Nazism right now,” adding: “I’m just not neutral on the political ideology of fascism. We condemn it, and we condemn it in full.” The purpose, he said, is to help students “recognize it and combat it.
01.07.22-TWO DISGUSTING RIGHT-WINGERS-Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) begged Tucker Carlson for forgiveness on Thursday. His sin: intimating that some of the people who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 were terrorists. The one-time presidential candidate debased himself in front of millions of conservative viewers, attempting to atone for daring to criticize the MAGA rioters, but a prickly Carlson refused to accept his apology. The saga started the day before, on the eve of the anniversary of the riot, when Cruz referred to the historic insurrection attempt as a “violent terrorist attack” during a speech on the Senate floor. His remarks set off fierce backlash in the MAGAverse — which has grown increasingly hostile to criticism of Jan. 6 — culminating with Carlson lashing out at the senator during primetime on Wednesday evening.
01.04.22-AMERICA IN PERIL-Trump came so dangerously close to successfully orchestrating the overthrow of the U.S. government last year that he only needed a few extra radical loyalists to pull it off, warned a chilling essay Monday in the conservative website The Bulwark. Trump was just “five Rudys short” of a successful coup, cautioned longtime attorney and frequent Bulwark contributor Philip Rotner, referring to Trump’s rabidly loyal ally Rudy Giuliani.
01.03.22-FROM ONE DICTATOR TO ANOTHER-Former president Donald Trump made an unusual endorsement in a foreign election on Monday, offering his “Complete support” for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a right-wing populist leader accused of undermining the country’s democracy and moving toward autocracy during more than a decade in power. Six opposition parties have coalesced around Hungarian opposition leader Peter Marki-Zay in a bid to oust Orban, who has championed “illiberal democracy” and become a pariah among European Union members, in parliamentary elections planned for the spring.
01.02.22-BE REALLY SCARED!-A chilling item in a document log provided to Jan. 6 investigators describes a draft letter by Trump calling for the “seizure” of election materials after he lost. The log, along with a trove of documents, was provided last week to the House select committee probing the insurrection. They were handed over by Trump ally Bernard Kerik, former New York City police commissioner and a confidant of Trump’s one-time attorney Rudy Giuliani, Politico reported. Kerik was a key adviser to Trump’s legal team trying to cook up a narrative of fraud in the presidential election Joe Biden won. Besides the documents Kerik turned over to the committee, he also offered a log of documents he refused to provide, including the Trump letter, according to Politico. Among the documents withheld is one described as a “Draft Letter from POTUS to Seize Evidence in the Interest of National Security for the 2020 Elections.”
01.01.22-PENCE IS THE WORST KIND OF PRETENDER-A Capitol police sergeant seriously injured in the Jan. 6 insurrection called it a “disgrace” that former Vice President Mike Pence recently seemed to downplay the significance of the day after officers risked their lives to save his. “That one day in January almost cost my life,” Sgt. Aquilino Gonell told NPR in an interview this week. “We did everything possible to prevent him [Pence] from being hanged and killed in front of his daughter and his wife. And now he’s telling us that that one day in January doesn’t mean anything. It’s pathetic,” Gonell said. “It’s a disgrace.” Gonell was attacked by the mob on Jan. 6, 2021, and dragged by his leg. He still does not have full use of his left arm. “I could feel myself losing oxygen and recall thinking to myself, ‘This is how I’m going to die, trampled defending this entrance,’” he recounted in emotional testimony in July before a House committee investigating the riot. Now, he’s furious about Pence’s recent comments downplaying the significance of the day.
Retired Navy Admiral William McRaven — U.S. special forces commander from 2011 to 2014, including the 2011 SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden — writes a WashPost op-ed condemning President Trump's treatment of retired Vice Admiral Joe Maguire, acting director of national intelligence until this week:
"As Americans, we should be frightened — deeply afraid for the future of the nation. When good men and women can’t speak the truth, when facts are inconvenient, when integrity and character no longer matter, when presidential ego and self-preservation are more important than national security — then there is nothing left to stop the triumph of evil."
