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Re: TRUMP-Wicked Wizard of West Wing-Consults Torture Lawyer to Skirt Law/Rule by Dec
TRUMP-Wicked Wizard of West Wing Consults Bush Torture Lawyer on How to Skirt Law and Rule by Decree
The Wicked Wizard of The West Wing is Melting Before Our Eyes.... John Yoo wrote memo used to justify waterboarding Trump keen to use executive orders and circumvent Congress The Guardian UK, 23 JUL 2020. https://media.salon.com/2020/07/trump-yoo-0720201.jpg TRUMP & John Yoo... The Trump administration has been consulting the former government lawyer who wrote the legal justification for waterboarding on how the president might try to rule by decree. John Yoo told the Guardian he has been talking to White House officials about his view that a recent supreme court ruling on immigration would allow Trump to issue executive orders on whether to apply existing federal laws. “If the court really believes what it just did, then it just handed President Trump a great deal of power, too,” Yoo, a professor at Berkeley Law, said. “The supreme court has said President Obama could [choose not to] enforce immigration laws for about 2 million cases. And why can’t the Trump administration do something similar with immigration – create its own … program, but it could do it in areas beyond that, like healthcare, tax policy, criminal justice, inner city policy. I talked to them a fair amount about cities, because of the disorder.” In a Fox News Sunday interview, Trump declared he would try to use that interpretation to try to force through decrees on healthcare, immigration and “various other plans” over the coming month. The White House consultations with Yoo were first reported by the Axios news website. Constitutional scholars and human rights activists have also pointed to the deployment of paramilitary federal forces against protesters in Portland as a sign that Trump is ready to use this broad interpretation of presidential powers as a means to suppress basic constitutional rights. “This is how it begins,” Laurence Tribe, a Harvard constitutional law professor, wrote on Twitter. “The dictatorial hunger for power is insatiable. If ever there was a time for peaceful civil disobedience, that time is upon us.” Yoo became notorious for a legal memo he drafted in August 2002, when he was deputy assistant attorney general in the justice department’s office of legal counsel. It stated: “Necessity or self-defense may justify interrogation methods that might violate” the criminal prohibition on torture. Memos drafted by Yoo were used for justifying waterboarding and other forms of torture on terrorism suspects at CIA “black sites” around the world. Asked if he now regretted his memos, Yoo replied: “I’m still not exactly sure about how far the CIA took its interrogation methods but I think if they stayed within the outlines of the legal memos, I think they weren’t violating American law.” In a book titled Defender in Chief, due to be published next week, Yoo argues that Trump was fighting to restore the powers of the presidency, in a way that would have been approved by the framers of the US constitution. “They wanted each branch to have certain constitutional weapons and then they wanted them to fight. And so they wanted the president to try to expand his powers but they expected also Congress to keep fighting with the President,” he said. In a June article in the National Review, he wrote that a supreme court decision that blocked Trump’s attempt to repeal Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programme, known as Daca and established by executive order, meant Trump could do the same thing to achieve his policy goals. Daca suspended deportations of undocumented migrants who arrived in the US as children. As an example of what Trump might achieve in the same way, Yoo suggested the president could declare a national right to carry firearms openly, in conflict with many state laws. “He could declare that he would not enforce federal firearms laws,” Yoo wrote, “and that a new ‘Trump permit’ would free any holder of state and local gun-control restrictions. “Even if Trump knew that his scheme lacked legal authority, he could get away with it for the length of his presidency,” he said. In a telephone interview, he added: “According to the supreme court, the president can now choose to under-enforce the law in certain areas and it can’t be undone by his successor unless that successor goes through this onerous thing called the Administrative Procedure Act, which usually takes one to two years.” Constitutional scholars have rejected Yoo’s arguments as ignoring limits on the executive powers of the president imposed by the founders, who were determined to prevent the rise of a tyrant. Tribe called Yoo’s interpretation of the Daca ruling “indefensible”. He added: “I fear that this lawless administration will take full advantage of the fact that judicial wheels grind slowly and that it will be difficult to keep up with the many ways Trump, aided and abetted by Bill Barr as attorney general and Chad Wolf as acting head of homeland security, can usurp congressional powers and abridge fundamental rights in the immigration space in particular but also in matters of public health and safety.” On the deployment of federal paramilitary units against Portland, Yoo said he did not know enough of the facts to deem whether it was an abuse of executive power. “It has to be really reasonably related to protecting federal buildings,” he said. “If it’s just graffiti, that’s not enough. It really depends on what the facts are.” Alka Pradhan, a defence counsel in the 9/11 terrorism cases against inmates in the Guantánamo Bay prison camp, said: “John Yoo’s so-called reasoning has always been based on ‘What can the president get away with?’ rather than ‘What is the purpose and letter of the law?’ “That is not legal reasoning, it’s inherently tyrannical and anti-democratic.” Pradhan and other defence lawyers in the pre-trial hearings at the Guantánamo Bay military tribunal have argued that the use of torture against their clients, made possible by Yoo’s 2002 memo, invalidated much of the case against them. “The fact that John Yoo is employed and free to opine on legal matters is an example of the culture of impunity in the United States,” she said. END MORE; Trump's Sweaty Fox News Interview Shows His 2020 Chances Melting Away With every new poll showing him losing, both nationally and in battleground states, Trump’s despair dribbled through all of his pores Sunday Richard Wolffe https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/wx...e59b6e862de9fa Two generations ago, Richard Nixon sweated his way to losing the first ever presidential debate on television to a young, fit and cool John F Kennedy. It was the kind of rookie mistake you could put down to the newness of TV. So how do you explain – 60 years later – the drenching sweat that trickled down the face of the reality TV star who is now living inside the White House? Of the very few things Donald Trump is supposed to know in any modicum of detail, TV sits right at the tippity-top. There are more historic crises challenging his presidency than there are cable news channels, but that doesn’t stop him tweeting about all the TV he’s watching all day. For a man who still measures his manhood by his own TV ratings, it was a curious choice to sit outside in the humid steamer of a Washington summer, caked in his glowing orange make-up, to field the pesky questions of the best interviewer on Fox News. “Hot enough for you here, Mr President?” asked Chris Wallace. “It’s hot,” said Trump. “It’s about, well, sort of almost record-breaking stuff.” “You know, we wanted to do it inside,” replied Wallace. “This is your choice.” Trump has made so many more consequential blunders than failing to prepare for his double-sided grilling by the weather and Wallace. But this chargrilled interview laid bare how the Wicked Wizard of the West Wing is melting before our eyes. This chargrilled interview laid bare how the Wicked Wizard of the West Wing is melting before our eyes For four years we have been told that populist leaders – especially this one – are peerless showmen: experts not in government but in hijacking the public attention. His pithy nicknames and catchphrases supposedly destroyed his rivals in 2016. They came up with 12-point plans while he was going to make America great again. He threatened North Korea with his big nuclear button, then fell in love with the North Korean leader in a summit staged just for the cameras. But now his repeated attempts to smear Joe Biden have flopped and the great showman is reportedly asking aides if he should try to find another nickname. With every new poll showing him losing the election, both nationally and in all the battleground states, Trump’s despair dribbled through all his pores on Sunday’s interview. When asked if Biden was senile, Trump answered with the kind of half-baked half-thoughts of a mind cooking slowly in the heat of the presidency. “I’d say he’s not competent to be president,” he warmed up. “To be president, you have to be sharp and tough and so many other things.” What are these so many other things, pray tell? “He doesn’t even come out of his basement. They think, ‘Oh this is a great campaign.’ So he goes in.” It wasn’t clear who they were or what he was going into. But it seemed totally clear to our sharp and tough president, who is also so many other things. “I’ll then make a speech. It’ll be a great speech. And some young guy starts writing, ‘Vice President Biden said this, this, this.’ He didn’t say it. Joe doesn’t know he’s alive, OK? He doesn’t know he’s alive.” It may be tempting to blame all of this on the young guy whose writing clearly leaves a lot to be desired. But it’s the old guy in the Oval we should be worried about. He doesn’t know he’s dying out there. There have been some clues, of course. There was the disastrous riot of a photo op with a pretty bible and a ton of tear gas. There was the Tulsa rally for a million people who failed to show up. There was that weird Mount Rushmore speech about the fascists who say mean things about racists. Then again, as Chris Wallace pointed out, there are the polls that show this desperate act isn’t working. And there’s all the endless video of our sharp and tough president predicting the pandemic would just disappear, like a miracle, with a little disinfectant injected inside. Or perhaps some bright light. “I’ll be right eventually,” Trump insisted when confronted with his own cringe-inducing comments about the coronavirus. “I will be right eventually. You know I said, ‘It’s going to disappear.’ I’ll say it again.” They say a stopped clock is right twice a day. But this broken timepiece will only be happy when all the clocks have stopped. At this point in Trump’s Twilight Zone, the audience has a good sense of the plot twists that lie ahead in the next four months. It consists of as much concocted chaos as humanly possible. There will be terrorist protesters in every major city, whisked off the streets by Trump’s paramilitaries in rented minivans. Thank goodness we have machine-gun-toting goons to protect us from all that graffiti. There will be caravans of coronavirus-filled immigrants scaling the freshly-painted border wall, which has done such a fantastic job of protecting us all from the pandemic. After Nixon sweated his way to defeat against Kennedy, he returned to win the presidency eight years later with a law and order campaign that promised to shut down civil rights protests and stop enforcing civil rights laws. Our Trumpified version of Tricky Dick is a little less subtle than the original. He claimed that people flying the confederate flag were “not talking about racism”. But when asked about removing the names of confederate generals from US military bases, Trump could only think about race. And some weird stuff about a couple of world wars. “We’re going to name it after the Rev Al Sharpton? What are you going to name it, Chris? Tell me what you’re going to name it,” Trump sputtered. “So there’s a whole thing here. We won two world wars, two world wars, beautiful world wars that were vicious and horrible. And we won them out of Fort Bragg. We won out of all of these forts that now they want to throw those names away.” Ah yes, those beautiful world wars. So vicious and horrible. All at the same time. Like the man says, there is indeed a whole thing here. “Let Biden sit through an interview like this,” Trump declared at another point. “He’ll be on the ground crying for mommy. He’ll say, ‘Mommy, mommy, please take me home.’” In his own man-childish way, Trump thought he was proving his point about senility and sharpness and toughness. And so many other things. But with every new interview, it sounds like he’s just asking his mommy to please take him home. |
re: TRUMPs' Sister Recorded Saying 'Donald is CRUEL & Has No Principles'
America 'Staring Down The Barrel of Martial Law', Oregon Senator Warns
Ron Wyden says Portland tactics threaten democracy Senator Jeff Merkley deplores ‘military-style assault’ Former Ice head: Trump is using agents as his ‘goon squad “A wall of Vets” has been formed in Portland to protect demonstrators from federal agents. The Guardian UK/AP, 25 JUL 2020. https://i2.wp.com/timesfamous.com/wp...77%2C437&ssl=1 https://www.rallylist.com/wp-content...d-1024x512.jpg https://im-media.voltron.voanews.com...?itok=EuDB-Ny_ https://nationalfile.com/wp-content/...Protesters.jpg America is “staring down the barrel of martial law” as it approaches the presidential election, a US senator from Oregon has warned as Donald Trump cracks down on protests in Portland, the state’s biggest city. > This is what happens when the war on terror is turned inward, on America - Hamilton Nolan In interviews with the Guardian, Democrat Ron Wyden said the federal government’s authoritarian tactics in Portland and other cities posed an “enormous” threat to democracy, while his fellow senator Jeff Merkley described it as “an all-out assault in military-style fashion”. The independent watchdogs for the US justice and homeland security departments said on Thursday they were launching investigations into the use of force by federal agents in Portland, where unidentified officers in camouflage gear have snatched demonstrators off the streets and spirited them away in unmarked vehicles. But Trump this week announced a “surge” of federal law enforcement to Chicago and Albuquerque, in addition to a contingent already in Kansas City. The move fuelled critics’ suspicions that the president was stressing a “law and order” campaign theme at the expense of civil liberties. Wyden said in a written statement on Thursday: “The violent tactics deployed by Donald Trump and his paramilitary forces against peaceful protesters are those of a fascist regime, not a democratic nation.” > I wish the president would fight the coronavirus half as hard as he attacks my home town ...Senator Ron Wyden Speaking by phone, he said: “Unless America draws a line in the sand right now, I think we could be staring down the barrel of martial law in the middle of a presidential election.” Military control of government was last imposed in the US in 1941, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that triggered entry into the second world war. In current circumstances it would entail “trashing the constitution and trashing people’s individual rights”, Wyden warned. The Oregon senator recalled a recent conversation with a legal adviser for the head of national intelligence. “I asked him again and again what was the constitutional justification for what the Trump administration is doing in my home town and he completely ducked the questions and several times said, ‘Well, I just want to extend my best wishes to your constituents.’ “After I heard him say it several times, I said my constituents don’t want your best wishes. They want to know when you’re going to stop trashing their constitutional rights.” The White House press secretary, 'tweety' Kayleigh McEnany, began a briefing on Friday with a selectively edited video montage depicting protests, flames, graffiti and chaos in Portland. “The Trump administration will not stand by and allow anarchy in our streets,” she said. “Law and order will prevail.” Trump has falsely accused his election rival, Joe Biden, of pledging to “defund the police” so violent crime will flourish. Democrats condemn Trump for a made-for-TV attempt to distract both from Black Lives Matter protests and his mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, now killing more than 1,000 Americans a day. “I wish the president would fight the coronavirus half as hard as he attacks my home town,” Wyden said. “I think he’s setting up an us-against-them kind of strategy. He’s trying to create his narrative that my constituents, who are peaceful protesters, are basically anarchists, sympathisers of anarchists and, as he does so often, just fabricate it. https://im-media.voltron.voanews.com...?itok=kItaIL1L Federal Forces Tear Gas Oregon Protesters, Portland Police Say https://themoneymanifesto.com/wp-con...rump-video.jpg Federal police under the orders of Donald Trump launch teargas after a demonstration in Portland, Oregon, on Thursday. “Trump knows that his [coronavirus] strategy has been an unmitigated disaster. The coronavirus is spiking in various places and he’s trying to play to rightwing media and play to his base and see if he can kind of create a narrative that gives him some traction.” The Portland deployment, known as Operation Diligent Valor, involves 114 officers from homeland security and the US Marshals Service, according to court documents. Local officials say their heavy-handed approach, including teargas and flash grenades, has merely enflamed demonstrations against police brutality and racial injustice. The justice department-led Operation Legend involves more than 200 agents each in Kansas City and Chicago as well as 35 in Albuquerque. It is targeted at violent crime. Lori Lightfoot, the mayor of Chicago, has vowed to resist the federal intervention. “We’re not going to allow the unconstitutional, state-sanctioned lawlessness we saw brought to Portland here in Chicago,” she said on Thursday. > It’s very clear what the president is trying to do is incite violence and then display that violence in campaign ads...Senator Jeff Merkley Merkley offered warning words of advice based on Oregon’s current experience. “I would say that you probably don’t believe that these federal forces will attack protesters if the protesters are peaceful and you will be wrong because that’s exactly what they’re doing in Portland,” he told the Guardian. “This is an all-out assault in military-style fashion on a peaceful-style protest. The way to handle graffiti is put up a fence or come out and ask people to stop doing it, not to attack a peaceful protest but that’s exactly what happened. It’s very clear what the president is trying to do is incite violence and then display that violence in campaign ads. And I say this because that’s exactly what he’s doing right now. This is not some theory.” The senator added: “This is just an absolute assault on people’s civil rights to speak and to assemble.” > Chad Wolf: who is the Trump official leading the crackdown in Portland? Merkley argued that with past targets such as Islamic State and undocumented migrants losing their potency, Trump has settled on African American communities in inner cities to be his latest scapegoats. “I think it’s also important to note the president we’ve always known has this intense authoritarian streak,” he said. “He loved and had so much affection for the leader of North Korea, Putin in Russia. Just admiration for some of the tactics in the Philippines with Duterte and Erdoğan in Turkey, by the crown prince in Saudi Arabia.” ***On Friday the United Nations warned against the use of excessive force against demonstrators and media in the US. “Peaceful demonstrations that have been taking place in cities in the US, such as Portland, really must be able to continue,” the UN human rights office spokeswoman, Elizabeth Throssell, told reporters in Geneva*** Duston Obermeyer, a Marines veteran, said a group of around 30 had been created after video emerged last week showing agents beating and tear gassing a navy veteran at the Portland protests -'That’s an illegal order': Veterans challenge Trump's officers in Portland |
re: TRUMP & SON Touted Widely Disproven COVID-19 Drug
Donald Trump says 'Nobody Likes Me', Rambles on and Cuts Short Presser After Difficult Questioning
US President Donald Trump questions why he's not as popular as his coronavirus task force experts. Trump Promoted a WITCH Doctor - Watch in The Video Below What She Said About Demons The Sun UK •29 Jul 2020 The president lamented that his poll numbers were lower than those of his top science advisers. “It can only be my personality,” he said. “He’s got this high approval rating,” President Trump said of Dr Fauci at the White House coronavirus briefing on Tuesday. “So why don’t I have a high approval rating with respect — and the administration — with respect to the virus?” Dr Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, and Dr Birx, his administration’s top coronavirus coordinator, have high approval ratings even as his own have sagged, Mr. Trump added, “And yet, they’re highly thought of — but nobody likes me.” “It can only be my personality,” he concluded. |
re: Donald Trump says 'Nobody Likes Me' & Promotes 'WITCH Doctor' for COVID
TRUMP Touted Ineffective Covid-19 Drug Says Dr Fauci
US President Donald Trump has again defended the use of hydroxychloroquine to ward off coronavirus, contradicting his own public health officials. ”Trump’s financial disclosures show that his three family trusts each had investments in a $10.3 billion Dodge & Cox mutual fund that owns shares in Sanofi. It makes Plaquenil, the brand-name version of hydroxychloroquine.” BBC News •30 Jul 2020 https://am24.mediaite.com/lc/cnt/upl...3704243533.jpg He said the malaria medication was only rejected as a Covid-19 treatment because he had recommended its use. His remarks come after Twitter banned his eldest son for posting a clip promoting hydroxychloroquine. There is no evidence the drug can fight the virus, and regulators warn it may cause heart problems. Top US virus researcher Dr Anthony Fauci has called President Donald Trump's sharing of a video which included claims masks are not needed to fight Covid-19 "not helpful". The video promotes a drug widely disproven to be effective in treating Covid-19. Dr Fauci's interview with the BBC's Katty Kay comes as the US is about to hit 150,000 deaths due to the pandemic. The virus continues to spread rapidly in the US as states lock down again. President Trump was among social media users who shared video on social media late on Monday of a group called America's Frontline Doctors advocating hydroxychloroquine as a Covid-19 treatment and saying that masks and shutdowns are not effective in combating coronavirus. Facebook and Twitter removed the video, flagging it as misinformation, but not before more than 17 million people had viewed it. Trump’s New Favourite COVID Doctor Believes in Alien DNA, Demon Sperm, and Hydroxychloroquine. Dr. Stella Immanuel, who emigrated from Africa, is a pediatrician and a religious minister, has a history of making bizarre claims about medical topics and Alien DNA, Demon Sperm, and Hydroxychloroquinets. She has often claimed that gynecological problems like endometriosis are in fact caused by people having sex in their dreams with demons and witches. |
re: TRUMPs' Sister Recorded Saying 'Donald is CRUEL & Has No Principles'
The Lincoln Project-Could This Anti-Trump Republican Group Take Down The President?
Savage attack ads from a well-funded group of dissident Republicans are aiming to sway a key sliver of opinion in swing states “If I were to vote again for Donald Trump in 2020, it would be just as much a failure as an American, but also a failure as a human being” - College-educated white women in crucial swing states The Guardian UK 2 AUG 2020 https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/58363...ormat&fit=max&https://am13.mediaite.com/med/cnt/up...mps-Health.jpg Amid all the noise of an election involving Donald Trump – all the inflammatory tweets and shadowy Facebook posts – one set of ads has somehow managed to break through. There’s the one of the US president shuffling down a ramp that declares that the president “is not well”. There’s the whispering one about Trump’s “loyalty problem” inside his White House, campaign and family. https://i1.wp.com/egbertowillies.com...66%2C768&ssl=1 There’s the epic Mourning in America that remakes Reagan’s election-defining 1984 ad, turning the sun-bathed suburbs into a dark national portrait of pandemic and recession. On Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, those three ads alone have racked up more than 35m views. The Lincoln Project, run by a group of renegade Republican political consultants, has crystallized one of the core narratives of the 2020 campaign in ways that few other political commercials have in past cycles. Its work on brutal attack ads sits alongside the swift boat veterans against John Kerry in 2004, the Willie Horton ad against Michael Dukakis in 1988, and the daisy ad against Barry Goldwater in 1964. Their reward? Disdain from independent media, distrust across the political spectrum and a recent series of harshly negative coverage from pro-Trump media outlets. Disdain appears to be the consensus view from the pundits. Atlantic magazine called their ads “personally abusive, overwrought, pointlessly salacious, and trip-wired with non sequiturs”. The New Republic examined what it called “the viral impotency” of the Lincoln Project, suggesting they couldn’t “persuade voters of anything”. Even the Washington Post declared most of their ads were “aimed not at persuading disaffected Republicans but simply at needling the president”. But that’s not how the project’s leaders see their work or purpose. In their launch manifesto, published as a column in the New York Times, the founders said their goal was “defeating President Trump and Trumpism at the ballot box”, including his Republican supporters in Congress. To that end, they said their efforts were about “persuading enough disaffected conservatives, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents in swing states and districts” to defeat Trump and elect congressional majorities opposed to Trumpism. In practice, that means organizing anti-Trump Republicans in eight swing states – including Florida, Ohio, Arizona and North Carolina – to hold virtual town halls and write postcards to Republican neighbors and friends. It also means organizing surrogates to speak to those voters in their home states and towns. “These are Republicans they are familiar with – former representatives and mayors,” said Sarah Lenti, executive director of the Lincoln Project. “People like Rick Snyder in Michigan who will come out and say, ‘We’re supporting the Lincoln Project and supporting Joe Biden this cycle.’ It gives people the cover to say, ‘Our leadership is doing this, so it’s OK for us too.’” Alongside the top-tier surrogates and ads, there is a grassroots effort to organize women, veterans and evangelicals to reach out to persuade Republicans to abandon the president who dominates their party. “There are certain voters we’re not going to move – the one-issue voters on the right to life – and that’s OK,” says Lenti. “We’re looking at 3-5% of Republicans in certain states. They tend to be more educated than not. Over 40 years old, and the demographic split is about 50/50, maybe a little towards men. We’re also seeing traction with some evangelicals, and those are typically older and less educated.” That sliver of disaffected Republicans is the target for ads like Mourning in America: people who are old enough to remember the original from three decades ago are also old enough to be at the highest risk of the coronavirus. “Under the leadership of Donald Trump,” the narrator says, “our country is weaker, and sicker, and poorer.” That was the first ad that triggered Trump enough to tweet-storm about the group two months ago: a presidential outburst that transformed the Lincoln Project’s profile and resources. “A group of RINO Republicans who failed badly 12 years ago, then again 8 years ago, and then got BADLY beaten by me, a political first timer, 4 years ago, have copied (no imagination) the concept of an ad from Ronald Reagan, “Morning in America”, doing everything possible to get even for all of their many failures,” Trump tweeted. If Trump was truly tormented by the Reagan reference, the irony is striking. Trump himself stole, without attribution, Reagan’s 1980 slogan: Make America Great Again. For the most part Trump’s tweets focused on the individual founders of the project that troubles him so deeply. Given their track record in GOP politics, his dismissal of them as Rinos – Republicans In Name Only – means there are very few Republicans who can pass the Trump test. The Lincoln Project founders include John Weaver, who was a political strategist for George HW Bush in 1988 and 1992, as well as John McCain’s strategist for a decade; Reed Galen, who worked on both Bush campaigns in 2000 and 2004; Steve Schmidt, who ran the McCain campaign in 2008 and worked in the Bush White House and campaigns before that; and George Conway, a conservative lawyer whose wife Kellyanne just happens to work as Trump’s counselor in the West Wing. The pushback did not stop there. The conservative Club for Growth took the extraordinary step of creating and airing its own ad attacking the Lincoln Project. It depicted the group as a bunch of failed strategists trying to make a quick buck by hating not just Trump but the American people. This month they have been joined by two hit stories in the Murdoch-owned New York Post, accusing the founders of “ties to Russia and tax troubles” as well as secretly wanting to work for Trump. These may be confusing lines of attack for Trump supporters who have grown numb to ties to Russia, tax troubles and think highly of those who want to work for Trump. For Democratic ad-makers, the work of the Lincoln Project has earned their respect, even if questions remain about its impact. “The ads have struck a chord with progressives and activists who see the Project as validating everything we’ve been saying about Trump, but now being voiced by the people we usually campaign against,” said Jim Margolis, a veteran Democratic strategist and ad-maker for the Obama and Clinton campaigns. “The question is whether independent voters, moderate Republicans and white suburban voters will respond as well. “If the objective is modest – moving a point or two in the right states with the right people – I think they can help win the election. Remember: Hillary Clinton lost the presidency in 2016 by less than one point in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. So even small gains can mean the difference between a Trump second term and a new day in America.” But for some of the ads it is clear they are engaged in a battle for the attention of a singular target. “Some of these ads have an audience of one,” says Lenti. “That’s always been part of the strategy. Because every time he gets off message, spewing grievances, he’s not campaigning. The idea is to get him off message again and again and again. It bothers him. We hear from people inside the White House that he wants them to make us go away. But we’re not going away.” Trump’s concern about the Lincoln Project has only helped to fill its coffers. After seeing Mourning In America, Trump stepped off Marine One and talked to reporters before boarding Air Force One. “They should not call it the Lincoln Project,” he complained, after taking more potshots at its founders. “It’s not fair to Abraham Lincoln, a great president. They should call it the Losers Project.” Instead of turning them into losers, Trump helped raise $2m for his sworn enemies. The group raked in more than $20m by the end of June, far ahead of its target of raising $30m by the end of the election cycle. Most of those funds came after Trump’s attacks in May, with small donors making up the bulk of its supporters: the average donation is around $50. Now the group has enough funds to go after Trump’s supporters in tight Senate races. This week it placed its biggest ad buy – $4m in Alaska, Maine and Montana – as the expanded battlefield underscores its bigger goal. “I don’t think this wing of the party is going away,” says Lenti. “Our job isn’t to reform the Republican party. Our job is to end Trump and Trumpism.” |
re: TRUMPs' Sister Recorded Saying 'Donald is CRUEL & Has No Principles'
Donald Trump Rails Against The 'Continuation of The Witch Hunt' as Manhattan DA Reveals He is Probing The Trump Organization for Insurance and Bank Fraud' and Pattern of Financial Misconduct
Reports of ‘extensive and protracted criminal conduct dating back over a decade’ cited The Supreme Court last month rejected claims by Trump’s lawyers that the president could not be criminally investigated while he was in office.
https://s1.ibtimes.com/sites/www.ibt...nald-trump.jpg President Donald Trump railed against a 'witch hunt' Monday after New York prosecutors seeking his tax returns told a federal court his family company is being probed for alleged fraud. Trump addressed the case at a White House press briefing after a rambling introduction where he said the coronavirus would 'soon be very much under control.' He then got asked about the court push, where prosecutors indicated their probes are going well beyond a hush-payment scheme to porn star Stormy Daniels and into complex financial matters related to the company started by Trump's father and overseen by him until he was elected in 2016. http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/35ae...-AFP-MM67L.jpg 'This is just a continuation of the witch hunt,' Trump said. 'It’s Democrat stuff they failed with Mueller they failed with everything,' Trump said, referencing Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, which generally confined itself to allegations of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russians. The report preceded a failed Democratic impeachment effort. 'They failed at every stage of the game,' Trump said. 'Even before I got in this was starting with the Mueller deal. Mueller started a little bit after,' Trump corrected himself. Mueller was appointed after former Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from overseeing the Russia investigation in 2017. Trump also said he was barely familiar with the matter, which was reported in the New York Times and a variety of outlets as a court filing was made public. 'There’s nothing that I know even about it,' Trump said. 'I said what’s this all about? I know nothing about it.' https://static.politico.com/83/77/dc...ump-ap-773.jpg 'It’s a terrible thing that they do. It’s really a terrible thing. The witch hunt has gone on long enough,' he said. A Manhattan prosecutor trying to get President Donald Trump´s tax returns told a judge Monday that he was justified in demanding them, citing public reports of 'extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization.' Trump´s lawyers last month said the grand jury subpoena for the tax returns was issued in bad faith and amounted to harassment of the president. Manhattan District Attorney District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr. is seeking eight years of the Republican president´s personal and corporate tax records, but has disclosed little about what prompted him to request the records, other than part of the investigation is related to payoffs made to women to keep them quiet about alleged affairs with Trump. https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/08...6477028428.jpg The office had earlier subpoenaed the Mazars accounting firm for the tax return information, in a case that resulted in a 7-2 Supreme Court decision. https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/08...6479131999.jpg Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.'s office continues to seek Trump tax return information in court In a court filing Monday, though, attorneys for Vance said Trump's arguments that the subpoena was too broad stemmed from 'the false premise' that the probe was limited to so-called 'hush-money' payments. 'This Court is already aware that this assertion is fatally undermined by undisputed information in the public record,' Vance´s lawyers wrote. They said public reporting demonstrates that at the time the subpoena was issues 'there were public allegations of possible criminal activity at Plaintiff´s New York County-based Trump Organization dating back over a decade.' 'These reports describe transactions involving individual and corporate actors based in New York County, but whose conduct at times extended beyond New York´s borders. This possible criminal activity occurred within the applicable statutes of limitations, particularly if the transactions involved a continuing pattern of conduct,' the lawyers said. 'In light of these public reports of possibly extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization, there was nothing facially improper (or even particularly unusual) about the Mazars Subpoena, which issued in connection with a complex financial investigation, requesting eight years of records from an accounting firm,' they wrote. https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/08...6479135279.jpg Longtime Trump lawyer Michael Cohen says Trump directed him to make payments to Stormy Daniels... https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/08...6497758717.jpg The filing says the investigation prompting the subpoenas is about more than 'hush money' payments. Here Adult film actress/director Stormy Daniels attends the 2019 Adult Video News Awards at The Joint inside the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino on January 26, 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/08...6479143548.jpg Trump denies the porn star's allegations of an affair The lawyers urged Judge Victor Marrero to swiftly reject Trump's arguments, saying the baseless claims were threatening the investigation. Marrero, who ruled against Trump last year, has scheduled arguments to be fully submitted by mid-August.'Every day that goes by is another day Plaintiff effectively achieves the `temporary absolute immunity´ that was rejected by this Court, the Court of Appeals, and the Supreme Court,' Vance's lawyers said. 'Every such day also increases the prospect of a loss of evidence or the expiration of limitations periods - the precise concerns that the Supreme Court observed justified its rejection of Plaintiff´s immunity claim in the first place.' The Supreme Court last month rejected claims by Trump´s lawyers that the president could not be criminally investigated while he was in office. Vance sought the tax records in part for a probe of how Trump´s then-personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, arranged during the 2016 presidential race to keep the porn actress Stormy Daniels and model Karen McDougal from airing claims of extramarital affairs with Trump. Trump has denied the affairs. Cohen is serving the last two years of a three-year prison sentence in home confinement after pleading guilty to campaign finance violations and lying to Congress, among other charges. He said he plans to publish a book critical of the president before the November election. The prosecutors' memo sites cites three media reports to back up the claim that 'possible criminal activity' justify the subpoena. A Wall Street Journal story details the $130,000 hush payment that Cohen made to porn star Stormy Daniels, who claims she had an affair with Trump. Another is an extensive New York Times report alleging Trump engaged in 'outright fraud' and reported on an investigation on practices Trump and his siblings took to lower the taxable estate of his father, Fred Trump. They also cited a Washington Post report that Trump overstated his wealth when he would issue a 'Statements of Financial Condition' to ledners and insurers. Longtime Trump lawyer Michael Cohen leveled the charge in House testimony following his guilty plea of lying to Congress. |
re: TRUMPs' Sister Recorded Saying 'Donald is CRUEL & Has No Principles'
Economic Tsunami : US Cities and States Hit by Covid-19 Face Dire Budget Cuts
State and local governments facing deep shortfalls wrestle with the devastating economic impact of the coronavirus The Guardian UK, 11 AUG 2020. Every day, New Yorkers throw out 10,000 tons of trash – a third of which is food and yard scraps that could skip the incinerators and landfills and be turned into compost. Over the last several years, a curbside pick-up program allowed New Yorkers to compost their food and yard scraps by putting them in a brown bin from the city that would be picked up just like trash. Then the Covid-19 pandemic hit. Along with over 200,000 cases of the virus and 20,000 deaths, the New York City, like many of its residents, took a hard economic hit due to mandatory stay-at-home orders. Facing a $9bn deficit, Mayor Bill de Blasio slashed $5bn out of the city’s budget. The city’s composting program was completely gutted, save for about $3m to allow for a few dozen community composting outlets to run. The move is “probably the biggest environmental reversal of a policy in the De Blasio administration”, said Eric Goldstein, senior attorney and New York City environment director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “This was a program that already was underfunded and a concept that had not expanded citywide as planners and waste experts have suggested was necessary for years.” The decision will be just one of thousands that will affect people across the US in the coming months as cities and states wrestle with the devastating economic impact of the coronavirus. Decisions that will cost people their jobs and residents services they have loved or relied upon. Across the country, state and local governments are facing dire budget deficits. With falling personal income tax and sales tax revenue, state budgets are looking at an estimated $500bn shortfall over the next two years. Local budgets are not looking bright either: nearly all cities with populations over 50,000 are expecting revenue shortfalls this year. State and local governments fund nearly every public good that directly touches Americans, from public schools and parks to police departments and trash collection. They employ over 18 million people, and spending by state and local governments make up about 9% of GDP. School buses parked in Leesburg, Virginia. Most vulnerable to state K-12 education cuts are school districts that serve students from low-income communities. Most vulnerable to state K-12 education cuts are school districts that serve students from low-income communities. Photograph: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA Some states have already taken drastic measures to offset revenue shortfalls. At least four states – Idaho, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Texas – have announced across-the-board cuts to all state agencies by at least 5%. Florida, which is still dealing with thousands of new Covid-19 each day, announced budget cuts that the governor likened to Game of Thrones’ infamous Red Wedding scene, slashing $1bn in funding from education and social services, including the state’s affordable housing program. So far state and local governments have largely avoided mass layoffs, turning instead to hiring freezes and temporary furloughs to try to rein in spending while keeping employees on payroll. Michigan and Washington temporarily furloughed employees, requiring workers to take unpaid days off. But one sector of government that is already seeing waves of layoffs is higher education, one of the largest chunks in state budgets. Colorado, Ohio and Wisconsin have already made huge cuts to their higher education budgets, with other states likely to follow. Mike Tosko and his wife, Angela Bilia, were two of 178 faculty members at the University of Akron to be laid off. Tosko, a tenured professor on the university’s library staff, and Bilia, a non-tenured track English professor, had worked for the university for 17 years. While they were expecting staff layoffs, it came as a surprise to them that they both would be cut. “It’s kind of pretty cruel, really. We’re the only married couple to be laid off,” Tosko said. Since the faculty union is going into arbitration with the university to fight the layoffs, Tosko and Bilia cannot apply for unemployment insurance since they have not formally been laid off. But they are not getting a paycheck, and the university is no longer paying for their health insurance. With two sons, health insurance on Cobra – the program that allows the newly unemployed to continue receiving their work health cover for limited periods – costs about $2,000 a month. Some states have chosen to target their higher education budgets in an attempt to protect their K-12 education budgets, which makes up the largest portion of spending in state budgets. Still, some states have had to make deep cuts to their K-12 budgets: Georgia slashed $950m from its K-12 funding while Nevada squeezed out $156m from its education budget. Cuts to state education budgets have already put educators and policy experts on edge. During the Great Recession, an estimated 300,000 school employees were laid off and by 2011, education funding in the country dropped 4%. Research has traced direct links between cuts to funding and lowered student performance. Most vulnerable to state K-12 education cuts are school districts that serve students from low-income communities. When a state cuts funding from all school districts by the same percentage, schools that rely more on state funding, which tend to be schools in high-poverty areas, end up losing the most funding. Schools in wealthier districts rely more on local property taxes for funding and are not as adversely impacted by state budget cuts. A recent analysis from the Education Law Center pointed out that New York, which cut funding for schools depending on how much money each school got from federal aid in the Cares Act, ending up reducing the most money from its poorest school districts. Meanwhile, Ohio’s governor took a more targeted approach and cut higher percentages from wealthier school districts that got less state funding. “In the Great Recession, we saw huge layoffs … the majority of which were in high-poverty districts. We can’t repeat those mistakes,” said Ary Amerikaner, a vice-president at the Education Trust and a former education deputy assistant secretary for the Obama administration. As the Senate negotiates with House Democrats on a new stimulus deal, many state and local government leaders have spoken out about the need for more federal aid. The National Governors Association has asked the Senate to include $500bn in unrestricted funding for state and local governments. Without it, “we will need to make steeper cuts and reduce payrolls even more, at precisely the time these services are needed the most”, the association said in a statement Multiple governors and mayors have painted bleak pictures of what the future would look like without additional federal funds. The New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, alluded to layoffs and big budget cuts without federal aid. California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, laid out a state budget with $11bn cuts that would happen if the state does not get at least $14bn in aid. Some states, like Illinois, have passed budgets with the expectation that they will be receiving federal dollars. Democrats have advocated for nearly $1tn in relief to state and local governments, but it is unclear how much the Republican-controlled Senate will allocate to states. Donald Trump and his administration have balked at the idea of giving states that much money, with Trump saying that Democrats want to assist “poorly run states”. Without a deal for those working – and living – in those states, the future is looking increasingly bleak. “The impact is dramatic. The declines are so deep and so vast,” said Lucy Dadayan, senior research associate at the Urban Institute’s Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. “Overall, the states were in a great place prior to the pandemic, and it just hit states like an economic tsunami.” |
re: TRUMPs' Sister Recorded Saying 'Donald is CRUEL & Has No Principles'
Trump Ally Making High-Risk Changes at USPS, Says Former Postal Service Deputy
Ron Stroman, who stepped down as deputy postmaster general this year, warned new policies at USPS could disenfranchise voters amid reports of severe mail delays across US OSCE says voting problems could harm integrity of US election-recommends sending 500 monitors for most challenging election in recent decades The Guardian UK, 13 AUG 2020. A former top official at the United States Postal Service (USPS) has warned that recent changes at the agency, now led by a Trump ally, could “disenfranchise” voters as they are implemented just months ahead of an election in which a record number of Americans are expected to vote by mail. Amid reports of significant mail delays, Ronald Stroman, who stepped down earlier this year as the second in command at USPS, said he was concerned about the speed and timing of changes that appeared to be implemented after Louis DeJoy, the new postmaster general, took office in June. USPS faces a financial crisis and every postmaster general is interested in cost savings and efficiency, Stroman said, but the question was how to balance those changes with the public’s needs. “The concern is not only that you’re doing this in a pandemic, but a couple of months before an election with enormous consequences,” said Stroman, now a senior fellow at the Democracy Fund. “If you can’t right the ship, if you can’t correct these fast enough, the consequence is not just, OK, people don’t get their mail, it’s that you disenfranchise people. “Making these changes this close to an election is a high-risk proposition,” he added. Some delays this year have been because USPS workers have been unable to work during the Covid-19 pandemic. But fears increased after DeJoy, a major Trump donor with no prior USPS experience, took over the agency. Shortly after he started at the postal service, the Washington Post and other news organizations obtained internal documents saying the agency was prohibiting overtime and that postal workers should leave mail behind at processing plants if it would cause them to leave late. Mark Jamison, a former postmaster in North Carolina who retired from the agency in 2012, said the idea of leaving first class mail – which includes letters with a regular stamp – was anathema to the culture of USPS. “The rule has always been you clear every piece of first class mail out of a plant every day, period,” he said. “There has never been, never, in the 30 years I worked for the post office, there has never been a time when you curtail first class mail.” Philadelphia residents have reported going upwards of three weeks without mail and postal workers told the Philadelphia Inquirer mail was piling up in local offices. Veterans and employees of the Department of Veterans Affairs have reported mail delays in fulfilling prescriptions. In Minneapolis, USPS temporarily stopped mail-delivery to a high-rise building, home to many low-income and immigrant residents, over concern of Covid-19 spread. In April, some Wisconsin residents reported never receiving ballots they requested for a statewide election. Democrats in Congress have opened an investigation into the delays and asked the USPS inspector general to probe the matter as well. “I mean come on, we’ve got a pandemic, you’re social distancing, people are calling in sick, you’re going to cut out overtime now? That just makes no sense,” Jamison said. “It’s unconscionable what they’re doing.” David Partenheimer, a USPS spokesman, said there was no blanket ban on overtime. The agency declined to say whether employees were being instructed to leave mail behind. There is concern the delays could last into November and disenfranchise many Americans. The majority of US states require absentee ballots to arrive by election day, regardless of when the voter puts them in the mail, in order to be counted. USPS has long advised voters to put their ballots in the mail a week ahead of election day to ensure they arrive in time to be counted (some states continue to allow voters to request a ballot up until days before the election). At least 65,000 ballots were rejected in primaries this year because they arrived too late, according to NPR. USPS denies it is slowing down the mail and DeJoy said the agency had “ample capacity” to deliver mail ballots on time. “While I certainly have a good relationship with the president of the United States, the notion that I would ever make decisions concerning the Postal Service at the direction of the president, or anyone else in the administration, is wholly off-base,” he said on Friday at a meeting of the USPS board of governors. There is also some concern about the cost different states will have to pay to send ballots. Some states send ballots as marketing mail, which is less expensive than first class mail and has an expected delivery time of three to 10 days (first class mail is typically delivered faster). In the past, USPS has quickly moved official election mail regardless of the class of service, but in recent weeks the agency has signaled it will not expedite election mail and election officials will get the service they pay for. Some Democrats have suggested this amounts to a USPS threat to raise postage on mail-in ballots, a characterization USPS strongly disputes. “There are currently no pending changes to the rates and classes of mail impacting ballots,” Martha Johnson, a USPS spokeswoman said in a statement. “The baseless assertion that we intend to raise prices in advance of the upcoming presidential election in order to restrict voting by mail is wholly without merit, and frivolous. The Postmaster General and the organization he leads is fully committed to fulfilling our role in the electoral process.” While Stroman agreed the agency had capacity to handle the volume of mail-in ballots, he said DeJoy should make it unequivocally clear that mail-in ballots need to be delivered consistent with USPS delivery standards and be transparent about how the agency was going to address apparent delays ahead of the November election. “I would like him to say to the employees, ‘This is a priority to me, and I expect 100% of the ballots that we have be processed and delivered consistent with our service standards,’” he said. “Just making that statement, I think, would be important to send a signal to the workforce [that] that is your expectation and that you’re going to put the resources in to make sure that happens.” Art Sackler, manager of the Coalition for a 21st Century Postal Service, an industry group that represents heavy mailers including Amazon and eBay, said he had heard a “mixed bag” from businesses over the last few weeks, some of which have reported delays. He questioned why the agency was moving ahead with the changes now. “If there’s a takeaway from the business side of this it would be that the timing of this is problematic,” he said. “In the teeth of a national emergency, voting is coming up in November, well sooner, their peak season comes up after that. A lot of folks are saying: why not do this in January?eak season comes up after that. A lot of folks are saying: why not do this in January?” MORE; US Postal Service announces cost-saving changes amid vote-by How Republicans gutted the biggest voting rights victory in ... End to US unemployment protections could fuel wave of despair |
Re: TRUMP ADMITS Holding Up COVID Aid to Block Postal Service Funds For Voting by Mai
Trump Says He is Holding up Coronavirus Aid to BLOCK Postal Service Funds for Voting by Mail
Trump ADMITS he is undermining USPS to make it harder to vote by mail The president says he opposes providing additional money to the postal service to help it deliver mail-in ballots 'Do you regret all your lying?' Reporter stumps Trump at White House press briefing The Telegraph UK, 14 AUG 2020. Donald Trump admitted on Thursday he opposed additional funding for the United States Postal Service (USPS) in order to make it more difficult to deliver mail-in ballots. Trump’s comments lend evidence for critics who say the president is deliberately trying to hamstring the USPS in advance of the November elections to help his re-election bid. Trump said on Thursday that congressional negotiations over stimulus aid were held up in part because of Democratic proposals to provide $3.6bn to states to run elections and $25bn in aid to the postal service. The president, who has falsely claimed that widespread mail-in voting will lead to fraud, suggested that without the funding it would be harder to vote by mail. “They need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” Trump said in an interview with Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo. “If they don’t get those two items, that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting because they’re not equipped to have it.” Congress has allocated just $400m to help states run elections, a small fraction of the $4bn the Brennan Center for Justice estimates is needed this year. Many election officials are scrambling to figure out how they will run an election where there is expected to be an unprecedented level of mail-in and in-person voting. The lack of funding may already be having an effect; in Kentucky, the state’s top election official said this week he did not support expanding mail-in voting for the fall because the state did not have the capacity to do so. The president’s comments also come amid accusations that Louis DeJoy, the new postmaster general and a major Republican donor, is making cuts at the agency to intentionally slow down the mail. There are reports of severe mail delays in places across the country and the Washington Post and other news organizations published internal USPS documents last month saying there was a blanket ban on overtime and that workers were being told to leave mail behind if it will delay them on their routes. A USPS spokesman denied there was a blanket ban on overtime, but did not address questions about whether employees were being told to leave the mail behind. A slower mail service could have a big impact this fall because an unprecedented number of Americans are expected to vote by mail and many states require a ballot to arrive at an election office by election day, regardless of when it was put in the mail, in order to be counted. At least 65,000 ballots were rejected during the 2020 primaries because they arrived too late. “If we don’t make a deal that means they don’t get the money. That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting. They just can’t have it. Sort of a crazy thing,” Trump said on Thursday. Andrew Bates, a spokesman for Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said in a statement Trump was attacking the US economy and democracy. “The president of the United States is sabotaging a basic service that hundreds of millions of people rely upon, cutting a critical lifeline for rural economies and for delivery of medicines, because he wants to deprive Americans of their fundamental right to vote safely during the most catastrophic public health crisis in over 100 years,” he said. USPS officials have not said they need additional funding to deliver mail-in ballots this fall. “The Postal Service has ample capacity to deliver all election mail securely and on-time in accordance with our delivery standards, and we will do so,” DeJoy said at a meeting of the USPS board of governors on Friday. In a separate interview on Thursday, Larry Kudlow, the president’s top economic adviser, dismissed efforts to make it easier to vote in negotiations over stimulus money. “So much of the Democratic asks are really liberal left wishlists,” he said. “Voting rights, aid to aliens and so forth. That’s not our game.” |
re: TRUMPs' Sister Recorded Saying 'Donald is CRUEL & Has No Principles'
Robert Trump: Brother of President Donald Trump Dies Aged 71
President confirms his younger brother has died after being taken to hospital in New York The Guardian UK, 16 AUG 2020. https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/bf...0cb799b068eeac Donald Trump’s younger brother, Robert Trump, died on Saturday night aged 71 after being hospitalised in New York, the president said in a statement. The president on Friday visited his brother in hospital after White House officials said Robert had become seriously ill. Officials did not immediately release a cause of death. “It is with heavy heart I share that my wonderful brother, Robert, peacefully passed away tonight,” Donald Trump said in a statement. “He was not just my brother, he was my best friend. He will be greatly missed, but we will meet again. His memory will live on in my heart forever. Robert, I love you. Rest in peace.” The youngest of the Trump siblings had remained close to the 74-year-old president and, as recently as June, filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Trump family that unsuccessfully sought to stop publication of a tell-all book by the president’s niece, Mary. Robert Trump had reportedly been hospitalised in the intensive care unit for several days that same month. He took blood thinners and had recently experienced brain bleeds after fall, according to the New York Times. Both longtime businessmen, Robert and Donald had strikingly different personalities. Donald Trump once described his younger brother as “much quieter and easygoing than I am” and “the only guy in my life whom I ever call ‘honey’”. Robert Trump began his career on Wall Street working in corporate finance but later joined the family business, managing real estate holdings as a top executive in the Trump Organization. “When he worked in the Trump Organization he was known as the nice Trump,” Gwenda Blair, a Trump family biographer, told the Associated Press. “Robert was the one people would try to get to intervene if there was a problem.” Robert Stewart Trump was born in 1948, the youngest of New York City real estate developer Fred Trump’s five children. “I have a wonderful brother,” the president during a news conference at the White House on Friday, the same day he had visited him in hospital. “We’ve had a great relationship for a long time, from Day 1,” he said. But their relationship could be turbulent. The president, more than two years older than Robert, admittedly bullied his brother in their younger years, even as he praised his loyalty and laid-back demeanour. “I think it must be hard to have me for a brother but he’s never said anything about it and we’re very close,” Donald Trump wrote in his 1987 bestseller The Art of the Deal. “Robert gets along with almost everyone,” he added, “which is great for me since I sometimes have to be the bad guy.” In the 1980s Donald Trump tapped Robert to oversee an Atlantic City casino project, calling him the perfect fit for the job. When it cannibalised his other casinos, though, “he pointed the finger of blame at Robert”, said Blair, author of The Trumps: Three Generations that Built an Empire. “When the slot machines jammed the opening weekend at the Taj Mahal, he very specifically and furiously denounced Robert, and Robert walked out and never worked for his brother again,” Blair said. A Boston University graduate, Robert later managed the Brooklyn portion of father Fred Trump’s real estate empire, which was eventually sold. Once a regular boldface name in Manhattan’s social pages, Robert had kept a lower profile in recent years. “He was not a newsmaker,” Blair said. Before divorcing his first wife, Blaine Trump, more than a decade ago, Robert Trump had been active on Manhattan’s Upper East Side charity circuit. He avoided the limelight during his elder brother’s presidency, having retired to the Hudson Valley. Robert and Donald reportedly reconciled at that time, with Robert describing himself as a big supporter of the White House run in a 2016 interview with the New York Post. “I support Donald one thousand percent,” Robert Trump said. In early March of 2020 he married his longtime girlfriend, Ann Marie Pallan. The eldest Trump sibling and Mary’s father, Fred Trump Jr, struggled with alcoholism and died in 1981 at the age of 43. The president’s surviving siblings include Elizabeth Trump Grau and Maryanne Trump Barry, a retired federal appeals judge. Authors Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher described Robert Trump as soft spoken but cerebral in Trump Revealed: The Definitive Biography of the 45th President: “He lacked Donald’s charismatic showmanship, and he was happy to leave the bravado to his brother, but he could show flashes of Trump temper.” |
re: TRUMPs' Sister Recorded Saying 'Donald is CRUEL & Has No Principles'
Everyone Thinks Trump Will Lose – Except The Stock Market
The S&P 500 has a remarkable ability to predict the winner of US elections Trumps' chaotic leadership has squandered America’s role as a leader of the free world, and his mismanagement of COVID has been a disaster. "Trump is the wrong president for our country" - Disaffected members of Mr Trump's Republican party also piled in on him The Telegraph UK / BBC, 18 AUG 2020. Inept, chaotic, confused and possibly corrupt. With the most infections in the world, and with little sign of a coherent plan for bringing it under control, US president Donald Trump’s catastrophic mismanagement of the Covid-19 crisis is widely assumed to have condemned him to defeat in November’s election. He is behind in the polls, against a popular opponent who has now added an astute choice of running mate to the ticket. But hold on. There is one exception to that consensus. The stock market. The record shows that if the bull market stays as strong as it has been, Trump will pull off an unexpected victory. People might or might not like that – but there is no point in ignoring it. With the Covid-19 crisis getting worse and worse, with economies plunging into deep recessions, and with a wave of job losses on the horizon, the markets have not focused on November’s presidential election as much as they usually would. There is simply too much other stuff to worry about. That said, as Nov 3 draws closer investors will start to focus on the contest for the White House and its likely impact on the global economy. Everyone can have their own view on Trump’s presidency, of course. The record is, to put it mildly, mixed. The reform of corporate taxes, the emphasis on deregulation, and the round after round of fiscal stimulus, have all helped the American economy. Against that, the tariffs, and the simple-minded protectionism, have set back the cause of free trade by a generation His chaotic leadership has squandered America’s role as a leader of the free world, and the mismanagement of the virus has been a disaster. Take it all together and it is hard to see how anyone could feel confident about a Trump second term. By contrast, Joe Biden would return the US to the broadly centrist path of Obama, Bush and Clinton. Some of the overdue tax reforms would probably be kept in place. The trade wars would quietly be dropped. There would be some tax rises, especially on the rich, and more regulation of the tech giants. Think George Bush senior on Mogadon – without much controversy, a lot more competence, and in vice-president Kamala Harris a punchy contender for 2024 if Biden decided one term was enough for a 77-year-old. The polls suggest that is what the electorate want right now. The latest trackers put the Democrat on 50pc against 41pc for the Republican, with significant leads for Biden in key battleground states such as coronavirus-ravaged Florida. It is rare that a lead that strong is thrown away in 10 weeks, and with the economy crashing, and the virus still rampant, there is not going to be much good news for the president. The smart money says Biden can start preparing his victory speech. There is one problem, however. The stock market is predicting a Trump victory. Before rushing to any conclusions, stop and look at this statistic. In 20 out of the last 23 presidential elections, and in every one since 1984, if stocks are up in the three months before the election, the incumbent party wins. If they are down, it loses. In reality, the market is a better indicator than the polls. In 2016, for example, just about everyone thought Hillary Clinton would win. But in the three months up to the election, the S&P 500 was down by 2.3pc. What happened next? The incumbent party lost. When Obama was re-elected, stocks had been rising, but when he took the White House from the Republicans in 2008 they had crashed in the three months before the election. In fact, the last time the S&P 500 didn’t call the result correctly was in 1980, when Ronald Reagan won against Jimmy Carter even though equities were up by 7pc in the preceding months. Before that, the rule didn’t work for Richard Nixon’s victory in 1968, and Dwight Eisenhower’s re-election in 1956. But that’s it. For every other contest since Herbert Hoover’s victory in 1928 (after a 13.6pc rise in the index, in case your memory doesn’t stretch back quite that far) it has held good. That, of course, is telling us something about the 2020 race. Week after week, the market keeps hitting record highs. The S&P 500 is within a whisker of a fresh record, and is already up significantly since the start of August. The tech-heavy Nasdaq is on a rampant bull run. Of course, a lot could change in the next couple of months. There are plenty of reasons to fear a correction. That said, equities have already taken Covid-19, lockdown and a deep recession in their stride, and recovered. It is hard to imagine what could count as bad news after all that. If the market remains strong, then Trump is going to be re-elected – or else a record is going to be broken. You may or may not like that. True, it might well be better for the economy for Trump to lose. Biden will find it easier to get Congress to agree to more spending. It will definitely be better for America’s standing in the world and the dignity of the office if he is replaced. But there is no point in ignoring the record and assuming there will be a change at the White House. Keep an eye on the S&P 500 over the next few weeks. It is not simply telling you what is happening to your portfolio – it is also telling you who will win the presidential election. MORE; Michelle Obama’s rebuke and anti-Trump Republicans: key ... Michelle Obama Picks Trump Apart in Gripping DNC Speech Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has been doing the media round this morning talking about last night’s DNC opening. She said she felt it was pretty clear to everyone that “Michelle Obama knocked it out of the ballpark.” |
re: TRUMPs' Sister Recorded Saying 'Donald is CRUEL & Has No Principles'
Nahhhh, you'd be surprised at the number of Trump supporters and even Democrats moving to his support. The MSM don't want anyone to know about it but it is happening for sure. As for who will win the election if there will even be one in up in the air due to this mail in business which is a huge farce. Being that so many people have died from the virus and other illnesses, they'll be mailing ballots to dead people. You wouldn't think dead people could vote but it happens. All I can say is Lord help us all in these times of turmoil and that's World wide.
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re: TRUMPs' Sister Recorded Saying 'Donald is CRUEL & Has No Principles'
Iran Sanctions: Trump Threatens to Unilaterally Reimpose UN Measures
US to activate controversial ‘snapback’ procedure, which Britain, France and Germany say it doesn’t have the right to do The Guardian UK, 20 AUG 2020. President Donald Trump has announced that secretary of state Mike Pompeo will activate a controversial mechanism aimed at reimposing UN sanctions on Iran, escalating a row with European allies that has huge repercussions for the Iranian nuclear deal. Pompeo will travel to New York on Thursday to notify the UN security council that the US is triggering the so-called “snapback” procedure, which Britain, France and Germany say it doesn’t have the right to do. “It’s a snapback, not uncommon,” Trump told reporters, despite the contested measure having never been used before. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e7/83...f177ddeda3.png The move comes after the United States suffered a humiliating defeat at the security council last week when it failed to muster support for a resolution to extend a conventional arms embargo on Iran. “Snapback” aims to restore all international sanctions against Iran that were lifted as part of the 2015 accord with Tehran that sought to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons. But it also threatens to torpedo the historic Iran nuclear deal that the US, China, Russia, France, Britain and Germany signed with Tehran in 2015. Trump withdrew the US from the agreement, known officially as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in 2018 and introduced American sanctions on Iran as part of a “maximum pressure” campaign against the Iranian regime. Despite pulling out of the deal, America claims that, as a “participant” of the original agreement, it has the power to unilaterally reimpose UN sanctions on Iran. A 2015 UN security council resolution ratifying the agreement negotiated by former president Barack Obama says participating states can unilaterally reinstall sanctions if Iran has failed to significantly comply with the accord. The “snapback” procedure is supposed to lead to the re-establishment of sanctions after 30 days, without the possibility of Russia or China wielding their vetoes. European countries on the security council contest the US’s legal argument and fear that the return of sanctions will sink the nuclear deal, which they are battling to save. “This will be [a] fully valid enforceable UN security council resolution. We have every expectation that it will be enforced just like every other UN security council resolution that is in place,” Pompeo said. Last week, only the Dominican Republic joined the United States in backing its call to extend a conventional arms embargo on Iran that expires on 18 October. The embargo expires under the terms of JCPOA. Although European countries had expressed concern about the 13-year embargo expiring, their main focus is on preserving the nuclear accord. The vote highlighted how isolated the US is over Iran at the UN. Experts say the snapback threatens to plunge the security council into crisis. “Most of the council will reject the US argument that it retains the right to trigger snapback despite leaving the JCPOA. They will write off this process as a sham,” UN expert Richard Gowan said. “The real winners in this process will be China and Russia, who will argue that they are defending the UN from US unilateralism, while the Europeans distance themselves from Washington,” added Gowan, who works at the International Crisis Group think-tank. Pompeo is scheduled to meet UN chief Antonio Guterres in New York on Thursday when they will discuss Iran. Read More; Iran arms sales: US struggles to win support for extension of ... |
re: TRUMPs' Sister Recorded Saying 'Donald is CRUEL & Has No Principles'
Steve Bannon Arrested & Charged With Fraud Over Mexico Wall Funds
Bannon, known for his unkempt dress sense, did not appear particularly more disheveled than in the past; his hair was mussed up and stringy, and his shirt was rumpled. His face appeared sunburnt, which would make sense, given that he was arrested on an 150ft yacht off Connecticut’s coast at 7.15am on Thursday morning. Trump’s former campaign chief, appeared in Manhattan federal court via video on Thursday afternoon after his arrest for allegedly siphoning money from a fundraising campaign to build the president’s controversial border wall with Mexico. With Bannon arrest, ‘Sovereign District’ sends another salvo BBC News / JIM MUSTIAN, Associated Press, 21 AUG 2020. https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cp...v062978449.jpg Steve Bannon appeared in court in New York City on Thursday https://www.everythinglubbock.com/wp...&h=1440&crop=1 President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon leaves federal court, Thursday, 20 Aug, 2020, after pleading not guilty to charges that he ripped off donors to an online fundraising scheme to build a southern border wall. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle) NEW YORK (AP) — If the recent firing of the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan was intended to quell criminal investigations into President Donald Trump’s close associates, as some have accused, federal prosecutors in New York appear to have missed the memo. Thursday’s arrest of Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, served as a stark reminder that no one who has been within the president’s inner circle is automatically immune from federal scrutiny. https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cp...buildawall.jpg Bannon, 66, and three others are charged with defrauding online donors in the name of helping build the president’s cherished southern border wall. Bannon pleaded not guilty at a hearing Thursday in Manhattan. The indictment came just two months after the abrupt dismissal of Geoffrey S. Berman, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York who had overseen several investigations with tentacles into Trump’s orbit — including one involving the business dealings of Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney. The same office prosecuted former Trump attorney and fixer Michael Cohen for campaign finance crimes, as well as two Giuliani associates tied to the investigation that led to Trump’s impeachment investigation in December. Giuliani himself has not been charged with any crime. Berman’s unceremonious removal — decried by some critics as a “Friday night massacre” in June — fueled longstanding concerns among Democratic lawmakers that the Justice Department has become politicized under Attorney General William Barr. But the wire fraud and money laundering charges against Bannon “confirm the ongoing professional independence” of the Southern District of New York, said Bruce Green, a former prosecutor in the office. The Manhattan prosecutors’ office, known as SDNY, has long been nicknamed the “Sovereign District of New York”for its independence from Washington politics. The office, older than the Justice Department itself, has been home to famous mob trials, terrorism prosecutions and, increasingly, probes involving Trump’s allies. “It shows that the Trump administration cannot fully protect the president’s former associates from federal criminal prosecution simply by firing U.S. attorneys like Geoffrey Berman who honor their responsibility to seek impartial justice,” said Green, who now directs the Louis Stein Center for Law and Ethics at the Fordham University School of Law. Green said in June that Berman’s firing “certainly wasn’t a routine decision, and the only fair inference is that there are some cases where the office is proceeding too independently.” The charges against Bannon came as Trump himself faced renewed legal perils, as a federal judge rejected Trump’s latest bid to shield his tax returns from a state grand jury investigation led by the Manhattan district attorney. Trump, who is appealing the ruling, blasted the subpoena as “the most disgusting witch hunt in the history of our country” — a refrain he has used to deride several criminal cases targeting him and his associates. He has criticized many of the criminal cases as politically motivated. The president also sought to distance himself from Bannon on Thursday, saying he knew nothing about the “We Build The Wall” fundraiser. Bannon served as chief strategist during the early days of Trump’s administration but clashed with other top advisers and was pushed out after less than a year. Trump’s frequent attacks on federal law enforcement — including his feud with former FBI Director James Comey and his scorn for special investigator Robert Mueller — have not prevented some of his closest associates from being hauled away in handcuffs. Aside from Cohen, those convicted include Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and Roger Stone, a longtime friend and adviser whose jail sentence Trump commuted last month. Berman refused to leave his post before ensuring he would be succeeded — at least in the interim — by Audrey Strauss, one of his most trusted lieutenants. Strauss leaned into the role, soon announcing headline-grabbing charges against Ghislaine Maxwell, the former girlfriend of deceased financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The prosecution of Bannon, meanwhile, “shows once again that SDNY is intent upon continuing its work without being influenced by politics,” said Jennifer Rodgers, another former federal prosecutor in Manhattan who now lectures at Columbia Law School. “I think the public owes a debt of gratitude to Geoff Berman for his fortitude in standing up to Bill Barr’s attempts to take control of SDNY,” Rodgers added. “I doubt we would be seeing this charge today if Barr had succeeded.” |
re: TRUMPs' Sister Recorded Saying 'Donald is CRUEL & Has No Principles'
America Needs to Protest Trump's Attacks on Post Office and Election -
In 2018 Trump said it was “embarrassing for the country to allow protestors.” Authoritarian leaders fear of the public's right to protest even more than their right to vote. Daily Mirror UK, 22 AUG 2020. https://www.irishcentral.com/uploads...g?t=1598091259 Legitimacy comes from the popular mandate and if you lose your mandate than you have just lost the power to govern. Protests are what keep would-be dictators up at night around the world. Thankfully protesting is as American as apple pie. The right to protest is a civil right protected under the First Amendment, it has been an important part of the fabric of American life since Independence. Long before the Bill of Rights was written, Americans were on the streets protesting injustice. From the Boston Tea Party to Women's Suffrage to the Civil Rights march on Washington to the Stonewall riots, America's history of protest is long and transformative because protests work. https://www.irishcentral.com/uploads...20___getty.jpg Not every protest is popular, of course. Women were regularly beaten by outraged men in the early part of the 20 century for daring to ask for the right to vote. The LGBT community were often brutalized by the police for demanding their rights. It's important to remember too just how unpopular the Civil Rights movement was in the 1960s too. These days Martin Luther King Jr. is heralded as an era-defining American leader, but back in the 1950s and 60's he was being surveilled by the FBI and had been since 1955 with the Montgomery Bus Boycott (which also introduced the world to Rosa Parks). For decades Dr. King was seen by Washington as a dangerous radical, not an elder statesman or American icon. The white public tended to agree too. It's a rare man or woman who can see beyond the place where they are currently standing, but Dr. King knew his work put his life on the line, and in his last public speech on April 3, 1968, he remarked: “(God has allowed me) to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land...” https://www.irishcentral.com/uploads...esized_mlk.jpg Martin Luther King, Jr. attends the historic March on Washington on August 28, 1963. He was shot dead the next day. His prediction that he might not live to see the changes he had helped to bring about proved all too true, but so had his foresight. We are still on the long march to the equality he once envisioned. The current Black Lives Matters protests are not popular among some sections of the press and public for the same reasons that prevailed in the '60s. That's an understatement. The right-wing press spend most of their time in search of scare quotes from the most radical extremists they can find, implying that fringe voices are the only voices of this national movement. This is of course a blunt attempt to delegitimize the entire movement. Look at these nut-jobs, the headlines direct you, they have no case. They are just coming for your communities and your "suburban housewives." So the racist playbook really hasn't changed that much since the era of George Wallace. https://www.irishcentral.com/uploads...20___getty.jpg But what Black Lives Matter is asking for isn't scary, it's actually quite simple: an end to state-sanctioned violence and anti-Black racism. They'd like it if the police would stop killing them in disproportionate numbers and with disproportionate violence too. That's really not a radical ask, that's a basic call for justice. Most Americans know that it is, too. I mean, would you volunteer to swap places with a Black family, including working for their lower incomes, their lack of access, and their diminished opportunities? If you say no then you have just admitted the longstanding racial disparity. You'd have to be blind not to see it. Donald Trump says that all protesting should be made illegal. In 2018 he said he thought it was “embarrassing for the country to allow protestors.” But interestingly he didn't think protesting was so embarrassing when the hundreds of Neo-nazi's he called “fine people” invaded Charlottesville with their flaming torches, although he was deeply outraged when quarterback Colin Kaepernick took a knee. You should pay attention when a powerful leader wants to dismantle your first amendment rights. When an American president challenges your right to assemble by sending military police to attack peaceful protestors with rubber bullets, flash grenades, and tear gas, it's a monstrous violation of our American traditions. Or when a powerful leader promises to send law enforcement agents to the polling stations to harass and intimidate and prevent voting on November 3 - and Trump has plainly stated he intends to do that. https://www.irishcentral.com/uploads...use_flickr.jpg Using military-grade weapons of war to treat protestors as illegitimate intruders instead of American citizens is a gross violation of the American Constitution. We now have a leader who has crossed that red line, so we better prepare to resist his attempts to cross all the others soon. Taking away our post boxes and our mail sorting machines and closing our local post office branches early is another national attack on a basic Constitutional right, the right to vote. We all know that he's coming for this hard-won freedom, and we all know why, so we all better be prepared to protest nationally soon. Read More: 'I decided I had to do something': can young voters flip a ... New York in the era of Donald Trump is an empty, eerie ghost town . |
re: TRUMPs' Sister Recorded Saying 'He is CRUEL, a LIAR & Has No Principles'
TRUMPs' Sister Recorded Saying 'Donald is Cruel, a LIAR and Has No Principles'
Maryanne Trump Barry, a former federal judge, made the comments to her niece Mary Trump in secretly taped conversations The Guardian UK, 23 AUG 2020. https://i0.wp.com/www.pmnewsnigeria....40%2C384&ssl=1 Adding insult to injury, Maryanne Trump Barry appears to be the key source for this smorgasbord of dysfunction. She is a retired federal judge who left the bench with an ethics cloud over her head. Fittingly, as Mary Trump lacerates multiple sets of vital organs, her pen a stiletto, she thanks her aunt “for all of the enlightening information”... http://static0.bornrichimages.com/wp.../s3/bh/107.jpg https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/5ee94...ormat&fit=max& Donald Trump and Maryanne Trump Barry stand outside their late mother’s house in Tong on the island of Lewis, in 2009. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian Donald Trump’s older sister, a former federal judge, is heard sharply criticizing her brother in a series of recordings released Saturday, at one point saying of the president: “He has no principles.” Maryanne Trump Barry was secretly recorded by her niece, Mary Trump, who recently released a book denouncing the president, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man. Mary Trump said Saturday she made the recordings in 2018 and 2019. In one recording, Barry, 83, says she had heard a 2018 interview with her brother on Fox News in which he suggested that he would put her on the border to oversee cases of immigrant children separated from their parents. “His base, I mean my God, if you were a religious person, you want to help people. Not do this,” Barry says. At another point she says: “His goddamned tweet and lying, oh my God.” She adds: “I’m talking too freely, but you know. The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lying. Holy ****.” Barry can also be heard saying that she guesses that her brother has never read her opinions on immigration cases. “What has he read?” Mary Trump asks her aunt. Barry responds: “No. He doesn’t read.” The recordings were first reported by the Washington Post. The Associated Press then obtained the recordings. The recordings came to light just a day after the late Robert Trump, brother to Maryanne and the president, was memorialized in a service at the White House. Later, the president was dismissive of the recordings. “Every day it’s something else, who cares. I miss my brother, and I’ll continue to work hard for the American people,” Trump said in a statement. “Not everyone agrees, but the results are obvious. Our country will soon be stronger than ever before.” In the weeks since the release of Mary Trump’s tell-all book about her uncle, she has been questioned about the source of some of its information. Nowhere in the book does she say that she recorded conversations with her aunt. On Saturday, Mary Trump revealed that she had covertly taped 15 hours of face-to-face conversations with Barry. “Mary realized members of her family had lied in prior depositions,” said Chris Bastardi, a spokesman for Mary Trump. He added: “Anticipating litigation, she felt it prudent to tape conversations in order to protect herself.” The president has frequently spoken highly of his sister; the recordings are the first time a family member, outside of Mary Trump, has been critical of him. The recordings illuminate the tension between the president and his sister. At one point Barry says to her niece: “It’s the phoniness of it all. It’s the phoniness and this cruelty. Donald is cruel.” Mary Trump’s book was filled with attacks on her uncle, including the assertion – denied by Trump – that he paid someone to take the SATs for him as he sought to transfer into the University of Pennsylvania. In one recording, the federal judge says that a Joe Shapiro took the test for Trump. The president was friends with a person at Penn named Joe Shapiro, who is deceased. Shapiro’s widow and sister told have said he never took a test for anybody. Bastardi said of Mary Trump: “She never expected to learn much of what she heard, including the president’s sister, federal judge Maryanne Trump Barry, state that Donald Trump had paid someone to take an SAT exam for him.” |
re: TRUMPs' Apocalyptic RNC Delivers Whirlwind of Lies Great & Small
The Dr Anthony Fauci interview: coronavirus, vaccines and President Trump
60 Minutes Australia 23 Aug 2020 You know these are strange days indeed when an immunologist, albeit a very good one, becomes a household name. But that’s exactly what has happened to Dr Anthony Fauci. His expertise in fighting the Coronavirus pandemic has made him a hero to many, but not his boss, the United States President. Talk about shooting the messenger – Donald Trump continually undermines his chief scientific adviser, calling him alarmist, and scoffing when the doctor urges caution about reopening the economy. But Dr Fauci’s not worried. Instead he’s getting on with trying to beat COVID-19. In an exclusive interview with 60 MINUTES, he shares important news with Tara Brown about the race for a vaccine and the way Australia is tackling this nightmare. MORE; Trump Wanted to Trade ‘Dirty and Poor’ Puerto Rico for Greenland, says White House Official Some 3,000 people were killed when Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico in 2017 AP •23 AUG 2020 Miles Taylor, who served as chief of staff to the former Department for Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, said the president made the comments in August 2018 – less than a year after Puerto Rico had been devastated by Hurricane Maria. “Not only did he want to purchase Greenland, he actually said he wanted to see if we could sell Puerto Rico,” Mr Taylor told MSNBC on Wednesday. “Could we swap Puerto Rico for Greenland because, in his words, Puerto Rico was dirty and the people were poor.” |
re: TRUMPs' Apocalyptic RNC Delivers Whirlwind of Lies Great & Small
Apocalyptic Times as Republicans Back Trump
Democrats will ‘disarm you, lock you in your homes’ … expectant mothers told only zero caffeine is safe … and how chairs shape our lives for the worse The Guardian UK, 25 AUG 2020 Republicans have used the first night of their national convention to issue dark warnings about the future of America, arguing that re-electing Donald Trump is the only way to save the country from falling into socialism, economic ruin, violence and anarchy. Monday night’s theme was officially the “land of promise,” but the collection of speeches offered an almost apocalyptic vision of what’s at stake in November’s elections, and a dizzying array of misleading claims. “They’ll disarm you, empty the prisons, lock you in your home and invite [street gang] MS-13 to live next door,” the congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida said of the Democrats in his speech, likening the prospect to a “horror movie”. “The same socialist policies which destroyed places like Cuba and Venezuela must not take root in our cities and our schools,” Trump campaign senior adviser Kimberly Guilfoyle warned in a loud, inflammatory speech to an empty room. Directly lifting a line from the Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s stump speech, Guilfoyle, whose partner is the president’s son Donald Trump Jr, said: “This election is a battle for the soul of America. Your choice is clear.” Guilfoyle described Democrats as focused on enslaving Americans to their liberal ideology “to the point that you won’t recognize the country yourself”. While Biden has moved to the left during his presidential campaign, he is regarded as a moderate within the party, and spent much of the Democratic convention last week touting his support among anti-Trump Republicans. Other featured speakers described the incumbent president as a compassionate man who succeeded through his first term in office in the face of “radical” Democrats and the media, both presented as the president’s coordinated enemies hellbent on blocking his initiatives. Mark and Patricia McCloskey, a white St Louis couple facing charges for brandishing guns at peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters, gave apre-recorded speech, in which they baselessly accused Democrats of “protecting criminals from honest citizens” and trying to “abolish the suburbs”. The dark tone was apparent to political operatives. The “campaign said the convention would be about hope and light but so far most of the speeches are extreme fear porn”, one veteran Republican presidential campaign operative told the Guardian. A video of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic featured multiple Democratic governors complimenting Trump and the federal government, editing out the fierce criticism of the administration’s response from those same speakers. Trump has been criticized for playing down the pandemic, and saying the coronavirus – which has killed more than 175,000 people in the US, more than any other country by far – will eventually just “disappear”. Voters have increasingly viewed the president’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic in a negative light. A new Gallup poll found that just 36% of Americans surveyed approve of how he’s handled the pandemic while 63% disapproved. As the night wore on the more high profile speakers took aim at Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris. “Joe Biden and the Democrats are still blaming America first. Donald Trump is putting America first. And he deserves four more years as our president,” the former UN ambassador Nikki Haley said, who is seen as a potential Republican presidential candidate for the 2024 election. “President Trump brought our economy back before, and he will bring it back again.” One of the most common warnings throughout the night was about cancel culture -the blanket censorship of public figures. Haley said Trump “knows that political correctness and ‘cancel culture’ are dangerous and just plain wrong”. “Joe Biden and the radical left are also now coming for our freedom of speech and want to bully us into submission,” Trump Jr argued in his speech, again to an empty room. “If they get their way, it will no longer be the ‘silent majority’, it will be the ‘silenced majority’.” The South Carolina senator Tim Scott warned “Make no mistake: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris want a cultural revolution. A fundamentally different America.” The DNC included speeches from Republicans as a way to try and woo over moderates and Republicans who don’t support Trump. But most of the RNC addresses on Monday were aimed at revving up the Republican base. Trump himself has been more focused on that throughout his re-election campaign, hoping that an energized conservative electorate can overpower any broader coalition backing Biden. The convention had some of the same elements as the Democratic national convention last week, including a short taped version of the roll call across America, testimonials from average Americans and the president interacting with people affected by the pandemic. But it also featured more live addresses over pre-recorded videos, which sometimes fell flat without the usual audience responses. The format of the convention changed several times over recent months as the coronavirus crisis worsened. But despite health concerns, more than 300 cheering Republicans convened in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Monday to officially nominate Trump as the party’s presidential candidate. In a preview of what was to come later in the evening, Trump claimed without evidence that the Democrats were attempting to “steal” the election. “The only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election,” Trump told the 336 delegates in the hall, who had traveled to the convention from the 50 states and US territories. “They’re trying to steal the election.” The majority of speakers at a political nominating convention such as the RNC or the Democratic national convention are usually current or former elected officials. But this year many of the speakers are celebrities for the conservative wing of the party. Over the next four days the RNC is poised to be the latest example of the Republican party’s complete shift over to a political party centered on Trump. The revised party platform for the convention this year is just an expression of support for the president’s second-term agenda. And none of the featured speakers at the convention are Republicans who have strongly dissented with Trump – a few, like the former Arizona senator Jeff Flake, have instead endorsed Biden. Usually former presidents attend their party’s nominating convention, but former president George W Bush, the only living former Republican president, is not attending or offering a taped video. All three former living Democratic presidents participated in last week’s Democratic national convention. Both national and statewide polling has shown Trump trailing Biden and although polls have recently tightened, Biden came out of his party’s convention with a polling bump. Trump and his aides are hoping the convention will help shift both Trump’s approval numbers and the national spotlight https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EcwPRH3X...jpg&name=small . |
re: Welcome to TRUMPs’ America -Poverty/Violence/Racial Bias & DEATH
Republican National Convention 2020 / RNC 2020 Delivers Whirlwind of LIES Great and Small
Speaker after speaker piled falsehood upon falsehood to recast Trump as a saintly feminist preoccupied with the nation’s health The Guardian UK, 27 AUG 2020. https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-akWWD-0Cd...-%2B1qfoe0.jpg There were lies aplenty at the last convention in Cleveland four years ago but, in those innocent days, reporters were still reluctant to call a lie a lie. Donald Trump blew that up on his first day in office when he and his officials claimed his inauguration crowd was bigger than Barack Obama’s. Now there is no getting away from the fact that Republicans are commandeering more than two hours a night of primetime television to lie and mislead so brazenly, frequently and shamelessly that there’s a chance the American public will simply be worn down into submission and untruth will be normalised. As the New York Times columnist Frank Bruni noted, all conventions tell “extravagant fibs” but this one is “less a feat of pretty storytelling than an act of pure derangement”. Wednesday night was another opportunity to deny Trump’s record, deny the severity of the coronavirus pandemic and climate crisis, and deny reality itself. Vice-President Mike Pence portrayed Trump as America’s saviour from Covid-19. “Before the first case of coronavirus spread within the United States, President Trump took the unprecedented step of suspending all travel from China,” he said, a false statement since there were several exceptions to the ban that still allowed tens of thousands to travel. Putting on a patriotic show at Baltimore’s Fort McHenry, scene of a battle that inspired The Star-Spangled Banner, Pence also avoided some brutal truths: no mention of Trump praising China’s early response, his constant downplaying of the threat, failing to deliver testing or protective equipment, waffling over face masks for months or ruminating about miracle cures. There was mention of the 180,000 death toll, the highest in the world by far. Other lies came in the convention’s ongoing attempt to perform triage and rewrite not only history but Trump’s personality. Someone waking from a four-year coma this week would be gratified to learn the president is a Mount Rushmore-worthy paragon of dignity, humility and kindness and a grandmaster of geopolitical chess. Kayleigh McEnany, who famously began her tenure as White House press secretary by pledging “I will never lie to you,” did just that from a different podium in the bleakly empty Andrew W Mellon Auditorium in Washington. McEnany told a story of how she underwent a preventive mastectomy and how Trump called to see how she was doing. “I can tell you that this president stands by Americans with pre-existing conditions,” she claimed about the man who has worked tirelessly, in Congress and in court, to reverse the law that protects 130 million Americans with pre-existing conditions. Perhaps McEnany’s closest rival as the most shameless defender of Trump’s mendacity is Kellyanne Conway, the outgoing White House counselor. She said: “For decades, he has elevated women to senior positions in business and in government. He confides in and consults us, respects our opinions, and insists that we are on equal footing with the men … For many of us, ‘women’s empowerment’ is not a slogan.” Trump’s cabinet is dominated by men, he faces multiple allegations of sexual harassment (which he denies), he has frequently and publicly bullied female reporters and he mocked women’s appearance online. He has also packed the country’s courts with judges who threaten women’s reproductive rights and revoked protections against sexual assault and discrimination at work and school. For good measure, Conway claimed that Trump had taken “unprecedented action” to combat the opioid epidemic. In fact he did not declare a national emergency, and fatal overdoses in 2019 increased more than 10% from 2016. Sometimes it’s the little lies. Madison Cawthorn, the Republican nominee for North Carolina’s 11th congressional district, who uses a wheelchair because of a car accident, commented: “James Madison was just 25 years old when he signed the Declaration of Independence.” No, Madison did not sign the Declaration of Independence. Cawthorn later claimed he “ad-libbed” the line. “After speaking all of that truth... I was afraid the fact checkers were going to get bored. I wanted to give them something to do,” he tweeted. And then there was Richard Grenell, former acting director of national intelligence, who said: “I’ve watched President Trump charm the chancellor of Germany, while insisting that Germany pay its Nato obligations.” Charm? Over to Angela Merkel for whether she saw it that way. Some of the deceit was wildly exaggerated scaremongering about what would happen if Democrat Joe Biden wins November’s election. Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee warned darkly: “If the Democrats had their way, they would keep you locked in your house until you become dependent on the government for everything. “That sounds a lot like Communist China to me – maybe that’s why Joe Biden is so soft on them. Why Nancy Pelosi says that ‘China would prefer Joe Biden’.” Sister Deirdre “Dede” Byrne, a retired army colonel, told viewers: “President Trump will stand up against Biden/Harris who are the most anti-life presidential ticket ever, even supporting the horrors of late-term abortion and infanticide.” No, Biden and vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris do not support infanticide. Even having to point that out somehow plays into the liars’ hands, like agreeing to a debate with a creationist or a flat-earther. Such is the current landscape of partisan cable news and wild west social media. Congresswoman Elise Stefanik of New York recalled Trump’s impeachment, which has been largely forgotten at both conventions, and called it “illegal” – another Pinocchio. The president’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, got in on the act with a fake Abraham Lincoln quotation and a red scare: “This is not just a choice between Republican and Democrat or left and right. This is an election that will decide if we keep America America or if we head down an uncharted frightening path towards socialism.” It was left to Pence to deliver perhaps the biggest lie of the night, so bold that it hid in plain sight in the Baltimore night. “America needs four more years of Donald Trump in the White House,” he said. Worth a factcheck, surely. |
re: TRUMPs’ 'Deep State' America-Poverty/Violence/Racial Bias & DEATH
AP FACT CHECK: Is Trump's America Great Again or Hellscape? - Trumps’ Presidency is a Death Cult
Trump’s ‘death cult’ would rather die from COVID-19 than admit he lied to them Mayor Wheeler to Trump – “This Deadly Violence is YOURS -Four Years of Your Racist Attacks on Black People” - “What America Needs is For You to be Stopped” Fears Related to The Presidential Visit to Kenosha AP / Daily Mail UK / The Guardian UK / The Telegraph UK, 31 AUG 2020. https://i.ytimg.com/vi/YuKvi0p-iAs/maxresdefault.jpg TRUMP-Wicked Wizard of West Wing Consults Bush Torture Lawyer on How to Skirt Law and Rule by Decree https://im-media.voltron.voanews.com...?itok=kItaIL1L Federal Forces Tear Gas Oregon Protesters https://media1.s-nbcnews.com/j/newsc...p-1200-630.jpg https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/asse...uper-tease.jpg https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/08...62_634x422.jpg A caravan of supporters of Donald Trump drive in downtown Portland, Ore., Saturday, Aug. 29, 2020. Saturday's rally was the third consecutive weekend that pro-Trump demonstrators converged in and around Portland, to confront counter protesters. (Dave Killen/The Oregonian via AP) WASHINGTON (AP) — The Republican National Convention begged this question: Why are President Donald Trump’s most fervent supporters describing the state of his union as a hellscape? It was perhaps the central paradox for voters wondering what to believe in the apocalyptic rhetoric, because it defied logic to believe it all. Are Americans living in a dystopia or in an America made great again by Trump? Four years ago, candidate Trump promised that if he won, "The crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon come to an end. Beginning on January 20th, 2017, safety will be restored.” Now? “I’ve never seen our streets go this bad so quickly," Pat Lynch, representing tens of thousands of New York police officers. When Trump was challenged by Axios national political correspondent Jonathan Swan to respond to the fact that, “a thousand Americans are dying a day” due to COVID-19, the president responded as though the grim tally was perfectly acceptable, saying, “They are dying, that’s true. And it is what it is.” https://img.thedailybeast.com/image/...ppwrewr_jankip While observers were aghast at the callousness of his statement, it should not have surprised us. Trump had warned that the death toll would be high, and he had asked us months ago to get used to the idea. In late March, the White House Coronavirus Task Force had projected that 100,000 to 240,000 Americans would die from the virus. Rather than unveil an aggressive plan to tackle the spread and prevent the projected mortality figures, the president had said, “I want every American to be prepared for the hard days that lie ahead.”The New York Times saw this warning as a contradiction to Trump’s stance in February and early March when he had said that “we have it totally under control” and “it’s going to be just fine.” The paper seemed to heave a sigh of relief that a few weeks later, “the president appeared to understand the severity of the potentiallygrave threat to the country.” But the report’s authors failed to grasp that Trump is willing to accept anything—including mass deaths—in service of his political career. ‘One Day – It’s Like a Miracle – It Will Disappear’ (Recorded Words of a Madman > Donald Trump, 3 April 2020) http://img.wennermedia.com/social/do...3b4d79b6ff.jpg Trumps’ Favourite COVID Doctor Believes in Alien DNA, Demon Sperm, and Hydroxychloroquine. Dr. Stella Immanuel, who emigrated from Africa, is a pediatrician and a religious minister, has a history of making bizarre claims about medical topics and Alien DNA, Demon Sperm, and Hydroxychloroquinets. She has often claimed that gynecological problems like endometriosis are in fact caused by people having sex in their dreams with demons and witches. https://migrate.readersupportednews....nyc-061120.jpg Covid patients arrive at the Montefiore medical center on 6 April 2020 in New York City. More than 170,000 Americans have died from coronavirus since the pandemic began in the US. Photograph: John Moore/Getty Images https://i1.wp.com/metro.co.uk/wp-con...64%2C542&ssl=1 https://images.newindianexpress.com/...navirus_AP.jpg MOBILE MORGUES https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020...isable=upscale Trumps’ Plan to Cut Off Food Stamps Could Cause Some U.S. Citizens to Go Hungry; https://www.washingtonpost.com/rf/im...jpg?t=20170517 Millions Queue at Food Banks in America http://criticallegalthinking.com/wp-...nk-queue-1.jpg https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-con...706_edited.jpg |
re: TRUMPs’ 'Deep State' America-Poverty/Violence/Racial Bias & DEATH
US Election 2020: Could Law and Order Secure Trump a Second Term?
As Donald Trump visits Kenosha, is he looking for a peaceful solution to racial violence or trying to sew division for political gain? BBC Newsnight Sep 20202 US President Donald Trump has visited Kenosha, Wisconsin, to back law enforcement after the police shooting of a black man sparked protests. Kenosha was rocked by days of violence after Jacob Blake was shot in the back by officers. President Trump defended the actions of US police and accused the media of focusing only on "bad" incidents involving officer and blamed "domestic terror" for the "destruction" in the city. With the president pushing a strong "law and order" message ahead of November’s election, does the recent violence in US cities offer Trump a clear route back to the White House? US Correspondent David Grossman reports and Kirsty Wark is joined by Democratic Congresswoman for Michigan, Brenda Lawrence and Democratic politician from Georgia who's now supporting Donald Trump, Vernon Jones. |
re: 'TRUMP is a Coward'-Called US War Dead Suckers & Losers
As Election Nears, Trump Builds The Very 'Deep State' He Railed Against
White House manipulation of US intelligence on Russian and Chinese interference may rival WMD fiasco that led to Iraq war, say experts The Guardian UK, 3 SEP 2020. https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/e18f7...ormat&fit=max&https://americanmilitarynews.com/wp-...2853257942.jpg https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/e18f7...ormat&fit=max& Donald Trump listens to homeland security secretary Chad Wolf, who reportedly blocked a warning about Russian efforts to question Joe Biden’s mental health. Photograph: Carlos Barría/Reuters Two months before the presidential election, the US intelligence agencies are under increasing pressure from the Trump administration to provide only the information it wants to hear. After installing loyalist John Ratcliffe at the pinnacle of the intelligence community, the administration is seeking to limit congressional oversight, and has removed a veteran official from a sensitive national security role in the justice department One former senior intelligence officer has suggested Donald Trump is seeking to create the very thing he was repeatedly complained about: a “deep state”. Another official has compared it to the intelligence fiasco that preceded the 2003 Iraq invasion. The intense focus of the current struggle is the covert Russian role in the election campaign. The intelligence community has assessed that Moscow is taking an active role, as it did in 2016, to damage Joe Biden and boost Trump, largely through spreading disinformation. But administration officials have sought to stop public discussion of such interference. ABC News reported this week that an aide to the homeland security secretary, Chad Wolf, blocked a bulletin in July warning about Russian efforts to create doubts about Joe Biden’s mental health. https://ei.marketwatch.com/Multimedi...a-9c8e992d421e John Ratcliffe has halted in-person security briefings, preventing any chance of cross-examination. Photograph: Andrew Harnik/AFP/Getty Images Ratcliffe, the new director of national intelligence (DNI), informed Congress at the end of last week that his office would no longer provide in-person briefings on election security, but would instead deliver written reports that could not be subjected to cross-examination by sceptical legislators. He justified his action by accusing Congress of leaking classified material but did not explain why the same risk did not apply to written reports. John McLaughlin, former deputy CIA director, said the fears of leaks should not outweigh the need for transparency. “Frankly, having briefed the Congress many times, it’s possible to talk about sensitive things without giving away sources and methods,” McLaughlin told the Guardian. “In my view the American voter needs to know as much about this as can be revealed. They need to know if someone is attempting to influence their vote or manipulate them.” Ratcliffe’s predecessor as acting DNI, Richard Grenell, another highly partisan figure, had sought to consolidate responsibility for election security under that office, taking the highly charged issue out of the hands of career intelligence professionals. And on Monday it emerged that the attorney general, William Barr, had abruptly removed a veteran official running the law and policy office in the justice department’s national security division. The official, Brad Wiegmann, was a widely respected career professional, part of whose job was to advise on public disclosure of evidence of election interference. He was replaced by a much younger prosecutor, Kellen Dwyer, a conservative cyber-security specialist with very limited national security experience. Katrina Mulligan, a former national security official who helped draft the policy by which the law and policy office could raise the alarm on meddling, said: “It remains the only avenue the [justice department] has to disclose foreign interference in the absence of criminal charges. “As you can imagine, when it comes to foreign interference we may have things going on that the public should know, and we don’t want to wait to have all our ducks in a row for an indictment, before we disclose that to the public,” Mulligan argued. Is China Really The Biggest Meddler? As more voices on the issue have been muted, senior Trump officials have been putting out a different message on election interference – that it is China, not Russia, that is the biggest meddler. “It simply isn’t true that somehow Russia is a greater national security threat than China,” Ratcliffe told Fox News. “China is the greatest threat that we face.” On Wednesday evening, Barr echoed the claim. “I believe it’s China,” he told CNN, “because I’ve seen the intelligence, that’s what I’ve concluded.” What we are seeing is, in some respects, worse than the intelligence failures surrounding weapons of mass destruction-Susan Hennessey, former National Security Agency attorney He would not say who China was backing, but he did not need to. In early August, William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, issued a statement in which he said Russia and China were backing different sides in the election. “Russia is using a range of measures to primarily denigrate former vice-president Biden,” Evanina said, adding: “We assess that China prefers that President Trump – whom Beijing sees as unpredictable – does not win re-election.” He gave details of concrete actions that Moscow was taking to damage Biden but was much more vague about Beijing, saying it was “expanding its influence efforts ahead of November 2020 to shape the policy environment” to “deflect and counter criticism of China”. Democrats and intelligence professionals have complained a false equivalence is being made between the two threats when it comes to direct election interference. “The documentary evidence on Russia is massive and the documentary evidence – in public at least – on China is minuscule,” McLaughlin said. US attorney general William Barr has echoed claims that China is a greater threat than Russia. John Sipher, a CIA veteran who once ran the agency’s Russia operations, argued in a New York Times commentary on Tuesday that the pattern of the Trump administration’s actions “smacks of the very thing that Mr Trump has used to stoke outrage in his followers – the formation of a politicised national security apparatus that can serve as a personal weapon for the president. A ‘deep state’.” David Rohde, journalist and author of a book published in April on the issue – In Deep: The FBI, the CIA, and the Truth about America’s “Deep State” – agreed with Sipher’s assessment. “If a ‘deep state’ is a group of officials who secretly wield government power with little accountability or transparency, Trump and his loyalists increasingly fit that definition,” Rohde said. “Under the guise of stopping a ‘coup’ that does not exist, Trump is politicising the intelligence community and the justice department and using them to boost his re-election effort.” The battle over intelligence is set to intensify as the election approaches. Barr has picked a prosecutor, John Durham, to investigate the FBI and special counsellor investigators who looked into Russian interference in the 2016 election. The attorney general has said he would not observe normal protocol and wait until after the election to publish Durham’s findings, or at least a version of those findings, with the likely aim of creating the impression that Trump was the victim of a conspiracy to undermine his presidency. “The Durham investigation presents the opportunity for bad actors to make a lot of mischief, but the lack of clarity makes it difficult for observers to criticise,” said Susan Hennessey, a former National Security Agency attorney. She added that the Trump tactics in manipulating US intelligence represented a historic threat, potentially overshadowing the fiasco that led to the 2003 Iraq invasion. “What we are seeing now is, in some respects, even worse than the intelligence failures surrounding weapons of mass destruction,” said Hennessey, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and executive editor of the Lawfare blog. “Iraq was obviously immensely consequential and illustrates why it is imperative to guard against even subtle political influence in intelligence reporting. But the politicisation here is brazen and explicitly partisan in nature. “It’s all these little things and so it’s often hard to pin down the precise place where the line has been crossed,” she added. “Lots of lines have been crossed. At this point, the cumulative picture of where we are at is not that there is a risk of politicisation of intelligence, but that we’ve already crossed the Rubicon.” |
re: STONE to TRUMP >Bring in MARTIAL LAW If You Lose Election
'He is a Coward': Trump Condemned For Reportedly Calling US War Dead ‘Suckers’
Trump claims accusations, confirmed by two former DHS officials, are ‘totally false’ as Biden criticizes president FOX News' report says Trump refused to visit the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France, saying it was a place "filled with losers" and that he didn't want his hair to be ruined by rain. In addition, the report said Trump asked staff planning for a military parade to keep wounded veterans away. Khizr Khan: 'Trump may damage American democracy permanently' - a Gold Star father whose son was killed by a suicide bomber in Iraq When my son volunteered and joined the United States military and went to Iraq for a year … he was not a sucker -Joe Biden “I take my wheelchair, and my titanium legs over Donald Trump’s supposed bone spurs any day” - Tammy Duckworth, who lost both her legs in combat in Iraq, The Guardian UK, 5 SEP 2020. https://tse4.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.j...=0&w=324&h=171 The US president referred to fallen soldiers as “suckers” and “losers”. Current and former members of the military, elected officials and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden reacted with outrage and sadness on Friday, as ex-Trump administration officials confirmed key details of a bombshell report in which the US president referred to fallen soldiers as “suckers” and “losers”. The Atlantic magazine published a story on Thursday in which four sources close to Donald Trump said he cancelled a visit to pay respects at an American military cemetery outside Paris in 2018 because he thought the dead soldiers were “losers” and “suckers” and did not want the rain to mess up his hair. Elizabeth Neumann, a former assistant secretary of counter-terrorism in the Department of Homeland Security, and Miles Taylor, a former chief of staff in that department, said the account was true, asserting that Trump’s low opinion of soldiers killed and wounded in combat was well known inside the administration. The White House moved to deny the report unusually quickly and forcefully. Trump himself dismissed it as a politically motivated “hoax” and claimed 11 current and former officials supported his account. “There is nobody feels more strongly about our soldiers, our wounded warriors, our soldiers that died in war than I do,” he told reporters at the White House on Friday. “It’s a hoax. Just like the fake dossier was a hoax, just like the Russia, Russia, Russia was a hoax. It was a total hoax: no collusion. Just like so many other things, it’s a hoax. And you’ll hear more of these things, totally unrelated, as we get closer and closer to election.” Asked why John Kelly, a retired marine corps general and Trump’s former chief of staff, was not among those defending him, the president added: “He was with me, didn’t do a good job, had no temperament and ultimately he was petered out, he was exhausted. This man was totally exhausted. He wasn’t even able to function in the last number of months. He was not able to function.” The Atlantic’s source, he speculated, “could have been a guy like a John Kelly”. Trump tweeted that he would not defund the Stars and Stripes newspaper, which serves US servicemen and women worldwide, after a Pentagon memo ordering its closure was reported by USA Today, causing huge controversy. When my son volunteered and joined the United States military and went to Iraq for a year … he was not a sucker -Joe Biden The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, also defended Trump, but the denials were met with widespread skepticism because of his past remarks about military veterans. And in an unusual intervention, the first lady, Melania Trump, also weighed in, tweeting that the Atlantic story “was not true”. “It has become a very dangerous time when anonymous sources are believed above all else, & no one knows their motivation,” she wrote. A visibly angry Biden called the alleged comments “disgusting” and said Trump was “not fit to be commander-in-chief”. “When my son volunteered and joined the United States military – and went to Iraq for a year, won the Bronze Star and other commendations, he was not a sucker,” Biden said, his voice rising, in remarks in Wilmington, Delaware. His son Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015, deployed to Iraq in 2008. “If these statements are true, the president should humbly apologize to every Gold Star mother and father and every Blue Star family,” Biden said. “Who the heck does he think he is? “I’m always cautioned not to lose my temper,” Biden said. “This may be as close as I come in this campaign. It’s just a marker of how deeply the president and I disagree on the role of the president of the United States of America.” Veteran Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the pilot who saved the lives of 155 people in 2009 when he guided his stricken plane onto the Hudson river, said: “For the first time in American history, a president has repeatedly shown utter and vulgar contempt and disrespect for those who have served and died serving our country.” “While I am not surprised, I am disgusted by the current occupant of the Oval Office. He has repeatedly and consistently shown himself to be completely unfit for and to have no respect for the office he holds.” On a press call hosted by Biden’s campaign, the Democratic Illinois senator Tammy Duckworth, who lost both her legs in combat in Iraq, accused Trump of attempting to “politicize and pervert our military to stroke his own ego”. “This is a man who spends every day redefining the concept of narcissism; a man who’s led a life of privilege, with everything handed to him on a silver platter,” she said. “Of course, he thinks about war selfishly. He thinks of it as a transactional cost, instead of in human lives and American blood spilled, because that’s how he’s viewed his whole life. He doesn’t understand other people’s bravery and courage, because he’s never had any of his own. “I take my wheelchair, and my titanium legs over Donald Trump’s supposed bone spurs any day,” she added, referring to one reason Trump received draft deferments during the Vietnam war. The call also included the congressman Conor Lamb, a marine veteran, and Khizr Khan, a Gold Star father whose son was killed by a suicide bomber in Iraq in 2004 and who was himself famously attacked by Trump during the 2016 campaign. Khan said Trump was “incapable – let me repeat it again – he is incapable of understanding service, valor and courage”. “His soul cannot conceive of integrity and honor. His soul is that of a coward.” In an interview with the conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, Mike Pompeo defended the president’s support of the military. “I’ve never heard that,” the secretary of state said of Trump allegedly calling the war dead “suckers”. “Indeed, just the opposite. I’ve been around him in lots of settings where there were both active-duty military, guardsmen, reservists, veterans. This is a man who had the deepest respect for their service, and he always, he always interacted with them in that way. He enjoys those times. He values those people.” The Biden campaign released a video quoting the president, based on the Atlantic story and later corroborating reports by the Washington Post and the Associated Press. Other media outlets, Fox News among them, also corroborated the Atlantic story. With the tagline “If you don’t respect our troops, you cannot lead them,” the Biden campaign video displayed the alleged Trump quotes over images of military cemeteries. At Friday’s briefing, Trump was asked about his past mockery of the late senator John McCain, who served in the military and was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. “I say what I say,” he told reporters. “I disagreed with John McCain on a lot of things. That doesn’t mean I don’t respect him. I respected him but I really disagreed with him on a lot of things and I think I was right. I think time has proven me right to a large extent.” |
re: STONE to TRUMP >Bring in MARTIAL LAW If You Lose Election
Democratic BS, that all it is......They're running scared.
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re: STONE to TRUMP >Bring in MARTIAL LAW If You Lose Election
Margaret Atwood on The US Election, Trump and The Testaments
BBC Newsnight •5 Sep 2020 Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments, discusses her work, with BBC Newsnight’s Kirsty Wark, on the upcoming US election and how Covid19 has changed us |
re: STONE to TRUMP >Bring in MARTIAL LAW If You Lose Election
Trump Facing Backlash Over CONFIRMED Allegations He Described America's War Dead as Losers
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re: STONE to TRUMP >Bring in MARTIAL LAW If You Lose Election
Even John Bolton who dislikes Trump to no end denies Trump ever said such a thing.
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re: STONE to TRUMP >Bring in MARTIAL LAW If You Lose Election
Donald Trump Rips Into Steve Jobs' Widow For Wasting Money He Left Her on a 'Failing Radical Left Magazine' by Co-Owning The Atlantic -Which Ran Bombshell Report Claiming He Called Dead Troops 'Suckers'
Daily Mail UK, 6 SEP 2020 Donald Trump went after the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, Laurene Powell Jobs, as she owns a stake in The Atlantic magazine, which ran the story that said the president had called U.S. war soldiers and war dead 'losers' and 'suckers.' 'Steve Jobs would not be happy that his wife is wasting money he left her on a failing Radical Left Magazine that is run by a con man (Goldberg) and spews FAKE NEWS & HATE,' Trump tweeted early Sunday morning. 'Call her, write her, let her know how you feel!!!' Trump had shared a tweet from Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk, a youth conservative activist, that claimed Jobs had donated 'at least $500,000 to Joe Biden's campaign this year.' http://a57.foxnews.com/media2.foxnew...ident.jpg?ve=1 Trump continued to be outraged over The Atlantic's reporting that he disparaged American troops and war dead. On Sunday morning Trump went after Steve Jobs' widow over her financial stake in the magazine President Donald Trump sent an outraged tweet Sunday morning aimed at Laurene Powell Jobs, who owns a stake in The Atlantic, suggesting that her late husband would be disappointed she was 'wasting money he left her' on a 'Radical Left Magazine' https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/09...9396226565.jpg Laurene Powell Jobs photographed at The Atlantic Festival in Washington, D.C. in September 2019 https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/09...9396377471.jpg Laurene Powell Jobs (right) with her late husband Steve Jobs (left), the co-founder of Apple, at the Academy Awards in 2010 Recode reported in July that Jobs was among the Silicon Valley mega-donors who were giving the max donation, or close to it, of $620,600 to Biden's campaign. Earlier in the cycle she gave money to some of Biden's competitors, including Tom Steyer and Andrew Yang. A 70 per cent stake of The Atlantic was purchased by Jobs' Emerson Collective in 2017, according to Politico. Trump has been infuriated over Jeffrey Goldberg's story about him in The Atlantic, first addressing its contents Thursday night after returning to Joint Base Andrews from his Latrobe, Pennsylvania rally. He's continued to tweet about it through the weekend. Trump's attack comes after he spent lashed out at another woman in media - Fox News Channel's Jennifer Griffin, who used her own unnamed sources to back up chunks of the Atlantic's reporting. Jennifer Griffin should be fired for this kind of reporting. Never even called us for comment. @FoxNews is gone!' Trump tweeted late Friday. After Goldberg first reported anecdotes about Trump disparaging war dead and wounded veterans and not wanting to go to a military cemetery during a trip to France, Griffin matched must of his reporting. She confirmed that the president' did not want to drive to honor American war dead' at the Aisne-Marnce cemetery. Weather was the president's original excuse for not making the trek. An official also told Griffin that Trump used the word 'suckers' to describe those for fought in Vietnam. 'When the President spoke about the Vietnam War, he said, 'It was a stupid war. Anyone who went was a sucker,' Griffin was told by an unnamed official. 'It was a character flaw of the President. He could not understand why someone would die for their country, not worth it' |
re: STONE to TRUMP >Bring in MARTIAL LAW If You Lose Election
TRUMP Demanded He Should Stay at Buckingham Palace for State Visit
When Barack Obama, Mr Trump’s predecessor, visited the UK with wife Michelle in 2003 they got a bed in Buckingham Palace so Trump expected the same, according to sources Daily Mirror UK, 9 SEP 2020. https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incomin...UK-Day-One.jpg Donald Trump demanded to stay at Buckingham Palace when he visited the UK in 2019, it's claimed. The US President made the request but was told the royal household in London was under extensive renovations, according to reports. Trump was first invited for a formal state visit by the Queen in January 2017, but only in the summer of 2019 the trip started being organised. White House aides told Downing Street that it was "critically important" that Mr Trump was allowed to stay overnight in Buckingham Palace, The Telegraph says. When Barack Obama, Mr Trump’s predecessor, visited the UK with wife Michelle they got a bed in Buckingham Palace so Trump expected the same, sources told the paper. “It was very, very clear Trump loved the Queen," they said. "He wanted to spend as much time as possible with the Queen and to stay at Buckingham Palace,” said one UK official at the centre of the state visit planning. “We went to the point of saying to the Palace ‘can you tell us which rooms are undergoing refurbishment’. It was properly looked into. The last thing we wanted was a snub story coming out. But it couldn’t work.” https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incomin...ACY-ROYALS.jpg Elizabeth II and Trump at Buckingham Palace last summer (Image: AFP/Getty Images) The President instead stayed in Winfield House, the US ambassador's residence in Regent's Park, during his state visit. But there will still concerns "Regent's Park Mosque would wake him up in the morning", one White House adviser told The Telegraph. During the state visit, Trump met Queen Elizabeth II at an event at Buckingham Palace, as well as other members of the British royal family, including Kate Middleton. https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incomin...ts-Britain.jpg The State Banquet with President Donald Trump at Buckingham Palace in London (Image: REUTERS) Mr Trump and First Lady Melania had to cut short their earlier function with Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall at Clarence House to dash to meet the Queen at Buckingham Palace. While the US president was visiting the UK, protests took place in London bearing signs that read “Trump hands off our NHS” and “cut war not health care”. |
re: STONE to TRUMP >Bring in MARTIAL LAW If You Lose Election
Woodward Tells How Allies Tried to Rein in Childish Trump's Foreign Policy
Senator Lindsey Graham, who had emerged as one of his closest advisers, urged him not to take such a “giant step”, that could trigger “almost total war”. On the golf course, Lindsey Graham urged restraint on Iran, while James Mattis slept in his clothes in case of emergency The Guardian UK, 11 SEP 2020. https://www.rollingstone.com/wp-cont...d-scare-us.jpg Four days before ordering a drone strike against the Iranian military commander Qassem Suleimani, Donald Trump was debating the assassination on his own Florida golf course, according to Bob Woodward’s new book on the mercurial president. Trump’s golfing partner that day was Senator Lindsey Graham, who had emerged as one of his closest advisers, and who urged him not to take such a “giant step”, that could trigger “almost total war”. Graham warned Trump he would be raising the stakes from “playing $10 blackjack to $10,000-a-hand blackjack”. “This is over the top,” the senator said. “How about hitting someone a level below Suleimani, which would be much easier for everyone to absorb?” Trump’s chief of staff at the time, Mick Mulvaney, also begged Graham to help change Trump’s mind. Trump would not be persuaded, pointing to Iranian-orchestrated attacks on US soldiers in Iraq, which he said were masterminded by the Iranian general, the leader of the elite Quds force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Suleimani was killed in Baghdad on 3 January, triggering a retaliatory Iranian missile strike against a US base in Iraq, but so far not the large-scale conflict Graham and others warned the president about. The golf course exchange is described in a forthcoming book, Rage, a second volume on the Trump presidency by Woodward, a veteran investigative reporter famous for covering the Watergate affair and the consequent fall of an earlier scandal-ridden president, Richard Nixon. Woodward interviewed Trump 18 times for the book and spoke extensively to Graham, as well as many presidential aides. The portrait that emerges is familiar by now: a volatile president, easily swayed by authoritarian leaders and capable of swinging dramatically from fiery bellicosity to fawning over America’s most ardent adversaries. Nowhere was that whiplash more violent than in policy towards North Korea. The book chronicles the period between July and November 2017 when Pyongyang tested a succession of long-range missiles capable of hitting the US mainland and carried out its sixth underground nuclear test. Conscious that the next missile could be heading towards the US, and that decisions would have to be taken in minutes that could put the country on the path to nuclear war, the then defence secretary, James Mattis, took to sleeping in his gym clothes and having a flashing light and bell installed in his bathroom in case a missile alert happened when he was in the shower. He also spent more time praying in the National Cathedral in Washington and preparing himself for the worst. In the US command system, the president has sole authority to launch nuclear weapons, but Mattis believed he would be asked for his recommendations. “What do you do if you’ve got to do it?” Mattis asked Woodward. “You’re going to incinerate a couple million people. No person has the right to kill a million people, as far as I’m concerned. Yet that’s what I have to confront.” Mattis’s fears were aggravated by Trump’s furious tweets threatening destruction and “fire and fury” against North Korea. Mattis said the tweets were “unproductive, childish and dangerous” and pleaded with Trump to stop. “I got over enjoying public humiliation by second grade,” he told the president, to no avail. A conflagration was ultimately averted and by early 2018, the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, declared that the goal of developing a nuclear arsenal had been achieved and he would therefore pivot towards focusing on the economy. Trump also switched direction and made peace overtures to Kim Jong-un, which led to a string of spectacular but ultimately ineffective summits and a remarkable flurry of 27 warm – sometimes breathlessly affectionate – letters between the two leaders, which Woodward has published for the first time. In December 2018, Kim recalled their first summit 200 days earlier in Singapore. “Even now I cannot forget that moment of history when I firmly held Your Excellency’s hand at that beautiful and sacred location as the whole world watched,” the North Korean leader wrote. Woodward noted that Trump was thrilled by the use of the title “Excellency”. The US president described the missives as “love letters” and told Kim they had “a unique style and a special friendship”. After the scare of 2017, the president insisted the flattery was essential for avoiding disaster. “You can’t mock Kim,” he warned Woodward. “I don’t want to get in a ****ing nuclear war because you mocked him.” Donald Trump described his correspondence with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as ‘love letters’. US intelligence never worked out who had crafted Kim’s purple English prose, but Woodward wrote: “The analysts marveled at the skill someone brought to finding the exact mixture of flattery while appealing to Trump’s sense of grandiosity and being center stage in history.” The manipulation of Trump by foreign potentates is a recurring theme of the book. Despite the fact that the special counsel’s Russia investigation found no proof of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, the US director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, became convinced that Vladimir Putin “had something on Trump”. “How else to explain the president’s behavior? Coats could see no other explanation,” Woodward wrote after interviewing the former spy chief. “He was sure that Trump had chosen to play on the dark side – the moneyed interests in the New York real estate culture, and international finance with its corrupt anything-to-make-a-buck deal making.” Trump freely admits his affinity for foreign strongmen to Woodward. “It’s funny the relationships I have,” he told the reporter. “The tougher and meaner they are, the better I get along with them … Explain that to me someday.” Another example is the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, implicated by US intelligence in the murder and dismemberment of a US-based Saudi dissident and writer, Jamal Khashoggi, in October 2018. Trump refused to put his own intelligence chiefs’ assessment and congressional outrage over the prince’s protestations of innocence. “I saved his ass,” Trump is reported as saying. “I was able to get Congress to leave him alone. I was able to get them to stop.” Woodward repeatedly asked Trump whether he believed in Prince Mohammed’s innocence. The president replied only that “he says very strongly that he didn’t do it” and, when pressed further, diverted the conversation to US arms sales to Saudi Arabia. In another extraordinary scene, the former secretary of state Rex Tillerson describes joining a meeting between Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu in May 2017 in Jerusalem, in which the Israeli leader showed the US president a videotape supposedly showing the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, inciting violence against Jews. Tillerson believed the tape had been faked or manipulated, splicing together words and sentences out of context, but Trump - who had previously been distrustful of Netanyahu - was totally convinced. The next day in Bethlehem, Trump hurled abuse at Abbas, calling him a liar and a murderer, and he severed diplomatic relations and financial support for the Palestinians soon after. Tillerson came to the conclusion that “Netanyahu had manufactured the tape to counter any pro-Palestinian sentiments that were surfacing”. The president also expressed pride in his relationship with Turkey’s leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who in October 2019 persuaded Trump to announce a troop withdrawal from north-eastern Syria, abandoning America’s Kurdish allies, who had taken the lead in the fight against Isis. The decision was the last straw for an outraged Mattis. “When I was basically directed to do something that I thought went beyond stupid to felony stupid, strategically jeopardizing our place in the world, and everything else. That’s when I quit,” the former defence secretary said. Mattis predicted Trump’s impact on the country would be lasting. “This degradation of the American experiment is real. This is tangible. Truth is no longer governing the White House statements,” he said. Coats, the former intelligence director, fired in July 2019 while he was playing golf on one of Trump’s courses, came to a similar conclusion. “To him, a lie is not a lie. It’s just what he thinks,” Coats said. “He doesn’t know the difference between the truth and a lie.” |
re: TRUMPS' Lawyer:Ex Security Chief Must Be Taken Out & Shot
Donald Trumps' Stolen Election Outbursts Fuelled by Fear He Could Go to Prison
EXCLUSIVE: Trump will suddenly be vulnerable to a string of legal actions - both criminal and civil once he loses the protections of the presidency Daily Mirror UK, 7 NOV 2020 https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incomin...e-House-in.jpg Donald Trump will suddenly be vulnerable to a barrage of legal actions – both criminal and civil – if he loses the presidency. Until now Trump has used “executive privilege” to prevent people from testifying against him but that changes if he loses to Joe Biden, as now seems likely. The Trump Organisation is already at the centre of a criminal probe. Trump also faces a case over his taxes. White House insiders have claimed to the Mirror his outbursts that the election has been “stolen” from him are in part fuelled by his fear of going to prison. Harry Sandick, a former US federal prosecutor, says: “In every regard, his leaving office makes it easier for prosecutors and plaintiffs in civil cases to pursue their cases against him. “For example, he is claiming a higher protection from subpoenas in the criminal cases and also in the congressional subpoena cases, [and that] is based largely on the fact that he is President.” In September last year, the President’s legal team made an attempt to defeat a subpoena from the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, which had petitioned for eight years of tax returns. Lawyers for New York State are trying to determine whether the Trump Organisation falsified company records concerning payouts allegedly made to Playboy model Karen McDougal and pornographic film star Stormy Daniels. As well as the Manhattan DA’s probe into the Trump Organisation, the reality television star would be open to defamation lawsuits sparked by his denials of accusations from dozens of women that he sexually assaulted them. They include writer E Jean Carroll, who has accused the former US Apprentice host of raping her in a changing room at Manhattan’s Bergdorf Goodman department store in the mid-1990s. Asked about her claims, Trump simply said: “She’s not my type.” Another defamation lawsuit waiting to be heard is by former Apprentice contestant Summer Zervos. https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incomin...e-House-in.jpg Shortly before the 2016 election, she accused the then-candidate of “aggressively” kissing, groping and rubbing his genitals against her in 2007. Trump called her allegations “fiction”. But Trump’s most serious and immediate danger by far is from the criminal probe into the Trump Organisation. The allegations cover the time the US leader was in charge, before handing over two his son Don Jr and Eric when he was made President. Prosecutors have subpoenaed for documents detailing business transactions and tax records, which Trump has bitterly fought against. On five occasions courts have said the information requests are valid. On top of the criminal probe, the New York Attorney General is pressing ahead with a civil law investigation into the Trump Organisation. They are looking into whether the firm falsely valued several assets, inflating or lowering them as needed to secure either loans or tax breaks. Several of Trump’s golf courses, hotels and tower blocks are said to be at the centre of the investigation. The Internal Revenue Service – the US’s HMRC – is circling too. According to the New York Times, tax investigators are probing a £55.5million refund he claimed. The state attorneys general of Maryland and Washington DC sued the President three years ago, claiming he corruptly benefited from the presidency by putting the interests of American citizens below his own, earning millions of dollars. In many civil litigations, Trump has sought to avoid giving evidence, or in Carroll’s alleged rape case refused to provide a DNA sample. On Thursday the US Office of Special Counsel opened a probe into whether the Trump campaign’s use of the White House violated federal law. Representative Bill Pascrell called on the watchdog to conduct an investigation, to which the agency responded that it “was not consulted on the decision to use space inside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building as a campaign war room”. The Hatch Act prohibits the use of federal property for campaign events. But the Republican Party hosted its election convention and many other events at the White House. But it’s not just law enforcement agencies taking action against Trump – the President’s niece Mary Trump is suing Donald, his sister and the estate of their deceased brother. She alleges fraud, saying they deprived her of her entitlements in the family property empire. Some legal experts have predicted that if he loses, Trump will use his final days in office before Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20 to pardon himself of any and all federal crimes. If he did, the decision of whether to reopen those cases would fall to the new Biden administration. https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incomin...e-House-in.jpg Trump may also be damned by former special counsel Robert Mueller’s testimony to Congress in 2016 that a President could be charged “with a crime after he left office”. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/88/ec...36396fe107.jpg . |
re: TRUMPS' Lawyer:Ex Security Chief Must Be Taken Out & Shot
Mark Esper Fired as Pentagon Chief After Contradicting Trump. Trump Fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper by Tweet
Defence secretary resisted deployment of active-duty troops-Esper was criticised for joining Trump at controversial photo op Barr Tells Prosecutors to Pursue 'Clear' Fraud Claims, Without Evidence Ivanka Trump Will Lose White House Status and Job The Guardian UK, 10 NOV 2020. https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default...c&v=1567727299 Mark Esper's Firing May Be the Beginning of Donald Trump's Post-Election Reckoning The post-election period got off to a raucous start Monday when President Donald Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper by tweet, a decision that tossed Pentagon leadership into tumult with just 72 days before transitioning to a new administration. Donald Trump has fired his defence secretary, Mark Esper, in the latest sign that the transition to a new Biden administration in January is going to be turbulent on both domestic and foreign fronts. Esper was fired by tweet on Monday afternoon, with the president declaring he was “pleased to announce that Christopher C Miller, the highly respected director of the National Counterterrorism Center (unanimously confirmed by the Senate), will be acting secretary of defense, effective immediately. “Chris will do a GREAT job! Mark Esper has been terminated. Esper had been at odds with Trump on a number of issues, most importantly his insistence at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer that there were no legal grounds to deploy active-service troops on the streets of US cities. He was also working with Congress on legislation to rename US army bases named after Confederate generals. In a final interview Esper predicted that he would be followed by a “yes man”, adding “And then God help us.” In a coolly worded final letter to the president, Esper wrote: “I serve the country in deference to the Constitution, so I accept your decision to replace me.” He left the Pentagon quietly on Monday without the “clap-out” from staff traditionally accorded to a departing secretary. Miller arrived at the Pentagon on Monday amid questions about the legality of his appointment. By law, the deputy secretary of defence, currently David Norquist, would become acting secretary in the event of a sudden departure at the top. Furthermore, the law requires that a secretary of defence to have been out of active duty military service for seven years. Miller, a former Green Beret, only left the military in 2014. The law can be sidestepped by a vote in Congress, as was done for Esper’s predecessor James Mattis, a retired marine. Barr Tells Prosecutors to Pursue Claims of Irregularities Despite Lack of Evidence William Barr, rhe US attorney general, has told prosecutors across the country to pursue “clear and apparently-credible allegations of irregularities” in the voting system, despite a lack of evidence that such fraud is occurring. In a memo obtained by the Associated Press, Barr – who has not shied away from violating norms in his efforts to prop up Donald Trump – told attorneys that investigations “may be conducted if there are clear and apparently-credible allegations of irregularities that, if true, could potentially impact the outcome of a federal election in an individual State”, the AP reports. States have another month to resolve election disputes before members of the electoral college finalize the outcome on 14 December. Ivanka Trump Will Lose White House Status and Job – What Will She Do Next? Ivanka Trump isn’t just losing her status as first daughter with her father Donald Trump’s defeat to Joe Biden – she’s also losing her job. In her father’s White House, Ivanka Trump works as “advisor to the president”, purportedly focusing on “the education and economic empowerment of women and their families as well as job creation and economic growth through workforce development, skills training and entrepreneurship”. Before that, she “oversaw development and acquisitions” for her father’s real estate company, the Trump Organization, and had a fashion clothing line. She also appeared as a boardroom judge on Trump’s reality show, The Apprentice. But her role in the White House, and the fact that virtually her entire professional history is tied to her father, raise the question: What will she wind up doing? While Ivanka could probably return to the Trump Organization, it may not be the most stable workplace when her father leaves office. The Manhattan district attorney’s office is seeking Trump’s tax returns in a “complex financial investigation”, previously citing public reports on “extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization” in their request. |
re: TRUMPS' Lawyer: Ex Security Chief Must Be SHOT
TRUMPS' Lawyer: Ex-Election Security Chief Krebs Should Be Taken Out and Shot
Trump Lawyer Joe DiGenova Says Fired Cybersecurity Chief Should Be 'Shot' For Defending Election Joe DiGenova condemned for ‘mob attorney’ remark made on podcast shown on conservative Newsmax TV The Guardian UK, 1 DEC 2020. https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/o....21957221ed6a64 Trump 'Mob' Lawyer Joe DiGenova https://i0.wp.com/www.nationalreview...00%2C700&ssl=1 Trump fired Chris Krebs for refusing to lie about the election result A former head of US election security who said Donald Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden was not subject to voter fraud should be “taken out at dawn and shot”, a Trump campaign lawyer said. Condemnation of Joe DiGenova’s remark about Chris Krebs was swift, including calls for his disbarment and the charge that he was behaving like a “mob attorney”. Krebs was fired as head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa) on 17 November, not long after he said the election, contrary to Trump’s claims, “was the most secure in American history”. Krebs also used Twitter to publicly debunk Trump’s conspiracy theories. DiGenova defended the president in the Russia investigation and is now involved in attempts to overturn results in battleground states. The Trump campaign has won one lawsuit – and lost 39. DiGenova made the remark about Krebs on The Howie Carr Show, a podcast shown on YouTube and the Trump-allied Newsmax TV, on Monday. “Anybody who thinks the election went well,” he said, “like that idiot Krebs who used to be the head of cybersecurity, that guy is a class A moron. He should be drawn and quartered. Taken out at dawn and shot.” Carr did not challenge the remark. A day earlier, Krebs told CBS 60 Minutes Trump was trying to “undermine democracy … to undermine confidence in the election, to confuse people, to scare people”. Trump called that interview “ridiculous, one-sided [and] an international joke”. DiGenova is not the first close Trump aide to call for the death of an official in the president’s disfavour. In early November, former campaign chief and White House strategist Steve Bannon said FBI director Christopher Wray and public health expert Anthony Fauci should be beheaded. He was banned from Twitter. DiGenova said Trump’s legal team was “talking to the jury, trying to influence the jury. And that includes judges and state legislatures. And the governors in these states are a bunch of losers, along with their secretaries of state. I’ve never seen such wimps wearing an R [being Republican]. “You know, they’re going to have to be dealt with politically. It’s the only way you deal with these people.” Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state in Georgia who has resisted attempts to overturn Biden’s win there, has said he and his wife have received death threats from Trump supporters. Condemnation of DiGenova’s remark about Krebs was swift. Lois Clark, chief executive of the Government Accountability Project, said in a statement: “Threats like these trigger an avalanche of them. They terrorise other whistleblowers into silence. It’s behavior befitting a mob attorney.” Frank Figliuzzi, a former FBI deputy director, said DiGenova had made “a retaliatory threat involving Krebs’ official duties, in violation of federal law Title 18 USC 351”. Andrew Weissmann, a former federal prosecutor and senior aide to special counsel Robert Mueller in the Russia investigation, tweeted that the remark was “shocking” and DiGenova should “face disbarment at least”. Krebs, he said, had shown “fearless integrity”. |
re: Biden Says TRUMP & Aides are Obstructing His Transition
TRUMP Officially Loses (Again) as Joe Biden Victory Approved by Electoral College
William Barr: US Attorney General to Leave Post by Christmas-Barr's term was due to end on 20 January, when Mr Trump leaves office. Tensions between the two flared after Mr Barr said there was no evidence of widespread fraud in November's vote. ALL of Donald Trump's baseless legal challenges have floundered in the courts as the sore loser continues to make inaccurate and damaging claims on Twitter BBC News, 15 DEC 2020. https://c.files.bbci.co.uk/1226C/pro...1227984498.jpg William Barr will step down on 23 December, President Trump said https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incomin...Conference.jpg Donald Trump has been officially dumped by America with Joe Biden confirmed as the new President of the United States. https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incomin...on-Results.jpg Members of the TRUMP Proud Boys kick a member of Antifa on the ground during a protest on December 12, in Washington (Image: Getty Images) Joe Biden, already the President-elect, has won the necessary Electoral College votes to make him the next President of the United States. State by state, the US Electoral College convened today to formally confirm Democrat Biden's victory as the next President and effectively end President Donald Trump's long-shot attempt to overturn the election results. Members of the Electoral College in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin and Arizona - battleground states won by Biden but challenged unsuccessfully in court by Trump - all cast the states' electoral votes for the former vice president. The Electoral College votes, traditionally a formality, have assumed exceptionally large significance this year because of Trump's baseless and wild claims of widespread fraud in November's poll. Results for weeks have shown Biden won 306 Electoral College votes - exceeding the 270 needed to win - after four tumultuous years under the Republican Trump. Biden and running mate Kamala Harris are due to take office on January 20. There was next to no chance that Monday's voting would negate Biden's victory and, with Trump's legal campaign to reverse the results floundering, the president's hopes of clinging to power will rest with a special meeting of the US Congress on January 6 where the odds against him are as good as insurmountable. California, the most populous US state, formally pushed Biden over the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win overall. Biden, 78, is due to make a speech at 1am our time - 8pm in America - calling on Americans to turn the page following the Electoral College vote. The flame of democracy was lit in this nation a long time ago," he was expected to say, according to excerpts released by his transition team. "And we now know that nothing - not even a pandemic - or an abuse of power - can extinguish that flame." Once in office, Biden faces the challenging task of fighting the coronavirus pandemic, reviving the US economy and rebuilding relations frayed with U.S. allies abroad by Trump's "America First" policies. |
re: TRUMPs' Crumbling Empire-$300+Mil Debts & Missing Melania
Ted Cruz and Other Republican Senators Oppose Certifying Election Results
Republicans say they will reject presidential electors from states where Trump campaign contested results unless audit completed Trump refuses to concede. He lost more than 50 lawsuits mounted in battleground states, alleging electoral fraud. Friday, a federal judge dismissed a suit lodged by a House Republican which attempted to give Pence, who will preside over the certification of the electoral college result on Wednesday, the power to overturn it. An appeal was rejected Saturday night. AP / The Guardian UK, 3 JAN 2021. Around 140 Republicans expected vote against counting of electoral college votes, in symbolic move to disrupt Congress and bolster Trump Maverick super-loyalists to Donald Trump are set to make an audacious spectacle in Washington next week by voting against the formal counting of electoral college votes certifying Joe Biden’s victory. While the tactic by outliers won’t be enough to stop Biden becoming the 46th president, it will serve to disrupt Congress, bolster Trump and establish an acidic tone to political co-operation with the incoming Democratic administration. Ted Cruz of Texas, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and nine other Republican US senators or senators-elect said on Saturday they will reject presidential electors from states where Donald Trump has contested his defeat by Joe Biden, “unless and until [an] emergency 10-day audit” of such results is completed. The move – welcomed by Vice President Mike Pence – is largely symbolic and unlikely to overturn the presidential election. Nonetheless, it adds to a sense of deepening crisis affecting US democracy. Trump has refused to concede, though Biden won more than 7m more votes nationally and took the electoral college by 306-232, a margin Trump called a landslide when he won it over Hillary Clinton in 2016. The Trump campaign has lost the vast majority of more than 50 lawsuits it has mounted in battleground states, alleging electoral fraud, and before the supreme court. On Saturday night, Trump urged his Twitter followers to “be a part of history” and join a protest march in Washington DC against the election result on Wednesday. On Friday, a federal judge dismissed a suit lodged by a House Republican which attempted to give Pence, who will preside over the certification of the electoral college result on Wednesday, the power to overturn it. An appeal was rejected Saturday night. Nonetheless, the senators and senators-elect who issued a statement on Saturday followed Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri in committing to challenging the result. Objections are also expected from a majority of House Republicans. Objections must be debated and voted on but as Democrats control the House and the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, and other senior Republicans have voiced opposition, the attempt to disenfranchise a majority of Americans seems doomed to fail. Marc Short, Pence’s chief of staff, said in a statement on Saturday that the vice president welcomed the effort to raise objections “to raise objections and bring forward evidence before the Congress and the American people on January 6th”. On Saturday, Utah Senator Mitt Romney described as “nonsense”, the idea that a congressional audit would restore trust in the election, saying the American people trusted federals judges more than Congress. In a statement, he said: “The egregious ploy to reject electors may enhance the political ambition of some, but dangerously threatens our Democratic Republic … President Trump’s lawyers made their case before scores of courts; in every instance, they failed.” On Saturday, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said she would vote to certify the results, writing: “The oath I took at my swearing-in was to support and defend the constitution of the United States, and that is exactly what I will do.” Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, a state where Trump has sued, said he would “vigorously defend our form of government by opposing this effort to disenfranchise millions of voters in my state and others”. But Cruz and Johnson were joined by Senators James Lankford (Oklahoma), Steve Daines (Montana), John Kennedy (Louisiana), Marsha Blackburn (Tennessee) and Mike Braun (Indiana). Senators-elect Cynthia Lummis (Wyoming), Roger Marshall (Kansas), Bill Hagerty (Tennessee) and Tommy Tuberville (Alabama) also signed on. “The election of 2020,” they said, “like the election of 2016, was hard fought and, in many swing states, narrowly decided. The 2020 election, however, featured unprecedented allegations of voter fraud, violations and lax enforcement of election law, and other voting irregularities.” No hard evidence for such claims has been presented. Federal officials including former attorney general William Barr and Christopher Krebs, a cyber security chief fired by Trump, have said the election was secure. Biden spokesman Michael Gwin said: “This stunt won’t change the fact that President-elect Biden will be sworn in on January 20th, and these baseless claims have already been examined and dismissed by Trump’s own attorney general, dozens of courts, and election officials from both parties.” Regardless, the senators said Congress “should immediately appoint an electoral commission, with full investigatory and fact-finding authority, to conduct an emergency 10-day audit of the election returns in the disputed states. Once completed, individual states would evaluate the commission’s findings and could convene a special legislative session to certify a change in their vote, if needed.” The senators made reference to the contested election of 1876, which ended in the appointment of such a commission. “We should follow that precedent,” they said. Most well-informed observers would suggest otherwise, given that process put an end to post-civil war Reconstruction and led to the institution of racist Jim Crow laws across the formerly slave-owning south. In August, the Pulitzer-winning historian Eric Foner told the Guardian: “The election of 1876 would not have been disputed at all if there hadn’t been massive violence in the south to prevent black people from voting and voter suppression like we have today. Now, voter suppression is mostly legal.” Presciently, given baseless claims that voting under a pandemic was abused by Democrats, he added: “Today, I can certainly see the Trump people challenging these mail-in ballots: ‘They’re all fraudulent, they shouldn’t be counted.’ Challenging people’s voting.” Cruz, like Hawley, is prominent among Republicans expected to run for president in 2024, and thus eager to appeal to supporters loyal to Trump. On Saturday, Christine Pelosi, daughter of House speaker Nancy Pelosi and a member of the Democratic National Committee, referred to the bitter 2016 primary when she tweeted: “Ted Cruz is defending Trump’s assaults on democracy with more energy than he defended his own family against Trump’s assaults on his wife and father.” The Democratic strategist Max Burns wrote: “The exact same Senate GOP that refused to allow a single witness during President Trump’s impeachment trial now wants to … call a bunch of witnesses to ‘investigate’ Joe Biden’s 2020 victory.” In Congress, the Connecticut senator Richard Blumenthal branded the statement “pathetic”, “un-American” and “an attack on our democracy”. Amy Klobuchar, from Minnesota, said Biden “will be inaugurated on 20 January, and no publicity stunt will change that”. Trump claimed “plenty more” senators would back his ploy. But there was some criticism from the right. Joe Walsh, a former congressman who ran against Trump in 2020, wrote: “They cite ZERO evidence of voter fraud … Donald Trump’s single greatest legacy is the destruction of truth.” Walsh added: “These Republicans know this is bad for the country. But they don’t care. They believe it’s good for them politically. They are placing their own interests before the country’s interests.” With unintended irony – or simple bad faith – the senators and senators-elect said their “allegations are not believed just by one individual candidate. Instead, they are widespread. Reuters/Ipsos polling, tragically, shows 39% of Americans believe ‘the election was rigged’. That belief is held by Republicans (67%), Democrats (17%), and Independents (31%). “… Whether or not our elected officials or journalists believe it, that deep distrust of our democratic processes will not magically disappear. It should concern us all. And it poses an ongoing threat to the legitimacy of any subsequent administrations.” Marc Elias, a leading Democratic elections lawyer, said of the senators: “History will remember and curse them for their cowardice and treachery.” # LAND OF THE GREEDY, CORRUPT, POWER HUNGRY COWARDS |
re: TRUMPs' Crumbling Empire-$300+Mil Debts & Missing Melania
The Demon-crats ain't doing nothing but stirring an already boiling pot by trying to impeach Trump. They'd best leave well enough alone......or they haven't seen nothing yet.
It's definitely a sad time in our Country. |
Re: TRUMPs' Crumbling Empire-Pocketed Mils of Foreign Govts US$ to Pay His $400 Mil D
Revelations TRUMP Pocketed Millions of Dollars in Foreign Emoluments
TRUMP Received Millions from Foreign Governments, Hid Debts & Losses BBC 14 AUG 2023 https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/...d/AA1feEet.img Democratic lawmakers have been targeting former President Donald Trump‘s business activities during his tenure in the top office. What Happened: Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), during an interview on ABC revealed plans for a report on the millions of dollars from foreign governments that went into Trump’s businesses, including hotels and golf courses, during his presidency. “We’re going to release a report about all of the foreign government emoluments — millions of dollars — we can document that Donald Trump pocketed at the hotels, at the golf courses [and] business deals when he was president and that his family got,” Raskin said. “During the Trump administration, we saw the development of a completely new public philosophy, which is that government is not an instrument of the common good in the public interest,” he added. Why It Matters: Although the focus of numerous news stories during the Trump administration, the former president’s business interactions with foreign nations had no legal repercussions. In 2021, the Supreme Court dismissed lawsuits that alleged the president had accepted unlawful payments, deeming them irrelevant due to his departure from office. However, Raskin criticized Republicans, including Chairman of the House Oversight Committee James Comer, for displaying a double standard by investigating the Bidens while overlooking inquiries into Trump and his family. “We have said, let the justice system run its course. They’re not saying that about Donald Trump,” Raskin said. Meanwhile, this came after Comer had accused Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, of ethical breaches over a Saudi investment deal. “I’ve been vocal that I think that what Kushner did crossed the line of ethics,” Comer said. |
re: TRUMP Trial to Be Televised & His 'Proud Boys' To Be Sentenced to LONG Jail Terms
TRUMP Inflated His Net Worth by as Much as $2.2BN in 2014
TRUMPs' Family Inflated His Net Worth by BILLIONS, Says New York State Lawsuit BBC 31 AUG 2023 https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/...48&s=215&d=215 Lawyers for Letitia James, the New York attorney general, claim the ex-president then used that blown up value for business deals... Former President Donald Trump routinely overstated his net worth -- sometimes by more than $2 billion -- during years when the actual values of his real estate holdings were far less than he claimed, according to a court filing Wednesday by the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James. The attorney general's office included the numbers in a motion for summary judgement that asks the court to resolve a civil fraud claim before the AG's $250 million civil suit against Trump goes to trial. The former president, meanwhile, called his real estate portfolio "the Mona Lisa of properties" during an April deposition in the suit, according to a transcript of the deposition that was made public Wednesday. "We have properties that make money, but you can sell for many, many times because of the quality of the property, like a Turnberry in Scotland," Trump said, according to the transcript. "I could sell that. That's like selling a painting. A painting on a wall that sells for $250 million and doesn't make income. It just sits on a wall, but it sells for numbers." Unlike his first deposition with James, during which Trump invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination hundreds of times, the former president in the April deposition answered questions for hours about his real estate holdings, which he suggested are worth far more than what appeared on property valuations. The trial is scheduled to begin in October. |
re: TRUMP, Giuliani, & 6 Others Plead NOT Guilty in Georgia Election FRAUD
TRUMP Trial to Be Televised....as His 'Proud Boys' Will Be Sentenced to Longest Jail Terms Yet Over Capitol Riots
Proud Boys: From Storming The Capitol For TRUMP to Protesting Drag Shows... Two more members of the far-right Proud Boys will be sentenced later for their role in the US Capitol riot, on 6 January 2021. BBC 1 SEP 2023 https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cp...1233110085.jpg Leader Joe Biggs was convicted of seditious conspiracy and other charges. US Army veteran Joe Biggs, 38 - was jailed for 17 years on Thursday. Prosecutors said he was an instigator of the storming of Congress, in support of Donald Trump after his election defeat. Zachary Rehl was sentenced to 15 years for spraying a chemical irritant at officers. Several members of the far-right Proud Boys are facing long prison sentences for their role in the attack on the Capitol on 6 January 2021. But that has not distracted the group from a new target - drag shows. They started as a drinking club seven years ago, but quickly immersed themselves in street violence and culture wars. After shooting to mainstream attention during the 2020 presidential campaign, they made up one of the main organised groups at the Capitol riot. Joseph Biggs, an Iraq war veteran who was a leading figure at the attack on Congress, has been sentenced to 17 years in prison. Zachary Rehl, former president of the Philadelphia Proud Boys, received 15 years. Three more members will be sentenced in the days ahead. As they face long spells behind bars, the group has dispersed and, at the same time, picked up a new focus - anti-transgender activism. Drag story protests - and fighting Fights broke out outside a drag story hour event in New York City in late March, and according to reports, men wearing Proud Boys gear were in the middle of the melee. It was not an isolated incident. In recent months, supporters of the far-right group have been at the forefront of similar actions across the country. Their involvement may seem, on the surface, like a departure from the group's libertarian roots. When the BBC went to interview Proud Boys in Portland, Oregon in 2019, we met a gay member of the club, and a transgender supporter. But their live-and-let-live ideals have always been in conflict with the group's description of themselves as "Western chauvinists" who believe in traditional gender roles. "Venerate the housewife" was one of their early precepts, and the organisation limits membership to "biological males". This focus on hyper-masculinity has made them a perfect fit for the new wave of anti-transgender activism on the right and far-right. How did the Proud Boys begin? The group was founded in 2016 by Gavin McInnes, a British-Canadian podcaster who previously co-founded Vice Magazine. Members of the group have always been keen to portray themselves as ordinary guys who were mostly interested in beer - "a drinking club with a political problem" is how they sometimes put it. In 2019, our crew was invited to a bar and later visited a boozy impromptu barbecue. But violence was always at the heart of their activities, and the group was better known for its battles with anti-fascist - also known as antifa - protesters. These street battles became a regular feature of life in Portland and other major cities before 2020. Despite some of their internal contradictions, what united them above all was intense dislike of left-wing politics and a special love for Donald Trump. Over the years, the Proud Boys went through a series of leadership changes, from Mr McInnes to an "elders chapter" and Tarrio, who took over in 2018. But the group's national structure frayed after the events of 6 January 2021 when the Proud Boys, like other organised groups who took part in the riots, started to face criminal charges and social media bans. After a short period of confusion, inactivity and a leadership breakdown, today the group shows no sign of slowing down. Individual Proud Boys chapters continue to operate, says Megan Squire, deputy director of data analytics at the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project. In some cases, they've added members, gaining visibility as they join anti-transgender protests, which over the past few years have become a flashpoint in America's culture wars. Ms Squire notes that the Proud Boys were "early adopters" of anti-trans sentiment starting around 2020. According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), which tracks far-right movements in the US, the number of anti-LGBT incidents - demonstrations, political violence, and offline propaganda activity - is growing. In 2022, far-right groups including the Proud Boys were involved in over 200 incidents, a three-fold increase from 2021, ACLED data shows. In a blog post last year, the Southern Poverty Law Center noted that Proud Boys have turned their attention to "issues most likely to drive right-wing outrage and, in turn, to help the group forge new coalitions". "We're seeing this on every wavelength, every flavour of hate," says Ms Squire, who's been researching Proud Boys activity across the country. "They're just all glomming onto anti-trans sentiment." And as they did during the Capitol riots, the Proud Boys have shown up at these anti-drag events ready to be the "far-right muscle," says Chuck Tanner, research director of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights. "They're not the movement thinkers out in front, they chase a lot of issues," he says. What next for the group? Before Thursday's verdict, Mr McInnes, the Proud Boys founder, told the BBC that the five defendants "did something wrong" by entering the Capitol, but said he believes their actions amounted to relatively minor offences. He said that if they are given long prison sentences they will become "martyrs for the cause", and insisted the group will continue despite its current lack of leadership. "It's just set in stone and you can't kill it. There's no top, there's no head," he said. Expert observers largely agree. Samantha Kutner, a researcher who's written about the group and is co-founder of Glitterpill LLC, an anti-extremism consultancy group, says that given the increasing politicisation after the Capitol riots, the convictions may give the Proud Boys a boost. "It will give them more momentum," she says. "Every time they lose it furthers their martyrdom and persecution complex." In an audio interview on Twitter which Tarrio joined via phone from his jail cell just after arguments ended in the court case, the former Proud Boys leader accused authorities of "weaponising" the justice system and likened the current US government to the regime in Nazi Germany. "This is not the end of the Proud Boys," Ms Kutner says. "Their threat now is as a larger and more decentralised network." Ms Squire of the Southern Poverty Law Center agrees, and says the Proud Boys will still survive, even without their leader. "The trial is a morale hit, but a small one," she says. "They're going to keep doing what they're doing. I don't see them going away any time soon." Expert: Proud Boys are Fascist NOT Patriotic TRUMP meanwhile, will appear live on TV from a Georgia courtroom when he fights charges that he conspired with 18 others to overturn the state’s election result, after a judge ruled it should be livestreamed. The trial could happen next year, as the former president seeks re-election |
re: Mark Meadows John Eastman Jeffrey Clark & All Others Plead Not Guilty in Georgia
TRUMP Pleads NOT Guilty in Georgia Election FRAUD Case
TRUMP is Waiving The Right to Appear in Court Next Week. TRUMP Co-Defendant Rudy Giuliani Pleads NOT Guilty in Georgia Case TRUMPS' Personal Lawyer Rudy Giuliani And Six Other Co-Conspirators Have Pleaded NOT Guilty to State Charges in Georgia. BBC 2 SEP 2023 https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/549/cp...11_mugshot.jpg Trump is among 19 people charged with a conspiracy to overturn the US state's 2020 vote results. He turned himself in at Fulton County Jail in Atlanta last week, where he had his mugshot taken. In total, Trump faces 13 felony counts - including racketeering - for allegedly pressuring Georgia officials to reverse the results of the 2020 presidential election in that state. In a court document filed on Thursday, Trump said he "fully understands" the nature of the allegations and his right to appear in court. "Understanding my rights, I do hereby freely and voluntarily waive my right to be present at my arraignment on the indictment and my right to have it read to me in open court," the signed document says. Trump, the current frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, has appeared at each of his three previous arraignments. He was required to do so for the cases he is facing in New York and Florida, and opted not to request a virtual appearance for a separate case in Washington DC. In all three cases, there was tight security as Trump supporters and counter-protesters gathered near the courthouses. Trump surrendered and was arraigned simultaneously in his federal court cases, which led to his high-profile courtroom appearances. However, in Georgia state court, a defendants' surrender and arraignment usually happen separately. Donald Trump: "I just want to find 11,780 votes" Brian Tevis, an Atlanta attorney who represents one of Mr Trump's co-accused, Rudy Giuliani, told CBS, the BBC's US partner, that "99% of the time" defendants who are given the option choose to waive their arraignment. Clark Cunningham, a law professor at Georgia State University, said that decision is "usually non-controversial". "Trump fully knows the charges against him," he said. "That's the main purpose of the arraignment, to read the charges to the accused, and [to enter] the person's plea. So he doesn't need to be there, he knows what they are." Earlier this week, three other co-defendants in the case entered not guilty pleas, including former Trump attorneys Ray Stallings Smith and Sidney Powell, as well as former celebrity publicist Trevian Kutti. Trump was originally due to be arraigned on 6 September, followed by the other defendants in 15-minute intervals. All 19 defendants in the case - including Trump - are charged with violating Georgia's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act, commonly known as the Rico act. Across the US and at the federal level, Rico laws are used to help prosecutors connect underlings who broke the law with those who gave orders or organised the crime. Fulton County's District Attorney, Fani Willis, a Democrat, has increasingly come under fire from some Republicans and Trump allies for her decision to indict Mr Trump in the case. Earlier in August, State Senator Colton Moore sent a letter to Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, a fellow Republican, calling for a special session to impeach Ms Willis. At a Thursday news conference, Mr Kemp said he had yet to see evidence that such a move would be justified. "As long as I am governor, we're going to follow the law and the Constitution, regardless of who it helps or harms politically," the governor said. All court proceedings against Trump and the 18 co-defendants in Georgia will be televised and broadcast on YouTube, a Fulton County judge ruled on Thursday. Rudy Giuliani https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cp...85068_rudy.jpg Giuliani is charged with 13 crimes related to efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in the state. He joins Trump and several other co-defendants in entering not guilty pleas, waiving their right to appear in person for a hearing next week. All 19 have been allowed to go free pending trial after paying a bail bond. On Thursday, the judge overseeing Mr Trump's case announced that the trial will be streamed on YouTube. A date for the trial has not yet been set, but it could be next year, in the middle of the former president's run for re-election. The next court date is an arraignment on Wednesday, a short hearing at which the plea is officially entered in court. Trump and the other alleged co-conspirators briefly travelled to Atlanta last week to turn themselves in at Fulton County Jail and have their mugshots taken. All 19 defendants in the case - including Donald Trump - are charged with violating Georgia's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act, commonly known as the Rico act. Across the US and at the federal level, Rico laws are used to help prosecutors connect underlings who broke the law with those who gave orders or organised the crime. They have denied any wrongdoing. After surrendering to authorities in Georgia last week, Mr Giuliani, who was the mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001, stood outside the jail and called the prosecution "a travesty". "I am very, very honoured to be involved in this case, because this case is a fight for our way of life," he said. Other suspects who have entered not guilty pleas include Ken Chesebro; the alleged architect of the fake electors scheme who has petitioned the court for a speedy trial; and lawyers Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis. |
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