alt fact 5 Earth2

SEE SIX EARTH TWO (2 WORDS)

BAK 6 24

{621}:

neg 6 22 basic enabler of civil war 2

merri ok

see alt fact 4

see fascism authoritarian doge coup

SEE ECHO ESCALATOR CRM 4

see social media amplify algorithm

SEE FAIL 3 COVID DELTA

really = conspiracy?

see qANON

TRUMPISTA

SEE FOX JRNL FAIL CRM 4 SEE FOX BIZ

SEE DENIAL

BIG LIE = CONSPIRACY 1 26 GEORGIA FBI RAID ED MARTIN KRAKEN

see gaslight lie repeat // --> fascism

SEE AGNOTOLOGY

STARTED AS OMG/BIZZAROWORLD?

SEE DISINFO2 false flag

see riot loot burn

see hype fear anger --> GRIFT EXTRACTION SOC MEDIA CRM NO FILTER

see violent crime racist border BS gang tren de a. ms 13

see rubber glue projection

see conspiracy

see polariz demonization they are coming for kids gas stove

SEE STORY 1 AM EXCEPT

see algo soc med

SEE GUBMINT THEY ARE COMING FOROVERREACH IRS BS

see omg bizzaroworld

see CNN on fact check BS by gop (but AN bias?)

AHA NOTE PRESS SUPPRESS LIBERAL MEDIA BIAS bs ESSENTIal for earth2

earth2 bak

---

recall Jan 6 trump coup impossible w/o BS alt facts/ conspiracy

---

aha: alt fact echo chamber/ tribal creates pre-conditions for

stunning bad faith alt fact earth2

see eg below

---

AHA DOH THIS = // EARTH 2

MSNBC 8 26 NOT TRYING TO PROVE BIG LIE IN CT, JUST GIN UP A GOOD ENOUGH STORY TO DECLARE EMERGENCY

MULLIN DHS 200k --> 185

-=-=

Gingrich has been wrong before. In 2012, after failing in his own bid for the Republican presidential nomination, he predicted that Mitt Romney would crush Barack Obama and that Republicans would take control of the Senate. He was wrong on both counts. Back in 1998, he predicted that Republicans would pick up six to 30 seats, but they ended up losing five and he was ousted as Speaker.

Gingrich helped lead the modern Republican Party far to the right in the 1990s. For the past 20 years, he has been promoting what Right Wing Watch in 2016 called “the Christian Right’s revisionist history, beliefs about a divinely inspired American exceptionalism, anti-Obama conspiracy theories and diatribes about the supposed war on Christianity in the U.S.” That’s why some Christian nationalists energetically encouraged Trump to pick Gingrich as his running mate in 2016.

Trump appointed Gingrich’s former mistress and third wife, Callista Gingrich, U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See during his first term; she currently serves as U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

-=-=

9 26 TUBERVILLE FURRY PILOTS

===

Rep. Scott Perry Blames The Media For Not Explaining That Iran Is 'The Actual Aggressor' In The War

RWW 9 26

-=-=

RWW

Michele Bachmann Says The Biggest Problem In Gaza Today Is Obesity From Too Much Food

9 26

-=-=

-=-=-=

MMA TRUMP MANTRA ECON NEVER BETTER EVER; FOX BRIEFLY HONEST ON JOB #?

Fox argues the Trump economy is “booming” as many indicators show otherwise

Trump has overseen multiple months of job losses, slower economic growth, and higher inflation while also kicking millions of Americans off their health insurance and food assistance

Written by Zachary Pleat

Published 08/11/26

Many on Fox News and Fox Business are arguing that the economy under President Donald Trump is “booming” and “going gangbusters,” even though many months of the Trump administration have included job losses, inflation remains elevated, wages are stagnant, and economic growth remains below the second half of the Biden administration. Fox is also pushing for Republicans to run on the economy during the upcoming midterm elections, even though many policies supported by Trump and other Republicans are making food, healthcare, prescription drugs, and other necessities more expensive or harder to access.

Fox argues that the Trump economy is strong, urges Republicans to message on “how good this economy is”

• • Fox anchor Sandra Smith: “You have to put into context of this economy, where some of the statistics, the numbers, and gosh, the stock market today hitting record high, Dow, S&P. Oil prices are plunging, I mean we’re back to $74. There's reason to think things are working. The jobs market remains strong, wages are up.” Smith added: “But yet, these polling continues to show that people aren’t really feeling it.” [Fox News, America Reports, 8/4/26]

• • Fox anchor John Roberts: “If you’re talking the economy, it’s going gangbusters today.” Fox White House correspondent Peter Doocy agreed, “It is.” [Fox News, America Reports, 8/4/26]

• • Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo: “Throughout all these campaigns, one thing that Democrats keep missing is the strength of this economy.” Guest Adam Johnson agreed, saying, “Republicans need to be more proactive about talking, about demonstrating and citing data on how good this economy is.” To make her point, Bartiromo began talking about “corporate numbers after corporate numbers” being “stronger than expected.” [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria, 8/5/26]

• • Fox Business host and former Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow: “We’re in a booming economy, all cylinders … are roaring.” [Fox Business, Kudlow, 8/5/26]
  • Fox Business anchor Cheryl Casone: In his Nevada speech, Trump “focused on … healthcare” and “prescription drug prices, the administration going to lower those things.” During the segment, Bartiromo also highlighted Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent promising 3% or higher economic growth in the second half of the year and saying “we can start coming back toward the Fed’s target level” of 2% inflation. [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria, 8/6/26]

• • A Fox Business panel celebrated the July jobs report showing a loss of 23,000 jobs and a downward revision of 103,000 fewer jobs in previous months as “great news.” Later in the show, guest and former Trump economic adviser Stephen Moore also said: “I would view this as not a bad report.” [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria, 8/7/26, 8/7/26]

• • Casone: Republicans “have a story” about “all the things that are going so well for the U.S. economy” under Trump’s policies, and Republicans should “hammer home and get that message out there that these policies … is what is helping them and helping their pocketbooks.” She added: “It’s affordability.” [Fox Business, The Bottom Line, 8/7/26]

• • Fox & Friends Weekend co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy: “The economy and the fundamentals of it were very strong just before this war. You wrap up this war, you get this economy going on full cylinder in the next couple months … you will win the midterms.” In fact, 156,000 jobs were lost in February prior to Trump launching his war on Iran at the end of that month. [Fox News, Fox & Friends Weekend, 8/8/26; Bureau of Labor Statistics, 5/8/26]

• • After Fox & Friends Weekend co-host Griff Jenkins mentioned Trump “constantly talking about record markets” and “rising wages,” yet Democrats talk about “how horrible the economy is,” Bartiromo replied: “That’s just propaganda. I mean, look — things are going well and I think we all feel it, right, Griff?” Bartiromo continued: “I mean, look at where we are right now — you’ve got job creation, you’ve got economic growth.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends Weekend, 8/9/26]

Yet multiple economic indicators during the second Trump administration have been poor

• • Inflation, which was on track to drop to 2% at the beginning of Trump’s second term, has instead re-accelerated and remains elevated following Trump’s imposition of universal tariffs in April 2025, and his war against Iran at the end of February 2026. [Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, accessed 8/7/26]

...

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AN 5 26

Nobel laureate Paul Krugman calls right-wing politics “deadly” — and predicts that “MAGA Will Kill Many Americans,” by the thousands, driven by greed and willful ignorance.

Krugman goes one step further, arguing outright that this is not by accident:

“Does MAGA want to see thousands of Americans die prematurely from smoking and refusal to get vaccinated? Yes,” he writes.

He argues that the right’s decades-long opposition to health care is driven by greed, especially from “wealthy donors unwilling to pay taxes to help others in need.”

Krugman points to Tuesday’s decision by Trump’s FDA to allow blueberry and mango-flavored vapes, which critics warn will increase use among the young.

Why?

“Trump is reportedly hoping that support for vaping will win back support from young men,” Krugman writes — a constituency the president has been losing during his second term in office.

There’s also the recent decision, again by Trump’s FDA, to block the release of studies finding the COVID-19 and shingles vaccines safe, with side effects rare.

“Beyond this,” he continues, “right-wing politics in America often goes hand in hand with hostility to science in general and medical science in particular. The deadly linkage between reactionary politics and rejection of science was obvious during the Covid pandemic.”

Krugman also implicates greed in the anti-vaccine movement, saying that “quack medicine is big business.”

“Right-wing radio and social media have long relied on peddlers of snake oil for a large part of their revenue. So much of the attack on medical science can be seen as financially motivated,” he writes.

Ideological willful ignorance plays a part as well — driven by the alliance between oligarchs and white Christian nationalism, the latter of which is “deeply hostile to Enlightenment values, modern science very much included.”

To prove his point, Krugman points to the widely-reported resurgence of measles, that was seen as eliminated from the United States decades ago, thanks to vaccines. Now, many parents are choosing to forego vaccinating their children against this highly contagious and potentially deadly disease.

He adds to that the refusal of many red states to expand Medicaid, a program largely paid for by the federal government under the Affordable Care Act.

The data bear him out. Life expectancy in “Trump-leaning” states trails blue states significantly.

There’s “a strong, clear negative correlation between Trump-leaning orientation and low life expectancy at the state level,” Krugman writes. “Deep red states like Alabama and West Virginia have life expectancy comparable to, say, Kazakhstan.”

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guk 4 26

The US Department of Justice has requested that a federal appeals judge overturn convictions for members of far-right groups Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, who were previously found guilty of seditious conspiracy in connection with the violent siege of the US capitol in 2021.

Jeanine Pirro, the Donald Trump-appointed US attorney for the District of Columbia, signed separate motions on Tuesday to vacate convictions for a slew of individuals, including the Proud Boys’ leaders Ethan Nordean and Joseph Biggs as well as Stewart Rhodes, a former attorney who founded the Oath Keepers’ militia.

The filings represent the latest move the Trump administration has made to absolve the January 6 rioters, a group composed largely of the president’s supporters who stormed the US Capitol in a desperate attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory over Trump.

[

‘We feel this incredible tension at all times’: what happened to small-town USA when extremists moved in

Read more](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/apr/11/strange-people-on-the-hill-michael-edison-hayden)

Several members of the two far-right groups were later sentenced to prison for their attempted roles to obstruct a peaceful transfer of power. The lengthiest prison term was given to Enrique Tarrio, the former chair of the Proud Boys, who faced 22 years behind bars.

However, Tarrio was released from prison in January 2025, when Trump, on the first day of his second term, issued sweeping pardons and commutations to roughly 1,600 people who had been charged related to the Capitol mob attack. Several Proud Boys and Oath Keepers’ leaders were granted clemency as part of that action.

Tuesday’s filing would erase the convictions from their records.

The move to abandon the convictions represented a stunning reversal from the Biden administration, which hailed the guilty verdicts as a crucial victory in its bid to hold accountable those responsible for what prosecutors described as an attack on the heart of US democracy. The Trump administration has sought to rewrite the history of that attack, portraying the rioters as patriots and peaceful protesters, being used as pawns by his political rivals, and repeating baseless claims of widespread election fraud.

“In truth, it was the Democrats who staged the real insurrection by certifying a fraud-ridden election, ignoring widespread irregularities, and weaponizing federal agencies to hunt down dissenters,” reads a paragraph from the White House’s web page on January 6.

More than 100 law enforcement officers were injured during the attack, including one who suffered a heart attack after being tased by a stun gun and one who was stabbed with a metal fence stake, according to a 2021 bipartisan Senate report examining the January 6 security response. Four officers who responded to the attack later died by suicide.

*The Associated Press contributed reporting

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UP FOR AG? OMG AT HEARTLAND CONF 4 26 2024?

MOJO GUK

Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), gave the keynote speech at a conference on Wednesday morning, one which was hosted by a prominent climate-denying think tank that previously compared those concerned about the climate crisis to the Unabomber on billboard posters in 2012.

“No longer are we going to rely on bad, flawed assumptions instead of accurate, present-day facts, without apology or regret,” Zeldin said at the Heartland Institute’s conference on climate change in Washington, DC, referring to well-established climate science.

Zeldin has been widely criticized by climate experts. Last month, more than 160 environmental and public health organizations called for him to resign or be fired, saying no EPA administrator in history “has so brazenly betrayed the agency’s core mission.”

In his speech, Zeldin poked fun at the media for calling him “controversial” for not “following blind obedience to whatever the dire, doom and gloom position of the day is from John Kerry or Al Gore or AOC”—referring to the congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “It’s controversial that we won’t sign up for the script that the world is imminently about to end,” he said.

He derided previous administrations’ heeding of climate scientists’ warnings about the dangers of greenhouse gas emissions, and for ignoring “what’s good and necessary about carbon dioxide for the life of the planet.”

“What happened for years and decades in this country is that the elite, the ruling class, the people who would run the agencies, the people who have decided that they are in charge of the science, the politicians, the biggest grifters: there would be a cabal that would decide exactly which model is the chosen model, which methodology is the higher methodology,” he said. “And if all of you in this room, if any of you in this room dare to challenge any of that, well shame on you.”

“Carbon dioxide, which is required for life on Earth…is not a pollutant and never was.”

Ahead of Zeldin’s Wednesday-morning speech at the Heartland conference, Environmental Defense Fund Action put up posters around Hotel Washington critiquing the EPA administrator’s participation and saying climate denial does not improve Americans’ lives. “Lee Zeldin is executing on the playbook of denial written by the Heartland Institute,” Joanna Slaney, a vice-president of the Environmental Defense Fund, said.

The Heartland Institute has accepted money from big oil companies including Shell and ExxonMobil, and from the Mercers, a family of Republican mega-donors. The thinktank was a contributor to Project 2025, the far-right policy blueprint for Trump’s second administration.

The Heartland Institute rejects the scientific consensus that the climate crisis is real, human-caused and urgent. Since the early 2000s, it has been a leading promoter of climate doubt, even branding climate science as “fake news.”

Experts agree that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are warming the planet, resulting in dangerous increases in temperatures and in the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events. Scientists have long warned that the world must quickly phase out fossil fuels in order to preserve a livable climate.

Donald Trump has repeatedly dismissed the climate crisis as a “hoax” and dismissed environmental policies as a “scam.” And under Zeldin, the EPA has exempted polluting facilities from regulations, shuttered climate and environmental research offices, and shrunk its workforce. It has also rolled back dozens of environmental and climate protections.

“What we are doing in the last 14 months is no surprise,” Zeldin said in his speech. “It is what I pledged during my confirmation hearing, and it is what the American public voted for when they put Donald J Trump back in office. And thank God they did.”

:{:{The EPA administrator also spoke about his most controversial environmental rollback: the shredding of the legal finding underpinning virtually all US climate regulations, known as the “endangerment finding.” Scientists and other experts widely condemned the repeal, but the Heartland Institute has celebrated it.}:

“Carbon dioxide, which is required for life on Earth and happens to result from every single bit of human and animal activity on the planet, is not a pollutant and never was,” Anthony Watts, a senior fellow at the thinktank, said in a February statement praising the repeal.

References to the rollback were met with cheers at the conference in Washington on Wednesday morning, and Zeldin expressed “admiration” for the Heartland Institute’s advocacy against the endangerment finding in his speech.

Craig Rucker, the president of CFACT—a right-wing group which complains about“climate exaggeration,” introduced Zeldin at the conference as a “friend of sound science [and] climate realism, a real rock star.”

Another panel at Wednesday’s conference convened the authors of a contentious Department of Energy report that was written to back up the repeal of the endangerment finding. The publication was derided by climate scientists as making a “mockery of science,” and was not used in the justification for the final repeal of the finding. “While the world warned, a lot of things improved and got better, and continues to do so,” said Ross McKitrick, an author of the report, at the conference.

Another report author, Judith Curry—a climatologist who rails against climate “alarmism”—criticized the “monolithic consensus” on climate science that is “presented to the world.” Though the US government disbanded the group which produced the controversial report on the endangerment finding, Curry said the authors were currently reviewing comments on the report and preparing a new version to release this year.

Earlier on Wednesday morning, the Heartland Institute’s president, James Taylor, kicked off the conference with a rousing speech in which he invoked the debunked climate myth that increased carbon emissions are good for plants: “Restoring CO2 and restoring warmth to our world is…a restoration to more ideal conditions,” he said.

“The truth is clear: there is no climate crisis,” said Taylor. “The science is very clear.”

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OMFG

AN 1 26

When Donald Trump won the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, two of the four criminal prosecutions he was facing at the time stemmed from his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results: a federal indictment prosecuted by then-special counsel Jack Smith, and a Georgia indictment prosecuted by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. Both of those election interference cases were doomed when Trump defeated Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in 2024's general election, and the president continues to claim, without evidence, that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

One of Trump's most aggressive supporters after he lost Georgia to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 was attorney Sidney Powell, who promoted a range of conspiracy theories on the election results in Georgia. And now, Powell is resurfacing after an FBI search in that state.

On Wednesday, January 28, FBI agents searched a Georgia election center, looking for records on the 2020 election. And the following day on X, formerly Twitter, Ed Martin (a Trump appointee to the U.S. Department of Justice) posted a photo of him with Powell — writing, "Good morning, America. How are ya?"

The Bulwark's Will Sommer, in response to Martin's tweet, posted, "After FBI raid on GA election office for 2020 ballots, top DOJ official posts a picture with leading election conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell."

Attorney David Colapinto, responding to the Martin/Powell photo, tweeted, "Are these two in charge of recounting the ballots?"

Powell was among Trump's many co-defendants in Willis' election interference case. In October 2023, she pleaded guilty to six misdemeanor charges and avoided jail time but was sentenced to six months of probation.

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AN 1 26

President Donald Trump was up early Thursday morning for a Truth Social posting spree that focused largely on his 2020 election loss — but included a dash of claims about 2016's "Russiagate."

The rant included a nearly decade-long conspiracy that Trump was spied on by former President Barack Obama. Trump reposted Fox News commentary from far-right host Jesse Watters who claimed Obama personally ordered a CIA spying operation on Trump.

"ARREST OBAMA NOW," one post read.

According to the "Truths," the Obama administration manufactured evidence to undermine Trump's election in 2016, though none of the information about the Trump campaign's ties to Russia was revealed publicly until after the election. Other reports about the Russian hack of Hillary Clinton's campaign, Russian bots and content farms were reported throughout 2016, a Washington Post timeline shows.

Trump on Thursday morning also posted a series of "Truths" showing he's still focused on his 2020 election loss.

Among the posts was a flood of accusations claiming that the election was "crooked."

Trump appeared to post screenshots of random users from X who agree with his sentiment that he actually won the 2020 election.

Another video Trump posted from CNN appears to show a discussion about Trump winning Georgia in 2024, though Trump doesn't explain how that is relevant to his 2020 conspiracy theories about the election.

Trump also shared another conspiracy cited by former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly about the Chinese government funding leftist groups and the Minnesota Immigration Rights Action Committee.

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MMA 1 26

January 24, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Big Weekend Show

JOE CONCHA (CONTRIBUTOR): [Minneapolis Mayor Jacob] Frey and [Minnesota Gov. Tim] Walz are gaslighting with a nuclear blowtorch because obviously this has now happened three times, right, where you have Nicole Good who tried to, I don't know if she intentionally tried to hit that ICE officer, but he was hit in the torso, there was internal bleeding, he had to react. Then we had last week you have not one, not two, three illegal immigrants that went after an ICE officer, including one with snow shovel, which at last check, if you hit someone cleanly with, can be a deadly weapon, thank you.

And now here literally a guy pulls a gun on an ICE officer, he defends himself, and they're saying that, Oh, no, he was only attacked at this point. Jacob Frey just said in that clip that you just played, Joey, that we need Donald Trump to act like a leader. You know what? Back in 2016 when Barack Obama was deporting 3 million people out of this country, you had leaders of Minneapolis, and Minnesota, and all across the country cooperating with ICE to make sure that that happened smoothly, that's acting like a leader, not what Frey is saying at this point, this human broomstick of a Mayor that we have in Minneapolis.

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January 6: One year later, Americans still view the Capitol takeover with dismay | YouGov

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nyt

Trump Still Pushing Conspiracies

False Narrative Posted

A Day of Rage

Presidential Rally Turned Rampage

Pardoned Rioters Rally

White House Posts False Jan. 6 Narrative on Riot’s 5th Anniversary

A new web page on the official White House site blames the Capitol Police and Democrats for the pro-Trump mob riot, absolving the president of responsibility and calling participants “innocent.”

Rioters enter the capitol building in riot gear.

Rioters walking through the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Luke BroadwaterAlan Feuer

By Luke Broadwater and Alan Feuer

Luke Broadwater is a White House reporter who helped cover the Jan. 6 riot. Alan Feuer has reported on the hundreds of criminal cases stemming from the riot.

Jan. 6, 2026

On the fifth anniversary of the pro-Trump mob attack on the Capitol, the Trump administration created a new page on the official White House website that represented the president’s most brazen bid yet to rewrite the history of the Jan. 6 riot with false claims aimed at absolving him of responsibility.

The site blames Capitol Police officers, who defended lawmakers that day, for starting the assault; Democrats, who were the rioters’ main targets, for failing to prevent it; and former Vice President Mike Pence, who rejected falsehoods about the 2020 election, for allowing the results to be certified.

Mr. Trump has long sought to whitewash the violence and vandalism committed on Jan. 6, 2021, and reject responsibility for having instigated it. But the webpage, promoted on government social media accounts, put the official imprimatur of the White House on an astonishingly misleading account of the Capitol attack.

In one section, the webpage mentions several members of the pro-Trump mob who died during or in connection with the assault, identifying them by name. But it excises altogether any reference to the nearly 140 police officers who were injured when they were assaulted that day with weapons that included bear spray, stun guns, hockey sticks, fireworks, broken pieces of furniture and at least one flagpole flying the American flag. Nor does the page mention any of the officers who died in its aftermath. In fact, at one point, the timeline asserts: “Zero law enforcement officers lost their lives.”

Image

Demonstrators and police officers both pull at a guard rail. People in the background are waving Trump and American flags.

The violent rampage that unfolded over nearly five hours on that day caused injuries to roughly 140 police officers and left five people dead.Credit...Kenny Holston for The New York Times

Image

A door with its windows damaged. Rioters are gathered on the other side.

The attackers used a wide variety of weapons: bear spray, stun guns, hockey sticks, fireworks, broken pieces of furniture and even a flagpole holding a U.S. flag.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times

The webpage includes a timeline of events on Jan. 6 that accuses the Capitol Police, who were attacked by the rioters for hours, of instigating the violence, and blames Mr. Pence for refusing to subvert the will of the voters to keep Mr. Trump in power.

“Vice President Mike Pence, who had the opportunity to return disputed electoral slates to state legislatures for review and decertification under the United States Constitution, chooses not to exercise that power in an act of cowardice and sabotage,” the webpage states.

“Stolen Election Certified,” another section says.

In a breathtaking reversal of reality, the site accuses Democrats of creating a “gaslighting narrative” about Jan. 6 in their efforts to certify “a fraud-ridden election” and to “persecute innocent Americans,” though those who were prosecuted for storming the Capitol were caught on video taken either by surveillance cameras or by other participants.

Instead, it is the White House account that twists the facts of the riot.

The timeline asserts, for example, that Mr. Trump invited his followers to come to Washington on Jan. 6 for “a peaceful and historic protest” over the 2020 election. It fails to mention that he also tweeted, “Be there, will be wild!” — a presidential imperative that, within hours of its posting, prompted scores of his supporters to issue calls for violence, even to post online images of the weapons, including assault rifles, that they said they planned to bring to the rally.

Image

President Donald J. Trump speaking to a crowd. The White House is behind him.

President Trump spoke at a rally in the Ellipse on the morning of the riot. Credit...Pete Marovich for The New York Times

Image

A man with his face masked with a U.S. flag and holding a pole with a flag, stands by the Capitol as others clamber up one of its walls.

The riot began after those at the rally streamed from the Ellipse to the Capitol. The violent attack lasted for hours. Credit...Jason Andrew for The New York Times

The White House’s timeline also fails to take note of how far-right extremist groups, like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers militia, reacted to Mr. Trump’s summons: quickly setting up encrypted communications channels, acquiring protective gear and, in one instance, preparing heavily armed “quick reaction forces” to be staged outside Washington. Many later took the lead in attacking officers and breaching police security lines.

A separate section of the timeline, beginning at 1:10 p.m., asserts that the Capitol Police “aggressively” fired tear gas and other crowd control munitions at the crowd, suggesting falsely that the authorities had acted without cause and saying they “turned a peaceful demonstration into chaos.” But that account leaves out entirely what happened in the minutes leading up to the police response.

Shortly before 1 p.m. that day, a small group of pro-Trump protesters confronted and attacked police officers at metal barricades set up at an area outside the Capitol known as the Peace Circle. Once the barricades fell, thousands of protesters trampled over them and were able to gain access to a plaza where they massed, greatly outnumbering the police officers defending the building.

The webpage also contains blatant falsehoods about the Justice Department’s efforts to hold the rioters accountable. In a section the timeline titled, “Mass Arrests of Patriotic Protesters,” it says that the “Biden DOJ” began “a coordinated nationwide dragnet” leading to the arrest of more than 1,500 rioters.

In fact, the arrests began well before Mr. Trump left office on Jan. 20, 2021, and the investigation was carried out for weeks by Justice Department leaders that he had put in place.

Moreover, the webpage claims that hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants were held as “political prisoners for years” and were given “lengthy sentences.” In reality, far fewer rioters were held in pretrial detention than in cases brought against drug or immigration violation defendants, and the median sentence for the rioters was about 60 days in prison.

Mr. Trump, in one of the first official acts of his second term, issued a sweeping grant of clemency to all of the nearly 1,600 people charged.

Luke Broadwater covers the White House for The Times.

Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump.

See more on: Donald Trump, United States Capitol Police

Share full article

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NYT columnist David Brooks didn't mean any of it

New York Times columnist David Brooks sits next to Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google, in this image from the U.S. Justice Department’s file of late financier Jeffrey Epstein, released by the House Oversight Committee Democrats in Washington, D.C., U.S., on December 18, 2025. House Oversight Committee Democrats/Handout

:{John Stoehr December 24, 2025

David Brooks, the conservative columnist who is beloved by liberals, wrote last month that the Democrats make too much of the Epstein story. He said they’re acting as conspiratorially as the Republicans.

Brooks said he was “especially startled” to see leading progressives characterizing all elites as part of “the Epstein class.” If he were a Democrat, he said, he’d be focused on “the truth”: “the elites didn’t betray you, but they did ignore you. They didn’t mean to harm you.”

Brooks went on to say: “If I were a Democratic politician … I’d add that America can’t get itself back on track if the culture is awash in distrust, cynicism, catastrophizing lies and conspiracymongering. No governing majority will ever form if we’re locked in a permanent class war.”

Sounds noble, but he didn’t mean any of it.

Last week, it was discovered that David Brooks had palled around with Jeffrey Epstein. Pictures of him were part of a trove released by the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee. It was deduced that they were taken at a 2011 “billionaires dinner.” A 2019 report by Buzzfeed identified Brooks, among others, along with Epstein, who had pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor for sex just three years prior.

Buzzfeed: “In 2011, after Epstein had been released from a Florida jail, it was an exclusive gathering, dominated by tech industry leadership. A gallery of photos taken at the event by Nathan Myhrvold, formerly Microsoft’s chief technology officer, named 20 guests, including just one media representative: New York Times columnist David Brooks.”

While defending Brooks, the Times inadvertently confirmed Epstein's presence at the dinner. “Mr. Brooks had no contact with [Epstein] before or after his single attendance at a widely-attended dinner.”

Sure, but Brooks knew Epstein was there. If he didn’t know about his crimes, which is doubtful, he still chose to write a column warning the Democrats against waging “permanent class war” without disclosing his non-trivial association with the namesake of “the Epstein class.”

It’s bad faith, up and down.

“I think that's what we get when (very) wealthy people are shaping opinion,” said Denny Carter, publisher of Bad Faith Times, a newsletter. “We can never really know the depths of their conflicts of interest, whether it's covering for a known pedophile ringleader or promoting a cause or politician or company that will benefit them financially.”

In 2023, Denny wrote a piece highlighting the importance of bad faith, which is to say, if you don’t put it at the center of your thinking about rightwing politics, you’re going to be very, very confused. He wrote:

“Republicans today support women’s sports (if it means barring trans folks from participating). They love a member of the Kennedy family. They’re skeptical of Big Pharma. They hate banks. None of it – not a single part of it – makes any sense unless you understand bad faith.”

They never mean what they say.

Denny brought my attention to that two-year-old piece by reposting it. I immediately thought of Brooks. Scolding the Democrats about demonizing “the Epstein class” while fraternizing with “the Epstein class” (it was a “billionaires dinner,” for Christ’s sake) – that’s the kind of behavior you might expect from a man who’s ready to betray you.

“You see these op-eds about supporting the fossil fuel industry and continuing to accelerate climate collapse in the guise of electoral advice for Democrats without having any idea if the writer means what they're saying or has some financial stake in promoting Big Oil and its various subsidiaries,” Denny told me in a brief interview. “You assume good faith among these writers and influencers at your own peril.”

In a 2023 piece you recently reposted, you said the world is upside down. The right loves Russia. The left hates Russia. This is confusing for those of us who remember 20 years ago. What happened?

This one, I think, is pretty straightforward. The right despised the collectivism inherent in Soviet ideology and the left was curious about how it might look in action. The fall of the USSR (eventually) led to a totalitarian fascist Russian state ruled by a vicious dictator who used religion and "traditional values" as a weapon against his many enemies, or anyone who dared promote democracy in Russia.

Listen to Putin and you'll hear a Republican babbling about “woke” this and “woke” that and positioning himself as the last barrier between so-called traditional society and some kind of far-left hellscape.

It's the same script every modern fascist leader uses, and it appeals very much to Republican lawmakers and their voters. You sometimes read stories about Americans fleeing to Russia to escape the “woke” scourge, only to deeply regret it. That's always funny or tragic, depending on how you look at it.

You say bad faith explains the upside-downness, but you also suggest the center has not held -- that social fragmentation brought us here. You even cite David Bowie. How did you come to that insight?

I've been a Bowie superfan for a while now, and like a lot of folks who spend too much time online, I've seen the viral clip of Bowie explaining the world-changing potential of the internet way back in 1999.

He was right on a few levels, but most of all he identified the internet's potential for destroying any sense of commonly held reality. Here we are today, a quarter century later, trying to operate in a political world in which there are a handful of different realities at any one time.

A traitorous right-wing mob tried to overthrow the US government in 2021. We all saw the footage. We all know what happened. Yet there are tens of millions of Americans who believe January 6 did not happen or was in fact a walking tour of the US Capitol.

We can't even agree that there was a coup attempt orchestrated by the outgoing president because social media took that event, broke it into a million pieces, and allowed bad actors to piece it back together to fit a politically convenient narrative. I wrote about it here.

You suggest that simply telling the truth won't fix things. Why?

I don't mean to sound cynical but if we've learned anything over the past decade of small-d democratic backsliding, it's that the truth doesn't mean anything anymore because of the societal fragmentation created by social media. There is no truth. We can choose our own adventure now because our phones will confirm our priors about what happened and why.

Pro-democracy folks in the US can't rely on facts and figures to win the day. They won't. The Harris campaign reached a highwater mark in August 2024 when they were ignoring facts and figures and coasting on vibes. It was a heady time because it seemed like Democrats had finally learned their lesson: good-faith “Leslie Knope” politics [facts will win the day] has no place in the modern world, if it ever did.

The right has a gigantic media complex and it's getting bigger. Twitter, CBS News and soon perhaps CNN -- all are right-coded or soon could be. Are you seeing recognition among liberals and leftists that this imbalance is unsustainable? If so, what's the plan?

Look, there are plenty of pro-democracy folks in the world with more money than they could spend in 50 lifetimes. A little bit of that money could go a long way in establishing pro-democracy media outlets that operate as propaganda outlets for the kind of liberalism that has been washed away by the right's capture of the media. Democracy needs to be sold to Americans just as fascism was sold to them, first in the seedy corners of the internet, then on Elon Musk's hub for international fascism, then in mainstream outlets run by people cooking their brains daily on Musk's site.

I'm not sure of a specific plan. I'm just a blogger. But people are awash in fascist propaganda 24 hours a day on every major social media site. It has ruined a lot of relationships and radicalized Americans who spent most of their lives ignoring politics as the domain of nerds.

There has to be a flood of pro-democracy messaging in the media and that can't happen without billions being invested in a massive network of outlets that can effectively push back on the right's unreality.

I wrote about the selling of democracy here.

The meaning of "elites" is central to the fascist project. As defined by David Brooks, they are educated liberal-ish people who drive Teslas, or used to. With an affordability crisis underway, liberals and leftists have a chance to redefine "elites" for the long haul. Thoughts?

I think engaging the right on the meaning of "elites" is probably a road to nowhere. They will label as "elite" anyone who has ever read a book or graduated from college. I would say the left can and should point out the vast gulf between real populism and fake right-wing populism. Media outlets, of course, have conflated these two because the media assumes everyone in politics is operating in pristine good faith.

But pointing out that Zohran Mamdani and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are real populists while Trump and his lackeys talk a big populist game while selling the country for parts to their golf buddies and business associates could offer people real insight into what it means to be on the side of the working person. Barack Obama has toyed with the idea of rejecting Trump as a populist; I think every pro-democracy American needs to push back harder on that label because it's disingenuous and a powerful tool for fascist politicians who have nothing if they don't have at least some working-class support.

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I was pushing my 4-year-old on the swing at our neighborhood playground in Providence, Rhode Island, on Saturday, less than a mile from my alma mater, Brown University, when my wife texted me about a mass shooting. I would eventually learn that two people had been killed and many were injured. Three days later, we still don’t know the shooter’s identity, and thus don’t know anything about his motives—but that has not stopped influential right-wing figures, including Elon Musk, from amplifying disinformation that portrays the shooting as a political attack on Republicans. Meanwhile, voices of reason in the center and on the left have appeared helpless to counter this dangerous false narrative, which is further evidence of how badly we are losing the information war.

What we know is that a man dressed in black walked into a classroom in Brown’s Barus & Holley building, just as a study session for Brown’s introductory economics course—the most widely taken course at the university—was wrapping up. The gunman shouted something (students who were present that they don’t know what he said), and then fired more than 40 rounds at the assembled group, injuring nine students and killing two people: Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, an 18-year-old immigrant from Uzbekistan who grew up in Virginia, and Ella Cook, a 19-year-old Alabaman who was vice president of the Brown College Republicans. This is more or less all we know.

Right-wingers have filled this void with a baseless narrative that Cook was, as the chairman of the College Republicans put it in a post on X with nearly two million views, “targeted for her conservative beliefs, hunted, and killed in cold blood.” To be clear, there is zero evidence, as of this writing, that Cook was targeted for her conservative beliefs. It’s not impossible, but it’s just as likely—or significantly more likely, considering that most extremist-related murders are committed by white supremacists—that the shooter targeted Umurzokov for being an immigrant. By farthe most logical possibility, given that the shooter fired 40 rounds into a crowded classroom and hit 11 students in total, is that this shooting was not targeted at any one individual—that he wanted to kill as many people as possible at Brown, regardless of what they believed.

And yet, the right’s declarations of victimization, honed after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, have been immediate and relentless. One right-wing influencer wrote, “The left is going to target and kill every effective Republican they can find.” A fellow at the Heritage Foundation with almost a million followers on X wrote, “If you don’t absolutely destroy left wing extremists, they WILL be emboldened.” Republican elected officials joined in, with New York City Council Member Vickie Paladino writing that the attack “was perpetrated by the leftist activist and targeted Republicans.” Another post read, “This happened because Antifa (and all the like groups) wasn’t liquidated after Charlie Kirk was assassinated.… The time to respond harshly was months ago, but now is better than never.” Musk shared that last post, which has more than 30 million views.

At one point, my timeline on X was full—literally full—of nothing but these false claims, all from accounts I have never followed. Others have reported similar experiences. It’s hard to imagine such informational dominance not being the result, among other dynamics, of a clear algorithmic push (Musk runs X, after all). And the goal is to exploit this tragedy toward political ends, namely the repression of MAGA’s political opponents. This repression is the explicit aim of President Donald Trump’s NSPM-7 directive and Attorney General Pam Bondi’s recent memo ordering the FBI to “compile a list of groups or entities engaging in acts that may constitute domestic terrorism,” which is targeted toward those expressing “opposition to law and immigration enforcement; extreme views in favor of mass migration and open borders; adherence to radical gender ideology, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, or anti-Christianity,” as well as “hostility towards traditional views on family, religion, and morality.”

Of course, this isn’t an isolated example of the MAGA conspiracy machine whirring into action. Increasingly, it seems like every high-profile event with potential political ramifications—certainly shootings but also climate disasters, elections, and more—gets poisoned by the right’s toxically mendacious content amplification system. This week it’s been occurring on multiple fronts simultaneously, with Grok spreading the lie that the hero in the antisemitic mass shooting at Sydney’s Bondi Beach was Christian, despite media confirmation that the man, Ahmed Al Ahmed, was a Muslim immigrant originally from Syria.

American politics today are defined by a profound informational asymmetry. The right now controls most of the traditional media institutions, the social media platforms, and the algorithms that shape our attentional ecosystem. They have also built up a far larger network of creators than anything the left has at its disposal. How do you beat opponents who have the informational and attentional firepower to impose deceptive conspiracies on the public and, in many cases, make their lies an accepted common truth? How can we win back the narrative on climate change when they can ascribe every climate-induced hurricane or wildfire to DEI initiatives or weather control technology? How can we address far-right political violence when they can turn an evangelical Trump supporter’s assassination of a Democratic lawmaker into a plot by radical Marxists? How can we protect free and fair elections when they can just deny the results?

I don’t have the solutions to these problems. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last few days—watching the buzz saw of MAGA disinformation tear through the factual reality of this mass shooting not far from my home—it’s that we need to figure them out, and quickly. It’s not about finding that oft-discussed “liberal Joe Rogan.” What’s required is the buildout of a media ecosystem that can challenge the right’s extensive informational infrastructure with the full panoply of content creators, revenue structures, cross-platform coordination, amplification systems, and attention-getting strategies necessary to win this narrative war.

Our reality is just what we see in front of us. It can be defined by truth or by lies, by information or disinformation. Ensuring that people start receiving more of the former, and less of the latter, is an incredibly difficult and expensive challenge. But there may not be a way around it. And we’ve got to start building fast, before MAGA’s attentional stranglehold becomes our permanent reality.

Aaron Regunberg

Aaron Regunberg is a contributing editor at The New Republic, a climate lawyer, and a progressive organizer.

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trump admin hides econ #; djt says grade on econ a++++

an 12 25

Lisandra Vazquez, an Atlanta-based comedian, has gone viral with her frequent parodies of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt — who sees the MAGA Republican as a caricature of herself and mocks her relentlessly with her videos on YouTube and TikTok. And Vazquez isn't the only one with that opinion of Leavitt.

In a biting opinion column published on December 12, MS NOW's Steve Benen emphasizes that Leavitt's obsequious praise of President Donald Trump is only growing more cartoonish and divorced from reality.

"Earlier this week," Benen observes, "White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News that China had refused to purchase American soybeans during Joe Biden's presidency because Chinese leaders 'had no respect for our president, Biden, or for the country at the time.' Thankfully, she added, Donald Trump has turned things around. As White House lies go, this one was odd — and rather lazy. It didn't take a lot of Googling to learn that Chinese purchases of American soybeans during the Biden era were quite robust."

Benen adds, "Beijing stopped buying the products, however, earlier this year in response to Trump's trade tariffs. It was a timely reminder that, in service of the president's political agenda, Leavitt isn't just willing to spin and exaggerate, she's also willing to turn reality on its head."

Leavitt claims were also "demonstrably ridiculous," according to Benen, when she claimed that "every economic metric" shows the "economy is improving" under Trump — and that "inflation is down" thanks to him.

"When CNN’s Kaitlan Collins dared to remind the White House press secretary that grocery prices have climbed," Benen observes, "Leavitt accused her of deliberately pushing 'untrue narratives,' despite the fact that grocery prices really have climbed….

As Americans turn sharply against Trump's handing of the economy, the president and his team have other options, but they appear determined to keep playing make-believe, hoping the repetition of nonsense will bully reality into submission."

Benen adds, "Trump's approval rating suggests Leavitt and her colleagues might need a Plan B."

*Steve Benen's full MS NOW column is available at this link.

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GOOD ANALYSIS --> FASCISM

AN TC 11 25

The headlines documenting President Donald Trump’s plan to send federal troops to San Francisco followed a familiar arc. “Trump claims ‘unquestioned power’ in vow to send troops to San Francisco,” The Guardian reported on Oct. 20, 2025. The next day, the San Francisco Chronicle blared: “S.F. threatens to sue if Trump brings in National Guard.” Then, on Oct. 23, “Trump reverses his decision to send troops to San Francisco,” as ABC News put it, after Trump posted that conversations with the city’s mayor and tech moguls had swayed him.

It was another example of how Trump’s shifting policy positions, racially inflammatory statements and threats frequently fuel a flurry of headlines, reflecting what some psychologists are calling “media saturation overload” or “Trump stress disorder.”

This barrage of information may seem like overcommunication from a hyperactive administration. But it is much more than that.

Scholars have found that the constant, often conflicting and at times false information coming out of the White House and shared via social media posts and the conventional news media causes members of the public to see truth and fact as relative and makes them more likely to dismiss those who disagree with them as untruthful. This leaves doubt about what’s real and what isn’t.

This citizen paralysis creates what philosopher Hannah Arendt described in “The Origins of Totalitarianism” as a general public “for whom the distinction between fact and fiction … no longer exist.” When lies are truth and truth is derided as lies, Arendt wrote, ordinary people lose their bearings and can be manipulated for totalitarian objectives.

Meanwhile, many journalists have openly acknowledged fatigue with the pace and nature of the Trump administrations’ news cycles, amid frequent newsroom layoffs, mergers and closures.

I am a longtime journalist and now scholar of journalism and race, trained to see the methods and aims behind political leaders’ press operations. And as I show in my forthcoming book, the Trump administration’s rhetorical strategies echo the playbooks of authoritarian and white supremacist organizations such as the Third Reich and some factions of the modern alt-right movement. They are intended to narrow the scope of who belongs as an American.

Headlines at ‘muzzle velocity’

The Trump administration’s rhetorical strategies include claiming victim status while often laying blame on immigrants or other scapegoats in ways that I believe betray racist intent. At the same time it has overwhelmed journalists and the public with breaking news.

This strategy was laid out by Steve Bannon, an influential Trump supporter and strategist in his first administration, during a 2019 PBS “Frontline” interview, when he described the media as “the opposition party.”

“They’re dumb and they’re lazy, they can only focus on one thing at a time,” he said. “All we have to do is flood the zone. … Bang, bang, bang. These guys will never – will never be able to recover. But we’ve got to start with muzzle velocity.”

Bannon has long been associated with the alt-right, a movement known for rhetorical tactics that minimize and obfuscate its true aims.

A strategy forged in Trump’s first term

As I detail in my book, “American Otherness in Journalism: News Media Representations of Identity and Belonging,” Trump and his key advisers have been developing, refining and ramping up their news media manipulation for a long time.

An early example of this is the way the administration used these tactics through Trump’s public responses to the fatal violence at the August 2017 Unite the Right protest in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The two-day rally was organized by a white nationalist blogger and attended by members of neo-Nazi, white supremacist and far-right militias protesting the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from a Charlottesville park. They marched with tiki torches, flew Confederate and Nazi flags and chanted antisemitic and racist slogans.

Amid violent clashes with counterprotesters on the second day, a neo-Nazi sympathizer drove into a crowd, killing a 32-year-old woman and injuring many others.

My study of television news coverage of Unite the Right found that the majority of news reports focused on the contradictory and inflammatory statements that Trump made about the antisemitic and racist protesters. Trump’s Aug. 15, 2017, press conference remark about blame on both sides after what happened garnered the most news media attention: “I think there is blame on both sides,” he said. “You had some very bad people in that group. You also had some very fine people on both sides.”

Exploiting chaos

The uncertainty surrounding what he meant created a cycle of news stories implying and denying that he sympathizes with white supremacists.

This is-he-or-isn’t-he intrigue spurred a surge of what fits the description of Bannon’s “muzzle-velocity” news headlines: “Trump declares ‘racism is evil’ amid pressure over Charlottesville” followed closely by “Trump defends White-nationalist protesters” and “Why Trump can’t get his story straight on Charlottesville.”

With the focus on Trump’s comments and what he might have really meant, the news media ultimately missed covering at the time the long-term threat posed by these white supremacist and other extremist groups.

Echoing a playbook from the past

Scholars have identified the fascist roots of these “post-truth” strategies: strongmen leaders uninterested in establishing leadership through honesty and transparency.

A recent scholarly analysis of Trump’s leadership concludes that the second-term president is overwhelming the public into “organized despair” by pitting races against each other while targeting minority groups as scapegoats, a tactic that hearkens back to 1930s Germany.

A 2019 analysis of Trump’s narrative style describes how he presents himself as a “strongman” fighting invisible forces of censorship and suppression. It also points out that this was part of the appeal of fascist leaders such as Mussolini and Hitler.

Researchers of Nazi propaganda identified key tactics in the German press such as name-calling and lumping together groups seen as opposition – communists, liberals and Jews – until public understanding of those groups blur into phrases like “enemies of Germany.” The messaging was constant and immersive, carried in local and national newspapers, radio, film and posters.

A key part of Trump’s rhetorical strategy is using race without directly referring to it. For example, Trump has described cities with large nonwhite populations such as Washington, D.C., and Chicago as “out of control” or “dirty,” contrary to actual crime statistics. He’s also questioned Kamala Harris’ racial identity, suggesting she “happened to turn Black.” And referring to Black football players who had been protesting systemic racism by kneeling during the national anthem, Trump said, “Get that son of a bitch off the field right now,” which many observers interpreted as racist because he was insulting people of color for the act of protesting racism.

This racial coding has been used by white supremacist groups to mask their true intent. They also use less overt labels such as “alt-right” or “pro-white” as a “rhetorical bridge” to the mainstream public.

In the case of the NFL protesters, the plausible deniability became an actual denial. Trump perfected this move when, during a 2020 debate with Joe Biden, he said, “Proud Boys – stand back and stand by,” referencing another group accused of thinly veiled racism.

Drowning in headlines

I believe that the endgame for this strategy is authoritarian power that greatly narrows the scope of who truly belongs and has rights in this country as an American.

This media saturation – drowning the public with a thousand Trump-generated headlines – allows his administration to keep dominating and controlling national attention.

But the media-consuming public can use the tools they have to encourage news outlets to better inform the public by identifying the media saturation strategy and reporting on why leaders are using it.

Otherwise, if news consumers let the headline overload do what it’s intended to do, and become overwhelmed and paralyzed, they become pawns in what I consider a ploy to make America less egalitarian and less democratic.

Angie Chuang, Associate Professor of Journalism, *University of Colorado Boulder

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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5 YR OLD B ROLL ON FOX? btb SAYS MOLO COCK ONLY BURNED FEET OF PROTESTOR, NOT BLDG? 10 25

--> insurrection mart law?

AN PP 11 25

When President Donald Trump told reporters on Sept. 5 he’d started looking at sending the National Guard to Portland, Oregon, he said it was because of something he saw on television.

He said the city was being destroyed by paid agitators. “What they’ve done to that place, it’s like living in hell,” he said, a comment that became an internet meme as some Portland residents juxtaposed it with tranquil images of the city.

Trump didn’t say which channel he watched; he said at one point he saw something “today” and at another “last night.”

The evening before, on Sept. 4, Fox News aired a two-and-a-half-minute segment spotlighting protests outside a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Portland. Similar footage aired the morning of Trump’s remarks. The president went on to announce Sept. 27 on Truth Social that he would send troops, saying that he was “authorizing Full Force, if necessary.”

He later said he’d told Oregon’s governor, Tina Kotek, that “unless they’re playing false tapes, this looked like World War II. Your place is burning down.”

ProPublica examined months of Fox News’ coverage and reviewed more than 700 video clips posted to social media by protesters, counterprotesters and others in the three months preceding the Sept. 4 broadcast.

The review found that the news network repeatedly provided a misleading picture of what was happening in Portland.

As The Guardian and The Oregonian/OregonLive have reported, Fox News on Sept. 4 used footage from the 2020 protests after the police killing of George Floyd and said it was from 2025. We found two clear cases from that night as well as one that seemed to match a scene filmed at a key site of the 2020 protests. Fox also mislabeled two other dates of actions shown on screen, and one broadcast implied that a protest from elsewhere was happening in Portland.

Fox News chyrons about Portland the week of Trump’s remarks carried phrases like “violent demonstrators,” “protesters riot,” “anti-I.C.E. Portland rioters” and “war-like protests.” One host said protesters were attacking federal officers.

This portrayal of protesters as routinely instigating violence or rioting was also misleading.

As ProPublica reported last week, most clashes between protesters and police before the Fox News segment did not result in any criminal charges or arrests alleging protesters committed violence. What’s more, based on news releases from federal and local authorities, charges and arrests for assault, arson or destruction of property were almost entirely confined to a period that ended the night of July 4.

Videos after that date captured numerous images of federal officers forcefully moving in on protesters without corresponding criminal charges alleging protester violence.

A spokesperson for Fox News did not respond to ProPublica’s requests for comment.

The Department of Homeland Security did not answer requests to comment on its officers’ tactics.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said of action on the ground in Portland: “This isn’t a peaceful protest that’s under control, like many on the left have claimed, it’s radical violence. President Trump is taking lawful action to protect federal law enforcement officers and address the out-of-control violence that local residents have complained about and Democrat leaders have failed to stop.”

Here’s how Fox News’ coverage of the Portland story was misleading.

Fox News Said It Was 2025. It Wasn’t.

Protests in 2020 in the wake of Floyd’s murder by a police officer attracted large, sometimes violent crowds to Portland — along with a federal law enforcement response authorized by Trump.

The protests outside the ICE facility have typically been far smaller. Still, Fox spliced footage from 2020 into its coverage this year and claimed it was from 2025.

The Fox News correspondent in the segment that aired the night Trump was watching TV said: “On this night in late June, police used tear gas.”

The accompanying image appears to be not from the ICE building but from the federal courthouse in downtown Portland, more than a mile away. A nearly identical scene was shown in a five years earlier. Footage that aired Sept. 4, shot at a slightly different angle, blurs out spots where graffiti was visible on the building in Fox’s July 2020 broadcast.

Almost immediately after showing the courthouse scene, the segment cuts to another image as the correspondent says, “federal police used tear gas and flashbangs.”

On screen at that moment is a U.S. Navy veteran who was pepper-sprayed and repeatedly struck with a baton. But it didn’t happen in September 2025. The video was posted on social media on July 18, 2020.

The Fox News segment about the ICE protests soon shows an American flag burning.

That image was posted on social media July 16, 2020.

The location: the base of a downtown Portland statue more than a mile away from the ICE building where protests are happening in 2025.

On the webpage for its Sept. 4 video segment, Fox News added an editor’s note at least two weeks later: “This video contains footage from protests in Portland in 2020 and 2025.”

“Still Going On”

After mislabeling 2020 events as 2025, Fox’s Sept. 4 evening broadcast explicitly drew a connection between the two periods.

“The protest chaos, which began with riots aimed at social justice in 2020, has severely damaged Portland’s reputation,” the correspondent said.

The dramatic footage at this moment shows fires in the street and was broadcast on Fox on Aug. 19, 2020, the day after a crowd smashed through windows and set items on fire in the headquarters for the government of Multnomah County, where Portland is located.

We don’t know for certain which broadcast got Trump thinking about Portland. The White House did not respond to questions about what Trump watched. But the president said on Sept. 5 that what he’d seen about Portland on TV was “unbelievable.”

“I didn’t know that was still going on,” he said. “This has been going on for years.”

The reality: Portland’s 2020 social justice protests, which resulted in hundreds of arrests and continued for months, turned sporadic by early 2021. Protests in years since have led to occasional property damage, but nothing in Portland has matched the scale of events that followed Floyd’s death.

Portland police Chief Bob Day said at a Sept. 29 press conference that the city had been inaccurately portrayed through the lens of the protests in 2020 and 2021.

“What’s actually happening, and the response we’re seeing both from Portlanders and from the Portland Police Bureau,” Day said, “is not in line with that national narrative. And it is frustrating.”

A Riot That Wasn’t

In a Sept. 2 segment featuring the video from a day earlier, anchor Bill Hemmer said it shows “riots raging.” Anchor Trace Gallagher teased another Sept. 2 news segment by once again showing the video, saying, “It’s a riot outside a Portland ICE facility.”

The Sept. 4 segment shows Julie Parrish, an attorney for a neighbor of the ICE facility, accusing Portland police of saying, “Meh, we’re just gonna let violent rioters do this for 80 straight nights.”

The physical behavior of protesters that was captured on the video is not violent. The camera instead shows federal agents advancing on them. In the moments before officers tossed munitions into the crowd, videos show, one protester was blowing bubbles. The Portland police did not declare a riot, a legal designation that allows for an elevated police use of force. (They declared a riot just once, a police spokesperson said, on June 14.)

The Sept. 1 protest had “little to no energy,” according to an internal Portland police summary, before federal officers dispersed the crowd to collect a prop guillotine that had been brought. Katie Daviscourt, a Trump-aligned commentator who filmed the clips, noted on X that protesters were having dance parties and that their main problems were “not leaving restricted areas, burning a flag, and possessing a deadly object (guillotine).”

ProPublica found a similar pattern for the three months before Fox’s Sept. 4 broadcast: clashes that on most days and nights had no criminal allegations of protester violence to explain them.

After dozens of arrests and charges were announced in June through July 4, federal prosecutors accused just three people of crimes at the ICE building in the roughly two months leading up to Fox’s Sept. 4 broadcast.

During that same two-month time frame, ProPublica’s review found numerous instances of police using force: videos from more than 20 days or nights with federal officers grabbing, shoving, pepper-spraying, tackling, firing on or using other munitions on protesters.

No local arrests or federal criminal charges were announced on these days or nights, and only a handful of dates corresponded with incidents of protester aggression later asserted by federal authorities in their legal case for sending troops.

Asked whether Fox News accurately represented her footage, Daviscourt said: “I stand by my four months of accurate reporting.”

Parrish told ProPublica she had collected evidence that “shows ongoing and persistent activity” outside the facility that under statute and police directive “would be considered riotous, unlawful assembly and/or disorderly conduct.” She declined to share this evidence, saying it was privileged as part of her client’s file.

Her lawsuit on behalf of a neighbor living near the ICE facility, which sought to require police to enforce Portland’s noise ordinance, was dismissed.

The Reappearing Neighbor

A Sept. 5 “Fox & Friends” segment showed a neighbor from an apartment building confronting protesters over noise, shouting at protesters: “Turn that (bleep) down, it’s midnight! … We the people need sleep!”

Fox said it happened Tuesday, which would have been Sept. 2. Co-host Ainsley Earhardt said, “This has been going on for months now, but a lot of this since Labor Day,” as the video shown on screen sandwiches footage of the neighbor between other scenes from the Labor Day protest.

“This is a chaotic city,” co-host Brian Kilmeade said.

The next day, the clip of the neighbor appeared again on Fox News. This time, the network said the footage was from Wednesday, or Sept. 3.

In reality, the confrontation was captured on video months before. Daviscourt published the video on June 29 on X.

On the two September nights that Fox said the neighbor’s confrontation happened, ProPublica’s review found no videos of violent clashes posted on social media, and federal authorities announced no arrests.

For example, according to a Portland police email from 11:22 p.m. on Sept. 3: “There are still about 20 people hanging around but only 4 were even on the sidewalk in front of the building.”

Misrepresentations Continue After Trump’s Guard Order

On Sept. 28, the day Trump’s order was implemented, a Fox News broadcast played a clip of Kotek saying that Guard troops were not needed in Portland, then immediately cut to a clip of a hectic scene of protesters clashing with police.

“Wish she could see some of those images,” the anchor said. Sarcastically, as a co-anchor chuckled, she added: “Look at that. Just a peaceful protest.”

A small box on the screen showed the footage wasn’t from Oregon.

It was from Illinois.

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AN 10 25

When Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth demanded journalists agree not to report anything without formal authorization from the Defense Department, he sent a mass evacuation of legitimate media from the press corps.

What’s left, writes Slate reporter Molly Olmstead, is … really something.

“The Pentagon has remade its press corps, and we’re starting to get an understanding of which people now are allowed access to the halls of power,” said Olmstead, who included a list of the “top hits” that Hegseth’s considers “valid journalism of interest to the public.”

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell “peddled his 2020 election conspiracy theories through a number of avenues, including his video streaming site,” wrote Olmstead. “As a result, LindellTV has been subject to the same defamation lawsuits that Lindell himself courted, but it carries on with a host of right-wing shows, including the signature Mike Lindell Show.”

LindellTV’s reporters frequently pester Democrats with MAGA lies dressed up as legitimate questions, prompting Nancy Pelosi to publicly snap at them for churning nonsense and MSNBC hosts to blast them for spreading lies to a LindellTV audience that is “too stupid to know the truth.”

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And when their reporters are not spouting lies, Olmstead says they’re fawning over President Donald Trump’s “fitness plan” and asking press secretary Karoline Leavitt when Trump plans to go public with it.

Another sycophantic organization still hanging around is The One America News network, which Olmstead describes as “about as extreme as it gets without tipping fully into Alex Jones lizard-people territory.”

“It has promoted hydroxychloroquine as a ‘miracle cure’ for COVID; spread ominous conspiracy theories about George Soros; speculated that Michael Cohen, not Donald Trump, had an affair with Stormy Daniels; and declared that Roy Moore was innocent and actually wonhis election,” said Olmstead. “It has also hired Matt Gaetz as a host.”

“Human Events” is another example of the lingering press corps flotsam, said Olmstead.

“This is the latest home for Jack Posobiec, a content creator so inflammatory that being seen as cozy with him — as Hegseth was, in inviting Posobiec on an overseas trip — can lead to major scandal,” said Olmstead. “Posobiec, who has connections to various hate groups, is known primarily as the man behind Pizzagate. … He remains extreme: “Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely,” he said at last year’s Conservative Political Action Conference.

The Navy revoked Posobiec’s security clearance as a U.S. naval intelligence officer on reserve, after his involvements with the Unite the Right white supremacist rally.

The list continues with spurious far-right networks like the National Pulse, whose leader was so inflammatory that Australia’s Labor Party asked to ban him from the country, Olmstead reports. Another is The Epoch Times, which Olmstead points out has been charged with money laundering and is “a dedicated promoter of right-wing conspiracy theories, going so far as to create a network of YouTube channels amplifying hoaxes and election misinformation.

The list goes on, and Olmstead said all will “inevitably benefit from a veneer of legitimacy from the credentialing and from the ‘scoops’ they’re given.”

Read the Slate report at this link.

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Fox viewers were told “there is no violence from the right” hours after arraignment of Jan 6 rioter for allegedly threatening to kill top Democrat

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 10/22/25

Just hours after New York prosecutors charged a pardoned January 6 rioter with threatening to kill House Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Donald Trump Jr. told Sean Hannity’s Fox News audience that “there is no violence from the right,” adding, “It is not both sides — it is from one side, and it was from the left alone.”

Fox viewers, however, probably did not experience any cognitive dissonance. The network all but ignored the threats against Jeffries, with its coverage on Tuesday consisting of a single largely nonspecific 36-second news read on its Special Report program, according to a Media Matters review.

CBS News’ Scott MacFarlane reported early Tuesday morning that Christopher Moynihan “was arrested Sunday after saying in text messages that he planned to ‘eliminate’ Jeffries when the top House Democrat spoke at an event in New York City on Monday” and charged with making a terroristic threat. Prosecutors noted in a court filing that Moynihan texted “Hakeem Jeffries makes a speech in a few days in NYC I cannot allow this terrorist to live,” and “Even if I am hated, he must be eliminated, I will kill him for the future." He was arraigned later that day.

Prosecutors previously said Moynihan was one of the first Trumpists to storm the U.S. Capitol during the January 6 insurrection and among those who occupied the Senate chamber that day. He pleaded guilty to five misdemeanors and was sentenced to 21 months in prison but was among the roughly 1,500 January 6 participants to receive a pardon from President Donald Trump on his first day in office.

Political violence does, in fact, target “both sides”

Donald Trump Jr.’s Tuesday night comments reflect a talking point frequently heard in right-wing spaces. In the wake of the shocking murder of Republican activist and podcaster Charlie Kirk, many in MAGA media and President Trump himself baselessly declared the case symptomatic of a terroristic left targeting a nonviolent right.

This argument flies in the face of what we’ve seen the last several years, as right-wing extremists have violently attacked not just the U.S. Capitol but also Democratic politicians and their families as well as Black, Hispanic, and Jewish Americans. Denying that reality derails any hope of a genuine conversation about political violence, a genuine scourge in this country, in favor of what appears to be a Trump administration plan to use Kirk’s death as a pretext to wield state power against its political enemies in a broad crackdown on dissent.

A Trump supporter who rioted against democracy and received a presidential pardon subsequently threatening to murder a leading Democratic politician hammers home the absurdity of the MAGA talking point.

And so Fox is hiding that news from its audience as part of its frequently deployed strategy to downplay or ignore stories that undermine its narratives. The network’s hosts and executives seem to prefer keeping viewers ignorant in order to maintain their fearfulness and fury at their fellow Americans.

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MMA

Right-wing media said Chicago ICE raid yielded numerous gang members' arrests. New reporting shows hardly any arrests related to Tren de Aragua.

Written by Gideon Taaffe & Sage Hodil

Published 10/16/25

Right-wing media have cheered Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s September 30 raid on a Chicago apartment, saying they arrested a dozen or dozens of “suspected Tren de Aragua gang members” in an apartment complex “seized by TdA gang members.”

However, the Department of Homeland Security told CNN that just two of the 37 arrested are believed to be gang members. And later DHS told MSNBC it has “verified” one Tren de Aragua member from the raid.

The Trump administration claims that its arrests in Chicago have targeted criminals, but there is little evidence many of the 1,000 people detained by ICE in the city have any criminal convictions. Right-wing media have previously carried water for the Trump administration’s mass deportations that allegedly focus on the “worst of the worst” even though the majority of ICE detainees have no criminal convictions.

ICE's raid on a Chicago apartment building led to dozens of arrests and four children taken into custody. New reporting shows that few if any arrested in that raid or others in Chicago have criminal or gang ties.

• • CNN reported shortly after the raid that DHS said only two people arrested were believed to be a Tren de Aragua member, and MSNBC reported later that DHS said it had “verified” just one. The September 30 raid at a South Side apartment building that ICE said was “frequented by Tren de Aragua members” saw 37 people arrested but CNN reported that just two of them “are believed to be members of the Venezuelan criminal gang, according to DHS.” According to MSNBC, DHS said one person is a “verified” member of Tren de Aragua but did not say “how it had verified that gang affiliation.” CNN, [10/3/25; MSNBC, 10/13/25]

• • Of the 1,000 migrants arrested in Chicago and its suburbs, the Department of Homeland Security has released details showing a criminal background for only “about 1%” of those detainees, according to MSNBC. DHS claims ICE is arresting “the worst of the worst pedophiles, child abusers, kidnappers, gang members, and armed robbers,” but MSNBC correspondent Jacob Soboroff said the people they are targeting “are not the worst of the worst. And I cannot say that more unequivocally and clearly enough.” Soboroff also said ICE agents are “indiscriminately rounding people up, grabbing people off the street. And I'm saying this as a reporter who has seen this with my own eyes, not the worst of the worst on the street.” MSNBC, [10/13/25; MSNBC, The Briefing with Jen Psaki, 10/7/25; MSNBC, Katy Tur Reports, 10/8/25]

• • Detentions at the Chicago apartment raid included “four children who are US citizens with undocumented parents,” according to CNN.One tenant of the building described the raid, saying, “The kids was crying. People was screaming. They looked very distraught. I was out there crying when I seen the little girl come around the corner, because they was bringing the kids down, too, had them zip tied to each other.” One resident who was initially detained told CNN, “Anyone with an outstanding warrant, even if it was unrelated to immigration, would not be released.” CNN, [10/3/25]

• • Previous attempts to arrest people associated with Tren de Aragua based on their tattoos have led to deportations of people with no criminal records.The administration sent numerous alleged gang members to El Salvador but then acknowledged that “many” of them had no criminal records, according to CBS News. Lee Gelernt, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney, told CBS, “Expert after expert tells us tattoos are not a reliable indicator of whether you're part of this particular gang.” CBS, [4/8/25]

• ## Right-wing media bolstered suggestions that the Chicago apartment raided by ICE was full of Tren de Aragua members

• • Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner claimed the building was “taken over by members of the violent Tren de Aragua gang.” Fox News, *The Faulkner Focus*, [10/2/25]

• • Fox News host Jesse Watters asserted that “dozens of Tren de Aragua members are getting Kilmared,” referencing deported Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia, before cutting to reporting on the September 30 raid.Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [9/30/25]

• • Fox News anchor Trace Gallagher said the operation led to “the arrest of more than a dozen suspected Tren de Aragua gang members.”Fox News,*Fox News @ Night*, [10/1/25]

• • Fox News host Laura Ingraham claimed “Trump is fixing the criminal mess” in Chicago, saying that “TdA gang members in Chicago got a surprise this week” when ICE conducted an “unexpected drop-in that involved a Black Hawk helicopter and hundreds of federal agents.”Fox News reporter Mike Tobin reported, “More than a dozen were detained. At least one has a tattoo commonly associated with the Tren de Aragua gang.” Fox News,*The Ingraham Angle*, [10/1/25]

• • In an interview with acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, Newsmax host Emma Rechenberg claimed the apartment had been “seized by TdA gang members.”Lyons also pushed the claim, stating the building was “taken over by Tren de Aragua gang members.” Newsmax, *The National Report*, [10/8/25]

• • While displaying a chyron that read “Tren de Arrested,” Fox News anchor Dana Perino said ICE agents were “targeting suspected Tren de Aragua members” in the raid and “netted 37 illegal aliens, including those associated with the bloodthirsty Venezuelan gang.”Fox News, *The Five*, [10/1/25]

• • The Daily Wire’s Jennie Taer wrote that the building was “teeming with suspected Tren de Aragua gang members.” The Daily Wire, [10/1/25]

• • Fox & Friendsco-host Lawrence Jones complained that people are “more concerned about the children being temporarily detained, not the fact that they were around, and the same apartment complex, of Tren de Aragua, a known terrorist organization.” Jones’ comment came after Lyons claimed Tren de Aragua “took over” the building and that pictures of zip-tied children were “AI fake photos.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [10/6/25]

• ## Trump and right-wing media have claimed that ICE is targeting “the worst of the worst,” but data shows otherwise

• • Earlier this year Trump claimed ICE was targeting the “worst of the worst,” yet ICE data revealed 84% of those detained at ICE facilities “were not given a threat level.” Only 5% of detainees were given the highest threat level by ICE. According to TRAC Reports, an oversight group that provides data on government operations, as of September 21, 71.5% of ICE detainees had no criminal conviction. TRAC additionally noted, “Many of those convicted committed only minor offenses, including traffic violations.” The Associated Press, [7/12/25; TRAC Reports, accessed 10/15/25]

• • Right-wing media have heralded the Trump administration’s campaign promise to focus deportations on the “worst” criminals while denying the reality of the mass deportations.Fox personalities have claimed ICE is not targeting “abuelitas” or “housekeepers” but “the worst of the worst” and “hardened criminals and gang members.” Media Matters, [4/9/25]

//

1. ### Right-wing media falsely claim benefits go to undocumented immigrants as millions of Americans face health coverage losses

10/14/25 4:20 PM EDT

2. ### Right-wing media say Portland is a war zone under siege. On-the-ground coverage paints a different picture.

10/10/25 9:40 AM EDT

3. ### As Trump sends the National Guard into US cities, right-wing media celebrate and call protests “an insurrection”

10/08/25

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hard to tell lies from just being wrong deluded

an 10 25 reporter no ID

President Donald Trump has repeatedly — and falsely — claimed that Democrats want to shut down the federal government in order to obtain $1 trillion for health care for undocumented immigrants, who by law are not allowed to access programs like the Obamacare exchanges, Social Security, or Medicare.

Democrats are “threatening” to shut down the government “unless they can have over $1 Trillion Dollars in new spending to continue free healthcare for Illegal Aliens,” Trump alleged last week.

He also wrongly claimed Democrats want to “force Taxpayers to fund Transgender surgery for minors, have dead people on the Medicaid roles, allow Illegal Alien Criminals to steal Billions of Dollars in American Taxpayer Benefits, try to force our Country to again open our Borders to Criminals and to the World, allow men to play in women’s sports, and essentially create Transgender operations for everybody.”

READ MORE: ‘No More Dudes in Dresses’: Hegseth Targets ‘Woke’ Diversity, ‘Nordic Pagans’ and ‘Beardos’

In a rare moment, a reporter told the President that undocumented immigrants are not eligible for health care, and pressed him on what he meant.

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“They’re not eligible for the healthcare subsidies that Democrats are demanding,” the reporter said. “So can you clarify, what are you talking about when you say, Democrats want to protect their healthcare?”

“So,” Trump responded, seemingly unaware of the law, “when an illegal person comes in, a person who came into our country illegally, therefore, breaking the law, and — look, we all have big hearts, I have a bigger heart than you do — they’re all breaking the law, and they’re coming into our country, and we just, as a country, cannot afford to take care of millions of people who have broken the law coming in.”

“We want them to come into our country, but we want them to come and legally,” he claimed, before going off on a tangent about the border.

READ MORE: ‘Fascism as a Playbook’: Trump Ripped for Saying U.S. Is ‘Under Invasion From Within’

“I mean, we had a border that was reckless. We had a border that was a disaster. They were coming in by the millions. I say 25 million people, and you’re saying less, but I say 25 million people came in illegally.”

“And no system can take care of the healthcare of all of those people that came in our lifetime for that,” Trump added, again, apparently unaware that that is not what Democrats are asking for.

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MMA

Right-wing media run wild with the blatantly false claim that Democrats are shutting down the government to secure “health care for illegals”

The New York Times noted a “misleading” Republican talking point on the looming shutdown. That talking point is all over right-wing media.

Written by Gideon Taaffe, Isabella Sherk & Pete Tsipis

Published 09/30/25

Right-wing media are pushing a lie that Democrats are threatening to shut down the government over “free health care for illegal immigrants” and want to “blow up the budget” for “illegal aliens” even though undocumented immigrants are not eligible for federally funded health benefits.

The Democrats are actually pushing to extend subsidies for the Affordable Care Act without which millions of Americans could face significantly higher health care premiums and lose access to health care. Additionally, Democrats are pushing to reverse cuts to federally funded health care that were passed under Trump's “One Big Beautiful Bill” in July.

• ## As the government faces a shutdown, conservatives lie about Democrats’ funding priorities

• • The U.S. government may face a shutdown on October 1 if Congress does not pass a short-term funding bill, and currently the two main points of contention are Democrats’ call to extend enhanced federal subsidies for Affordable Care Act coverage that are set to expire this year and reverse cuts to health care, including Medicaid, passed in Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.”CNN, [9/30/25]

• • Democrats have proposed to continue the ACA subsidies, which would help “22 million Americans lower their health insurance costs” and save health care for an estimated 4 million.According to the nonpartisan health policy research group KFF, the result of letting the subsidies end would be “an increase of more than 75% in premiums on average for enrollees; a 90% increase in many rural areas.” Subsequently, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that 4 million people will lose health insurance. CBS News, [9/30/25; KFF, 9/3/25; Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 9/22/25]

• • Several prominent Republicans have falsely claimed that Democrats are trying to use a government shutdown to demand health care for undocumented immigrants.President Donald Trump posted a deepfake video to Truth Social of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) in a sombrero and a mustache and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) claiming, “If we give all these illegal aliens health care, we might be able to get them on our side so they can vote for us.” Vice President JD Vance posted, “Democrats are about to shutdown the government because they demand we fund healthcare for illegal aliens.” And House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) put out a press release that claimed “Democrats are Choosing Health Care for Illegal Aliens over American Troop Pay.” Truth Social, [9/29/25; Politico, 9/30/25; Twitter/X, 9/25/25; MikeJohnson.house.gov, 9/28/25]

• • NY Times: The Democrats’ budget proposal “does not provide free health care for unauthorized immigrants.”Undocumented immigrants are “largely barred from federally funded health care,” as the Times reports, and while the Democrats’ proposal would restore eligibility for certain groups of “lawfully present” immigrants, it would not make unauthorized immigrants eligible. The Times adds: “There is no uniform definition for ‘lawful presence,’ a term typically used by federal and state health care and social welfare programs to determine eligibility. Most groups of ‘lawfully present’ noncitizens have authorized or legal immigration status like refugees and asylum recipients.” The New York Times, [9/29/25]

• ## Right-wing media falsely claim Democrats are shutting down the government over health care for undocumented immigrants

• • Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt claimed Democrats say “we want health care for all Americans, but that would include the illegals.”Co-host Lawrence Jones replied, “They’re still fighting for illegals. You just lost the election over it.” He said the Democrats don’t have political support on this: “You lost on it. Move forward.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*,[9/30/25]

• • Teasing a segment, Fox News anchor Trace Gallagher said, “A government shutdown now 25 hours away and it appears Democrats are still pushing free health care for illegal immigrants.” Fox News, *Fox News @ Night*, [9/29/25]

• • Fox host Sean Hannity said, “Schumer and his Democratic friends … want free health care for illegals as part of that deal.” He said it is “interesting because Democrats used to be totally against free health care benefits for illegals” and played clips of Schumer and then-first lady Hillary Clinton opposing the idea. Fox News, *Hannity*, [9/29/25]

• • On his radio show, Hannity said Schumer won’t get what he wants because “we're not going to pay for health care for illegal immigrants by virtue of the fact they don't deserve benefits that are supposed to be reserved for the American people.” Premier Radio Networks, *The Sean Hannity Show*, [9/29/25]

• • Fox host Mark Levin posted that Democrats “want to give their biggest constituency, illegal aliens, free healthcare at your expense, and blow up the budget.” He added that they will shut down the government if Republicans don’t “go along and spend another $1 trillion plus!” Twitter/X, [9/27/25]

• • Hannity claimed that “if there is a government shutdown, it will be on the Democrats,” saying, “Democrats are fighting for, you know, for services for illegal immigrants. They're fighting for more DEI programs.” Hannity stated this to a caller who criticized Hannity for saying federal employees would “go home for two weeks, sit on the couch, and then come back and get back pay.” Premier Radio Networks,*The Sean Hannity Show*, [9/26/25]

• • Hannity also claimed that Democrat demands “include things like over a trillion dollars in new spending for health care for illegals, taxpayer-funded gender swap surgeries for minors, open borders, men in women’s sports.” Fox News, *Hannity*, [9/23/25]

• • Right-wing podcast host Laura Loomer wrote, “Democrats are threatening to shut down the government unless they get taxpayer-funded healthcare for illegals.” She added, “They really do hate America.” Twitter/X, [9/26/25]

• • Right-wing talk show host and former White House press secretary Sean Spicer claimed that “access to health care” is “code for taxpayer financed healthcare for illegals.” Twitter/X, [9/30/25]

• • Right-wing influencer Catturd posted, “Imagine shutting down the government because you want illegals to have free healthcare, and then thinking it’s gonna be popular with the American people.” Twitter/X, [9/30/25]

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1. ### Sean Hannity: “I don't care if the government shuts down”

09/30/25 12:35 PM EDT

2. ### Benny Johnson: “I feel like most workers in the federal government are nonessential. I think most of them could be replaced by an AI chatbot, frankly.”

09/30/25 12:13 PM EDT

3. ### Newsmax host: “Let's not pretend that the idea of a government shutdown isn't somewhat alluring to most of us”

09/30/25

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MMA 10 25

Frequent Fox appearances are central to the Trump administration's climate and energy misinformation strategy

Special ProgramsClimate & Energy

Written by Evlondo Cooper

Research contributions from Harrison Ray

Published 09/29/25

Fox News and Fox Business have not simply covered President Donald Trump’s destructive climate and environmental agenda — they have served as the administration’s preferred vehicles for selling it to the public.

Since late July, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum have made dozens of appearances across Fox News and Fox Business programs to defend the proposed repeal of the EPA’s endangerment finding, shift blame for soaring electricity bills away from fossil fuel volatility, and portray offshore wind projects as both unreliable and dangerous.

By turning to Fox networks, senior Trump officials gain a platform where destructive environmental deregulation is framed as common sense and basic policy questions are never asked. What emerges from these appearances is not legitimate debate or accountability journalism, but a symbiotic relationship that allows the Trump administration to launder harmful misinformation through Fox’s news and opinion programming — leaving viewers with a distorted picture of climate science, energy policy, and the real stakes of the administration’s environmental rollbacks.

Topline findings

• • Doug Burgum, Chris Wright, and Lee Zeldin have appeared a combined 36 times on Fox networks from July 29 through September 21. Zeldin and Burgum are tied for the most appearances during this period, with 13 apiece, followed by Wright with 10.

• • Fox Business’Mornings with Maria Bartiromofeatured the three Trump administration officials the most, with 8 total appearances, followed by the network’sVarney & Co.(7 combined appearances) and Fox News’America Reports(5 appearances). Kudlow, The Ingraham Angle, and Fox & Friends each hosted the Trump officials twice during the studied period.

• ## Trump officials used Fox appearances to push misinformation after the administration proposed repealing the EPA’s landmark endangerment finding

• While Fox networks have spread misleading claims about climate and energy for years, the appearances by administration officials in the weeks following the proposed repeal of the endangerment finding released on July 29 offer a snapshot of how they work hand-in-hand with the Trump White House to downplay the scientific basis for greenhouse gas regulation, distort the causes of rising electricity prices, and attack renewable energy.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin

Zeldin has leaned on Fox’s coverage to launder claims that climate regulations are illegitimate and that reliance on renewable energy is driving economic pain.

During the August 13 episode of Fox Business’ Kudlow, Zeldin argued that the endangerment finding — a 2009 scientific determination that provided the legal framework for the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions — rested on “a lot of mental leaps” and claimed that “the Clean Air Act doesn’t make any reference to the greenhouse gases.” (In reality, the Supreme Court’s Massachusetts v. EPA ruling explicitly found that greenhouse gases qualify as air pollutants under the Act.) He paired that dismissal with charges that Obama-era scientific findings were exaggerated and “pessimistic,” and closed the segment by promoting natural gas pipelines as the only path to affordable energy and job growth.

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From the August 13, 2025, episode of Fox Business' Kudlow

• During the September 1 episode of Fox News’ One Nation with Brian Kilmeade, Zeldin presented Trump’s deregulatory agenda as the backbone of U.S. “energy dominance,” dismissing offshore wind projects as inefficient and unreliable for consumers. In contrast, he again portrayed fossil fuel expansion — particularly natural gas — as both environmentally superior and essential for national security.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright

Wright has similarly leaned on Fox to attack renewable energy as too costly, unreliable, and an obstacle to America’s economic and technological ambitions. He also used his appearances to make sweeping claims that fossil fuel expansion is the only realistic path forward and to blame renewable energy for electricity price increases.

During a segment about the “importance of unleashing U.S. energy” to meet growing demand from artificial intelligence on the September 4 episode of Fox & Friends, Wright told viewers that artificial intelligence represents “perhaps the highest use of electricity.” Later that day on Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle, Wright described offshore wind projects as a “guaranteed” driver of higher electricity costs, telling host Laura Ingraham that wind and solar are “variable, parasitic sources” that make the power grid less reliable and more expensive. He also claimed that by adopting offshore wind, the United States would be “competing for the most expensive electricity in the world.” Ingraham did raise the issue of higher electricity costs during the Trump administration but allowed Wright to spin, evade, and double down on falsely blaming renewable energy.

• Video file

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From the September 4, 2025, edition of Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle

• On the September 19 episode of Fox Business’ Mornings with Maria Bartiromo, Wright labeled global investment and uptake of renewables such as wind and solar as a “complete trainwreck” and insisted that climate change is a “slow-moving, gradual phenomenon, nowhere near a crisis or a disaster.”

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum

Burgum has also used Fox appearances to promote the administration’s fossil fuel expansion agenda while attacking renewables as unreliable and costly.

During the August 2 episode of Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo’s Wall Street, Burgum defended the administration’s proposed rollback of the endangerment finding, agreeing with Zeldin and Wright that the EPA had overstepped its authority. He also blamed increased energy costs on Obama- and Biden-era climate regulations, pushed deregulation as a way to unleash economic growth, and attacked offshore wind.

• Video file

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From the August 2, 2025, episode of Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo’s Wall Street

• On the August 20 episode of Mornings with Maria Bartiromo, Burgum announced a sweeping offshore oil and gas leasing plan while continuing to attack offshore wind. He tied fossil fuel production to U.S. dominance in the race for artificial intelligence, claiming that only coal and gas could deliver the electricity needed for growth, and contrasted this with “blue state” reliance on renewables, which he described as intermittent, subsidized, and responsible for high electricity costs.
• ## The climate and energy realities Fox keeps from its audience
• Fox networks have repeatedly provided Zeldin, Wright, and Burgum with a platform to repeat administration talking points and propaganda without pressing them on the evidence that undercuts their claims. As a result, Fox viewers have been left with a curated narrative that omits the most important facts.

For example, on Kudlow, after Zeldin dismissed the endangerment finding as “a lot of mental leaps,” Fox host and former Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow never pointed out that it was grounded in the Supreme Court’s 2007 Massachusetts v. EPA decision and decades of scientific consensus. Nor did viewers hear that it has prevented hundreds of thousands of premature deaths and delivered billions in net economic benefits.

And when Wright insisted that renewables drive up electricity prices on The Ingraham Angle, the Fox host did not mention that analysts instead point to fossil fuel volatility, surging demand from AI data centers, and Trump’s own decision to roll back and cancel renewable energy projects as the primary drivers of increased electricity costs.

On Mornings with Maria Bartiromo, as Burgum railed against offshore wind energy and celebrated coal and gas as the foundation of energy dominance, Bartiromo never noted that solar energy combined with battery storage is now the cheapest and fastest-to-build source of new power, or that clinging to coal plants saddles consumers with higher bills while increasing pollution. Instead, the segment cast fossil fuels as the only reliable option, ignoring the economic and health benefits of renewables.

The Trump administration’s reliance on Fox News and Fox Business is not incidental; it is a core communications strategy. By prioritizing their appearances on Fox networks, officials like Zeldin, Wright, and Burgum gain access to a powerful megaphone while shielding themselves from scrutiny or accountability. Fox’s “straight news” programs give their talking points the appearance of neutrality, and its opinion hosts repeat and amplify those same claims until they harden into conventional wisdom.

The result is the laundering of misleading talking points: Administration officials feed misinformation into Fox, the network recycles and legitimizes it, and audiences are left with a propagandistic narrative that obscures the public health costs of climate change and environmental deregulation and dismisses the economic benefits of clean energy.

• ## Methodology...

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AN 9 25 THE CONV

There have been many questions raised about the intentions behind Donald Trump’s spate of radical public statements about Canada, in which he claims trade deficits amount to subsidies, massive amounts of fentanyl are flowing across the border and the country should become the 51st American state, among other things.

The U.S. president’s comments have fuelled speculation about what he means when he makes these kinds of false claims — or whether he means anything at all.

After all, rounded to the nearest percentage point, zero per cent of illicit fentanyl entering the U.S. comes from Canada, trade deficits are not subsidies and annexing Canada is an absurd proposal.

So why say things that are so untrue?

Is Trump serious about any of this?

Ignore Trump? Or fear him?

The aggregate opinion seems to be both an unhelpful no and a yes, so the answer remains unclear.

If we take every provocation seriously, we’re falling for the “flood the zone” strategy as Trump spews out outlandish claims as a form of distraction.

If we shrug off his claims, we’re ignoring the potential danger.

But there are patterns and incentives behind Trump’s flouting of basic communicative norms. One illustrative example dates back to 2018 talks with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, when Trump complained about the U.S. trade deficit with Canada. Later, he told prospective donors in Missouri that he’d made this claim up on the spot.

Why make up a claim like that? And, having done so, why admit and even brag about it, and then renew this knowingly false claim six years later?

My colleague Jennifer Saul and I are scholars in the political philosophy of language. We’re among those who cite this example of Trump bullshit in our work on bullshit in authoritarian political speech and how bullshit can succeed even though everyone recognizes that it is, in fact, bullshit.

Why Trump bullshits

Our notion of bullshit is a refinement of the term that was the subject of American philosopher Harry Frankfurt’s seminal 2005 book *On Bullshit*.

Most liars care enough about the truth to try to conceal it. But simply not caring either way is a different vice, which Frankfurt called bullshitting.

An example would be claiming a trade deficit without having any idea whether that’s true or false. Other examples include uttering falsehoods that are so obvious they couldn’t possibly be intended to deceive anyone.

Really obvious bullshit can succeed politically, we proposed, because there are many audiences in mass communication. Bullshit targeted at Audience A can be a big hit with Audience B, if B thinks A deserves it.

Then it becomes a display of power over A, with B enjoying the spectacle. This overt bullshitting lends itself to authoritarian politics for someone cultivating a strongman image. It marks an opponent for disrespectful treatment, and advertises that the bullshitter cannot be held to account.

So Trump’s admission that he bullshitted Trudeau in 2018 was a successful strategy because he revealed it to a sympathetic audience, who got to see themselves as part of the performance and not as its target. Asking: “Does Trump really mean this?” is often less revealing than: “How does this promote Trump’s image as an authority figure, and to which audience?”

Similarly, Trump falsely remarked in 2019 that Hurricane Dorian’s projected path included Alabama. He responded to fact-checking by showing an official storm track map that he literally altered by hand, with a marker.

Such a ridiculous invention couldn’t be meant to deceive. But it showed Trump’s base, many of whom distrust mainstream information sources, that he couldn’t be made to back down for reporters, no matter the facts.

Some claims appear deceptive lies to one audience and bullshit to another, like Trump’s recent claim that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a dictator who started the war in Ukraine.

Some audiences might believe it. Others will see it as false and designed to be deceptive, yet recognize it as a threat to treat Ukraine as an aggressor with American demands for Ukraine’s rare earth minerals at stake.

Credibility matters in unexpected ways

Even conservative pundits initially worried that Trump’s propensity to bullshit would diminish the finite resource that is credibility.

They didn’t recognize that credibility is a dubious virtue in strongman politics. Its absence can even be an asset. Acting without credibility is a chance to flex — to show that you can compel others to take you seriously whether they believe you or not.

These incentives link frivolous outbursts of bullshit with very serious doubling-downs. Trump first spoke about Canada becoming the 51st state in a meeting with Trudeau in late November so offhandedly that it was not immediately mentioned in news reports.

Once Fox News seized upon it, Trudeau was forced to publicly dismiss the comment as a joke.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Donald Trump at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in November 2024. Trudeau apparently thought Trump was just bullshitting when he made mention of Canada becoming a 51st state during the dinner.(X/@JustinTrudeau)

VIDS

A more commentary revealed liberal-leaning Canadians and Americans were angry and even frightened by this sort of talk — conditions that made it attractive for Trump to double down rather than back down.

Combing through Trump’s speech and actions towards Canada to discover what he really means may just be an attempt to “sane-wash” them; meaning trying to figure out if they reflect a stable and sincere attitude, or even a stable and insincere negotiating strategy.

What makes Trump’s bullshit so dangerous is that it rarely reflects fixed, coherent meanings or convictions. It lurches from triviality to deadly seriousness, depending on how his various audiences provide the approval and the outrage Trump seeks for his performances of strength.

Tim Kenyon, Professor, Faculty of Humanities, Brock University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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After Kirk shooting, right-wing media revive false narrative about attack on Minnesota legislators

Written by Matt Gertz

Published09/17/25

In the wake of the killing of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, many on the right have claimed that all political violence comes from the left, an argument used to justify a broad crackdown against their political enemies. The June shooting of two Democratic state legislators in Minnesota is the most prominent recent evidence against that argument (though hardly the only such case).

But several right-wing media figures have found a rhetorical solution by suggesting that the alleged Minnesota shooter — who reportedly had a “hit list” of dozens of other Democratic leaders and was, according to his friend and roommate, a supporter of President Donald Trump — is actually a leftist.

In fact, the right-wing media bubble is so impermeable to facts that contradict its narratives that prominent Republican figures, including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Attorney General Pam Bondi, have pushed the same claims.

The right’s false narrative about the Minnesota shootings

Federal prosecutors allege that Vance Boelter committed “targeted political assassinations” when he shot and killed Minnesota House of Representatives Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband, then shot and wounded Minnesota State Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, in the early morning hours of June 14.

:{:{Boelter, like many alleged perpetrators of political violence, seemed to be suffering from mental illness that muddled the clarity of his views. But his preferences appear to be with the political right — he was reportedly an evangelical Christian who preached against abortion and the LGBTQ community, and according to his roommate and longtime friend, he “supported Trump and tuned in to programming from Alex Jones’s conspiracy-filled Infowars site.”}:

And his targets were universally on the political left: Hortman, and Hoffman’s legislative district, were reportedly named in a “hit list” that law enforcement subsequently recovered from Boelter’s vehicle; the list also included Gov. Tim Walz, dozens of other Democratic lawmakers from Minnesota and elsewhere, and “figures with ties to the abortion rights movement, including Planned Parenthood.”}:

None of these facts should suggest that the political right or the Republican Party as a whole bear responsibility for Boelter’s alleged political violence or that their repression is justified to prevent similar attacks. They are relevant, however, to the question of whether political violence is solely directed from the left toward the right.

But while those facts were trickling out in the days following the attack, MAGA influencers were spinning up a narrative in which Boelter was actually a leftist. Some even suggested that the attacks may have been ordered by Walz, perhaps as retribution for the legislators supporting legislation the governor opposed. This argument rested on two ludicrously thin pieces of evidence. First, Walz had, in 2019, reappointed Boelter to a workforce development advisory board that reportedly “has about 60 members, many of whom are not politically connected or would have meaningful access to the governor or interactions with him.” Second, police found flyers with “No Kings” written on them in Boelter’s vehicle, which they said could have indicated he planned to target anti-Trump protests scheduled to take place later that day.

The right revives the false Minnesota narrative following Kirk’s killing

Many prominent right-wing figures seem to have either never heard any information about Boelter outside of those initial conspiracy theories, or learned of it but decided to hide the facts from their audiences. And now, in the wake of Kirk’s killing by an apparent leftist whose alleged motive was to stop Kirk’s “hate,” the false narrative has been revived by MAGA commentators who are trying to push back against arguments that the Minnesota shootings were a case of political violence from the right.

Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade, while listing recent cases of politically motivated killings on September 13, described the Minnesota shootings as follows: “And then, June 14, these Minnesota legislators were killed, something to do with what’s going on locally — they didn’t like what Tim Walz was doing, or a former staffer of Tim Walz.” Neither Kilmeade nor Fox’s graphic identified the legislators as Democrats.

Fox host Will Cain claimed on his Tuesday broadcast that “essentially bullets are flying in one direction,” but the left is trying “to make this a both-sides problem of political violence” by falsely attributing cases like the Minnesota shootings to the right.

“What we know about that particular suspect’s motivations remains somewhat unclear, but we do know that he had with him flyers that had No Kings Day protests solicitation on them,” Cain said. “There is also some suggestion he was upset about the way Hortman voted when it came to illegal immigrants and health care. Before we assume it is both sides, let’s get the facts on each instance.”

Video

Citation

From the September 16, 2025, edition of Fox News' The Will Cain Show

Newsmax host Rob Finnerty offered a similar explanation on his show later that night. “They're trying to pretend that what happened to Charlie Kirk has nothing to do with the left, that this happens all the time on both sides, which is not true,” he said, before turning to the Minnesota shootings.

“The problem with that, Melissa Hortman was a Democrat, and while her death was tragic, she was actually killed by another Democrat,” Finnerty claimed. “Not only that, a Democrat who worked directly for Tim Walz, was appointed by Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, Kamala's running mate, meaning that in this case, a Democrat literally assassinated another Democrat.”

“Because that's the left,” he continued. “That's what they do as a party, and it's not being covered by the rest of the media. It's being covered up.”

This narrative about the Minnesota shooting is so prevalent in right-wing media — and the GOP’s leaders are so ensconced within the right-wing media bubble — that Republican politicians have promoted it.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), who is pathologically online, had posted shortly after the June attack that the shooter had been a “Marxist.” He later deleted his posts after being confronted by Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN), who had also been on the alleged “hit list.”

But three months later, their colleague Cruz also linked the Minnesota shooter to the left.

When Cruz called political violence “a left-wing problem” during a CNN interview on Tuesday, host Kaitlan Collins responded by pointing to the Minnesota shooting.

“You need to get your facts right,” Cruz replied. “The assassin there was not a right-wing assassin acting on a political motive. The assassin there was someone who had been an appointee of Tim Walz, and he was a deranged lunatic.”

Likewise, asked about the Minnesota shooting on Monday, Bondi said of the alleged killer, “I believe they said that they were supporters of Gov. Walz."

As I wrote last week, we can’t have a real conversation about political violence if we can’t admit that it has come from both sides. But many on the right just don’t seem capable of doing that, and they’re backfilling whatever explanations they can conjure up to avoid admitting the existence of political violence from the right.

// MMA

• ### On the killing of Charlie Kirk, political violence, and the right’s response

09/12/25 1:22 PM EDT

• ### Right-wing disinformation machine spins up a false profile of Minnesota shooting suspect

06/16/25 12:50 PM EDT

• ### After the killing of a leading Minnesota politician, Laura Loomer pushed baseless claims

06/20/25

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OMFG MMA 8 25 // CRM4

Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk called pictures of starving children in Gaza “propaganda” and “emotional, visual, optical warfare” and claimed the “lies against Israel are relentless,” showing The New York Times’ picture of the 18-month-old suffering from malnutrition and emphasizing his “muscular disorder.”Kirk’s guest Rabbi Pesach Wolicki also claimed Palestinians in Gaza are “not emaciated. They're not starving. The people of Gaza are not starving. But Hamas needs to perpetuate this narrative.” Real America’s Voice, *The Charlie Kirk Show*, [7/28/25]

AN 7 25

CNN analyst Daniel Dale says the president lies. He lies a lot.

“President Donald Trump told a story on Monday about how he 'made a correct prediction’ about the outcome of the United Kingdom’s 2016 Brexit referendum while he was visiting his golf course in Scotland ‘the day before the vote,’” Dale said.

“It didn’t happen,” said Dale. Trump actually visited Scotland the day after the Brexit referendum, and he’d made no public predictions on the outcome of that vote.

READ MORE: Trump has only one way out of this mess

It would be trivial if it didn’t happen all the time, said Dale, but it’s “part of a pattern – a long line of similarly fabricated tales from the president about his own history and world history.”

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Dale included an eight-point list of lies from just over the last two months, including Trump’s false claim that he issued a “don’t go in” warning against the 2003 invasion of Iraq, his lie about a supposed conversation with his late uncle about the Unabomber, and his dishonest claim that it was he who deployed the National Guard during civil unrest in Minneapolis in 2020, among many others.

“I actually did say, ‘Don’t go in [to Iraq], don’t go in, don’t go in.’ But I said, ‘If you’re going to go in, keep the oil.’ But they didn’t do that,” claimed Trump.

He didn’t, said Dale

READ MORE:'Do it!' Trump orders top Republican to bulldoze obstacle stopping far-right prosecutors

“[Ted] Kaczynski [the Unabomber] was one of [my uncle’s] students,” said Trump, who then went on to fabricate an impossible conversation between Trump and his uncle about Kaczynski.

Dale said it was impossible because Kaczynski was not known to be the Unabomber at the alleged time of the conversation.

“That city was burning down, Minneapolis – it was burning down, it was gonna burn to the ground – and [Gov. Tim Walz] wouldn’t call the Guard. And I waited for a long time, and I called the Guard, and I saved it.” Trump claimed of civil unrest in Minneapolis following the death of George Floyd by city police.

But it was Gov. Tim Walz, not Trump, who called out the guard.

And as for Trump’s claim that South Korea persuaded Biden to let it abandon paying for U.S. military protection from North Korea? Lies.

READ MORE:'An internal scapegoat': Here's how Trump could try to 'end the scandal'

“In fact, Biden’s administration signed two cost-sharing agreements with South Korea, one in 2021 and one in 2024, that included South Korean spending increases – meaning South Korea twice agreed to pay more than it did during Trump’s first term,” Dale said.

So, why does he do it? Dale said the lies all serve the purpose of exaggerating Trump’s alleged expertise, embellishing his biography and his record and to “diminish his political opponents.”

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NO LNX

This new capitulation to Trump is grotesque — and the most dangerous yet

Thom Hartmann July 31, 2025

The media’s job in a democratic society is to speak truth to power, not to suck up to it. But last week, CBS and its parent company Paramount waved the white flag, handing Donald Trump a $16 million bribe and agreeing to censor their own newsroom to curry favor with a twice-impeached, multiply-indicted rapist authoritarian who lost the popular vote twice.

That is not journalism. That’s capitulation. And it’s devastating to democracies.

The Paramount merger with Skydance should never have been a political issue. In normal times, regulatory agencies like the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) operate independently, applying laws without fear or favor. But these are not normal times.

Trump’s FCC — under the control of far-right ideologue Brendan Carr, who helped draft the fascism-friendly blueprint known as Project 2025 — made it clear they’d block the deal unless CBS “cleaned house.”

Carr even bragged on CNBC that the merger only went through because Skydance promised to remove “bias” from CBS News. By “bias,” of course, he means “truth.”

Trump and Carr appear to be demanding that CBS stop telling the truth about the GOP’s fascist drift, stop investigating corruption, and stop airing facts that make Trump and the MAGA movement look bad. And CBS didn’t just roll over: they cut a personal check to Trump for $16 million, reportedly threw in an equal amount in free advertising, canceled Stephen Colbert’s show to eliminate critical comedy, and agreed to install a literal “monitor” in their newsroom to hunt down and eliminate so-called “leftwing bias.”

This is not just grotesque. It’s dangerous.

Installing government-friendly “monitors” in newsrooms to silence dissent is one of the first things authoritarians do when they take power. It happened in Hungary under Viktor Orbán. It happened in Russia under Vladimir Putin. In Germany in the early 1930s, Adolf Hitler handed control of the media to Joseph Goebbels and banned reporting that contradicted Nazi talking points.

What Trump and Carr are doing is textbook fascism: co-opting the press, criminalizing dissent, and demanding personal loyalty above all else across both government and the media.

The problem, of course, is that reality has a well-known leftwing bias. That’s because reality, unlike rightwing ideology, is rooted in facts. For example:

Trickle-down economics has never helped the working class — it’s a scam to transfer wealth to the rich.

Immigrants are not more likely to commit crimes — they’re less likely.

Late-term abortions are rare and almost always involve severe fetal abnormalities or risks to the mother — women don’t “love getting abortions” or do so with little thought.

Unions raise wages and reduce inequality — they don’t “steal from workers.”

Climate change is real and accelerating, and fossil fuel companies and Republicans have known it — and spent billions to cover it up — for decades.

Renewable energy is cheaper than coal, gas, or oil in most of the world.

People on public assistance are usually not “lazy” but are either disabled, working or actively seeking work, or living in areas where there is no work.

Raising the minimum wage doesn’t increase unemployment — it boosts the economym, which increases employment.

Universal healthcare works in every other developed nation — it’s not “impossible” to implement here in America.

The U.S. was not founded as a Christian nation, but as a secular republic.

Yet when these facts and others become “too political” for CBS to air — when truth is treated as liberal bias — we’re in real trouble. If CBS can’t push back on obvious lies because it’s afraid of offending Trump’s FCC, how long before every newsroom falls in line?

This is exactly how freedom of the press — and then freedom for everybody — dies: not with a bang, but with a checkbook and a veiled threat. When media companies start self-censoring to avoid regulatory retribution, they become lapdogs, not watchdogs.

And Trump isn’t even trying to hide this. He’s bragging about it.

Last week, the White House even released a full-on tantrum of a statement attacking South Park for mocking Trump. The show dared to suggest that combining the powers of the presidency with lawsuits and bribes might be a bad thing for democracy. In response, Trump’s staff accused the show of being “irrelevant” and “desperate for attention.”

Can you name any other president in American history who issued a press release attacking a cartoon?

But Trump’s not just punching down with his words: he’s using the full weight of the federal government to go after anyone who defies him. He’s already targeted universities, law firms, prosecutors, and journalists with bogus DOJ investigations and regulatory harassment. Now he’s turned the FCC into his personal censorship bureau.

The bribes paid by CBS and ABC weren’t one-offs, they were the first installment in a classic protection racket.

That’s not America. That’s a mob state being run by a man who behaves like a mob boss.

So what do we do? First, we must stop pretending this is normal. It’s not. CBS didn’t make a “business decision,” they submitted to a political shakedown. And the rest of the media should not let them get away with it.

Second, we must speak out, loudly and relentlessly. Let CBS know that rolling over for a wannabe strongman is unacceptable. Tell your local stations you want truth, not Trump-approved propaganda. Support independent journalism and media outlets willing to tell the truth even when it’s unpopular. Subscribe. Donate. Amplify their work.

And finally, we need to get serious about defending our democracy. That means voting like our freedoms depend on it, because they do. It means rejecting candidates who would silence the press and stack the courts and install “monitors” in our newsrooms. It means recognizing authoritarianism when it’s right in front of us and calling it what it is. It means getting inside your local Democratic Party and fighting for real progressive change and the survival of our republic.

Trump has shown us, again and again, that he will use every lever of power to silence his critics and punish his enemies. Now he has the FCC and a major news network doing his bidding. If we stay silent now, we may not get another chance.

Democracy dies when people stop caring. Let’s prove that we still do.

NOW READ: 'You guys made this happen': Dems find a way to stick it to a furious GOP

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aha // yikes:

msnbc divide not left right, not quite college vs not but fact vs not

dean col sch jrnl on drones 12/24?

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Fox News totally ignored new report showing violent crime is down — while running more than 4.5 hours of violent crime coverage 08/15

AHA NOTE PRESS SUPPRESS LIBERAL MEDIA BIAS bs ESSENTIal for earth2

// LIE GASLIGHT ON JAN 6

NOTE LIBERAL MEDIA BS BELOW

Trump says “Russia, if you’re listening” was a joke. There’s tape proving otherwise. | Vox

no lnx

Trump says “Russia, if you’re listening” was a joke. There’s tape to prove otherwise.

Trump is layering lie upon lie to rewrite the history of his encouragement of Russian hackers.

by Aaron Rupar

Sep 29, 2020,

Trump accused reporters this weekend of mischaracterizing comments he made in July 2016 publicly encouraging Russian hackers to attack Hillary Clinton. But the way he described those comments is completely at odds with reality, and there’s video to prove it.

“Do you remember when I said, ‘Russia, if you’re listening, find her emails,’ or whatever the hell I said? ‘Find her emails,’ and then we all laughed together, 25,000 people in a stadium,” Trump said at a rally in Middletown, Pennsylvania, on Saturday. “They cut it off exactly before we all started to laugh together, right? And for two years they’ve been saying, ‘He dealt with Russia. He asked Russia to please get her emails,’ or whatever the hell we were asking ... the whole place cracks up with me ... this is how dishonest these people are.”

This is no doubt part of his never-ending effort to discredit the media.

Watch:

Trump made the remarks in question during his first campaign, saying, “Russia, if you’re listening — I hope you are able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let’s see if that happens.”

But Trump did not say this to a cheering and laughing crowd at one of his rallies. He actually said it in front of a handful of reporters during a news conference at his Doral property in Florida. That news conference wound up being his final one before the election, in large part because of the negative stir his remarks generated.

Furthermore, nobody laughed when Trump said it, and his comments are just as bad in context as they are when the “Russia, if you’re listening” line is considered on its own. Here’s the footage:

Jim Acosta of CNN, the reporter who asked the question that prompted Trump to say “Russia, if you’re listening” at the July 2016 news conference, tweeted on Tuesday morning that “the reporters at the news conference didn’t laugh. And Trump didn’t appear to be joking.”

The president seems to be trying to turn reality on its head, even though there’s tape to prove otherwise.

Trump is spitting on his supporters and telling them it’s raining

Retconning the incident has become a staple of Trump’s campaign speeches. On September 19 in Fayetteville, North Carolina, for instance, Trump brought it up and claimed “everybody laughed” and “it was a joke,” then added the lie about it happening at a rally for the first time over the weekend.

Even if Trump didn’t mean for his comments to be taken seriously, Russian hackers apparently did. According to Robert Mueller’s indictment of 12 Russian military intelligence officials, on the same day Trump made those comments, Russian hackers “attempted after hours to spearphish for the first time email accounts at a domain hosted by a third-party provided and used by Clinton’s personal office. At or around the same time, they also targeted seventy-six email addresses at the domain for the Clinton Campaign.”

Trump has made clear in the years since that he doesn’t think foreign interference in American elections is a bad thing, insofar as it helps him. In October 2019, Trump flatly told reporters that he thought the Chinese and Ukrainian governments “should investigate the Bidens.” Those comments were widely condemned but were defended as just a joke by Republican members of Congress like Kevin McCarthy and Roy Blunt, even though footage of the comment showed Trump was serious.

Trump’s comments about the July 2016 news conference were especially shameless, but they were far from the only brazen lie he pushed in Middletown. He told his supporters that just prior to the coronavirus hitting the US, “we were coming together ... I was getting calls from stone-cold, hard-line Democrats,” even though in reality he had just been through an impeachment trial. He claimed 35,000 people attended his Friday evening rally in Newport News, Virginia, but local reports indicate there were around 4,000. And he appeared to fabricate stats about excess mortality in order to mislead people about how hard the US has been hit by Covid-19.

Trump once advised his supporters in 2018 to “just remember — what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.” He’s not subtle about it.

See More:

2020 Presidential Election

Donald Trump

Politics

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NO LNX

'Veterans on Patrol': Inside MAGA's new assault on reality and bizarre conspiracy theory

Thom Hartmann July 12, 2025

In Oklahoma, a domestic militia calling itself “Veterans on Patrol” is systematically targeting weather radars. Their leader, Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer, claims the military is controlling the weather through Doppler radar systems and that these machines are part of a divine affront — a “weather weapon” — that is “mocking God Himself.”

He’s encouraging his followers to sabotage these radars under an operation he calls “Leaning Tower.” This isn’t just fringe paranoia: it’s part of a growing anti-reality insurgency that threatens our democracy itself.

Let’s be blunt: this is insanity. Not just in its content, but in its consequences. And yet, it’s not isolated. It’s one of many conspiracy-fueled campaigns that now animate parts of American life, often backed by violence or intimidation. From QAnon to flat-earth nonsense to vaccine “skeptics” now within the Food and Drug Administration, we’re watching a dangerous erosion of truth, a collapse of shared facts, and an outright assault on the institutions that protect life and liberty.

What’s happening here isn’t just about weather radars: it’s about reality itself.

When people are told not to believe their own eyes, not to trust scientists, doctors, journalists, or even the National Weather Service, society begins to crack. And the people exploiting those cracks — including some of the Trump administration’s most senior officials (see: Bob Kennedy and Stephen Miller, among others) — know exactly what they’re doing.

Veterans on Patrol isn’t just anti-science or anti-government; it’s anti-democracy. It joins a growing list of extremist groups peddling lies and hatred: anti-immigrant, anti-Indigenous, antisemitic, misogynist, anti-Catholic, anti-Muslim. It wraps its destruction in the flag and cloaks its violence in religion. And when Meyer boasts about being responsible for “a lot more than” taking down a radar, we’d be fools not to take him seriously. Oklahoma, after all, remembers Timothy McVeigh.

This latest attack rendered a critical radar system “instantly obsolete,” according to meteorologist David Payne. That radar was designed to save lives, particularly in tornado-prone Oklahoma. When it’s destroyed, people will die. Period. This is not free speech: this is domestic terrorism.

But here’s the deeper issue: this attack is only a symptom, not the disease. The disease is the deliberate poisoning of the American mind with fantasy and fear by a network and system of media and social media owned by anti-democracy rightwing billionaires and filled with Russian trolls. And when truth dies, democracy soon follows.

Because democracy — as Thomas Jefferson so accurately pointed out (“Whenever the people are well informed, they may be trusted with their own government”) — depends on an educated public operating on the basis of shared truths and actual facts.

You can’t have a functioning republic if half the country believes extreme weather is a “liberal weapon” and the other half knows it’s the result of an atmosphere warmed by fossil fuel emissions. You can’t govern when reality itself is disputed. And you certainly can’t maintain civil peace when people are being radicalized into acts of violence based on complete and utter delusion.

The fossil-fuel-billionaire-funded radical right’s war on truth isn’t new, but it’s accelerating. When lies are repeated often enough, they become gospel to those who want to believe them.

Right-wing media outlets, extremist influencers, and opportunistic Republicans have learned — as Josef Goebbels famously preached — that a lie can be more powerful than the truth when it aligns with grievance, fear, and identity and is repeated often enough.

The problem isn’t just gullibility. It’s that these lies are weaponized. And when they take hold, facts become negotiable, science becomes suspect, and even saving people from storms becomes controversial.

Just look at how the “mainstream media” consistently omits from their reporting on Trump’s tariffs that they’re a clear violation of the Constitution and was explicitly called that in an unanimous decision by the US Trade Court, as Robert Hubbell points out so eloquently.

Or when the media ignores the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, and 14th amendment violations of ICE’s random, masked, warrantless arrests and incarceration of brown-skinned people, including those with Green Cards at the “Alligator Alcatraz” concentration camp, along with those with full, court-ordered permission to be here in America.

What does this mean for democracy?

A shattered consensus on truth makes informed voting impossible. If voters can’t agree on basic facts — like whether the atmosphere is heating up or whether a vaccine works — how can they make rational decisions at the ballot box?

The weaponization of delusion breeds violence. Just like the January 6th attack on our Capitol, these radar attacks are fueled by conspiracy and rage. They don’t just damage property, they destabilize the rule of law.

When truth is optional, tyranny becomes inevitable. Autocrats thrive in the fog of misinformation. The more confused and divided a people are, the easier they are to control, thus the daily Trump Reality Show.

Public trust collapses. Scientists, educators, journalists, and public servants all become suspect. That vacuum gets filled by cult leaders, armed militias, and political demagogues.

:{:{Democracy becomes unrecognizable. Without a shared sense of reality, debate becomes pointless, compromise becomes impossible, and elections become battlegrounds instead of ways to determine a rational direction for our shared future.}:

So what do we do?

We fight back with truth. Unapologetically. Loudly. Persistently.

We stand up for science. For journalism. For civic education. For basic decency.

We hold platforms accountable that spread lies, tweak their algorithms secretly to promote anti-democracy messages, and reject the persistent “mainstream media” cowardice of both-sidesism. There aren’t “two sides” to facts. There is reality and there are lies.

We support platforms, networks, media, newsletters, programs, writers, speakers, politicians, and movements that promote the truth and push back against the creeping fascism that is rapidly overtaking our nation.

So we must loudly and persistently call this out for what it is: an attempt — which has so far been successful at destroying democracy in nations like Russia, Hungary, and Turkey — to engage in social and political sabotage. It’s radicalism, a form of domestic terrorism whose target is democracy itself.

And it’s time to say: enough.

Because without truth, we don’t just lose the weather forecast.

We lose our nation.

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7 25 AN

BESSENT SAYS DEMS BLEW UP DEFICIT IN 2020

FOX RETRACTED ABREGO KILLED AM

'Not even bothering to Google': Republican fact-checked over China claim

Ailia Zehra

an 7 25

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miller says scotus 9-0 on abrego

rww

04/18/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

• Elizabeth Dias and Ruth Graham @ The New York Times: White House of Worship: Trump Elevates Christian Prayer and Power

Evangelical leaders are relishing the new atmosphere at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue — and greater access to the president.

• Angry White Men: Stew Peters: America Has A ‘Black Problem’

On The Stew Peters Show, Holocaust denier and Nazi sympathizer Stew Peters dedicated yet another segment to the killing of Austin Metcalf. In it, Peters claimed that America has a “Black problem,” and called for a “national conversation about the problem that we have with Blacks.”

• Media Matters: Kevin Roberts tells Mark Levin that Heritage has started planning Project 2029

"I can tell you on behalf of all of my colleagues at Heritage, we're extraordinarily proud of our work, and I will also tell you, Mark, we're already starting Project 2029 because we are not tired of winning."

• Steve Benen @ The Maddow Blog: Trump allies pitch an alternate reality in which his approval rating is ‘soaring’

Confronted with evidence that the president’s support is falling, Trump’s allies have some options. They’ve chosen the worst one.

• David Badash @ The New Civil Rights Movement: Trump’s Latest Target: The Watchdog That Keeps Suing Him

From the outset of his 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump signaled that a central focus of his presidency would be targeting and exacting retribution against his critics.

an 3 25

**Marjorie Taylor Greene supports infecting kids at measles 'parties' as outbreaks turn deadly**

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an the conv 2 25

There have been many questions raised about the intentions behind Donald Trump’s spate of radical public statements about Canada, in which he claims trade deficits amount to subsidies, massive amounts of fentanyl are flowing across the border and the country should become the 51st American state, among other things.

The U.S. president’s comments have fuelled speculation about what he means when he makes these kinds of false claims — or whether he means anything at all.

After all, rounded to the nearest percentage point, zero per cent of illicit fentanyl entering the U.S. comes from Canada, trade deficits are not subsidies and annexing Canada is an absurd proposal.

So why say things that are so untrue?

Is Trump serious about any of this?

Ignore Trump? Or fear him?

The aggregate opinion seems to be both an unhelpful no and a yes, so the answer remains unclear.

If we take every provocation seriously, we’re falling for the “flood the zone” strategy as Trump spews out outlandish claims as a form of distraction.

If we shrug off his claims, we’re ignoring the potential danger.

But there are patterns and incentives behind Trump’s flouting of basic communicative norms. One illustrative example dates back to 2018 talks with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, when Trump complained about the U.S. trade deficit with Canada. Later, he told prospective donors in Missouri that he’d made this claim up on the spot.

Why make up a claim like that? And, having done so, why admit and even brag about it, and then renew this knowingly false claim six years later?

My colleague Jennifer Saul and I are scholars in the political philosophy of language. We’re among those who cite this example of Trump bullshit in our work on bullshit in authoritarian political speech and how bullshit can succeed even though everyone recognizes that it is, in fact, bullshit.

Why Trump bullshits

Our notion of bullshit is a refinement of the term that was the subject of American philosopher Harry Frankfurt’s seminal 2005 book *On Bullshit*.

Most liars care enough about the truth to try to conceal it. But simply not caring either way is a different vice, which Frankfurt called bullshitting.

An example would be claiming a trade deficit without having any idea whether that’s true or false. Other examples include uttering falsehoods that are so obvious they couldn’t possibly be intended to deceive anyone.

Really obvious bullshit can succeed politically, we proposed, because there are many audiences in mass communication. Bullshit targeted at Audience A can be a big hit with Audience B, if B thinks A deserves it.

Then it becomes a display of power over A, with B enjoying the spectacle. This overt bullshitting lends itself to authoritarian politics for someone cultivating a strongman image. It marks an opponent for disrespectful treatment, and advertises that the bullshitter cannot be held to account.

So Trump’s admission that he bullshitted Trudeau in 2018 was a successful strategy because he revealed it to a sympathetic audience, who got to see themselves as part of the performance and not as its target. Asking: “Does Trump really mean this?” is often less revealing than: “How does this promote Trump’s image as an authority figure, and to which audience?”

Similarly, Trump falsely remarked in 2019 that Hurricane Dorian’s projected path included Alabama. He responded to fact-checking by showing an official storm track map that he literally altered by hand, with a marker.

Such a ridiculous invention couldn’t be meant to deceive. But it showed Trump’s base, many of whom distrust mainstream information sources, that he couldn’t be made to back down for reporters, no matter the facts.

Some claims appear deceptive lies to one audience and bullshit to another, like Trump’s recent claim that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a dictator who started the war in Ukraine.

Some audiences might believe it. Others will see it as false and designed to be deceptive, yet recognize it as a threat to treat Ukraine as an aggressor with American demands for Ukraine’s rare earth minerals at stake.

Credibility matters in unexpected ways

Even conservative pundits initially worried that Trump’s propensity to bullshit would diminish the finite resource that is credibility.

They didn’t recognize that credibility is a dubious virtue in strongman politics. Its absence can even be an asset. Acting without credibility is a chance to flex — to show that you can compel others to take you seriously whether they believe you or not.

These incentives link frivolous outbursts of bullshit with very serious doubling-downs. Trump first spoke about Canada becoming the 51st state in a meeting with Trudeau in late November so offhandedly that it was not immediately mentioned in news reports.

Once Fox News seized upon it, Trudeau was forced to publicly dismiss the comment as a joke.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Donald Trump at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in November 2024. Trudeau apparently thought Trump was just bullshitting when he made mention of Canada becoming a 51st state during the dinner.(X/@JustinTrudeau)

A more commentary revealed liberal-leaning Canadians and Americans were angry and even frightened by this sort of talk — conditions that made it attractive for Trump to double down rather than back down.

Combing through Trump’s speech and actions towards Canada to discover what he really means may just be an attempt to “sane-wash” them; meaning trying to figure out if they reflect a stable and sincere attitude, or even a stable and insincere negotiating strategy.

What makes Trump’s bullshit so dangerous is that it rarely reflects fixed, coherent meanings or convictions. It lurches from triviality to deadly seriousness, depending on how his various audiences provide the approval and the outrage Trump seeks for his performances of strength.

Tim Kenyon, Professor, Faculty of Humanities, Brock University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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PUTIN WAR CRIMINAL INVITED TO WHITE HOUSE, UKRAINE TO BLAME FOR WAR, ZELENSKY A DICTATOR?!

AN 2 25

Trump was able to be elected president a second time partly by mobilizing his base of Christian nationalists. This anti-Democratic group has an “us vs. them” mentality, believing that America is on the verge of an apocalypse and that they are being persecuted. In her new book, "Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy," journalist Katherine Stewart investigates this voter base. Salon published an interview with her Tuesday.

This subculture, Stewart argues, believes America should move past democracy. “They believe the U.S. is not founded on principles, but on a specific religious and cultural heritage,” she said. “They argue America is on the brink of an apocalypse, owing to the rise of equality and what they call ‘wokeness.’ They argue democracy, as a system, isn't sufficient to meet the ‘challenges’ of feminism and equality. They believe the democratic rules no longer apply, because we're facing this absolute apocalypse of equality. They want an authoritarian leader who puts himself above the law, who's going to seize the reins of power and scrap the rule of law in favor of the iron fist.”

One of the three major tenants of this mindset is the belief that the country is nearing an apocalypse.

READ MORE:'A lot of MAGA': 20 million Americans could lose health coverage under new GOP bill

“This is what authoritarian leaders do,” she explained. “Christian nationalism is not just an ideology. It's also not just a political movement. It's a mindset… First is ‘us versus them’ or ‘pure versus the impure,’ or those who properly ‘belong’ in the country, and those who do not. Second, there's a sense of persecution. They claim white conservative Christians are being persecuted more than any other group in society. Third is the sense that we're facing an apocalypse. They share this view with the new right. It's always, ‘If we don't win this election, we're gonna go under the control of the Illuminati and the devil's gonna be controlling us for hundreds of years. So it's any means necessary to ‘save’ us from this terrible fate.”

“Those three ideas,” she continued, “clear the way for the acceptance of an authoritarian leader, someone who doesn't respect the rules, who will punish their enemies, and who will suspend the rule of law. If you look at what's happening in our politics today, you can see it playing out before our eyes. In the first weeks of the Trump presidency, we're seeing a version of Project 2025. They've been telling us for a long time they're going to smash the institutions that safeguard our democracy. That's what they're doing.”

But the members of this group have been “colossally misinformed.”

“Many of these supporters don't recognize that American democracy might be destroyed. Some don't care. They think it's more important to put a strong man in power to demolish the supposedly dangerous radical left. But whether they don't care or don't know, it's because they've been colossally misinformed. That's how they rationalize their choices at the ballot box. And I would have to say this is not just about Trump. Authoritarianism loves a misinformed public. The anti-democratic movement has funded this massive propaganda campaign that has led us to where we are today,” she said.

READ MORE:'Revoltingly un-American': Internet erupts after Trump posts photo crowning himself 'king'

Here is an excerpt from the book, published by Rolling Stone:

“Power has not softened the base of this movement. It’s not just blood that they’re after; they want a show. This is the thing that Trump surely understands best. Policy simply doesn’t matter. You can kill off grandma through vaccine denial, take away health insurance, bust unions, drive up inflation, and reward your billionaire friends with policies that benefit their bloated bottom lines. None of that matters as long as you give the people the pleasure of a good performance, where they can project their frustrations and resentments on the targets they have been trained to hate.”

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DOGE COUP USAID a criminal org, money to sean penn ben stiller [jew?]

nazi salute speech to AFD no guilt CRUELTY --> FEAR = FASCISMSTARVING KIDS AID THRU WOODCHIPPER (ireland opera was state dept $, so was---)}:

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an 2 25

President Donald Trump has taken credit for distributing water to Southern California, but Fox News Chief National Security Correspondent Jennifer Griffin said otherwise. In fact, she said in a post on X on Monday, the water went to farmers whose dormant crops did not need it.

“President Trump again said he ‘turned the water on’ in California and that water could have been used to fight the wildfires,” Griffin wrote. “A few facts: The water released by the Army Corps of Engineers from 2 dams in Central California has no way to reach Southern California. The sudden rush alarmed local farmers whose land was nearly flooded.”

She added: “The water is usually kept in reserve to help farmers in Central California during summer drought months. There are no crops that need the water right now. They are dormant. The water was released by the Army Corps of Engineers from Terminus Dam at Lake Kaweah and Schafer Dam at Lake Success but has no way to connect to the aqueduct to deliver water to Southern California to be used for wildfires (most of which are now no longer burning).”

READ MORE: 'Exaggerated his own made-up claim': CNN rapid-fire fact-check busts Trump’s presser talking points

Griffin was responding to a post from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency: “Congratulations to the Administration and DOI’s [Department of Interior] Bureau of Reclamation for more than doubling the Federally pumped water flowing toward Southern California in < 72 hours. Was an honor for the DOGE team to work with you. Great job!”

Trump repeated the claim during a press conference Monday.

More water from Northern California would not have changed the outcome of the fires that destroyed parts of Los Angeles, a spokesperson for California Gov. Gavin Newsom told the Los Angeles Times.

“There is no shortage of water in Southern California,” Newsom’s spokesperson, Tara Gallegos, said. “Water operations to move water south through the Delta have nothing to do with the local fire response in Los Angeles. Trump is either unaware of how water is stored in California or is deliberately misleading the public.”

READ MORE: 'Steamrolling anything in his way': How Trump is 'bulldozing state and local power'

Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) also questioned the move. “Unscheduled water releases require close coordination with local officials and safety personnel, as well as downstream agricultural water users, in order to reduce flood risks to communities and farms,” he wrote to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. “Based on the urgent concerns I have heard from my constituents, as well as recent reporting, it appears that gravely insufficient notification was given, recklessly endangering residents downstream.”

“Today, 1.6 billion gallons and, in 3 days, it will be 5.2 billion gallons. Everybody should be happy about this long fought Victory!” Trump posted on X last week. “I only wish they listened to me six years ago — There would have been no fire!

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an 1 25

Donald Trump’s ambitious demand that the United States regain control of the Panama Canal would be “a mess” for the country, according to the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, which added that it is just the latest example of the incoming president’s “bully tactic diplomacy.”

Trump’s “America First” agenda was on full display during a disjointed news conference Tuesday at his Mar-a-Lago golf resort, where he turned heads for again repeating his desire for the U.S. to acquire Canada, Panama and Greenland.

But the trick to deciphering Trump’s remarks “is figuring out when Mr. Trump is trolling and when he means it,” the Journal’s conservative editorial board wrote Wednesday.

“A Greenland deal has potential if he’s artful. Panama would be a mess, and his Canada trolling could hurt the Conservatives,” according to the board. “Mr. Trump often prefers to talk tough, but using the bully pulpit to bully America’s friends is no help against the real bad guys.”

Trump told reporters Tuesday that “the Panama Canal is vital to our country,” adding that it was “a big mistake” for the U.S. to sign over the canal in a treaty under former President Jimmy Carter. But his tough talk on Panama seemed to be a bridge too far for the board, which noted that the president-elect refused to take using military force off the table.

“If he means that, he’s asking for trouble,” the board wrote in their op-ed. “It would turn an ally in the Western Hemisphere into an adversary. Does he want a forever guerrilla war?”

The Journal’s editorial board suggested that Trump’s threats may be aimed at a deal on canal fees “or maybe the Panamanian ports managed by a Hong Kong entity.”

“But he’s simply making it up that Chinese soldiers are running the canal,” the board wrote in a fact check of Trump’s claims the canal is being operated by Chinese soldiers.

They concluded that Trump – who famously penned “The Art of the Deal” with ghostwriter Tony Schwartz – would benefit from a piece of his advice.

“One possible option might be a defense free association compact with Greenland, similar to U.S. arrangements with Pacific island states,” the board wrote. “The subtle art of persuasion would be required.”

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am 12 24

Trump's second term as president is less than a month away, with the president-elect scheduled to be inaugurated on January 20, 2025. And when he is sworn in, Republicans will have small majorities in both branches of Congress.

Salon's Chauncey DeVega hasn't minced words in his anti-Trump articles, many of which have attacked him as a dangerously authoritarian.

In an article published on December 27, DeVega offers a "Words of the Year" listicle for "Donald Trump’s imminent return to power and the very dark and challenging times that may lie beyond in the country's worsening democracy crisis."

READ MORE: 'Cracks are showing': Why 'messy mix' of 'contradictions' may sink Trump’s coalition

The terms in DeVega's listicle include: (1) "weathering," (2) "witnessing," (3) "dread," (4) "corporeal politics," (5) "anticipatory obedience," and (6) "malignant normality."

DeVega describes "weathering" as "the impact of chronic stress and other negative factors on a person's mind, body and overall wellbeing."

"The American people are going to experience great weathering from a resurgent Trump Administration, the MAGA Republicans and the larger 'conservative' movement and its allied forces," DeVega warns. "This weathering will also impact those people who voted for Trump — his 'working-class' supporters in red state America will be particularly vulnerable."

DeVega describes "corporeal politics" as "the relationship of the body to politics" and "anticipatory obedience" as "a temptation to surrender in advance" when " societies that are under siege from fascist and other such authoritarian, illiberal, and antidemocratic forces."

READ MORE:[GOP trifecta to feature legislative attacks on voting rights

"The reasoning here is that preemptive surrender and compliance will somehow create safety," DeVega explains. "This is largely an illusion."

According to DeVega, the "malignant normality" concept "helps to explain Donald Trump and the MAGA movement and larger right-wing's hold on power and the country's political imagination."

The Salon journalist laments, "This state of malignant normality will likely endure long into the future because the collective relationship between truth and reality has been so disrupted by right-wing malign actors and such forces as disinformation, propaganda, social media, the algorithm, digital media echo chambers, conspiracism, closed epistemes and alternate realities, a failing public education system, a weak Fourth Estate and the death of local newspapers and other legitimate news sources, and perhaps most importantly the Trump-MAGA political experience-infotainment machine and pseudo-religion."

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an 12 24

Trump and his MAGA allies repeatedly accuse mainstream media outlets of spreading "fake news" — which, Trump critics argue, is projection in light of all the conspiracy theories that MAGA Republicans promote.

In an article published the day after Christmas, Salon's Amanda Marcotte stresses that "disinformation" and a "poor information ecosystem" played a key role in Trump's victory over Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.

"In the face of Vice President Kamala Harris losing the presidential election to Donald Trump," Marcotte writes, "the punditry's focus has been almost exclusively on asking how the Democrats couldn't beat a relentless liar with 34 felony convictions and a previous attempted coup under his belt. Everyone has a different theory about Harris' 'messaging,' with every critic inevitably arguing that if she had just talked more about their pet issue, she would have won."

Marcotte continues, "Another option, however, is to listen to what swing voters who backed Trump said about their decision."

READ MORE:[Businesses are already 'capitulating to Trump' for fear of retribution

Many U.S. voters, Marcotte laments, are "addicted to BS." And she cites research from conservative strategist Sarah Longwell, a Never Trumper who recently interviewed 2024 Trump voters who listen to Joe Rogan's podcast.

"Rogan's audience perfectly illustrates the way the firehose of disinformation online — his conspiracy theory-hyping podcast has over 16 million followers — has pickled the brains of so many otherwise normal people," Marcotte explains. "Most of the people Longwell interviewed couldn't go two minutes without coughing up a conspiracy theory. Everything is a shadowy plot, from the COVID-19 pandemic to the guy who shot Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania."

Marcotte points to the far-right QAnon as an example of how outlandish conspiracy theories can be.

"After the insurrection of January 6," Marcotte observes, "a lot of attention was paid to the rise of QAnon, because so many rioters were adherents to this online cult that preached that Trump is a savior prophesized to stop a worldwide Satanic conspiracy. Alarming reports showed millions of Americans believed QAnon myths, such as the divinity of Trump or that Democrats drink children's blood."

READ MORE:**'Throwing in the towel': NYT columnist slammed for urging Trump critics to 'wish new admin well'**

Marcotte continues, "QAnon is still around, but it gets much less media coverage these days. One likely reason is what we see in these focus groups: bonkerballs levels of conspiracy belief is no longer a fringe phenomenon. QAnon-style beliefs are simply the norm in American society…. One of the best predictors, if not the best predictor, of a Trump vote is how poor a person's information ecosystem is. People who read or watch real news outlets voted overwhelmingly for Harris. People who get their political information from social media voted for Trump."

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an 12 24

At least 27 House Republicans are urging President-elect Donald Trump to end the Internal Revenue Service's Direct File program as soon as he returns to the White House and begins his second term. But Direct File also has plenty of supporters, including MSNBC's Hayes Brown.

In an opinion column published on December 15, Brown argues that House Republicans have a motivation for wanting to abolish Direct File: making it more "painful" for Americans to file their taxes.

"In the fall of 2023, the Internal Revenue Service announced a pilot program that would allow some Americans to file their taxes directly to the agency — for free," Brown explains. "The Direct File service managed to go against at least a half-dozen federal government stereotypes: it was new and novel in a system that loathes change, it allowed people to be more efficient with their time, and the people who used it this past tax season had plenty of good things to say about their experience."

READ MORE:[New Kristi Noem proposal would fund Christian ‘segregation academies’

Brown adds, "In May, the IRS said the program would be expanded and made permanent. But of course, there are Republicans who would like nothing more than to strangle a popular government initiative in its cradle."

According to Brown, House Republicans who oppose Direct File believe that abolishing the program will make it easier for their party to carry out tax cuts for wealthy Americans.

"The more friction in the system, the more visible of a target the IRS becomes for average Americans," Brown explains. "The more people who are frustrated with the IRS, the better their case for cutting even more taxes for the wealthy. It also doesn't hurt to be in the good graces of massive tax preparation companies like Intuit, which have spent years and millions of dollars to ensure that filing taxes is as painful a process as possible. Among the reforms they blocked was a plan to go further than Direct File, letting many taxpayers file pre-populated forms for free."

Brown continues, "The net effect is that there's no upside to murdering Direct File ahead of tax season beyond making the federal government less responsive and useful in the eyes of Americans. Republicans can falsely claim that they're trying to save taxpayers' money from the clutches of the IRS. It's clear what they're really trying to claw back is a massive refund of Americans’ time and energy in the name of making everything a little bit worse."

READ MORE:['Trump ’28': Bannon calls for third term

*Hayes Brown's full MSNBC opinion column is available at this link.

ref 1 biz insider

• IRS has gradually rolled out a program to allow Americans to directly file taxes with the IRS.
• It's designed to make filing taxes simpler and easier.
• A group of Republicans want Donald Trump to end it, saying it's government overreach.

More than two dozen House Republicans are asking President-elect Donald Trump to terminate the Internal Revenue Service's free direct tax-filing system as soon as day one of his presidency.

Republican Reps. Adrian Smith of Nebraska and Chuck Edwards of North Carolina sent a letter to the president-elect on Tuesday urging him to end the program via executive order, saying it posed a "threat to taxpayers' freedom from government overreach."

The letter was signed by 27 other Republicans and is also addressed to Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the co-leads of the Department of Government Efficiency.

The program came about as the result of the Inflation Reduction Act, which included $15 million in funding to study the creation of a website allowing Americans to directly file their taxes to the IRS for free. That led to the rollout of a pilot program that was available in 12 states last year and is set to expand to 24 states in 2025.

A spokesperson for the IRS didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Many Americans rely on tax-prep companies such as TurboTax and H&R Block to do their taxes each year. The new program is designed to compete with those programs and make filing easier and less costly for Americans.

Smith and Edwards argued in their letter that the program represented a conflict of interest for the IRS — that the agency shouldn't be in charge of both assessing taxes and enforcing them. The duo wrote that the agency "has little incentive to ensure hardworking Americans do not pay more than they owe in taxes."

They also cast the free Direct File program as an example of the "weaponization of government against Americans," a long-standing focus of Trump and the MAGA-aligned right.

It's unclear whether Trump will take the lawmakers up on their request, and the Trump-Vance transition didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Republicans have broadly sought to roll back the $80 billion in additional funding for the IRS that was included in the Inflation Reduction Act, saying it will be used to enable the agency to target conservatives and ordinary taxpayers.

ref 2

MOFO BIZZARROWORLD

Smith, Edwards, Colleagues Call for Day-One Elimination of IRS Direct File

December 10, 2024

Press Release

Washington, D.C. - Today, Congressman Adrian Smith (R-NE) and Chuck Edwards (R-NC) along with 27 House colleagues sent a letter asking President Trump to immediately end the IRS' unlawful Direct File pilot program upon taking office in January. Copies of the letter were addressed to Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, Trump's selections to lead his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) as well as Treasury Secretary-Designee Scott Bessent, and Trump's selection to lead the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Russell Vought.

Cosigners of the letter include:

Reps. Mike Kelly (R-PA), Carol Miller (R-WV), Mark Alford (R-MO), Rick Allen (R-GA), Don Bacon (R-NE), Vern Buchanan (R-FL), Mike Carey (R-OH), Ron Estes (R-KS), Michelle Fischbach (R-MN), Andrew Garbarino (R-NY), Kevin Hern (R-OK) Erin Houchin (R-IN), Young Kim (R-CA), David Kustoff (R-TN), Darin LaHood (R-IL), Greg Murphy (R-NC), August Pfluger (R-TX), Keith Self (R-TX), Pete Sessions (R-TX), Greg Steube (R-FL), Claudia Tenney (R-NY), William Timmons (R-SC), Beth Van Duyne (R-TX), Steve Womack (R-AR), Andrew Clyde (R-GA), Nathaniel Moran (R-TX), and Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY)

In the letter the members said:

"We write to urge you to take immediate action, including a day-one executive order, to end the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) unauthorized and wasteful Direct File pilot program. The program’s creation and ongoing expansion pose a threat to taxpayers’ freedom from government overreach, and its shaky rollout and structural flaws have already come at a steep price.

...

"This is deeply concerning and a clear conflict of interest.

...

"Under the Biden-Harris administration, the IRS has undertaken an aggressive expansion of its influence, fueled by the exorbitant $80 billion provided by the Inflation Reduction Act, in which it has repeatedly overstepped its authority and targeted hardworking Americans with audits...Even prior, the IRS has a long record of abusing its authority to target political opponents.

How can we entrust the IRS to responsibly prepare and enforce taxes when it has encroached on Americans’ individual liberties at every opportunity? And how can we trust future administrations to not do as the Biden-Harris administration has done in wielding the IRS as a tool to silence political opponents and control private citizens? We should act now to end Direct File to protect Americans from further overreach.

...

"Instead of Direct File, the IRS should be focused on improving its functionality and service to American taxpayers. Under the Biden-Harris administration, Americans experienced significant delays in receiving their tax returns, and the agency has failed to reduce the federal deficit despite the bloated enforcement funding provided by the Inflation Reduction Act. The agency’s existing issues will only be compounded by an expanded Direct File venture..."

Read the full letter here.

BACKGROUND:

Smith and Edwards introduced legislation in July of this year to terminate the IRS’s unauthorized Direct File program. Smith also introduced legislation, passed by the House in January 2023, to repeal the Biden-Harris administration’s $80 billion IRS expansion.

mma

MAGA propaganda machine helped carry Trump back to the White House — and it’s not done poisoning America

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 11/07/24

Donald Trump was reelected president on Tuesday, four years after fomenting a coup which saw a mob of his supporters storm the U.S. Capitol and then leaving the White House in disgrace. He owes his return at least in part to a rankly dishonest right-wing information ecosystem that helped carry him through countless scandals that would have ended the careers of most politicians, driving his comeback to the pinnacle of power.

Conservative audiences are dependent on a right-wing media complex that bombards them with falsehoods and grievances while dissuading them from consulting any alternative sources of information, be they legacy news outlets or government officials or medical experts.

Once Trump captured the GOP and ascended to the presidency in 2017, that bubble served him and his interests. Within it, for example, his supporters were convinced by a sprawling conspiracy theory portraying the then-president as the victim of a shadowy “deep state” cabal that justified vast retribution.

The January 6 insurrection presented Trump’s propagandists with a crossroads. Rupert Murdoch, whose media empire includes right-wing bastions like Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and New York Post, privately sought for him to become a “non person.” But Tucker Carlson and his allies at Fox and elsewhere instead went to work creating a counternarrative in which Trump was blameless. People who knew better either played along or actively participated in the whitewashing of that day.

Trump’s various indictments for a host of crimes provided additional hinge points. Right-wing media figures who could have used evidence of his abject criminality as a rationale for cutting him loose instead rallied to him and sought to delegitimize those seeking to bring him to justice.

The right-wing media bubble’s eagerness to excuse Trump’s actions gave him a dominant position in the Republican primary. As he romped to the nomination, his opponents complained that they were unable to gain traction because the party’s propaganda wing had united behind him.

Trump again became the nominee of one of the two major parties. He selected Ohio Sen. JD Vance, a Carlson favorite, as his running mate, and demonstrated the importance of the right-wing echo chamber by giving Carlson himself a prime-time speaking slot at the Republican National Convention.

With the general election set between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, right-wing propagandists went to work holding the GOP base together with a combination of grievance-mongering and silence.

They flooded the zone with a bogus narrative of “migrant crime” while ignoring evidence that violent crime was actually plummeting from its Trump-era high.

They instructed their audiences to treat immigrants as a scapegoat, falsely claiming that federal disaster aid desperately needed to respond to hurricanes had been siphoned off to benefit migrants and ginning up grotesque lies about Haitian immigrants eating pets.

They lashed out at the press, urging the Republican base to treat Trump’s poor showing in his debate against Harris as the result of media bias.

When an unprecedented string of former Republican officials and Trump’s own former administration aides came forward with dire warnings of what Trump did in his first term and could do in a second one, they hid the news from their audiences.

And they kept quiet on a host of unpopular aspects of Trump’s policy agenda, from Social Security to reproductive rights, while beating back burgeoning scandals over his alleged January 6 crimes, communications with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and a political event at Arlington National Cemetery.

Journalists and political strategists will spend the next weeks and months grappling for explanations as to how Trump returned to the White House. But without the support of the right-wing propaganda machine, he would not have been in position to sweep his party’s nomination in the first place — and in an evenly divided country amid a global anti-incumbent wave, that provided a strong position to win the presidency.

Now, the same propagandists who helped him back to power are poised to help him carry out his extreme agenda of destruction and retribution.

an 10 24

Mark Robinson, the GOP gubernatorial candidate in North Carolina and current lieutenant governor, is in trouble again.

Not just because Robinson has referred to himself as a “black NAZI” and a “perv,” expressed support for reinstating slavery, said he watched transgender pornography, called homosexuality “filth” and the Holocaust “hogwash,” and has asserted that “some folks need killing.”

He’s in trouble now because he blew off a vote on a declaration that would have granted Governor Roy Cooper key emergency powers ahead of Hurricane Helene’s landfall. Robinson was the only member on the Council of State — a board of nine — who didn’t vote in favor of the declaration. Cooper got the power he needed, but Robinson is now criticizing him for not doing more in the wake of the storm.

Yet Robinson still commands the support of 63 percent of Republicans in North Carolina, according to an East Carolina University poll released Wednesday.

Something seriously troubling has happened to the Republican Party. It’s become filled with wacko candidates for office who are being supported by large percentages of Republican voters.

The trend started in the 1980s with Rush Limbaugh’s radio program, which attracted a wide audience with a toxic mixture of lies, conspiracy theories, fear-mongering, and thinly veiled racism.

It accelerated in 1996 when Rupert Murdoch hired Roger Ailes to emulate Limbaugh with a new TV channel, Fox News. Additional media imitators followed.

The growing supply of this poison offered the (predominantly) white working-class an easy explanation for why the wages and status of many blue-collar men had hit the skids: They could blame immigrants, Black people, Latinos, “coastal elites,” government bureaucrats, pedophiles, women, secularists, Muslims, liberals, Democrats, and Satan.

In the 1990s, Newt Gingrich saw an opportunity to build the Republican Party around similar lies and conspiracy theories. Gingrich’s efforts attracted the first group of modern crackpot candidates into the GOP.

Starting in 2016, Trump attracted another group, even wackier than the previous one.

It’s become a doom loop. As both the demand and the supply of these lies, conspiracy theories, fear-mongering, and racism have grown, the Republican Party’s base has ventured farther from reality. Meanwhile, sane Republicans have left, reasonable people have drifted away, and normal Republican officials have been purged or voted out.

If Trump loses the 2024 election, the Republican Party won’t change, because its base is filled with this poison. So it will continue to attract more crackpot candidates loaded with even more venom; it will nominate them, and some of them will win.

In the current election cycle, the poison doesn’t begin or end with Trump. It includes a Republican vice presidential candidate who calls women who choose not to have children “childless cat ladies,” claims Haitian immigrants are eating people’s pets, won’t concede that Trump lost the 2020 election, and won’t commit to be bound by the outcome of the 2024 election.

It’s produced a slew of Republican candidates for Congress saying similar things. In Ohio, Senator Sherrod Brown’s Republican opponent, Bernie Moreno, is parroting the same racist lies about Haitian immigrants.

In Arizona, the Republican candidate for Senate, Kari Lake, has denied the outcome of the 2020 election, tried to overturn the governor’s race she lost in 2022, appeared at QAnon and white nationalist-tied events, and has a history of violent rhetoric.

Republican Rep. Jen Kiggans of Virginia has called abortion “elective surgery” and compared it to a “Hollywood nose job.”

Wisconsin Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden, who was at Trump’s January 6 rally and appears to have been among the insurrectionists who breached police barricades at the Capitol, calls abortion “genocide.”

Arizona Republican Rep. Eli Crane is promoting conspiracy theories about the assassination attempts on Trump — blaming a mole within Trump’s Secret Service detail and saying that the FBI can’t be trusted to “give us the truth”; that the shooter in Butler, Pennsylvania, didn’t act alone; and that the gunman behind the second attempt is an “asset” of a foreign adversary — despite evidence contradicting all these theories.

Back in North Carolina, Michele Morrow, the current Republican candidate for superintendent of public instruction, has been warning voters about a network of child traffickers and pedophiles that, she says, torture and kill children to harvest their blood for an anti-aging elixir known as adrenochrome.

Morrow says the plus sign in LGBTQ+ “includes PEDOPH*L*A!!” She claims that transgender therapy is “a disgusting plan of Big Pharma to make our children unable to reproduce” and that the World Health Organization has been using vaccines to sterilize people and kill children. She says Satan is “in cahoots” with Democrats, globalists, the “one world order,” the United Nations, China, and Russia “to take down the United States of America.”

Morrow discourages parents from sending their kids to public schools, which she refers to as “indoctrination centers” and “socialism centers.” She was on the Capitol grounds on January 6, 2021, and proposed then that Trump invoke the Insurrection Act, which, she said, “completely puts the Constitution to the side and says, ‘Now the military rules all.’”

Despite all this, Morrow has an even chance to become the state’s top educator. A poll by Raleigh-based WRAL last month found that she is in a statistical tie with her Democratic opponent.

You see the problem. When the base of one of our two political parties both fuels and is fueled by crackpots, some of those crackpots get elected.

The only way forward is with an entirely new Republican Party that rejects and detoxifies the old one and puts an end to this doom loop. Will Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, and some as yet unknown young politicians lead the way?

===

aha:

kremer // jdv on eat pets earth2? not sure he admitted lying/making up stuff, but he admitted to making memes, which are justified in bringing injustice/gubmint failure to light.

plus recall disaSter/evil of dem win justifies any ACT, INCLUDING LYING

rs

*real* Florida family walking through floodwaters as they return home after Hurricane Helene. AP

There has been no shortage of gut-wrenching photographs from communities in the southeast devastated by Hurricane Helene, which caused extreme flooding and killed at least 215 people — pictures of houses destroyed, families trapped on rooftops, wreckage from mudslides and roads washed out by torrential rains. But rather than focus on the actual victims or damage, many right-wing influencers and politicians have extended their sympathies to a nonexistent girl and her puppy (who is also not real).

The AI-generated image they’re sharing depicts a crying girl in a boat, seemingly alone except for the little dog she’s clutching. She wears a lifejacket and appears to be adrift on floodwaters caused by a major storm. Sen. Mike Lee of Utah posted the picture on X on Thursday, writing “Caption this photo,” apparently inviting his followers to vent their outrage at the Biden-Harris administration for allowing American children to suffer such misery on their watch. After users pointed out that he’d fallen for AI slop, he deleted the picture. (The image originated on the Trump web forum Patriots.win, where several users immediately recognized it as the product of an AI model.)

IFrame Content

Others, however, have left the misleading picture up on their social media accounts — and some are defending it as an accurate representation of Helene’s effects even though it’s fake. Far-right conspiracy theorist and Donald Trump associate Laura Loomer called the image “sad,” quote-tweeting a post from Buzz Patterson, columnist for the conservative blog RedState, who wrote of the picture: “Our government has failed us again.” Neither have taken their posts down as of press time. Amy Kremer, RNC National Committeewoman for the Georgia GOP and co-founder of Women for Trump, tweeted on Thursday that the image had been “seared into my mind.”

Informed that she was not looking at an authentic photo, Kremer doubled down. “Y’all, I don’t know where this photo came from and honestly, it doesn’t matter,” she replied. “There are people going through much worse than what is shown in this pic. So I’m leaving it because it is emblematic of the trauma and pain people are living through right now.”

A large anonymous blue-check account on X that routinely attacks Democrats did remove the picture but similarly argued: “Even though that image was AI, it spoke a truth about the disregard Harris and Biden have for ordinary Americans, as evidenced by their criminal non-response to Helene.” Another X user posted a since-deleted screenshot of a more succinct response from an apparent family member advised that the image was bogus. “Who cares,” they answered.

The little girl and her puppy — there are AI-generated variants of the more viral image floating around as well — have been widely presented by MAGA world as evidence of a failed disaster response in the aftermath of Helene. Similar fake images depict girls or women clutching Bibles as floods rage around them. Trump himself is pushing lies about the U.S. government not being able to fund relief efforts, adding an overtone of racism with the groundless claim that the White House “stole” money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and “spent it all on illegal migrants.” (The irony being that in 2019, the Trump administration itself redirected millions in disaster funds, during hurricane season, to pay for detention centers at the border.)

...

===

hurricane helene is cLoud seed to cover up gubmint lithium grab 10 24 mma

---

jdv debate trump saved obamacare

and

Benny Johnson claims January 6 was a military coup: “Donald Trump is actually the number one person who attempted to prevent January 6th”

10/03/24 mma

---

===

mma

Trump publicly bragged about tanking the border bill — now a Fox host is trying to help him revise history

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published 09/27/24

Fox & Friendsco-host Ainsley Earhardt is helping former President Donald Trump run cover for his public sabotage of a bipartisan immigration bill he previously bragged about tanking.

On the September 27 episode, Earhardt argued that while Vice President Kamala Harris has been blaming Trump for the failed immigration bill, “he says, ‘I never called those lawmakers.’ Those lawmakers say the same thing. ‘No — he had nothing to do with it. We didn’t like the bill.'”

Earhardt’s attempt to help Trump revise history is stymied by a series of facts.

Trump publicly came out against the bill in a Truth Social post, stating, “I do not think we should do a Border Deal, at all, unless we get EVERYTHING needed to shut down the INVASION.” In a separate post, Trump wrote, “Only a fool, or a Radical Left Democrat, would vote for this horrendous Border Bill.”

Trump himself has previously owned the blame for the failed bill. At a late January rally, Trump vowed to “fight it all the way” and stated, “A lot of the senators are trying to say, respectfully, they’re blaming it on me. I say, that’s okay. Please blame it on me. Please.”

===

===

Fox is in denial of reality just weeks before the election

Fox personalities have rejected data showing a reduction in violent crime, record energy production, plummeting inflation, and fewer unauthorized border crossings

Written by Zachary Pleat

Published 09/26/24 mma

In recent weeks, multiple Fox personalities have been in denial of objective reality that under the Biden-Harris administration, especially in recent months, violent crime has declined, inflation is steadily declining, oil and natural gas production are at record highs, and unauthorized border crossings have plummeted.

• ### Statistics show violent crime has dropped under the Biden-Harris administration, but Fox is rejecting this data and claiming the opposite

On September 23, the FBI released its annual crime statistics estimates, which showed a 3% decline in violent crime nationwide, including an 11.6% drop in “murder and non-negligent manslaughter.” These statistics were widely reported, and The New York Times noted that this continues a pattern of declining murder rates under the Biden-Harris administration, with the decline in murders showing “the largest year-to-year decline since national record-keeping began in 1960.”

Yet Fox, which spent more than half the year running nearly 1,000 weekday segments on the bogus “migrant crime” narrative, has denied these statistics showing a drop in violent crime.

• • Fox News anchor Dana Perino: “So much for crime being down.” Perino, reacting to a chaotic video from Philadelphia, suggested it was evidence that statistics showing a drop in crime were not reflective of reality. Fox host Greg Gutfeld claimed, “The statistics that the FBI uses aren't taken seriously because they’re limited. They don't pass the smell test.” Fox News, *The Five*, [9/24/24]

• • Fox host Harris Faulkner confusingly suggested that statistics may not show a decrease in violent crime — immediately after acknowledging that they do. On her program, Faulkner said: “So crime down — what about violent crime? Because that’s the part that is changing people’s lives.” Moments prior to this, Faulkner said: “The White House is praising new FBI statistics which indicate violent crime is down across the nation. However, the FBI and the Bureau of Justice Statistics have some numbers that tell a very different story.” Fox News, *The Faulkner Focus*, [9/24/24]

• • Fox host Jeanine Pirro falsely claimed there has been an “increase in crime” and that Vice President Kamala Harris is responsible for it. Fox News, *The Five*, [9/24/24]

• ### Inflation has plummeted from its peak more than two years ago, yet Fox claims it's at “record highs”

Multiple measures of inflation have plummeted since their mid-2022 peak. Both the consumer price index and the personal consumption expenditures price index measures show 2.5% inflation — near the Federal Reserve’s 2% PCE target — and the producer price index measure shows a lower 1.7%. The improving inflation picture has at last galvanized the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, much to Fox’s displeasure. Yet Fox continues to cover inflation in a misleading manner, falsely claiming that it is currently at “record highs.”

• • Fox host Jesse Watters falsely claimed “inflation [is] at record highs.” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [9/24/24]

• • Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt: “The truth is, inflation is high. That’s why prices are up.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [9/20/24]

• • Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo: Harris lacks a “plan to take inflation down because she doesn’t have an understanding of what took us to 40-year highs.” Prior to Bartiromo saying this, her program aired a graphic showing the annual CPI inflation measurement declining significantly from its peak of 9.1% more than two years ago to its current level of 2.5%. Fox Business, *Mornings with Maria Bartiromo*, [9/20/24]

• ### Data shows record-high oil and natural gas production under Biden-Harris, but Fox is telling you not to believe it

American energy production is experiencing record highs under the Biden-Harris administration. In addition, the U.S. is on track to be the world’s leading exporter of liquefied natural gas for the second year in a row and is the largest supplier of LNG to Europe. In 2023, U.S. crude oil production, at an average of 12.9 million barrels per day, surpassed the record set in 2019, and the Energy Information Administration has forecasted a new record of 13.25 million barrels per day this year.

• • Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade: “We’re not” leading in natural gas and oil production. Kilmeade continued: “Don't let anybody tell you our oil and gas production is high.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [9/25/24]

• • Kilmeade falsely claimed there was double the daily production of oil under Trump compared to the Biden-Harris administration. Kilmeade said: “When she talked about there’s more oil production under us than under you, she’s wrong. It was 4 million barrels a day under Trump. It was 2 million barrels under Biden-Harris. So, that's totally inaccurate.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [9/13/24]

• ### Data shows fewer unauthorized border crossings, yet Fox is using legal immigration numbers to reject it

Report after report has shown that unauthorized border crossings in the Southwest have plummeted in recent months compared to previous years in the Biden-Harris administration. Even Fox News reported a huge drop in apprehensions at the border.

Yet Fox continues to challenge the data showing a huge drop in unauthorized border crossings by insisting that the number of people using the administration’s programs to entice immigrants to enter legally should be added to border crossing numbers. This denial of reality and goalpost shifting bears similarities to the rhetoric of Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance, who has been purposefully referring to authorized migrants as “illegal aliens” after stirring up hate against Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, with false smears.

• • Fox correspondent Bill Melugin: Data showing “illegal crossings … have been down significantly” is “not a true reflection of the amount of people who are being allowed into the country.” Melugin suggested that data showing unauthorized border crossings plummeting in 2024 isn’t genuine, citing programs from the Biden-Harris administration to increase legal immigration. Fox News, *America’s Newsroom*, [9/17/24]

• • Fox host Laura Ingraham: Harris can only claim “our numbers are down” for unauthorized border crossings because immigrants are “coming through the ports of entry” legally and “bringing in people under ‘legal’ cover … from four countries.” Melugin added: “We’re talking, like, 70,000 to 80,000 people per month between these two programs that come into the U.S. quote-unquote ‘lawfully,’ and they never get counted in the border numbers now. They’re not illegal crossings, so they don't show up in Border Patrol numbers. So yeah, those numbers have fallen off a cliff, but if you look at the port-of-entry numbers, those numbers are skyrocketing. They’re bringing tens of thousands of people in every single month via these lawful programs, and it’s been effective at pushing those illegal crossings down.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [9/9/24]

• • Fox host Rachel Campos-Duffy decried legal immigration programs: The administration “can artificially keep their numbers low and pretend that they're actually doing something on the border when, in fact, they're doing the opposite. They’re increasing them.” Campos-Duffy cited Fox contributor and former Trump administration Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Tom Homan to claim that legal immigration programs enacted by the Biden-Harris administration are “in place to change the numbers so those people … are not counted in the illegal crossings.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends Weekend*, [8/31/24]

===

==

an 9 24

When former President Donald Trump debated Vice President Kamala Harris in Philadelphia on September 10, he hoped to frighten Americans into voting for him. But many of Harris' supporters — from arch-conservative former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) and The Bulwark's Mona Charen (a former Nancy Reagan speechwriter) to self-described "democratic socialists" like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) — have been warning that the real threat the U.S. is facing is the possibility of a second Trump presidency.

In an article published on September 23, the Washington Post's Ashley Parker details Trump's use of fear on the campaign trail.

"In Donald Trump’s imaginary world," Parker explains, "Americans can't venture out to buy a loaf of bread without getting shot, mugged or raped. Immigrants in a small Ohio town eat their neighbors' cats and dogs. World War III and economic collapse are just around the corner. And kids head off to school only to return at day's end having undergone gender reassignment surgery."

READ MORE:**Harris sees 'largest favorability increase for any politician' since Bush post-9/11: report**

Parker continues, "The former president's imaginary world is a dark, dystopian place, described by Trump in his rallies, interviews, social media posts and debate appearances to paint an alarming picture of America under the Biden-Harris Administration.

The Post reporter stresses that Trump often promotes outright lies with his use of fear. For example, Trump falsely accused Harris' running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, of promoting "execution after birth" — which, Parker notes, is "illegal in all states."

Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg, Parker observes, believes that Trump is even more hinged in 2024 than he was in 2016 or 2020.

In a September 7 post on X, formerly Twitter, Rosenberg wrote, "The percentage of his speeches that are about things that happen in this world, not in his imaginary world, is plummeting. He's spending far more time in a place where he's a hero not a villain, where Hannibal Lecter is a real person, where climate change isn't real, where he is running against Joe Biden, where Russia is an ally not an enemy, where the economy is weak not strong, where crime is exploding not falling, where the flow to the border is higher today than when he was President (it isn’t), where the deficit is rising, not falling, where he hasn't already turned his Presidency over to Vance and Elon, where he is not a rapist, fraudster, traitor and felon."

READ MORE:**A grim question that must be asked**

According to Parker, Post analysis shows how frequently Trump lies.

"In Trump's presidency alone," Parker observes, "an analysis by The Post's Fact Checker found that he made more than 30,000 false or misleading claims — an average of about 21 untruths per day.

READ MORE:**Trump is 'losing women voters' badly — here's why it may get even worse**

*Ashley Parker's full Washington Post article is available at this link (subscription required).

===

===

Right-wing media are celebrating JD Vance for his racist lie that Haitian immigrants are widely spreading disease in Springfield, Ohio

Data from Ohio’s Department of Health and Clark County Combined Health District shows only a handful of new tuberculosis and HIV cases, which Vance falsely claims “have skyrocketed”

Written by Zachary Pleat

Published 09/14/24

Right-wing websites are celebrating Republican vice presidential nominee and Ohio Sen. JD Vance for spreading a longstanding xenophobic trope in a CNN interview that “communicable diseases like HIV and TB have skyrocketed” in Springfield, Ohio, because of Haitian immigrants in the city. This falsehood follows his debunked smear that Haitian residents of the city were eating people’s pets, a lie reportedly linked to recent bomb threats.

Vance had already spread this smear in a September 10 post on X, formerly known as Twitter. But it was Vance repeating the falsehood in a CNN interview shortly after the ABC News presidential debate which right-wing websites are celebrating.

SEN. JD VANCE: And again, whether those exact rumors turn out to be mostly true, somewhat true, whatever the case may be, Kaitlan, this town has been ravaged by 20,000 migrants coming in. Health care costs are up, housing costs are up, communicable diseases like HIV and TB have skyrocketed in this small Ohio town. This is what Kamala Harris' border policies have done.

Vance repeated this smear in a September 13 post on X as well.

Right-wing blogs have responded to Vance's misinformation with widespread praise.

A Townhall post which quoted his smear that Haitian immigrants are widely spreading disease in Springfield declared his CNN appearance “masterful,” adding, “Bravo, sir.”

The Media Research Center’s NewsBusters embedded a clip of Vance’s CNN interview, declaring: “JD Vance SCHOOLS CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Immigration and Cat Memes.” And RedState included a transcript of Vance’s disease smear in its post congratulating him for making “a very real and damning point about the media,” adding: “When you come at JD Vance, you better get ready for a fight. CNN's Kaitlan Collins certainly wasn't.”

For all of their congratulations to Vance over continuing to push this smear, these right-wing blogs missed the reality that Vance is simply lying. Making it up.

Data from the Ohio Department of Health and Clark County Combined Health District — which Vance presumably could easily obtain, given that he’s one of the state’s senators — shows that there are barely any new cases of either TB or HIV in Clark County, of which Springfield is the county seat.

The most recent data available, for 2018-22, shows that in 2018, Clark County reported 10 new HIV infections. Six new HIV infections were reported there in 2019, six again in 2020, 12 in 2021, and 13 in 2022. These five years of data reveal that between 2018-22, the county had a cumulative total of 322 HIV diagnoses — while the state’s cumulative total during this time period was 39,729 HIV diagnoses. To put it simply, Clark County, which includes Springfield, represented less than 1% of all HIV diagnoses in Ohio during this time period.

A December 2022 report of TB cases in Clark County prepared for the Clark County Combined Health District goes back a full decade, showing several incidences of 1, 2, 3, and sometimes zero cases of active TB in the entire county each year.

Clark County Combined Health District Commissioner Chris Cook told NBC News that Vance’s claim of a surge in diseases there is false: “Overall, we have not seen a substantial increase in all reportable communicable diseases. In fact, if you look at all reportable communicable diseases together (minus COVID) for the year ending 2023 you will see that we are at our lowest rate in Clark County since 2016.” And according to Bruce Vanderhoff, the director of Ohio’s Health Department, the state isn’t seeing a “measurable or discernible increase” in vaccine-preventable illnesses, further debunking Vance’s smear.

As Advocate explained, Vance is reinforcing “historical stigmas, stoking xenophobia and racial fear.” Right-wing media may be celebrating Vance pushing these cruel lies, but legitimate media organizations should be prepared to call him out.

an 9 24

2024 Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance (R-OH) is facing significant backlash after he admitted his claim that Haitian immigrants are eating pets in Springfield, Ohio is a lie.

The Bulwark's Sam Stein reported via X: "JD Vance acknowledges the cat and dog stories are urban legends and then rationalizes it (via CNN): 'If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do.'"

After Donald Trump parroted the debunked claim during his debate against Kamala Harris on Tuesday, a Springfield, Ohio spokesperson told ABC News earlier this week that "these claims are false, and that there have been 'no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals in the immigrant community.'"

READ MORE:**Multiple-location bomb threat follows Trump and Vance’s false dog-eating immigrants claims**

The spokesperson added that "there have been no verified instances of immigrants engaging in illegal activities such as squatting or littering in front of residents’ homes. Furthermore, no reports have been made regarding members of the immigrant community deliberately disrupting traffic."

A slew of political experts and journalists immediately rebuffed the VP hopeful's Sunday CNN interview admission.

The anti-Trump Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson replied: "'If I have to create stories' will be on his political tombstone."

Marie Claire former contributing editor Karen Schwartz added: "The GOP VP candidate is proud to have made up stories that have lead to closed schools and bomb threats in hospitals."

READ MORE:**'I'm going to have to move': Haitian migrants 'anxious and scared' amid wave of MAGA attacks**

Zack Beauchamp, Vox senior politics correspondent, said: "Vance isn’t as good at lying as Trump because he feels a deep need to be respected intellectually. So you get humiliating admissions like this"

Bloomberg columnist Matthew Yglesias wrote: "If they told you the truth about their plans for abortion rights, health care, and Social Security you wouldn't vote for them so they're making stuff up instead."

National Journal columnist Natalie Jackson added: "I usually refrain from using the f-word on social media, but truly there is no other way to describe this than completely fucked up."

Austin Chronicle culture editor Richard Whittaker commented: "Where I come from, you call people like this liars. It's now perfectly fine to call him a liar - because he acknowledged that he lied."

READ MORE:[Springfield resident who ignited false rumor 'feels' for Haitian community: 'I am not a racist'

see normalizing

an 9 24

Dangerously misleading': How the beltway media sanitizes Trump’s 'unhinged' rambling

Alex Henderson

September 04, 2024

Former President Donald Trump often accuses the mainstream media of pushing "fake news" when they give him any type of negative coverage. The mainstream media, Trump argues, are hopelessly biased against him. And Trump has, at times, even accused right-wing Fox News and Fox Business of being unfair to him in their coverage.

But journalist Parker Molloy has a totally different perspective.

In an article published by The New Republic on September 4, Molloy argues that many mainstream media reporters are guilty of "sanitizing" Trump in their coverage and downplaying just how "unhinged" his "incoherent ramblings" are.

READ MORE:Deep-red states meet 'wall of hostility' in forcing Christian nationalism on public schools

Molloy previously addressed this topic in an article published by Media Matters on March 12, 2020. And the reporter believes the problem has "only worsened" since then.

"As Trump's statements grow increasingly unhinged in his old age," Molloy warns, "major news outlets continue to reframe his words, presenting a dangerously misleading picture to the public."

Molloy cites the New York Times' recent coverage of Trump's speech at Moms for Liberty's annual summit as an example.

"While speaking at an event put on by the extremist group Moms for Liberty," Molloy observes, "Trump spread a baseless conspiracy theory that 'your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation' — referring to transition-related surgeries for trans people. In their write-up of the event, a glowing piece about how Trump 'charmed' this group of 'conservative moms,' the Times didn't even mention the moment where he blathered on and on about a crazy conspiracy that has and will never happen."

READ MORE:'Gender chasm': GOP panics over huge Harris lead among women as Trump chases 'bro vote'

Molloy emphasizes that reporters do their audience a disservice when they treat Trump like a normal politician and fail to adequately report the more "unhinged" things he says.

"This 'sanewashing' of Trump's statements isn't just poor journalism; it's a form of misinformation that poses a threat to democracy," Molloy argues. "By continually reframing Trump's incoherent and often dangerous rhetoric as conventional political discourse, major news outlets are failing in their duty to inform the public and are instead providing cover for increasingly erratic behavior from a former — and potentially future — president."

Molloy continues, "The consequences of this journalistic malpractice extend far beyond misleading headlines. By laundering Trump's words in this fashion, the media is actively participating in the erosion of our shared reality."

READ MORE:'They all think you’re nuts': Latest Conway ad shows GOP voices in Trump’s head

*Read Parker Molloy's full article for The New Republic at this link.

---

mma

Right-wing media claimed a downward jobs revision indicated recession. A new GDP revision shows the economy actually grew more than expected.

08/30/24

crime spike under trump, biden record low unemploy, stock mkt record high, max oil output number one in world, he made money on oil reserve

Fox’s Laura Ingraham and Maria Bartiromo push false narratives about oil production despite record-breaking U.S. output

08/14/24 mma

mma 8 24

On MSNBC, Angelo Carusone explains how the media privileges the Trump campaign’s misinformation “in an attempt to inoculate themselves from cries of bias”

Carusone: “If they have not adapted yet to sort of be the vanguard, they can at least be the laggard by covering the effective work that the campaign is doing and because they can't ignore it”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published 08/09/24

Video

CitationFrom the August 9, 2024, edition of MSNBC's Deadline: White House

NICOLLE WALLACE (HOST): Throughout Donald Trump's time in our politics, there has been an added responsibility, a burden really, placed on anyone opposing him and everyone covering him. The responsibility to fact check the barrage of lies he spews at an alarmingly high and growing rate. Trump lies about things big and important and small and meaningless.

The size of his crowds, the results of the 2020 presidential election, immigration statistics, COVID statistics, economic indicators, the fact that Mexico would pay for his wall, his knowledge or familiarity with Project 2025, crime rates, and what actually happened on January 6th. You get the picture. The Washington Post counted that Trump lied more than 30,000 times while he was president, and the rate of those lies, as we said, increased as the years went on.

Trump's lying has, of course, continued since he's been out of office, defeated by Joe Biden. At the debate against President Joe Biden in late June, he lied more than 30 times in 90 minutes, and it was barely mentioned in the coverage that ensued.

And there was yesterday's incoherent, rambling, nonsensical, grievance-filled press conference yesterday at Mar-a-Lago that garnered wall to wall media coverage. In it, Trump uttered more and more lies, including the outrageous false claim that more people attended his January 6th insurrection in Washington DC than were at Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.

He said that. Our network fact-checked him immediately, which is no easy feat, considering the shear volume of lies. And very soon after, the networks did their fact-checking, came the fact-check to end all fact-checks from the Harris Walz campaign. A thorough, itemized, pithy takedown, not just with the facts, but with the evidence and the receipts and a bit of cleverness and humor, an epic and important trolling of the ex-president that we can only assume made his blood boil.

The list the Harris Walz campaign provided, we read most of it on the air, was 31 fact-checks. It was important for a lot of reasons, not just because it got the truth out immediately, but it's a really important and healthy display of this campaign's competence and strategy for the next 88 days. Be quick, be straightforward, be accurate, mix in a little bit of humor, and wouldn't hurt to be a little sharp-edged while you do it.

They called it, "Donald Trump's Very Good, Very Normal Press Conference" and proceeded to say things like this: "We work to pin down reality so Donald Trump, bless his heart, doesn't have to."

Here are a few of their fact-checks again: "People have spoken to bigger crowds than Donald Trump, Obama, Clinton, literally anyone at Lollapalooza, Coachella, or the World Cup. Trump said they have commercials at a level no one else does. He's being drastically outspent on the airways. Governor Josh Shapiro is actually a great guy. Trump said he was not complaining. He, in fact, very much was. Trump does not know the difference between asylum seekers and an insane asylum. After-birth abortion does not exist. Minnesota and Virginia are not the same. There are no polls that say Donald Trump is going to win in a landslide."

This afternoon, the campaign pushed their fact checking endeavors even further, putting out a second press release on what they called "Trump's Temper Tantrum." This time, with many visuals and many quotes from publications further correcting and pushing back against his copious lies.

As we take stock of that powerful display by the Harris Walz campaign, begs a question, has Trump finally met his match as a liar? Questions where we start the hour with some of our favorite experts and friends.

..

Angelo, my colleague, Lawrence O'Donnell, did so -- let me just show you what he did. Did something rather extraordinary on his broadcast last night. Let me play a little bit of it.

...

I play that because Harris actually did answer questions yesterday. She walked to the press before she got on the plane. She answered all of their questions. I don't think they were shouting at her, when she walked away. And, I don't know that everyone even sitting in her live events.

We were, because we heard they were -- they were happening when we were on the air. But just explain to me, in any way you want to, anecdotal, systemic, why the press is still struggling with how to cover Donald Trump?

ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT): I mean, in part, I think, at the few reasons. One, I think in part it ties in with what Anne was talking about before that this is what happens when you're confronted with this avalanche of lies. You just, you flood the zone, and then they drown. They haven't adapted, and that in some ways is a failure of the industry to sort of figure out a new approach that is professional but is also responsive to that moment.

There's also another part that's just basic muscle memory, which is that I think it's worth keeping in mind that this is the first election in 30 years, first election in 30 years, where Rush Limbaugh is not the single largest get out the vote operation. And by that, I'm not I mean -- I'm using that as an illustration to point out the fact that we've been dealing with, for decades, a massive right-wing media echo chamber that has not just been an amplifier of lies and false narratives and misinformation, but has also repeatedly beaten up the press such that they, in an attempt to inoculate themselves from cries of bias, have actually started to privilege all kinds of misinformation, false narratives, and worse, have sort of adopted a double standard as a matter of course.

And, you know, there's all kinds of examples of that. I mean, in the weeks after Donald Trump became the presumptive nominee, he didn't do any sit down interviews except for one with Fox. You know, he sat with Fox. But he didn't do a real interview with a reporter. There wasn't any clamoring in the press asking why he wasn't doing interviews. Yet, there have been clamoring this weekend, attacks and criticisms of Harris that somehow she's not doing something from major publications by not sitting down for an interview. That's a double standard.

Or how about back in May when Donald Trump made it, you know, reportedly made an offer to oil executives to spend a billion dollars on ads and in exchange he would roll back a whole bunch of environmental policies. The only network, national network, that covered that was MSNBC.

And then if you look on social media, every single major news channel and news operation that week on their social media channels cover the fact that that Vice President Harris said the "f word," but not a single one of them talked about that deal and that report about Donald Trump. So, I think that's really what's going on here.

It's the -- they're confused and disoriented, and there's also some muscle memory here that has been built up over decades.

WALLACE: The asymmetry, Angelo, has been, I think, the biggest dynamic that has aided Donald Trump. And I remember talking about it on The Today Show in the 2015 Republican primary. The asymmetry, and I think it was Mitt Romney who wrote it up and called on Trump to release his taxes. Maybe that was in the beginning of 2016. But, this -- the double standard that the press either accepted or didn't know how to sort of find the strength to push back and require the same standard for Trump as everybody else.

Do you see any signs? I see signs in this fact-check that happened yesterday, that the Harris campaign, it may be, the first institution to try to push back against that asymmetry.

Do you see any signs that make you think maybe this gig is up for Trump?

CARUSONE: Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, usually when we talk, it's always about something sort of a little bit depressing and unsettling, but this a green shoot. This is a positive thing, and it's real. I mean, this is a real positive thing because one of the things that the right-wing has is that their audience has baked in this amplification imperative.

So, not only do their people lie, but then they reflexively, they'll go ahead and repeat that. They amplify it. They saturate it. And then you have the media that's not playing this referee. What the Harris campaign has done, really effectively so far, is they understand that these packages are not only for news outlets.

They're also for their audience, their people who then go and can take that content and amplify it. They want to amplify it. It's designed in a way to actually empower individuals to share it to others. It's fun to share, not just to stick it to them because it's actually truth. And this is -- you know, there's that famous saying about how, you know, a lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on. And the only way to sort of counteract that asymmetry is that they -- because lying is a cheat code. It is an advantage, is to actually do this not only because it allows our people to spread it, but it actually then generates a backward effect on actual traditional news outlets. If they have not adapted yet to sort of be the vanguard, they can at least be the laggard by covering the effective work that the campaign is doing and because they can't ignore it because their people are helping saturate it.

So, I think it's a really positive thing.

===

===

aha

FAKE NEWS comeback 7 24? AA reporter april --- starts w/ tough but fair questions [ a list of bad actions, racist name-calling], you’re ABC? fake news... [// egyn kelly blood everywhere but immediate “horrible” racist? questions?

AHA: back in the enemy of the ppl phase, rubber reverse term, you’re the puppet becomes a cudgel to deflect crit [origin in Newt debate had done something horrible to wife, he attacked press out of the gate; become std for GOP to trash press before answering any question as a sort of pre-emptive prophylactic tactic?

IF YOU NEUTRALIZE FACT CHECK, SHARED REALITY YOU GET POLAR ECHO ESCA FROM THE FEVER SWAMP --? ALT FACT EARTH2

ironically there is lots of fake news, it's just all made by the right

eg...

===

HARRIS FAULKNER (FOX NEWS ANCHOR): Those moments yesterday, the audio and technical problems we were having per the NABJ and ABC News were really, really frustrating. And I am watching that back and I'm seeing that we were able to -- at some point the former president and I have a conversation -- so much of what America is focused on today and so much of what that started with with all that emotion and the gotcha moments from the interviewer who was seated directly to his left, has really overtaken the fact that we had an opportunity to talk with the president who walked into a racial storm yesterday. There were journalists, activists, whatever you want to call people who let their politics show who wanted the NABJ to rescind their offer to have the 45th president of the United States to come and sit.

[...]

All of that I say because there were protesters who were forecast to come, and then the internal stuff that was going on. He walks out on stage and not a greeting to acknowledge it's been 18 days at that point since you survived an assassination attempt. We're going to ask you tough questions, but Mr. President, welcome, and we are glad you're still here. I mean, it didn't take much to show humanity and in that moment I was so disappointed that that didn't happen.

I couldn't control it, but it got things off to an emotional start and you and I both know that once that happens and you are interviewing someone, there is an agenda. And I'm glad that you guys played a clip of that, because America and the journalists in the room -- who by the way sat and listened, some were laughing along with the president, little jokes and quips he was making, there were some critical in the audience too, -- but it was expressed respectively or respectfully rather.

There was a way to have taken some of the energy out of that moment though, with that reporter. And what I would say to anyone who is going to be discussing race while the left is playing the race card mightily, take the air out of the balloon a little bit and let things cool down by saying, look, I am willing to discuss anything with you, but if you show me disrespect, if we can't have mutual respect, then it is up to you if you want me to get up and leave. It's all on you.

You've got the control, and boom, take it down. But what the president did say yesterday, was he really made some points on the economy. He made points on the border. But the race comments, they have been tough and I don't know Ainsley, I don't know, and Steve, that people are going to vote on the color of their skin and the hair texture this time around.

This is about money, the color is green. When candidates are talked with it's worth saying, no matter who is in the room, I mean come on Black communities aren't hit by the economy, of course they are. So let's focus on that, how do we empower the voters to know the information they need to know, when they go to vote as early September 6 in a couple of the battleground states.

---

Harris Faulkner says ABC's Rachel Scott was too “emotional” during NABJ interview of Donald Trump

07/31/24

mma 8 24

Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner co-moderated a panel interviewing former President Donald Trump at the National Association of Black Journalists convention. The major headline coming out of the panel was Trump’s claim that Vice President Kamala Harris, his likely opponent in the 2024 election, “was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden, she made a turn, and she went — she became a Black person.”

Faulkner went on Fox News following the panel to discuss the event, immediately going into spin mode for Trump.

Asked about her “take on what happened,” Faulkner’s first takeaway was: “What I loved about what you couldn’t see today was how much of that audience was enjoying the moment of hearing from a candidate that they might not always agree with.”

variant on at least in am we are free to debate]

Video

CitationFrom the July 31, 2024 edition of Fox News'The Story with Martha MacCallum

Faulkner was then asked to respond to two claims Trump made during the speech: that he was “the best president for the Black population since Abraham Lincoln” and “his questions about whether or not Kamala Harris is Indian or Black.”

Conveniently, Faulkner didn’t respond to either.

Video

CitationFrom the July 31, 2024, edition of Fox News' The Story with Martha MacCallum

Faulkner wasn’t the only Fox anchor to try to help spin Trump’s performance, but she was the only one to do so after helping moderate the event in question.

The Latest

1. ### Project 2025 partners call for the end of birthright citizenship

08/01/24 12:07 PM EDT

2. ### Kamala Harris is facing a barrage of misogynistic and racist attacks on TikTok, it’s not just fancams and coconut memes

08/01/24 12:06 PM EDT

3. ### Fox host Brian Kilmeade defends Trump questioning Kamala Harris' ethnicity: “President Trump is so unaware of race and gender”

08/01/24 11:24 AM EDT

4. ### Prompted by right-wing radio host, JD Vance linked Roe v. Wade to Dred Scott decision allowing slavery

08/01/24 10:47 AM EDT

5. ### Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner attacks her NABJ panel co-moderator in defense of Trump's performance

08/01/24

• [### Harris Faulkner

](https://www.mediamatters.org/harris-faulkner)

• [### Donald Trump

](https://www.mediamatters.org/donald-trump)

Related

1. ### Harris Faulkner says ABC's Rachel Scott was too “emotional” during NABJ interview of Donald Trump

07/31/24 9:56 PM EDT

2. ### Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum desperately tries to spin disastrous Trump interview with NABJ

07/31/24 4:55 PM EDT

3. ### Trump attacked Kamala Harris’ ethnicity while at a conference for Black journalists. Right-wing media have spent years doing the same.

07/31/24

===

an 7 24

...Trump also falsely said Saturday that he sent in the National Guard to quell the rioting in Minneapolis after Floyd’s murder; in fact, Walz, a 24-year veteran of the National Guard before his time in politics, called up the Guard.

Trump was joined on stage by Shannon Owen, whose husband Josh Own was killed in the line of duty as a Pope County Sheriff’s Deputy, and Paul Perez, president of the National Border Patrol Council.

The rally drew many East African immigrants, despite Trump’s anti-immigrant message. He promised in his speech to reinstate the travel ban on predominantly Muslim countries, including Somalia.

Osman Dagane, an Uber and Lyft driver from Minneapolis, said he arrived early Saturday morning to organize East African immigrants to come support Trump. He brushed off Trump’s previous comments on immigration — including that Somali migration to Minnesota has been a “disaster.”

“Well, now he gets to know a lot,” Dagane said. “He didn’t know that time, but now he know a lot.”

Dagane left before Trump took the stage because he was mainly interested in seeing Vance. Many people started filtering out of the arena thirty minutes into Trump’s speech, leaving only the most devoted behind.

Minnesota Reformer is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Minnesota Reformer maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor J. Patrick Coolican for questions: info@minnesotareformer.com. Follow Minnesota Reformer on Facebook and X.

===

an 7 24

For decades, journalist Peter Wehner, now 63, was a staunch Republican, serving as a speechwriter for three GOP presidents: Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. But that was before Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.

Since 2016, Wehner has made no secret of his belief that Trump and the MAGA movement have been terrible for the GOP and conservatism. And in a biting op-ed published by the New York Times on July 29, Wehner laments that Trump and the GOP have only become more unhinged since 2016.

"With so much attention focused on the changes at the top of the Democratic ticket," Wehner argues, "we are not paying enough attention to the lack of change on the top of the Republican ticket. This month, Donald Trump won his party's nomination for the third straight time. Whatever else we might say about him, he is a transformative figure."

READ MORE: [Trump debuts new material in attack on Harris at Minnesota rally

Wehner adds, "This further confirmed, for me at least, the wisdom of my decision eight years ago to break with the Republican Party. In January 2016, I warned what were then my fellow Republicans that if they nominated Mr. Trump, he would constitute a grave threat to the nation."

The Never Trump conservative notes that "few figures in American history" have "overhauled a political party as quickly and as fundamentally as Mr. Trump has" — and not for the better.

The Trumpified GOP, Wehner laments, has "jettisoned" the ideas Republicans once "championed" — from "free trade" to "fiscal discipline" to "welcoming legal immigrants and refugees."

"Mr. Trump tapped into the growing resentment of millions of voters," Wehner observes. "He was seen by them as their tribune. Unfortunately, he exploited their fears and did almost nothing to solve their problems. But that doesn't seem to matter to them. It's all about the posturing."

READ MORE:[Internet erupts after Fox News poll shows Harris beating Trump's approval in swing states

Wehner adds, "The Republican Party, rather than embracing the best aspects of populism, has taken on its vices: anti-intellectualism, anti-institutionalism and anti-elitism…. But the most worrisome feature that has defined the Republican Party during the Trump era is a relentless assault on reality, fused with lawlessness and the embrace of illiberalism."

READ MORE:**Why Kamala Harris laughs at J.D. Vance**

*Peter Wehner's full op-ed for the New York Times is available at this link (subscription required).

===

===

earth 2 gaslight lie rep

Daily Wire host Michael Knowles: “The Trump movement has engaged in virtually no political violence ever”

06/26/24

===

---

aha rnc conv projection-palooza

//

an 7 24

Despite facing three criminal indictments, Donald Trump campaigned on a law-and-order message during the 2024 Republican National Convention. Now, with President Joe Biden having dropped out of the race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president, Trump may be up against a candidate with a long resumé as a prosecutor — first as San Francisco district attorney, then as California state attorney general.

Never Trump conservative David French examines Trump's law-and-order promises in a scathing New York Times column published on July 21 — emphasizing that he promises "peace and stability" despite a history of causing "violence" and "chaos."

"If past performance is any indicator of future results," French warns, "Americans should brace themselves for more chaos if Trump wins. The most egregious example of Republican deception centered around crime. The theme of the second night of the convention was 'Make America Safe Again.' Yet the public mustn't forget that the murder rate skyrocketed under Trump."

READ MORE:**Kentucky's Andy Beshear 'auditions' for Kamala Harris' running mate**

French continues, "According to the Pew Research Center, 'The year-over-year increase in the U.S. murder rate in 2020 was the largest since at least 1905 — and possibly ever.' That's a human catastrophe, and it's one that occurred on Trump’s watch. Republicans want to erase 2020 from the American mind, but we judge presidents on how they handle crises."

The Never Trump conservative argues that it is "particularly rich for" Trump to campaign as "the candidate of order" even though the "crime rate rose during his presidency and is plunging during Joe Biden's."

French notes that Democrats have been the aggressive ones from a foreign policy standpoint, adding that "it's the Democrats who are facing down Russian aggression."

"Trump wants you to be a goldfish," French laments. "He wants you to empty your mind of the past so that he can fill it with his own 'alternative facts.' The Republican National Convention was one long exercise in creating memories of a Trump term that never existed."

READ MORE: Trump's tone is 'noticeably different' with possible Harris debate: analysis

French adds, "The real Trump term was chaotic and dangerous from start to finish, and if Americans' memories don't improve soon, the voters who seek peace and stability will instead bring us violence and tears."

READ MORE: Missouri editorial board praises Biden for 'doing the right thing': 'You put the country first'

===

---

fox host Kayleigh McEnany falsely claims Trump didn’t enact a Muslim ban

06/05/24 mma

---

6 24 maga mike rant about biden slow on XO border but no mention he killed bill for trump

---

===}:

some neglect, constant antics, gop crit?

an 6 24

in a profane rant filled with lies and false accusations, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) unleashed a venomous screed in the halls of Congress attacking Dr. Anthony Fauci, the retired immunologist who served as the public face of the federal government’s battle against the COVID pandemic, just after she had attacked him face-to-face during a House committee hearing Monday.

Dr. Fauci retired at the end of 2022 after serving since 1984 as the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, but the right and the far-right’s false claims about COVID and Fauci during a pandemic that caught the Trump White House off guard one year after it dismantled President Barack Obama’s pandemic response team, continue to this day.

Among them, Congresswoman Greene’s remarks Monday afternoon.

“The Democrats are responsible for the lockdowns, forced vaccinations, kids being forced to stay home, people committing suicide, and all of the horrors that this country lived through during COVID,” the Georgia GOP lawmaker said on-camera in little-noticed remarks she posted to social media (video below).

RELATED: ‘National Embarrassment’: Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Fauci Attack ‘Crazy and Irresponsible’

“Fauci belongs in prison. He should be tried for mass murder and crimes against humanity. That’s how I feel after that hearing. That’s how the American people feel.”

Greene is wrong.

Both Democratic and Republican governors and local authorities directed Americans to stay home in the early days of the pandemic. Some directed out of state visitors to quarantine. Some closed schools and transitioned to virtual classrooms, and some instructed residents to stay home except for medical emergencies or trips to the supermarket.

So did then-President Trump on March 16, 2020:

Since General George Washington mandated inoculations for his soldiers, Americans at times have been required to be vaccinated against infectious diseases. The CDC recommends dozens of vaccinations for infants through adolescence, and again in adulthood, including for seniors. All 50 states have vaccination mandates for public school students.

Dr. Peter Hotez, considered a “vaccine specialist,” in 2023 estimated 200,000 Americans died as a result of refusing the COVID vaccine.

READ MORE: Trump Demands SCOTUS Intervene After ‘Dangerous’ Suggestion of Possible Violence if Jailed

In December of 2022, The Atlantic‘s Yasmin Tayag, citing studies wrote, “by far the single group of adults most likely to be unvaccinated is Republicans: 37 percent of Republicans are still unvaccinated or only partially vaccinated, compared with 9 percent of Democrats. Fourteen of the 15 states with the lowest vaccination rates voted for Donald Trump in 2020. (The other is Georgia.)”

The Georgia Republican Congresswoman in her hallway remarks on Monday claimed “everything” she said in the hearing was “correct.”

“It’s how the American people feel, is what we know to be a fact.”

Congresswoman Greene said Dr. Fauci was not a doctor, as far as she was concerned.

“It’s all the evidence has been proven true,” she also claimed.

“We have [Democratic Congressman] Jamie Raskin in there accusing us of worshipping Trump, worshipping a convicted felon,” Greene also said, using air quotes as if Trump were not a convicted felon.

When told Donald Trump is a convicted felon, Greene replied, “well, yeah. So was George Floyd,” referring to the unarmed Black man whose murder by police set off massive nationwide protests.

“The media worships George Floyd. Democrats worship George Floyd, there were riots burning down the f*cking country over George Floyd and Raskin’s in there say we worship him. Excuse me, let me correct you, and this is really important. I don’t worship, I worship God, God, and Jesus is my Savior. I don’t worship President Trump, and I’m really sick and tired of the b*llsh*t antics I have to deal with constantly from the Democrats.”

Despite Greene’s insistence that “the American people feel” that “Fauci belongs in prison” and “should be tried for mass murder and crimes against humanity,” polling firm YouGov ranks Dr. Fauci as the 17th most popular person in America. Pope Francis is ranked at number 18. 49% of Americans have a positive opinion of Dr. Fauci.

===

---

CNN debunks right-wing media's false claims about FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago

05/22/24

===

judd pop info 4 24

in the 2024 presidential election, one of the central attacks that Trump and his political allies are levying against Biden is that Biden is responsible for a "migrant crime" wave. The argument was summarized by Trump in a March 22 video:

[A] real bloodbath is occurring right now under crooked Joe. It’s Biden’s Border Bloodbath. There’s never been anything like that. Every day, Joe Biden is setting loose thousands of unvetted, unscreened, military-age men into the United States from parts unknown… We had the safest border in history. Now we have the worst border probably in the history of the world. Every day innocent citizens are being killed, stabbed, shot, raped, and murdered because of Biden migrant crime. It’s a new word, a new term. It’s migrant crime, but we call it Biden migrant crime cause he’s responsible for it 100%... When I’m your president, we’re going to end this disgrace, and we’re going to stop Biden’s Border Bloodbath. It is a bloodbath indeed, and we’re going to get it stopped.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) has launched a website dedicated to the issue, BidenBloodbath.com. "History will remember Biden for his destruction, chaos, and failure. Lives of everyday Americans have been shattered as a direct result of Biden’s open border policies — and he doesn’t care," the RNC claims on the homepage. "We have to stand up and stop Biden before he destroys our nation. The cost of doing nothing is measured in the lives lost to the… crime wave washing across America."

This message has been amplified by the right-wing media. Fox News' Jesse Watters, who hosts the network's top-rated primetime show, offered this commentary on April 12:

Migrant crime is quickly becoming one of the largest issues affecting the American people. Communities all across the United States are being terrorized by violent illegals, while Biden rolls out the red carpet for them with his open border policies, but Donald Trump is pledging to take care of the problem and keep our citizens safe when Republicans get back in power

There are violent crimes committed by undocumented migrants, which are traumatic for the victims, their families, and their communities. That is why the accusation that Biden is responsible for a surge in violent crime by undocumented migrants is so politically potent. There are disturbing anecdotes of crimes that make powerful fodder for attacks during a political campaign. People, understandably, want to feel safe.

But is there evidence that, since Biden took office, there has been a surge in violent crime by undocumented migrants?

The most straightforward answer would be to look at crimes committed by undocumented migrants over time. Unfortunately, this data is unavailable because law enforcement agencies do not typically collect or report information about immigration status, analyst Jeff Asher notes.

In his newsletter, Jeff-alytics, Asher came up with the next best alternative. He looked at trends for "violent crime across the 14 counties along the Texas border with Mexico." If there is, in fact, a violent crime wave fueled by migrants, it would show up in these counties before anywhere else. The Texas Department of Public Safety maintains up-to-date, reliable crime data at the county level.

Asher found "no evidence of increasing violent crime along the US border with Mexico." In fact, these border counties "have seen a relatively steady violent crime rate below that of the rest of their state and the nation as a whole."

The same trends hold when you look at murder alone. The murder rate in border counties is consistently lower than the country as a whole, with little change over the last four years.

In other words, the best available data does not support the claim that Republicans have made a central issue in the 2024 campaign. There is no "bloodbath" at the border. These areas, in fact, have less crime than the nation as a whole.

The national crime decline

If there is no migrant crime wave at the border, perhaps it will show up in other areas of the country. The data does not support that claim either.

Nationwide, homicide and violent crime dramatically declined in 2023. According to the latest FBI’s Quarterly Uniform Crime report, which was released in March, homicides were down 13% in 2023 compared to 2022. Meanwhile, violent crime and property crime dipped 6% and 4% respectively. This data is preliminary and based on reports submitted by 15,199 of 19,152 law enforcement agencies across the country, reflecting “about 82% of the U.S. population.” (The FBI will release a more complete analysis for 2023 in the fall.)

Based on initial findings, Asher said “[t]he decline in murder in 2023 is likely the largest one year decline ever recorded.” The last time that happened was in 1996 when murder dropped 9.1%. In 163 of the 232 cities that submitted data, murder “was down or even,” Asher wrote. These findings were also mirrored in a survey by the Council on Criminal Justice, “which found that homicides were down an average of 10%” across 32 cities. The preliminary data also “suggests 2023 likely had the lowest reported violent crime rate nationally since the late 1960s,” Asher said. A few cities, including Chicago and DC, bucked the trend and saw an increase in violent crime in 2023. But there is no evidence this increase was attributable to migrants.

Asher said early data from 2024 shows that “murder is down around 20 percent in 2024 in more than 180 cities” compared to the same time period last year. In some cities, like DC, Las Vegas, and New Orleans, murder has declined by “more than 30 percent.” In Chicago, murder has declined 12%. But Asher concluded that the data, though incomplete, is encouraging overall. “A murder decline of even half the magnitude suggested by the early 2024 data would place the US murder rate this year largely on par with or below where it was from 2015 to 2019,” Asher noted.

The fact that we are not seeing evidence of a migrant crime surge is consistent with historical data that shows migrants, even undocumented migrants, are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans. A peer-reviewed 2020 study, which used data from the Texas Department of Public Safety from 2012 to 2018, "found a lower felony arrest rate for immigrants in the U.S. illegally compared to legal immigrants and native-born U.S. citizens and no evidence of increasing criminality among immigrants." An upcoming study by a researcher at the libertarian Cato Institute similarly found that "undocumented migrants in Texas were about 26% less likely to be convicted of homicide than native-born Americans over the decade of 2013-22."

It appears, however, that Republican messaging around the issue is having an impact. Despite the data, most people believe crime is up. A Gallup poll in November 2023 found that 77% of Americans “believe there is more crime in the U.S. than a year ago.”

===

Fox News' attempt to manufacture a Biden crime crisis runs into a problem: Violent crime is down | Media Matters for America

'There’s no evidence': Experts debunk Trump’s claims of 'migrant crime' wave in US cities - Alternet.org

===

---

mma 4 24

a panel on MSNBC’s Morning Joe Thursday highlighted the role right-wing misinformation is playing in distorting perceptions about the state of the economy and the rate of inflation, which a majority of Americans incorrectly believe is headed in the wrong direction.

Wall Street Journal economic reporter Greg Ip drew attention to the enormous disparity between perception and reality when it comes to consumer sentiment about the economy in an April 4 article, titled “What’s Wrong With the Economy? It’s You, Not the Data.” Ip pointed to public opinion data showing that a vast majority of respondents incorrectly believed inflation has gone up in the past year, when indeed it has fallen significantly and stabilized in the nearly two years since peaking in June 2022. Furthermore, Ip highlighted a survey showing that by 40-to-60 point margins, respondents think the overall U.S. economy is getting worse while their own state economy is getting better. He also cited data indicating that by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, a majority of Americans wrongly believe the economy — which has enjoyed robust job creation and GDP growth — has gotten worse over the past year.

Ip's article spurred a conversation on the set of MSNBC's Morning Joe, where co-hosts Mika Brzenski and Joe Scarborough and New York Times columnist and CNBC anchor Andrew Ross Sorkin keyed in on the role played by the partisan misinformation ecosystem in fomenting pessimism and distorting reality.

“The misinformation that’s been put out across the country about this issue is so shocking, because of the way people feel versus the actual reality of the numbers,” said Sorkin. “It’s hard to tell people that you shouldn't feel one way, and I know that is true, but the numbers are directionally, shockingly, going in a good place.”

NBC News national affairs analyst John Heilemann chimed in that while the economy has improved, the tapering of inflation happened slowly, and that from a political standpoint for the Biden White House, “You cannot argue people out of their feelings,” with Heilemann recommending a different approach.

“You have to figure out a way to say to them, hey, we know that prices are still too high, we know you're still feeling it in your pocketbook now, but look at all the progress we've made,” Heilemann said. “Give us some more time, because you know it's just going to be worse with Donald Trump. He's not on your side. We're on your side, we fixed a lot of stuff. This thing still, we need some work, we've made some progress, but not enough.”

Indeed, liberal and conservative economists agree that Trump’s policies would make inflation worse — but mainstream media outlets have barely covered this.

Scarborough then contrasted the poll findings that people thought their own state economies were doing well while the rest of the country was doing badly, then turned the question back to the sheer volume of right-wing media misinformation.

“I'm sorry but, you know, if you looked at certain cable news channels you would think we were in the middle of a Great Depression, that illegal immigrants were racing through schools across America stabbing people in the face, and that leprosy is going to be spread by migrants going across the border, and that trans athletes are coming to your middle school to beat up your, you know, sixth-grade girl,” Scarborough declared. “I mean, seriously, turn it on any time. Turn it on any time, and it’s the economy is in free fall, migrants are coming to kill you, and trans athletes. I mean, it's constant — it’s a constant, constant churning of these messages. And it has an impact on polls after [airing] 24/7.”

Right-wing media have often painted the completely false picture of the dystopian, even post-apocalyptic America that Scarborough described. On those exact topics that Scarborough mentioned, for example, Fox News has ignored or dismissed positive economic news, falsely depicted a “war on fossil fuels” when in fact the country is producing more energy than ever, and depicted minimum wage increases as a danger to the economy and American way of life. Fox has also run an obsessive level of coverage depicting migrants as a criminal threat to the country, and hyped supposed new threats without any empirical evidence. (Scarborough’s reference to immigrants purportedly carrying leprosy was actually a Fox News narrative from 2018.)

And of course, Fox has engaged in a vast culture war against transgender people, and the network drastically picked up its coverage in 2021 as soon as Democrats took control of the White House and Congress. This intense coverage has continued for years, including targeted hate campaigns, treating urban legends as if they’re real news, and whipping up new cultural battles via days of relentless coverage and dishonestly edited footage.

Watch the full segment from Morning Joe below:

---

https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/decade-russian-infowar-republicans-weird/

alternet no lnx 2 24

A decade of Russian infowar has made Republicans weird

President Donald J. Trump and President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation hold a joint press conference | July 16, 2018 (Official White House Photo by Andrea Hanks).

John Stoehr February 29, 2024

There’s a clip going around featuring Malcolm Trumbull, the former prime minister of Australia, describing for a home audience the few times he witnessed Donald Trump interacting with Vladimir Putin. He said: “When you see Trump with Putin, as I have on a few occasions, he’s like the 12-year-old that goes to high school and meets the captain of the football team – ‘my hero!’ It is really creepy. It’s really creepy. … It struck everybody. You could touch it. The creepiness was palpable.”

I’ll leave it to worthies steeped in international relations to discuss the ramifications of a former leader of one of America’s closest allies defenestrating Trump’s great claim that all the world respects him.

For me, I’m interested in that adjective, “creepy,” and its cognates – “strange,” “weird,” “not normal,” and so on – because I’m going to suggest two things. One, that we are hearing those words applied to Trump and the Republicans with greater frequency by Americans rooted in mainstream culture. And two, that the more their behavior is called “creepy,” “weird,” etc, the more they are going to appear, to Americans rooted in mainstream culture, to be virtually foreign.

When you think about it, that makes sense.

As I said in yesterday’s edition, the Russian government has, more or less, been waging nonstop information warfare against the United States since at least 2015. During that time, Donald Trump and the Republicans have eaten, digested and metabolized practically all of it.

Their views are nearly indistinguishable from Vladimir Putin’s. State governments run by Republicans are increasingly Russian in practice. (“They have banned books, censored speech, outlawed history, suppressed individual expression and, therefore, individual liberty,” I said. “If they have not used the power of the state to control their populations, they have empowered snitches and vigilantes to reach the same goal.”) The heart of the GOP’s impeachment inquiry is a Kremlin lie. “Basically, the Republicans have become synonymous for [the] Russians at this point,” said Texas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett.

I called this the transmogrification of the Republican Party. To see how thorough, complete and total that process has gotten, watch this clip. An MSNBC reporter asked Trump supporters for their thoughts on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Vladimir Putin’s threat to democratic Eastern Europe. After watching it, you may be reminded of this piece I wrote in September summarizing the Russo-Republican perspective:

'According to the rightwing view, Ukraine is not a democracy. It is a corrupt regime undeserving of aid. Moreover, it’s an enemy. Among other things, it colluded with Democrat Hillary Clinton in a scheme to undermine US sovereignty and defraud the American people in the 2016 election. The plan was thwarted by the victory of Donald Trump.'

'The rightwing view insists, moreover, that Donald Trump, as president, attempted to expose Ukraine’s corruption in 2019 when he demanded an investigation into then-former Vice President Joe Biden. Biden, according to this view, abused his office and corrupted US foreign policy in 2016 in order to enrich himself and his son, Hunter Biden.'

That’s upside down, backward and prolapsed.

It’s also weird.

Consider that the president ordered and ate an ice cream cone recently. In response, Fox host Jesse Watters suggested not only that Biden has dementia, on account of people with dementia enjoying the taste of ice cream, but that he’s unmanly. “A grown man, especially the president, should not be licking ice cream in public.” (Watters also said a grown man should not eat soup in public. “It’s not a good look.”)

On the one hand, this was an attempt to “infantilize” the president. Jennifer Mercieca, an expert on authoritarian rhetoric, said last night it’s “another way of saying he’s weak and not a Übermensch. He’s not trying to be an overlord strongman. He’s trying to be a president. Ice cream is delicious and eating it is democratic. Fascists gonna fash.”

On the other, this is just weird. “I've said it before: rightwingers are the biggest weirdos,” one person said on Twitter. “It truly sounds awkward, like ‘decadent Westernized male degrades manhood with frozen treats,’” another quipped. James Surowiecki, formerly of The New Yorker and currently of The Yale Review, put the ice cream thing in context. “In the past four weeks, high-profile rightwingers have come out against adults eating ice cream, IVF, recreational sex, Taylor Swift, and the NFL. They're so in tune with mainstream Americans.”

Surowiecki was joking, of course. The Republicans and their media allies are not in tune with mainstream Americans. They don’t like people having abortions. They don’t like in vitro fertilization. They don’t like birth control. They don’t like a self-made female billionaires dating Super Bowl-winning football players. And they don’t like grown men eating ice cream cones in public. (Or soup). They, like Mother Russia, don’t like things that don’t fit into a human society ordered vertically – with straight white Christian men dominating the top.

These people are so far outside mainstream American culture that those on the inside might legitimately ask: “Wait, you’re not from around here, are you?” “The creepiness was palpable,” Trumbull said.

He’s right.

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Dismissing positive jobs reports and a record-high stock market, Fox News is laying the groundwork for Trump to attack Biden’s economy | Media Matters for America

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• John Knefel and Jack Wheatley @ Media Matters: Charlie Kirk makes false accusations about exonerated “Central Park Five” defendant and NYC Council member Yusef Salaam.

Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk doubled down on Monday on a false accusation that the exonerated “Central Park Five” defendant Yusef Salaam was involved in the assault and rape of a jogger in Manhattan in 1989. Salaam’s conviction was vacated in 2002, following a judge’s ruling and the Manhattan district attorney’s decision not to retry the case.

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Sean Hannity falsely claims Republicans aren’t “taking away anybody’s rights to an abortion” after Dobbs | Media Matters for America

--> more shuck and jive

Now that Joe Biden is president, Sean Hannity doesn’t find a record high stock market all that impressive | Media Matters for America

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CNN host debunks Mike Johnson’s false hundreds of 'known terrorists' claim in real time - Alternet.org

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mma 12 23

MATT GERTZ

PUBLISHED 12/20/23

I don’t know what will happen now that the Colorado Supreme Court has ruled that Donald Trump is ineligible to appear on the presidential ballot. There is no precedent for implementing the 14th Amendment’s ban on candidates who supported insurrection. But there’s also no precedent for a president seeking to subvert the results of an election he lost by summoning a mob of supporters to the White House and then unleashing it on Congress to prevent the peaceful transition of power.

:{:{What I do know is that attempts to seek accountability for the events of January 6, 2021, are playing out in an environment in which the Trumpist media have developed a twisted alternate narrative of that insurrection. The right-wing stars conservatives trust most have spent the last few years downplaying the violent storming of the U.S. Capitol.}:

They've largely succeeded in convincing the Republican base and the party’s politicians to follow them, creating a stark partisan divide over whether it was wrong for Trump to try to overturn American democracy. And after portraying Trump’s federal and state election subversion charges as illegitimate attacks on democracy, they’re now doing the same thing for the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision.}:

The right-wing effort to minimize January 6 and Trump’s role in fomenting it began that very day. Fox hosts who knew better told their viewers that Trump’s supporters had been responding to reasonable fears that the election had been stolen, while any violence may have been caused by antifa interlopers.

:{:{In the intervening years, Trumpist media stars — led by former Fox host Tucker Carlson — cosseted their viewers with a slew of lies about January 6. There was no “insurrection,” just a “political protest [that] got out of hand” in which “the overwhelming majority” of participants were “orderly and meek.” The rioter shot and killed by law enforcement while trying to breach the speaker’s gallery was a martyr, while the officers who were nearly beaten to death during the attack deserve mockery.}:

The violence was orchestrated by undercover federal agents as part of a sinister plot to imprison patriotic Americans for their conservative views. The events were comparable to staffers for a late-night talk show shooting an unauthorized video in the Capitol complex, or a Democratic congressman foolishly pulling a fire alarm, or progressive protests at state capitols.}:

None of this is true. Of the more than 1,100 people federal prosecutors have charged with crimes related to the riot, at least 350 have been charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers or employees (roughly 140 officers were assaulted that day). Nearly a third of those were also charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon against police officers or causing serious bodily injury to an officer. Several leaders of right-wing extremist groups have been convicted of seditious conspiracy for their roles in the insurrection.

And Republican political leaders know it isn’t true. The mob forced the party’s senators and representatives to evacuate from their legislative chambers and huddle in a secure location. When they emerged, many condemned both what they described as a “violent insurrection” and Trump’s role in fomenting it.

But the influence right-wing media have on their audience is among the most powerful forces in modern American politics. The stars spun a web of lies, viewers and listeners became convinced it was truth, and GOP leaders either followed along or were purged from office. Republican members of Congress now treat January 6 as a punchline, while Trump’s serious would-be rivals are loath to try to use his attempt to subvert the election on the campaign trail. And Trump himself is promising full pardons for “a large portion” of January 6 convicts.

As news of the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision broke on Tuesday night, Trump’s propagandists flew into a frenzy.

“Tonight, America is seeing the ultimate in election interference,” Fox’s Laura Ingraham alleged on her show, before bringing on network contributor Jonathan Turley to decry the court’s decision as “strikingly anti-democratic” and “chilling.” On Steve Bannon’s War Room, a guest denounced “republic-ending tactics by the Democrats.”

The very people who supported Trump’s electoral subversion plot and minimized the resulting violent effort to overturn democracy are now lashing out at the prospect of Trump suffering consequences for his actions. They’ve convinced a large swath of the country that he did nothing that deserves accountability. And if Trump once again tries to overturn an election, they’ll be ready to help.

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guk ref no lnx gfx

Alarm at rightwing push to reverse clean-energy success in Texas and beyond

Supporters of clean energy say they expect further battles ahead to prevent state’s progress in solar and wind from being unwound

Oliver Milman and Dharna Noor

Thu 8 Jun 2023 

In the scramble before the end of Texas’s legislative session last week,a must-pass bill was amended to impose new costs upon renewable energy.This came amid a barrage of anti-solar and wind power measures pushed forward by Republicans to reshape a state that has become the US’s powerhouse of clean energy.

But the conservative lawmakers had help.

Sections of the bill that impose new burdens upon clean energy providers were directly crafted and edited by the Texas Public Policy Foundation (or TPPF), a conservative group that has led the backlash to renewables and to make what it calls “the moral case for fossil fuels”, according to a copy of the draft language seen by the Guardian.

Several dozen edits were made to the bill’s amendments by Brent Bennett, a TPPF policy staffer, the document shows, and Texas lawmakers subsequently passed parts of this language along with the key TPPF desires – to impose new transmission costs on renewables and require them to source fossil fuel “backup” power when the sun isn’t shining or wind isn’t blowing.

The passage of the bill, which funds the ongoing operation of the Public Utility Commission of Texas, was the flagship victory for TPPF even as a raft of other Republican bills that would have “shut down the renewable energy industry in Texas”, as energy analyst Doug Lewin put it, faltered.

The burgeoning influence of TPPF, an organization substantially funded by fossil fuel interests and publicly lauded by Greg Abbott, Texas’s Republican governor, is the catalyst to a rightwing attempt to crimp the stunning progress of renewable energy in the state, whichnow produces more than a quarter of all wind-powered electricity in the US.

The group’s agenda is now extending far beyond Texas, bankrolling efforts to halt offshore wind turbines in Massachusetts and to prop up coal power on native American land in Arizona while spearheading efforts to crack down on sustainable finance in energy-producing states like West Virginia.

“We are very influential, we are meeting with policymakers to share recommendations and we’re having success around the country,” said Jason Isaac, a former state representative and now director of TPPF’s energy initiatives. Isaac said that TPFF regularly helped craft “certain aspects” of bills in Texas related to the state’s electricity grid or environmental, social, and corporate governance (or ESG) issues.

“I think conservatives are slowly but surely moving away from variable generation and towards reliable generation,” he said of the group’s quest against renewables. Isaac claimed renewables have been unfairly propped up by a “cult-like fascination” among politicians who have pursued what he called a “dangerous and deadly” agenda to reduce planet-heating emissions.

The aggressive push against renewables in Texas has alarmed environmentalists who fret it will undermine the state’s nation-leading wind industry and threaten the revenues solar and wind generates for local communities and farmers. More broadly, the template used by TPPF in Texas could hobble efforts by Joe Biden’s administration to tackle the climate crisis.

“We are seeing a rush of these bills attempting to wind the clock back on renewables and TPPF really are at the point of the spear on this,” said Luke Metzger, executive director of Environment Texas. “They are transparent advocates for the fossil fuel industry and I think they pose an incredible threat to renewables. TPPF have gained incredible traction, they really are shifting the narrative in Texas.

“They’ve won over the top politicians in the state, which is very dangerous. Texas is going to be critical if the US going to get to net zero emissions, so we should take this threat seriously.”

TPPF’s impact can now be found thousands of miles from its base in Austin, Texas, with the group filing a lawsuit in 2021 on behalf of six east coast fishing businesses – collectively calledNantucket Residents Against Turbines – targeting a major windfarm currently under construction off the coast of Massachusetts. Slated to come online by the end of the year, Vineyard Wind will be the first major offshore wind project to be built off the US east coast.

The lawsuit claimed federal agencies did not sufficiently analyze how the project, which is set to deliver enough electricity to power 400,000 homes, would affect wildlife – specifically the endangered North Atlantic right whale – and thereby violated the Endangered Species Act and slew of other environmental policies.

Meghan Lapp, a seafood dealer and longtime offshore wind critic who was a plaintiff in the suit, told Reuters in 2021 that TPPF got involved in the suit at her request. As it announced its involvement in the case, the thinktank also took the unusual step of releasing a trailer called “A Heavy Wind”.

The case was ultimately unsuccessful after a federal judge dismissed it last month, but the idea that wind turbines kill whales has been seized upon by conservatives, especially since December, when dozens of whales began washing up on the Atlantic coast in what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) calls an “unusual mortality event”.

Noaa has said there is no evidence that offshore wind power is killing off whales, with fishing practices, boat strikes and the climate crisis among the primary dangers to marine mammals, but congressional Republicans have called on the White House to pause offshore wind development, while Tucker Carlson, then of Fox News, aired a critical series of segments called “The Biden Whale Extinction”.

The assault on renewables by TPPF and its Republican allies has stunned conservatives who remain supportive of the longstanding bipartisan enthusiasm for clean energy.

The reversal has been particularly stark for Texas which, blessed with the capacious, flat terrain and amenable climate for abundantwind and solar energy, was championed as a bastion for renewables by previous Republican governors George W Bush and Rick Perry, even as they embraced the ubiquitous oil industry.

More than 40% of Texas’s electricity came from carbon-free sources last year, with the state now producing more wind and solar than the next three states – California, Iowa and Oklahoma – combined. This imperious status now seems uncertain.

“I don’t recognize the state sometimes any more from our elected leaders. It’s like we are in a twilight zone where up is down and day is night,” said Matt Welch, state director of Conservative Texans for Energy Innovation.

“I fear we’re losing our lead in the nation and the world as the source for clean energy advancement. It’s just amazing we’ve rolled up the welcome mat and told wind and solar operators they’re just not welcome here any more.”

The Texas Public Policy Foundation was founded in 1989 by James R Leininger, a San Antonio-based physician who made his fortune selling hospital beds, and initially focused on the issue of charter schools before branching out into other topics such as energy. The thinktank is a member of theState Policy Network, a network of far-right non-profits across the country that fight climate-focused legislation.

In 2021, the most recent year for which records are available, donations for the thinktank totaled $25.6m. Publicly available data shows that – like many State Policy Network affiliates – its largest known funder isCharles Koch, the billionaire industrialist who made his fortune from fossil fuels. Entities tied to Koch have contributed at least $8.8m to the group since 2012, according to an analysis by researcher Connor Gibson.

Tax filings show that the group has received donations from fossil fuel companies including ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and Chevron, but, as a non-profit, the full extent of TPPF’s fossil fuel funding is unknown.

Issac said, however, it has been “many years” since large oil firms such as Exxon have donated to TPPF as these companies now ostensibly support decarbonization and environmentally responsible corporate governance, which conflicts with the foundation. He insisted that the foundation is committed to “free enterprise and individual liberty” and the eradication of “market distorting” subsidies, not just for renewables but also fossil fuels.

But Welch said that Republican lawmakers, backed by TPPF, have ditched any ideological consistency by heaping onerous restrictions on renewable energy development on private property, in some cases attempting to impose requirements absent from oil and gas drilling, and trying to slash subsidies for the industry at the same time as offering state support for the buildout of new gas plants.

One proposed bill that didn’t get sufficient backing in the latest Texas legislative session would have placed stringent new rules for wind and solar projects, including written permissions from neighboring property owners and setbacks of up to half a mile from the edge of a property for wind turbines. Another would have cut all subsidies for renewable energy.

“On a Tuesday these lawmakers will be adamantly for private property rights, but on a Thursday they will want to stop the growth of renewable energy even though it’s on somebody’s private land,” Welch said, adding thatTPPF was once full of “mini Milton Friedmans for years until recently, and now all of a sudden they throw that out the window.

“It’s been a shocker. It’s so hypocritical,” he said. “I used to be an acolyte of TPPF but they are now driven by oil and gas billionaires who want to stop alternative forms of energy to benefit their own bottom line. They’ve sold their soul to the almighty dollar.”

Renewable energy remains broadly popular with the Texas public for delivering cheap, clean power along with an injection of cash for entities such as school districts, but affection has somewhat curdled among some of the state’s Republican leadership. A devastating winter storm in 2021, which left millions of Texans without power and led to several hundred deaths, was a major accelerant of this trend.

In the days following the crippling event, known as winter storm Uri, Abbott and other leading Republicans pushed the blame for the power blackouts upon renewable energy, with misleading pictures of frozen wind turbines from Europe quickly circulating social media as the supposed cause of the grid’s breakdown.

Subsequent studies have made clear the primary cause of the blackouts were frozen gas pipelines and a lack of infrastructure resiliency to extreme weather, rather than renewables per se, but the perception of faulty wind and solar has stuck, eagerly fanned by TPPF.

“I still believe [renewables] deserve a lot of the blame,” said Isaac. “The storm was helpful in educating people who just assumed when they flip a switch the lights come on that there are issues with grid reliability, that solar panels covered in snow don’t produce electricity.”

Isaac said the foundation accepts that the climate is changing but disputes that this is harmful to people,claiming that the benefits of burning of fossil fuels “far outweighs” any negatives, including deadly air pollution, which he asserts isn’t an issue for the US and its “near natural” air quality. Scientists have, in fact, found that the climate crisis poses huge and growing risks to humanity, with airborne pollutants from burning coal, oil and gas linked to an array of different health problems.

While the most severe of the anti-renewables bills pushed forward in Texas didn’t pass the legislature this year, Isaac said that TPPF remains undaunted and will continue to agitate against what he called “the false panacea of variable power”. Supporters of clean energy said they expect further battles ahead to prevent Texas’s progress in solar and wind from being unwound.

“With the growth trajectory of renewable energy, TPPF can either get on the train or lay down in front of the tracks,” said Welch. “I suspect they won’t rest on their laurels. They’re going to come for renewables again and again and again.”

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see claim no evid polar

he gets away b/c of 1 demonization 2 tammany daly machine holdover BS 3 everybody does it, all politics is corrupt/crooks 4 endless rep of lie Big Lie is tribal signifier

an 12 23

Wisconsin Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski is calling for Republican Bob Spindell to be removed from the Wisconsin Election Commission for being one of the fake electors who, in 2020, tried to help former President Donald Trump overturn the election results in that state. When Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) appeared on CNN on Monday night, December 11, host Kaitlan Collins asked if he favored removing Spindell from the Commission in light of his role in the "fake electors scheme."

Johnson, in response, accused Democrats of using fake electors and told Collins, "These folks did nothing different than what many Democrats have done in many states. It has happened repeatedly."

Collins asked Johnson to back up his claim, and The New Republic's Ella Sherman notes that he was "left flabbergasted" when he couldn't offer any evidence.

POLL:Should Trump be allowed to hold office again?

Johnson told Collins to "just check the books" for examples of Democratic fake electors, but when she asked, "Which books?," the Wisconsin senator had no specific examples to offer.

Sherman notes, "Johnson is right that fake elector schemes have been found across the country — but they were all backing Trump. In addition to Wisconsin, Nevada, Michigan, and Georgia have all charged fake electors in their states. There is yet another investigation into a similar scheme in Arizona. Meanwhile, Trump faces separate charges in Georgia for the whole plot."

READ MORE:Wisconsin secretary of state calls for 2020 fake elector to be removed from election board

*Watch the video below or at this link.

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bizzaroworld:

Fox News host demands 'honest conversation' about how Dems are 'communists and fascists' - Alternet.org

rubber glue

projection of projection

an 12 23

fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy on Sunday called for an "honest conversation" about how Democrats should be considered "communists and fascists."

During a discussion about Donald Trump's campaign stops in Iowa, Campos-Duffy praised Trumpfor attacking Democrats.

"As the Democrats have sort of removed the mask of who they are — and we've seen it on display in many ways, especially over the last couple months through these protests — I love that he is just naming it out, calling them communists and fascists," she said. "Let's just have a really blunt, honest conversation about what are the choices in this election."

"I like the phrase, the destroyers of democracy," co-host Will Cain added. "Now, listen, I don't know if it's a matter of human nature, but I definitely know it's a matter of political strategy, that the left has engaged successfully for a good half a decade now of accusing their opponents of the sins which they are committing."

"What they have done is demonize others for the things that they are secretly doing," he added. "And it's been revealed to itself as well through this lens of, you're a threat to democracy."

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11 23 rww

Rep. Brandon Prichard

last month, Christian nationalist North Dakota State Rep. Brandon Prichard appeared on a local television program called “Ladies of Another View” where he attempted to defend his Christian nationalism by spreading misinformation and falsehoods.

Prichard appeared on the program to discuss the criticism he had received in the wake of posts he made on social media declaring that every member of Congress must “submit to the Gospel of Jesus Christ” and that “every conservative state should put into code that Jesus Christ is King and dedicate their state to Him.”

Prichard insisted that he had nothing for which to apologize because American history proves that his worldview is the same as the Founding Fathers.

“Here’s the deal,” Prichard boldly proclaimed, “history is on our side. History is on the side of the conservatives on this issue. The first thing that happened at the Constitutional Convention was what? It was Benjamin Franklin coming in front of everybody—he was actually one of the most agnostic of them all—and said that we need to plead to the heavens and pray for our country. And it was a Christian prayer; they had a Christian pastor come and say a prayer.”

“As early as the 1980s,” Prichard continued, “Ronald Reagan dedicated the country to Jesus and had a National Day of Prayer enshrined into our law.”

“So, I think that it’s crazy to suggest that that our country is not, at bare minimum, a Christian nation,” Prichard concluded.

IFrame Content

vid?]

Nearly everything Prichard cited in support of his Christian nationalism is false.

As Right Wing Watch has explained before, while Benjamin Franklin did urge the delegates at the 1787 Constitutional Convention to pray for help in drafting the Constitution, it was certainly not the “first thing that happened” at the convention and, more importantly, Franklin’s suggestion was ignored by the rest of the delegates. So no, the Constitutional Convention did not have “a Christian pastor come and say a prayer.”

If the Constitution’s authors had wanted to require members of Congress to “submit to the gospel of Jesus Christ,” as Prichard believes they should, they had a chance to do so; instead, they banned any religious test for public office.

Furthermore, President Ronald Reagan never “dedicated the country to Jesus,” whatever that even means, and the National Day of Prayer was enshrined into law in 1952 by President Harry Truman.

If, as Prichard claimed, “history is on our side,” then why do he and so many other Christian nationalists keep spreading falsehoods in their effort to “prove” it?

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Kari Lake says it doesn’t matter if she lied about elected official - Alternet.org

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aha big lie, vaxx, agw denial are proof of bona fides, legit member of tribe

an 10 23

a British journalist and academic is warning that because the Republican Party and its members are cementing belief in Trump's big lie about the 2020 election in its national identity, democracy is at risk.

In an essay for the Guardian, Peter Pomerantsev — a senior fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University — opined that the recent election of Rep. Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) as the next Speaker of the House is a sign that the GOP is embracing election denialism as part of its core identity. Pomerantsev added that adherence to lies is a typical tactic of some of the world's most authoritarian governments.

"Agreeing to Trump’s claims about the rigged election is the absurdity you have to pledge allegiance to in order to show you belong to the tribe. It ensures your fealty by making you complicit," Pomeratnsev wrote. "For anyone who has lived in authoritarian regimes, it’s a familiar sight."

To illustrate this point, Pomerantsev noted that even though Johnson had unanimous support from his caucus in the speaker's race, many Republicans "have admitted both publicly and privately that the elections were, in fact, not falsified."

"Yet when journalists faced a gaggle of Republican congressmen and questioned Johnson’s record on this blatant lie, his colleagues jeered and he mockingly said: “Next question” – as if the facts were irrelevant here," Pomerantsev wrote. "And in a sense, they are."

Pomerantsev's essay elaborated that because Republicans have to believe in a claim they privately know is false in order to maintain power, right-wing media must follow suit in order to sate the tribalist nature of their audience. Because of this, he argues, "it will be hard to fact check our way out of this situation."

"The issue can’t simply be resolved by “trusted” sources, even those on the far right, who can communicate the truth about the election to Trump supporters. Instead, sources only become trusted if they agree to the lie," he wrote. "Pledging loyalty to the 'big lie' is more about identity than knowledge – and to fight it entails understanding the need for belonging and meaning it fulfills."

READ MORE:'Extraordinarily deplorable': Analyst slams GOP over 'Kraken level Big Lie' speaker choice*

"Authoritarian propaganda can give the illusion of status and at its extremes a sense of supremacy to compensate for the lack of real agency," he added.

Click here to read Pomerantsev's essay in full.

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https://www.alternet.org/2015/01/10-historical-facts-only-right-winger-could-believe

as you may have noticed by following their writings, conservatives are not sticklers for historical accuracy, especially when they have a point to defend and not a lot of evidence to support it. Get a load, for example, of John Podhoretz explaining how the pro-choice Rudy Giuliani reduced abortions in New York City (though, um, not really) because he cut crime, which is one of "the spiritual causes of abortion."

Yeah, deadline pressure's a bitch. But there are some bizarre notions of American history in which conservatives have become so invested they've adopted them into their worldview. The best-known example is probably Jonah Goldberg's notion of "Liberal Fascism"; nowadays anytime a conservative talks about, say, Woodrow Wilson or Hillary Clinton, you may expect him to mention their resemblance to Benito Mussolini. They don't even have to think about it, even when normal people are gaping at them open-mouthed like audience members at "Springtime for Hitler" -- it's part of the folklore that helps them understand the American experience.

There are plenty of others. I've picked out 10 such ideas that are widespread enough to qualify. (In the nomenclature I have treated "Republican" and "conservative" as synonyms because, come on.)

10. The Robber Barons weren't robbers -- they were capitalist heroes.

The overarching task of the conservative historian is to rehabilitate the image of capitalism, even at its most red-toothed and -clawed. Not a hard job, as both our history and culture ceaselessly celebrate the innovative dynamism of American business.

But one of the rare areas in which history teachers are allowed to criticize unfettered capitalism is the Gilded Age of the "robber barons" -- Morgan, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Fisk, et al. These men, many of whom first rose to prominence through unseemly wartime speculation, built enormous fortunes on the exceedingly generous terms of the times, which included bribery, monopolies, and stock manipulation, perverting the alleged power of the free market on their own behalf. They were kind of like the Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers of their day -- except they never got caught.

Most of us still look on this as a shameful thing. But historians of the conservative-libertarian persuasion such as Thomas E. Woods, Lawrence W. Reed, and Thomas J. DiLorenzo (better known now as a neo-Confederate) look at the robber barons' dirty records and ask: So what? J.P. Morgan built a nice library!

They tend to skirt the smelly stuff, and talk instead about how Carnegie's machinations drove down the price of steel -- surely you're not against low prices? And if Jay Gould and Cornelius Vanderbilt paid off legislators to acquire land for their railroads, the railroads got built, and that's what counts.

why do they so eagerly defend the robber barons even at their worst? Maybe because, as economist Brad DeLong has noted, the grotesque inequity in American wealth that characterized their era has only one equivalent in U.S. history -- that of our own time. And if one's business is excusing the perfidy and criminality of today's speculators and swindlers, it is helpful to make heroes of the speculators and swindlers who are their models.

9. Sputnik bankrupted the Soviet Union.

This one comes from the top of the conservative food chain: Sarah Palin. In her Fox News rebuttal to President Obama's recent State of the Union, Palin said that the Russians' "victory in that race to space... incurred so much debt at the time that it resulted in the inevitable collapse of the Soviet Union."

It has been pointed out that Palin's version of history is confused on many points. But don't tell that to conservatives. Among them, Palin's charisma is so overweening that her bizarre POV is yet defended -- in some cases, on the grounds that her "larger and more important point about history" was misunderstood (which then mutated into "Palin was right"), and in others just because, as a poster at Lucianne Goldberg's site put it, "The left will have puppies because of it."

Palin's ahistoricism has since metastasized among her following into an indictment of America's entry into the space race, which National Review's Jonah Goldberg described as "the government tells the people what to do, and it relies on a handful of expertsto get it done according to government specifications."

(It should be noted that Sputnik revisionism didn't start with Palin; John Bircher Cleon Skousen claimed in the '50s that the USSR built Sputnik with plans stolen from the United States. It kind of figures Palin would follow in that tradition.)

8. Galileo was a conservative.

You may recall how conservatives made lifelong socialist George Orwell into a neocon icon. Now they're trying to do the same thing with Galileo.

You may think Galileo's an odd choice, because he's history's most famous scientific dissident, having been forced by the Catholic Church to deny his heretical finding that the earth revolved around the sun. But it's not his devotion to truth that makes him attractive to conservatives -- it's his persecution. As they feel themselves persecuted by a liberal conspiracy, conservatives will easily adopt as their avatar any historical figure who suffered and was later shown to be right, regardless of the relevance of his cause to theirs. If you've seen The Passion of the Christ, you know how it works.

The Catholic Encyclopedia, for reasons that should be obvious, has long portrayed Galileo's ordeal as not so bad; why, the Pope didn't even torture him, he just threatened to, and anyway the Church was only reasonably trying to "prohibit the circulation of writings which were judged harmful."

Scholarly apologists such as Jonathan Weyer and Paul Feyerabend have amplified the theme, but their heady thoughts were brought crashing to earth by National Review's Jonah Goldberg, who in 1999 attacked the "ancient, pro-enlightenment, zealot spin" on Galileo with easy-reading versions of the Catholic argument. (Dinesh D'Souza provided similar arguments at a slightly higher reading level.)

Galileo may have been prosecuted by the Church, said Goldberg, but he was persecuted by "jealous fellow-scientists," one of whom he compared to James Carville. Actually, Goldberg said, the Church loved Galileo. Admittedly they did try him, but that was "very complicated" -- the upshot being that "one need not look much further than then-Senator Al Gore's treatment of dissenters on global warming to see how modern inquisitions work."

Thus continued the rehabilitation of Galileo -- no longer the enemy of the Church, but the patron saint of global warming denialists. In 2001 the American Spectator called skeptic Lloyd Keigwin "The Galileo of Global Warming" and claimed he made a giant contribution to discrediting a movement that would impose a deadly energy clamp on the world economy...." More recently the "ClimateGate" scandal prompted a new wave of Galileo reclamation, with Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal lamenting, "The East Anglians' mistreatment of scientists who challenged global warming's claims... evokes the attempt to silence Galileo."

Scan the blogs, and you'll see plenty more of this stuff (e.g. "The Great Global Warming Inquisition"). Next stop: J. Robert Oppenheimer -- Victim of a Liberal Conspiracy.

7. The Founding Fathers really tried to end slavery.

Even in the exceedingly forgiving musical 1776, the Founding Fathers are shown willing to table the issue of slavery in order to win a consensus for the Declaration of Independence. (It also shows Jefferson "resolved to release my slaves," which he never did.)

That's not patriotic enough for Tea Party princess Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, who told a sympathetic audience that "the very founders that wrote those documents [the Declaration and Constitution] worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States." The one "founder" Bachmann cited was John Quincy Adams, who was actually the son of the founder John Adams.

Her bizarre assertion got negative press, and the inevitable right-wing defenses from Glenn Beck, Andrew Breitbart's Big Journalism, and others.

That's no shock; Bachmann's theme was right in line with a traditional conservative method of reconciling their fairy-tale vision of American history with the founders' self-evident hypocrisy. Fundamentalists, for example, frequently cite the founders' verbal objections to the practice as the inspiration for abolitionism.

The basic idea seems to be that because the Founders were embarrassed by slavery, that meant they were in some secret way fighting against it. Author Paul Gottfried, for example, has argued that "Presbyterian theologians spilled rivulets of ink doing what Cicero and Pliny never felt obliged to do, showing how in their society slavery was being elevated to solicitous education for a backward people. The fact that such arguments had to be provided... underscores the perceived need to humanize a 'peculiar institution.'" So, like very young children in permissive households, the founders' dim awareness of guilt excuses them from blame.

It's hard for most of us to imagine that men who, shortly after the Revolution, countenanced the military suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion would have endorsed John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, or that George Washington, who tried to solve his dental challenges by having implanting in his gums teeth extracted from his slaves, was a precocious abolitionist. But when you hang out with people in tricorner hats and knee-breeches who think the Founders were guys just like themselves, it's a little easier to suspend disbelief.

6. Teddy Roosevelt was a socialist.

Theodore Roosevelt was a naval theorist and war aficionado, a lawman in both the Dakota Territory and New York City, and a cheerful imperialist. You'd think conservatives would appreciate him better. But Glenn Beck has helped turn that around, lambasting TR at last year's CPAC and denouncing his words as "a socialist utopia" which "we need to address ... as if it is a cancer."

In an essay at Beck's site, R.J. Pestritto, a professor at the conservative Hillsdale College, said that while "the progressives were elitists; they looked down their noses at the socialists, considering them a kind of rabble," nonetheless "the progressive conception of government closely coincided with the socialist conception." Pestritto was given room to defend his and Beck's views in the Wall Street Journal. And the Ashbrook Center's Ken Thomas concluded that Roosevelt "pushed centralization of power far further than circumstances justified."

Now even when conservatives defend Roosevelt, they qualify their enthusiasm, saying while he went wrong with his statism, he did do some good things, like subjugate foreigners and so forth.

You might wonder why conservatives have chosen to start picking on the guy from Mt. Rushmore. One explanation may be that they were sick of hearing liberals say, oh, if progressive taxation is socialist, then what about TR, was he a socialist too? Now, instead of sputtering, they can just say yes.

5. Conservatives swept MLK and the Civil Rights movement to victory.

Back during the Civil Rights era, the preeminent conservative journal National Review stood foursquare against the Civil Rights movement and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Many modern conservatives would be shocked to hear this, as they are convinced that Republican conservatives defeated the Klansmen of the Democratic Party to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and realize King's dream.

They usually start with the Civil War, at which time Republicans really were African Americans' better friend among the Parties, and then slide on up to the Civil Rights Act -- skipping Strom Thurmond leaving the Democratic Party over segregation, Truman's integration of the Armed Services, etc.

They point out, rightly, that a greater percentage of Republicans than Democrats voted for the Act in both chamber. They generally don't recall that nearly all the Democratic opponents were Southern, nor that President Lyndon Johnson, who had pushed for the Act, reflected afterward that the Democrats had "lost the South for a generation" -- which turned out to be accurate, plus a decade or two, as Southerners abandoned the Democrats in consequence of their race-mixing ways.

To this day, though they are unsupported by later political developments (such as Tea Party pet Rand Paul's criticism of the Civil Rights Act), conservatives will claim King and civil rights for themselves, and react to the continuing, massive disposition of black Americans to vote Democratic as an act of stunning ingratitude.

4. Margaret Sanger was all about the eugenics.

Margaret Sanger is known to most normal people as the feminist pioneer who fought law and superstition to educate women to better methods of birth control -- mainly condoms and early diaphragms, as opposed to the caustic chemicals and folk remedies desperate women had previously used, sometimes disastrously, to prevent pregnancies.

In the course of her crusade, Sanger made common cause with a variety of world figures, including Jawaharlal Nehru, Reader's Digest founder DeWitt Wallace -- and followers of the pseudoscience of eugenics. This last was an unfortunate choice, to put it mildly, as eugenicists championed forced sterilization and even managed to get laws passed mandating it in some states.

Sanger's own writings show that eugenics was for her a hook for spreading the word about contraception, rather than the other way around; preventing unwanted pregnancy was her life's work. Still, it's a fair cop, and her eugenics endorsements -- like H.L. Mencken's anti-Semitic remarks and Robert Byrd's Klan membership -- are a dark spot on an otherwise admirable reputation.

But ask a modern conservative about Sanger, and you'll find they've got her backwards -- eugenics is literally all they know about her. Though they talk about eugenics as if it were still a popular movement, they usually don't condemn the prominent churchmen and scientists who supported it, not the Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations, nor Charles Lindbergh, nor Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, et al. It's always Sanger who symbolizes it -- which is rather like portraying Ezra Pound as the head of the Third Reich. Not only lowly lunatic fringe figures, but also big-time wingnuts like Jonah Goldberg and Michelle Malkin take this approach.

It's not hard to guess why: As the recent Lila Rose Planned Parenthood sting reminds us, conservatives aren't just against abortion -- they're against anyone who offers women any alternative to childbearing whatsoever. By portraying America's First Lady of Contraception as an enemy of freedom, they may hope to mask their their own authoritarian ambitions.

3. Women were better off before they got the vote.

Perhaps because they are not usually associated with the extension of rights to the disenfranchised -- or because American women tend not to vote the way they want -- conservatives are a little squirrely about women's suffrage. Some rather defensively insist that "conservatives and libertarians played central roles in drafting and ratifying" the 19th Amendment, so there. Others, like National Review's John Derbyshire, Ann Coulter and the editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, affect to be against women's suffrage, either in clumsy emulation of H.L. Mencken's playful remarks on the subject, or because they're assholes.

But among conservatives a consensus is forming that women were better off when they didn't have the vote. The notion does not seem to be based on the premise that women don't deserve the vote, mind you, but that it is extraneous to their real interest, which is to live in a pre-feminist society.

Last year Jacob G. Hornberger of the Future of Freedom Foundation asserted that Americans were freer in the 1880s than they are today. When called on it, Hornberger said okay, maybe black people and women weren't so free. But this prompted George Mason professor Bryan Caplan to ask, "In what ways, then, were American women in 1880 less free than men?" Their lack of franchise, sexual autonomy, etc. struck Caplan as irrelevant: Such women lived in an era before gun control or the Department of Education, so, he judged, they were by definition more free than now.

Discussion generally ran against Caplan, but he had his high-profile defenders. At the Atlantic, Megan McArdle said, "The overwhelming majority of women in 1880 would be positively horrified by the prospect of living my life. Not only is it flagrantly immoral, it violates much of what they themselves thought of as the core of womanhood. Should we get excited about women being denied the right to go to medical school, who did not want to go to medical school?" We may imagine 19th-century women who did not want to go to medical school raising their fists in approval.

Others suggested that if conservative women didn't come out ahead, then women's rights were merely ephemeral. Last year Concerned Women for America celebrated the 90th anniversary of the 19th Amendment thus: "Women Won the Right to Vote 90 Years Ago; Conservative Women Still Fighting the Media for a 'Place at the Table.'" "90 years after the 19th Amendment," wrote Lori Zingano at RedState, "Democrats are actively seeking to figuratively repeal the amendment" -- that is, by promoting "the myth of a wage gap" between men and women and disapproving of Sarah Palin. Thus, she said, Democrats "are striving for a form of reverse-suffrage, wherein every woman must walk in lockstep with their ideology, or you are not a 'real' woman."

It is probable that, put under harsh lights and in front of a crowd, any of these people would declare himself or herself an avid women's suffragist. But among themselves they almost never mention women's rights without observing how insignificant they are alongside their own idea of the way things ought to be.

2. Darwin is a menace to Western Civilization.

You will from time to time hear about how some conservatives, at least, are cool with Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. But they're usually discussing the science of evolution -- and on that score, they still can't bring a majority of Republicans onto their side.

On the philosophical implications of man evolving from monkeys, prominent conservatives have long believed and still believe that, in the words of Center for a Just Society Chairman Ken Connor, Darwin would have us believe that "God is simply a creature of our imagination. Human beings emerged gratuitously from the primordial ooze. Since we are the product of mere chance, we have no inherent dignity, value or worth." And that just ain't right.

Thus at the Conservative Book Club you can buy The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinismand Intelligent Design, which assures us that "Darwinism -- like Marxism and Freudianism before it -- is simply unfit to survive," and you can buy from the Conservative DVD Club films like How the Cambrian Fossil Record Disproves Darwin, and so on.

Some intellectual cons who can't quite go full knuckle-dragger try to finesse their way out of it. Dinesh D'Souza noted that, while "evolution does seem to turn many Christians into unbelievers," the discovery of evolutionary principles didn't sour Darwin himself on God -- Darwin's own bitterness over the death of his child did that; and when the evil Thomas Huxley later tied evolution to atheism, the embittered atheist Darwin supported him by becoming "increasingly insistent that evolution was an entirely naturalistic system, having no room for miracles or divine intervention at any point." If Darwin had been in his right mind, of course, he'd be singing Glory Hallelujah.

First Things author Peter Lawler made a noble effort, writing that as Darwinism shows that "our happiness comes from doing our duty to the species as social mammals. .. this account of who we are is basically conservative. It promotes family values—including such insights as people who come from large families are generally happier…."

Nice try, Poindexter! But, as with so much in conservative thinking, Jonah Goldberg iced the cakewith his statement that while "I disagree with those who would lump Darwin with Freud and Marx… I don't think one can glibly say that just because the book was scientifically correct (speaking broadly, we've discovered lots of new things since then) and pioneering, doesn't mean it can't also be harmful. Darwinism certainly led to many horrors and abuses across the ideological spectrum…."

This thing goes way back and, despite the efforts of some pointy-heads, conservatives aren't backing off it anytime soon.

1. FDR: History's greatest monster.

If you have aged grandparents still living who remember the New Deal, or are among America's prominent historians, you will hear nothing but good from them about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the president who shepherded America through the Great Depression and the Second World War.

Conservatives have never felt that way, of course -- back in the day they went to the Trans-Lux to hiss Roosevelt, and FDR welcomed their hatred. For some years they were obliged to keep their anger at FDR on the down-low -- after all, wasn't Reagan a Roosevelt fan? Plus there were many more people then than now who actually remembered that presidency, and it didn't play well to contradict their memories.

Lately, though, conservatives have gotten back to the Trans-Lux, and this time they're not just hissing. "FDR's public works only exacerbated the Depression," says The American Conservative. "The New Deal was harmful medicine for a struggling economy," claims The American Spectator. "Faced with a similar crisis, there cannot be more than one in a hundred who would now recommend FDR's specific curatives" -- at least, not among the hundred the Spectator would ask.

A book by right-wing factotum Amity Shlaes called The Forgotten Man, all about how FDR prolonged the Depression, has gained a place of honor on conservative bookshelves. As you may imagine, the Wall Street Journal reviewer loved it -- "Ms. Shlaes rightly reminds us," he wrote, "of the harmful effect of Rooseveltian activism and class-warfare rhetoric." The reviewer did mention that "one question that Ms. Shlaes never quite answers is just what Roosevelt should have done to beat the Depression beyond practicing a Coolidge-like passivity." But no true conservative would need to ask such a question: Of course FDR should have done as Tea Partiers counsel be done for our current depression: Cut the deficit and screw the poor.

When the book was criticized by John Updike (what does he know about books? Or the Depression? Oh, he lived through it? Well, what does he know about books?)Ross Douthat leapt to condemn Updike's "solipsistic flapdoodle": "FDR could have given us the fireside chats and the rhetoric of government action" that Updike's dad admired, said Douthat, "and yes, even the stronger safety net without the counterproductive attempts at centralized planning and the relentless scapegoating of business."

Ah, what might have been! Any previous U.S. policy may be reexamined, and no administration is sacrosanct. Who knows how things might have been better or worse had James Knox Polk chosen not to pursue the Mexican-American War? But it is evident that the current wave of anti-FDR sentiment coincides with the rise of Democratic power in the last half of the previous decade, and anti-Rooseveltians are always eager to explain how FDR's disastrous presidency -- to which the American people, for reasons unknown, returned him for four terms -- is an ominous warning for the allegedly similarly socialistic Obama.

Clearly the War on FDR is a proxy struggle with the (substantially less aggressive) current president -- they seek to make activist government look foolish, in hopes of preventing it from being tried again. But then, in a way all their other historical revisions are also directed at their current enemies. They go through the ghost of Margaret Sanger to stymie feminists; through the shades of Galileo and Darwin to warn off scientists; through the late MLK to get at voters whose enthusiasm for a black president thwarts their own electoral ambitions, etc. For them, history, like everything else, is just politics by other means.

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aha we once had 3 tv networks and school textbks for shared set of facts?  no silo/bubble tribes 2 am

https://www.alternet.org/florida-permits-prageru-materials-classrooms/

https://www.alternet.org/desantis-slave-trade-trade-school/

https://www.alternet.org/education/florida-crt-2659613380/

florida textbook publisher under fire for editing Rosa Parks’ story to omit race

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prove it was 7 23

https://www.alternet.org/desantis-makes-wild-claims-insurrection/

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wicked smart analysis

mma 4 23

cHRIS HAYES (HOST): Fox News has settled the defamation suit brought against them by Dominion Voting Systems, but the underlying problem -- and it's a deep and profound one -- is not going anywhere. And now Fox has to pay 787 million dollars for a bind they got themselves into. It's a bind that the whole country is in, in a certain way, but what I'm talking about is the problem, which is that tens of millions of our fellow citizens live in such a constrained informational environment and are so distrusting of any alternative sources of information, they operate in what is basically an entirely separate informational sphere.

I think the best way to understand this is just to look at some data, right? The spectrum of sources, for instance, that the median Republican primary voter consumes versus the median Democratic voter. So, Democrats consume and trust a wide variety of sources -- The New York Times, The Washington Post, this network -- a broad spectrum of the mainstream media, the progressive media, across the board. The spectrum of what Republicans consume is way, way smaller. First and foremost, they trust Fox News. That is their dominant source along with just a few others, like talk radio and OAN. It's a very, very small universe of ideologically partisan-aligned sources of information.

And here's the thing, that didn't happen by accident. That is the product of a successful effort by Fox News and others, a lot of other conservatives who have waged a decades-long war -- going back to the 1960s -- on the mainstream media and any other trusted American institutions.

The late Rush Limbaugh enshrined the battle lines in what has become a famous or infamous model -- monologue on what he called the Four Corners of Deceit.

[CLIP BEGINS]

RUSH LIMBAUGH: So we have now the Four Corners of Deceit, and the two universes in which we live. The Universe of Lies, the Universe of Reality, and The Four Corners of Deceit: government, academia, science, and media. Those institutions are now corrupt and exist by virtue of deceit.

[CLIP ENDS]

HAYES: Government, academia, science, the media. Corrupt, exist by virtue of deceit.This is what Limbaugh and the conservative movement taught people, hammered into their heads after day after day, month after month, year after year, that they -- the Rush Limbaugh's of the world, the Fox News's of the world -- are the sole source of reality. They exist in the universe of reality and everyone else is in the universe of lies. And you can't trust anyone but them, the Rush Limbaugh's and the Fox News's. You can't trust the government, government official or government statistics. You can't trust scholars. You can't trust scientists or the mainstream media reporters.

And, of course, knowledge, what we know about the world is inescapably predicated on trust. We just can't verify firsthand the overwhelming majority of things we know about the world. I wasn't there for the randomized control trials for the vaccine, for instance, right? So, what we do is we use trust as a means of coming to know about the world. For example, if a reporter from the New York Times says, "I have seen this atrocity happening on the ground in Ukraine and I've talked to folks who saw it, firsthand witnesses, they told me about it," I can't go check for myself, right? My disposition is to trust that it's true. And not completely, right? I would look for other verifications, see if other outlets report similar findings as a kind of verification. We've seen that with atrocities and massacres that have happened in Ukraine.

But trust is the foundation here. And those trust relationships -- with credible media sources, researchers, again, government bureaucratic statistical entities -- they end up being the way that we form a lot of knowledge of the world.The American right has made it their mission to sever each of those trust relationships, to cut their base off from any other institution that produces knowledge.

Now, this has created this incredibly dangerous situation, in which conservatives are -- really are -- severed from any connection, again, to the main institutions of knowledge production in our society. Think about it, think of what the Four Corners of Deceit: government, academia, science and media. Because they are severed from those institutions, these tens of millions of folks can then be sort of captured, dominated entirely by Fox News and its conservative allies.This is an incredibly lucrative thing. They've got customers who only come to them. Rush Limbaugh -- who died a very, very, very, very wealthy man -- understood this.

But here's the thing. Disconnecting their audience from other possible sources of authority has also left Fox vulnerable. They're vulnerable to someone else who is even more of a grandiose liar, an even more effective demagogue coming along and winning over their audience's trust. And this is precisely what happened with the phenomenon of Donald Trump.

Now, remember, in the beginning, when he first got in the 2016 race, Fox and the Republican establishment wanted Trump out.

[CLIPS BEGIN]

GLENN BECK: I am really trying to understand how conservatives can look at Donald Trump's record, which he himself self-identifies more as a Democrat than as a conservative or a Republican, and say, "That's our guy."

RICH LOWRY: He's insulted and bullied his way to the top of the polls

KARL ROVE: We saw an angry, defiant, you know, fuming, threatening bully.

MEGYN KELLY: You've called women you don't like fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: I don't think I've ever heard such a stream of disconnected ideas since I quit psychiatry 30 years ago.

[CLIPS END]

HAYES: Of course, that didn't work. The base decided they trusted Trump more than they trusted Fox. And again, here's -- this is what's key here, Fox themselves had produced a situation in which they were helpless to do anything, right? They created an audience that was completely unwilling to believe anyone else who would say, "Yes, he's a sexist and a crook and he's dangerous."

And we saw the same thing play out again after the 2020 election. Fox wanted to, in the main, institutionally, rely on their trust relationship with their audience and tell the viewers the basic truth that Joe Biden won the election. It wasn't rigged, and that what Donald Trump did was, as Rupert Murdoch actually wrote in an email, "Pretty much a crime." I agree, Rupert. So Fox tried that for a couple weeks after the election. But the viewers started to turn away because they no longer trusted Fox, they trusted Donald Trump who was telling them that the election was stolen.

Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott understood this. She laid it out plainly in another e-mail made public, again, thanks to the Dominion lawsuit: "We have damaged their trust and belief in us." Yes, it was basically a trust showdown. One that Fox couldn't win unless they adopted Trump's line, which they did.

Because here's the thing, they couldn't go to their base and tell them, "Hey, look, don't just listen to us. Look at every other independent assessment of the election. Look at the official numbers provided by government. Look at the courts, another part of the government. Look at the reporting in the media, in the New York Times and the Washington Post and the LA Times and NPR and on and on and on." They couldn't do any of that because they are the ones who told their audience not to believe any of those people, because those people were -- in Rush Limbaugh's words -- the Four Corners of Deceit. So Fox was left on its own, desperate to win back their audience. And so they decided to peddle Donald Trump's lies.

And this is still a very much live issue because, listen to me here, the exact same problem is happening now, again, in the 2024 Republican primary. When Donald Trump attacks his likely opponent, Ron DeSantis, claiming, for example, that "He is, for a Republican, an average Governor who got 1.2 million less votes in Florida than me," DeSantis can't really hit back. So in that example, right, Trump fails to mention that he won Florida by less than four points. DeSantis swept the state, with a margin of nearly 20 points. I mean, he only got fewer votes because it was a midterm, not a presidential.

But again, who is going to say that? Who is going to inject that context? Republican primary audience is so cut off from reality those facts can't get through. And where can Ron DeSantis turn to appeal to? Like a Washington Post fact-check? Not going to work. There's no referee. Fox News and the conservative movement destroyed the conditions for that.

So now, it's just a head-to-head battle of who you like more, who you believe, who you trust more. They trust Donald Trump. And until Rupert Murdoch and Suzanne Scott and the rest of the Republican party and the political operatives -- Ron DeSantis will be working on his campaign -- unless they figure out how to dismantle the situation they themselves built, Fox News and the rest of the right will always lose to Donald Trump or anyone else who can out-demagogue him.

Angelo Carusone is the President and CEO of Media Matters For America -- a watchdog group for right-wing media -- and he joins me now. How much, do you think -- we played that Ben Smith clip in the opening -- when it comes to the Dominion case itself, Fox has put it on the air for about a few seconds, maybe a few minutes. There's a very funny graphic of their website in which it's just like utterly buried and there's just 200 words and doesn't name the settlement figure. How much have they just kept their viewers away from this entire story?

ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT) Oh, entirely. They've just entirely kept them away. Even when they've mentioned it, they haven't mentioned the settlement to their audience, like the number, they just sort of say "settled." And when they talked about it, to your monologue, they actually talk about it in the context of "It's gonna sure disappoint the rest of the news media that was so excited for this trial to take place." That's how they framed it for their audience. They actually frame it within the context of the Four Corners of Deceit.

So, there's no acknowledgment -- even that little bit of acknowledgement they gave to the court that said, "Well, we acknowledge what the court said, that maybe some of the things we said were false," they don't even give that statement to their audience. So, they are keeping them pretty far away from it.

And the other parts of the right-wing media, because there is this sort of resorting, reshuffling that's happening right now. You know, they've been waiting for Fox to be on the ropes too because it meant bigger audience share and more power for them. Other parts of the right-wing media, like the Daily Wire and elsewhere, which is sort of the closest analogue to a Fox competitor, an emerging Fox competitor, they mention it, but barely.

They'll say, "Well, yeah, Fox kind of lied because they had to give something to their audience. They whiffed it here, but Fox is still pretty good. But it does show you that, maybe, you should think about some other places, perhaps like our show." So, they're even being very careful with how they sort of introduce this to the sort of larger Fox ecosystem.

HAYES: Well, you would think, right, you would think there's an opening here. I mean, I've seen Steve Bannon get up and say, "Read the transcripts. They think nothing of you." About Fox, right? And this is purely a self-interested thing for him to say. He's got his podcast while he awaits trial, which is cute. And he wants people to listen to that rather than listen to Fox. And he's trying to pry them away in exactly the way that Trump pried people away from Fox. It's all just these trust relationships, but no one can referee any of it. There's no one to appeal to outside of this universe

CARUSONE: No, and to your, you know -- one of the mechanics of how Trump was able to hijack the Fox audience is that he used those other outlets as a cudgel. You know, the first time One America News and others were used against Fox was not the election. You can go all the way back to 2016, when Trump was boycotting Fox News for two weeks and Sarah Palin suddenly had a show on One America News where Donald Trump was the featured guest. Or during COVID, where they had Chanel Rion from One America News come in and say all the things that Fox News wasn't saying for a couple weeks, until Fox News finally started to get in line on some of this, right? So, he used -- because there is a fusion of the right-wing media and the Republican political power. So, whoever sort of has the key within the right-wing media then gets to exercise that political power.

HAYES: And this is the thing that I think is important, and one of the takeaways from Dominion and from the primary, is they're chasing as much as they're leading. And they're more dangerous the more they're chasing. This is the thing that everyone has to understand, right? That like, the further they're chasing, the more they're driving down to the most lizard brainparts of their audience. They're just trying -- that is the most dangerous it gets, but that's always the project. 

CARUSONE: Yes, what you just said is so very important because now, it's starting to transcend well beyond just misinformation and false ideas and false narratives. There's a bloodthirstiness within the right-wing media. Because, keep in mind, in 2022, it was the first time in a quarter century that Rush Limbaugh wasn't the single largest name in the get out the vote operation in the country. Fox News has been on its heels for the past year and a half because they're trying to figure things out. And the entire right-wing echo chamber's resorting.

There's a bloodthirstiness right now, and Fox News just got a license to lie. They are going to satisfy that bloodthirstiness, because they're back off their heels and they need to shore up that power, fast. Before somebody else comes in and hijacks it 

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biden all in on "ej"

mma 4 23  note victim rev discrim BS

GREG GUTFELD (CO-HOST): What does environmental justice mean? AOC laid out perfectly: the environment is now tied to racism, which is what they did with ESG -- environmental social governance. It's a scorecard, another scorecard that takes measures on how companies act responsibly. So, they marry the environment to race because it couldn't be believed alone, the numbers weren't working. The projections weren't working. But you know what works? Being scared of being called a racist.

So, environmental justice, if you do not agree with it, if you don'tswallow the climate agenda, if you don't agree with AOC, you probably don't just hate the planet, you probably hate non-white people as well.

And the consequences of that, we've talked about it before, with every aspect of life being filled with racism or injustice. The roads are racist we found out this week. Pollution is racist, we just found out. Cheap energy, fossil fuels, that's racist because it hurts non-white people. If you don't want to be looted, that's racist, too, because looting is mere redefinition of justice.

Basically, you're telling people that they can -- you're sanctioning crime. You're sanctioning riots. That's why the politicians in Chicagosaid as much and said that this was their way of evening the score. Because when you tell everybody, and you program their brain with this language that the world sucks and it's this group of people behind it, now it's in climate. Now it's in climate.

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yikes

aha2 ghost dance god would extract enemies, and bullets no harm; trump says i am your retribution against enemy who took away your country/ hegemony; retaliation armageddon end times civil war Earth2

aha social media thus amp ?! , but trump rally is call and response?  dream logic // magical thinking?

https://www.alternet.org/gop-voters-2659695517/

an 3 23

no lnx

author Jeff Sharlet has spent years interviewing conservatives and found many unassuming Americans are ready and eager for violence against their political enemies.

Sharlet's latest book, The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War, is the result of more than a dozen years of reporting on the religious right, compiling numerous interviews conducted throughout the Midwest and Great Plains, and he's more worried than ever about the possibility of civil war, reported The Guardian.

"I’ve been writing about the right for a long time," he told the newspaper. "I’m always interested in the margins of things that tell us about what’s happening at the center. An undertow is a metaphor for that, for the force that’s been pulling us to this place for a long time. If you’d asked me 10 years ago if I ever thought another civil war would be possible in the United States, I would have said no. But to think so [now] is to not understand that the right in America is as dangerous as it is."

He cited a "nice-looking" family he met near Eau Claire, Wisconsin, who seemed like "ordinary" conservatives, as the newspaper described them, but harbored bloodthirsty fantasies rooted in extreme conservative politics.

"[The father said] he had a 'Let’s go Brandon' sticker because he didn’t want to swear around his son," Sharlet said. "They’re a middle-class dad and mom. They were always gun people, but not a lot of guns. Now they’re up to 36, now they are arming up. The father had always been anti-abortion. But now it was like a dream had moved into his and his wife’s mind. He described, in incredibly violent detail, the process of abortion. Then he described, in incredibly violent detail, the punishment he thought he and others were going to give to abortion doctors. They were ready for executions."

The current political moment was rooted in a decades-old struggle against fascism, and Sharlet said Donald Trump, intentionally or instinctively, used its "dream logic" to spellbind his followers, who fill in the unfinished thoughts in his pronouncements with their own beliefs -- and that creates the illusion that he's speaking their truth into existence.

"The free association that happens at Trump’s rallies, the ways people make connections that make no sense – it has dream logic," Sharlet said. "One minute, a scary man is crawling into the window to rape your wife, and then the next minute we’re laughing at windmills, and then the next minute we’re sad for the birds that were killed by windmills. And then, in the next minute, we’re yelling, 'Lock her up.'"

:{"This is dream logic, and there’s vanity in it, right?":{ Sharlet added. “'I will interpret what they’re saying and I will bend it.' It’s the vanity of the base, the vanity of the mob, the aggregate grotesque imagination of power.}::{ It becomes a spinning whirlpool that pulls more and more people in. These are people for whom reality is not enough."}::{}:

The illusion that's created for Trump and his followers feels interactive and very real to them, Sharlet said, and that's where the twice-impeached former president gains his power.

"This is why the right feels they are more democratic than the left," he said. "The intellectual rightwingers are like, 'F*ck democracy, we don’t need it.' But the everyday people, they’re like, 'This is the most democratic I’ve ever felt. I am not only receiving – I receive, I interpret and then I transmit back.'"}:

:{:{Sharlet sees a similar dynamic at work within the anti-abortion movement, which the left sees as an effort to control women's bodies, but the right sees as a cause so righteous that violence is necessary.}:

"Yes, the project is misogynist to the core," he said. "But it is not experienced as such by many on the right. Once you make that move, that we’re talking about children, what kind of person are you if you don’t want to save that child?"}:

"It’s astonishing there hasn’t been more violence," Sharlet added. "I think we’ve had a shield from that violence for a long time and now that shield … I sound like Jerry Falwell saying the hand of God is being removed from America."

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BIG LIE CORROLLARY: NO INSURRECTION

no lnx twt vid

https://www.alternet.org/gop-to-tucker-carlson/

Brett Wilkins and Common Dreams March 08, 2023

After Fox News' Tucker Carlson falsely dismissed the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump as mostly nonviolent, numerous Republican senators including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday blasted the right-wing opinion host's "whitewashing" of the deadly insurrection.

Carlson—who publicly promoted former President Donald Trump's 2020 election lies while privately calling the GOP loser's claims "absurd"—said Monday on his program that "very little about January 6 was organized or violent" and that "surveillance video from inside the Capitol shows mostly peaceful chaos."

Recently deposed as part of Dominion Voting Systems' $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News, Carlson echoed colleagues who said under oath that they didn't actually believe Trump's "Big Lie" that the 2020 presidential contest was stolen by Democrats.

While some of the eight Republican senators (and 135 House members) who voted against certifying President Joe Biden's Electoral College victory have stuck by the Big Lie, numerous others pushed back hard against Carlson's reimagination of the worst attack on the Capitol since Puerto Rican nationalists launched an armed assault on the building in 1954.

"I think it's bullshit," Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) told reporters Tuesday when asked what he thought of Carlson's narrative. "When you see police officers assaulted, all of that... if you were just a tourist, you should've probably lined up at the visitors' center and came in on an orderly basis."

Also speaking Tuesday, McConnell (R-Ky.) said that Fox News "made a mistake" by airing Carlson's spurious revision of the deadly insurrection.

"With regard to the presentation on Fox News last night, I want to associate myself entirely with the opinion of the chief of the Capitol Police about what happened on January 6," McConnell declared.

As he spoke, McConnell held up a printout of remarks from U.S. Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger, who called Carlson's account "filled with offensive and misleading conclusions" and "conveniently cherry-picked from the calmer moments of our 41,000 hours of video."

\u201cSenate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says Tucker Carlson's whitewashing of the Capitol insurrection was a \u201cmistake.\u201d\n\n"My concern is how it was a depicted ... Clearly, the chief of the Capitol Police ... correctly describes what most of us witnessed firsthand on January 6th."\u201d

— The Recount (@The Recount) 1678218192]

Asked whether he thought U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) erred in giving Carlson exclusive access to the footage—a move that prompted watchdogs on Tuesday to call for an Office of Congressional Ethics probe—McConnell said that "my concern is how it was depicted."

:{:{}:

}:

"Clearly," he added, "the chief of the Capitol Police correctly described what most of us witnessed on January 6."

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, joined in the criticism of Carlson, saying, "We don't want to whitewash January the 6th."

:{:{}:

}:

"I think the January 6 committee had a partisan view of things, and I'd like to know more about what happened that day and the day before," Graham added. "But I'm not interested in whitewashing the Covid lab theory, and I'm not interested in whitewashing January 6."

:{:{}:

}:

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) accused Carlson of "feeding falsehoods" to his viewers.

"It's really sad to see Tucker Carlson go off the rails like that," the 2012 Republican presidential nominee told reporters. "The American people saw what happened on January 6. They've seen the people that got injured, they saw the damage to the building."

"You can't hide the truth by selectively picking a few minutes out of tapes and saying this is what went on," he added. "It's so absurd. It's nonsense. And people saw that it was violent and destructive and should never happen again. But trying to normalize that behavior is dangerous and disgusting."

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) condemned Carlson's framing of the attack as "some rowdy peaceful protest of Boy Scouts."

"I think that breaking through glass windows and doors to get into the United States Capitol... is a crime," Cramer argued. "I think... when you start opening the members' desks, when you stand up in their balcony—to somehow put that in the same category as, you know, permitted peaceful protest is just a lie."

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) got straight to his point: "I thought it was an insurrection at that time. I still think it was an insurrection today."

:{:{}:

}:

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), meanwhile, called on Fox to keep Carlson off the air this evening.

"To say January 6 was not violent is a lie. A lie, pure and simple," Schumer said on the Senate floor.

:{:{}:

}:

"I don't think I have ever seen a prime-time cable news anchor manipulate his viewers the way Mr. Carlson did last night," he added. "I don't think I've ever seen an anchor treat the American people and American democracy with such disdain. And he is going to come back tonight with another segment. Fox News should tell him not to."

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mayor pete affirm action gay hire

let's start hanging fascists again t shirt

[[ an 2 23

ahead of former President Donald Trump's Wednesday visit to East Palestine, Ohio—where a Norfolk Southern-owned train transporting carcinogenic chemicals derailed on February 3, prompting a mass evacuation and release of pollutants—progressive critics highlighted the key role his administration played in making the fiery crash and its toxic aftermath more likely.

During his speech, Trump—considered a leading GOP presidential candidate for 2024 despite spearheading a deadly coup attempt following his 2020 loss—criticized how President Joe Biden's administration has responded to the environmental and public health disaster unfolding in East Palestine, a poor rural town of about 4,700 people located a few miles west of the Pennsylvania border.

But as critics noted beforehand, the Trump administration's gutting of train safety rules at the behest of railroad industry lobbyists was instrumental in creating the conditions for the derailment and ensuing chemical spill and burnoff, which has provoked fears of groundwater contamination and air pollution.

"He should be apologizing to that community for his administration rolling back rail regulations," progressive stalwart Nina Turner, a former Ohio state senator, tweeted prior to Trump's address.

philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch made a similar point in an opinion piece published earlier this week.

"If residents of East Palestine—a modern news desertof downsized or disappeared news sources, which allows misinformation to fester—truly knew the reality, a delegation of townsfolk would likely greet Trump with tiki torches and pitchforks," Bunch wrote, comparing the former president's visit to "the tendency of a criminal to return to the scene of his crime."

Bunch noted that "Trump acted specifically to sabotage a nascent government effortto protect citizens from the growing threat posed by derailments of outdated, poorly equipped, and undermanned freight trains that were increasingly shipping both highly flammable crude oil from the U.S. fracking boom as well as toxic chemicals like the ones that would derail in East Palestine."

"Trump had been in office for less than a year when he moved to killthe 2015 rule change initiated by the Obama administration that would have required freight trains to upgrade the current braking technologythat was developed in the 19th century for state-of-the-art electronic systems," wrote Bunch, who pointed out that this came after Norfolk Southern and other rail carriers donated more than $6 million to Republican candidates in 2016 and spent millions more on lobbying.

"With the investigation into the East Palestine wreck still in its early phases, it's not clear if the modern brakes—originally required for installation by 2021—could have prevented the toxic derailment or whether the specific Obama rule would have applied," Bunch continued. "But experts do believe the new brakes could have mitigated the wreckage—and thus the release of so many hazardous chemicals."

"The rule reversal wasn't the only time that Team Trump sided with Big Rail over the forgotten Americans who live on the wrong side of their tracks," he added. "In 2019, for example, the Trump administration moved to not strengthen but relax regulations on shipping fracked natural gas through communities like East Palestine. The same year, Trump's White House also killed an Obama-era proposal that would have required two crew members in freight-train locomotives."

Ahead of Trump's visit,More Perfect Union also argued on social media that the ex-president's "attempt to portray himself as a friend of the town and as someone who would have stood up to Norfolk Southern... couldn't be further from the truth."

As the progressive media outlet observed, the Trump administration "withdrew multiple rail safety recommendations and moved toward a 'self-regulatory approach' where rail companies could do as they pleased."

"It's no surprise that the Trump years were filled with dangerous deregulation," More Perfect Union asserted, describing his decision to nominate top rail industry executives to lead the Federal Railroad Administration and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration as "a prime example of the revolving door between business and government."

"The Trump approach to the rail industry was to let the companies do what they wanted, which was to avoid regulations, slash jobs, and extract profit," the outlet continued. "This approach, and rail companies' greed, has led to over 1,000 derailments each year. Some are massive catastrophes like East Palestine. But every single one is harmful. And if the industry isn't regulated and forced to change, we'll soon be seeing more disasters."

When Trump "pretends to care about rail workers, or the people of East Palestine, we can't believe him," More Perfect Union added. "His record tells a very different story, the story of his own role in creating this problem in the first place."

Even some conservative critics of Trump have questioned the sincerity of his visit.

"It's clear that it's a political stunt," Ray LaHood, a Republican ex-member of Congress who led the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) during former President Barack Obama's first term, told Politico on Wednesday. "If he wants to visit, he's a citizen. But clearly his regulations and the elimination of them, and no emphasis on safety, is going to be pointed out."

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) wasted little time in doing exactly that, calling the GOP's indignation "fake" soon after Trump announced his travel plans.

Bunch acknowledged that "it's beyond hypocritical for Trump to bring his Harold Hill-huckster shtick to East Palestine when residents are still experiencing headaches and breathing foul air from the kind of catastrophe he didn't lift a finger to stop from the Resolute Desk."

"But also it's a bit baffling why Biden or his Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg—who seems to be channelinghis inner McKinsey & Co**. these days—haven't gone to Ohio," he argued. "Especially when Trump and any other Republicans hoping to make political hay off of East Palestine's misery are coming to town empty-handed."

"None of the anti-Biden critics on this issue have offered a solution, because they can't," wrote Bunch. "The only fix for the kind of runaway abuses of modern capitalism that cause these environmental catastrophes isgovernment regulation, aided by empowering worker safety with strong unions—two things that the Trump-led GOP has opposed at every turn."

Even in the wake of the disaster, Republican lawmakers have refused to demand stronger regulations, as HuffPost reported:

Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio), a vocal Biden critic who represents East Palestine, on Tuesday dismissed immediate calls for stricter rail regulations, saying actions toward accountability will hinge on the findings of a National Transportation Safety Board [NTSB] investigation into the derailment.

'That will dictate whether there are laws, regulations that need to be changed, whether there were rules that were violated,' he said during a news conference in East Palestine. 'We don't know any of that yet, and we won't know that until NTSB releases its report.'

Hours before Trump spoke, Buttigieg announced that he plans to travel to East Palestine on Thursday. His visit is expected to coincide with the publication of the NTSB's preliminary report about its ongoing probe into the crash.

On Tuesday, Buttigieg unveiled DOT's recommendations for improving the safety of the nation's rail system, though an inter-union alliance of rail workers immediately criticized the plan as inadequate.

Given the scale of the problems—and in light of the transportation secretary's ongoing refusal to exercise his authority to reinstate previously gutted rules along with his consideration of an industry-backed proposal to further weaken the regulation of train braking systems—union leaders have called for nationalizing the railways and implementing their proposed solutions.

Turner, for her part, emphasized that she has "been outspoken about the two years the Biden administration had [to] fix these problems."

"The Trump administration is at fault, as is the Obama administration," Turner contended, referring to the fact that the latter's regulations were also watered down in response to industry pressure.

"The Ohio GOP is to blame as well," she added, echoing recent reporting on Norfolk Southern's campaign to influence state-level lawmakers and officials. "Failure at every level of government and multiple administrations led to this."

ref dayton

https://www.daytondailynews.com/ideas-voices/marcano-the-importance-of-local-media-following-the-east-palestine-derailment/7ORSBKCMPZGLLPR6NAX3EWXNPA/

the Norfolk Southern train wreck near East Palestine has received its share of national news coverage.

The Washington Post covered a raucous town hall that the train company inexplicitly skipped. NPR’s “what to know about the derailment” provided an excellent primer on the wreck. CBS, CNN, NBC, and even Al Jazeera have covered the incident.

The train, pulling 150 cars, derailed on Feb. 3. Three dozen cars went off the tracks, and 11 contained hazardous materials — including five with the man-made, cancer-causing substance vinyl chloride. For the roughly 4,800 residents of East Palestine, on the Pennsylvania border some 40 miles west of Pittsburgh, the current short-term angst will soon turn to long-term worry.

But what happens when the story subsides and the big boys go home?

The Lisbon Morning Journal is the closest newspaper to East Palestine, about 13 miles away. The Salem News has covered the story, and they’re 30 miles away. Particle Media’s online site, Newsbreak, aggregates news content, so that’s useful.

But the train derailment highlights a problem that has affected small communities and areas from Tarboro, North Carolina, to Tucson, Arizona.

Some 360 newspapers closed from the start of the pandemic, according to a report published in the New York Times. The problem is so acute thatone in five Americans live in a news desert with limited access to local news, the Times reported.

Ohio has fared particularly poorly. Since 2004, the state has lost 32% of its newspapers, according to a study by Policy Matters. Most of those companies were run by small operators who cared about the communities they covered.

In years past, the Youngstown Vindicator would have unleashed its army of journalists to travel the 30 minutes to East Palestine. The Vindicator once had the staff and resources to support its 160,000 Sunday circulation product. But the newspaper collapsed under the weight of circulation declines and financial losses and closed in 2019, with a Sunday circulation of just 32,000.

The East Palestine train derailment lays bare what happens when the community loses its news sources.

Newsgathering goes far beyond the daily reporting of who said what at a press conference or who spoke to a crowd at a community gathering. That’s fairly simply blocking and tackling.

I wonder who will go more in-depth.

Who will tell the stories of the townspeople who will be scared for years by the wreck?Who will monitor whether residents start leaving, which would have a cascading effect on property tax revenue and the city’s school district? Who will chronicle the families and children who stay behind and worry about their health?

Who will monitor health department reports to see if residents start getting sick?

Who will act as a watchdog to monitor state officials, who will be charged with ensuring that Norfolk Southern makes restitution, in whatever form that takes? Who will file public records requests to examine the records of any settlements? If there are lawsuits, who will go to the courthouse and report on the findings?

Without reporters and news sources, the people of East Palestine don’t have an independent news source that keeps officials on their toes.

When people say that local media doesn’t matter, take a look at what’s happening a four-hour drive east of the Dayton area. The big boys will go home because they have so many other issues to tackle. Eventually, the citizens of East Palestine will feel the frustration of living in a news desert.

Somehow, we need to strengthen local news, not continue to watch it wither.

Dying newspapers mean there are fewer independent avenues to help communities, fewer ways to cover tragedy, and fewer ways to hold companies and agencies accountable through reporting.

Local news matters. Let’s do a better job supporting it.

Ray Marcano’s column appears on these pages each Sunday. He can be reached at raymarcanoddn@gmail.com   ]]

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https://www.alternet.org/cognitive-neuroscientist/

an 2 23 raw

it  may sound like an insensitive statement, but the cold hard truth is that there are a lot of stupid people in the world, and their stupidity presents a constant danger to others. Some of these people are in positions of power, and some of them have been elected to run our country. A far greater number of them do not have positions of power, but they still have the power to vote, and the power to spread their ideas. We may have heard of “collective intelligence,” but there is also “collective stupidity,” and it is a force with equal influence on the world. It would not be a stretch to say that at this point in time, stupidity presents an existential threat to America because, in some circles, it is being celebrated.

Although the term "stupidity" may seem derogatory or insulting, it is actually a scientific concept that refers to a specific type of cognitive failure. It is important to realize that stupidity is not simply a lack of intelligence or knowledge,but rather a failure to use one's cognitive abilities effectively. This means that you can be “smart” while having a low IQ, or no expertise in anything. It is often said that “you can’t fix stupid,” but that is not exactly true. By becoming aware of the limitations of our natural intelligence or our ignorance, we can adjust our reasoning, behavior, and decision-making to account for our intellectual shortcomings.

To demonstrate that stupidity does not mean having a low IQ, consider the case of Richard Branson, the billionaire CEO of Virgin Airlines, who is one of the world’s most successful businessmen. Branson has said that he was seen as, and has admitted to having dyslexia, a learning disability that affects one’s ability to read and correctly interpret written language. But it wasn’t just reading comprehension that was the problem — “Math just didn’t make sense to me,” Branson has said. “I would certainly have failed an IQ test.” zzz...So, what is responsible for his enormous success, both financially and in terms of being a prolific innovator? Branson attributes his success to surrounding himself with highly knowledgeable and extremely competent people. Branson’s smarts come from his ability to recognize his own limitations, and to know when to defer to others on topics or tasks where he lacks sufficient knowledge or skill.

This means you don’t have to be traditionally intelligent or particularly knowledgeable to be successful in life, make good decisions, have good judgment, and be a positive influence on the world. Stupidity is a consequence of a<...failure to be aware of one’s own limitations, and this type of cognitive failure has a scientific name: the Dunning-Kruger effect.

yyy  effect is a well-known psychological phenomenon that describes the tendency for individuals to overestimate their level of intelligence, knowledge, or competence in a particular area. They may also simultaneously misjudge the intelligence, expertise, or competence of others. In other words, they are ignorant of their own ignorance. The effect has been widely written about, and investigated empirically, with hundreds of studies published in peer-reviewed journals confirming and analyzing the phenomenon, particularly in relation to the dangers it poses in certain contexts.

It is easy to think of examples in which failing to recognize one’s own ignorance can become dangerous. Take for example when people with no medical training try to provide medical advice. It doesn’t take much Internet searching to find some nutritionist from the “alternative medicine” world who is claiming that some herbal ingredient has the power to cure cancer. Some of these people are scam artists, but many of them truly believe that they have a superior understanding of health and physiology. There are many people who trust these self-proclaimed experts, and there is no doubt that some have paid their lives for it.

What’s particularly disturbing about the Dunning-Kruger effect is that people are attracted to confident leaders, so politicians are incentivized to be overconfident in their beliefs and opinions, and to overstate their expertise. For example, Donald Trump — despite not having any real understanding of what causes cancer — suggested that the noise from wind turbines is causing cancer

(a claim that is not supported by any empirical studies). It is well documented that on topics ranging from pandemics to climate change, Trump routinely dismissed the opinions of the professionals who have dedicated their lives to understanding those phenomena, because he thought that he knew better. It’s bad enough that politicians like Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene don’t recognize their own ignorance and fail to exercise the appropriate amount of caution when making claims that can affect public health and safety — but what is really disturbing is that they are being celebrated for their over-confidence (i.e., stupidity).

It is less surprising that politicians who regularly exhibit the Dunning-Kruger effect are being elected to office when one realizes that they are being voted in by people who also display the Dunning-Kruger effect. A 2008 study by the political scientist Ian Anson surveyed over 2000 Americans in an attempt to see whether or not the effect was playing a role in one’s ability to overestimate their political knowledge. The results clearly showed that the people who scored lowest on political knowledge were the very same people who were the most likely to overestimate their performance. While this is shocking, it also makes perfect sense: the less we know about something, the less of an ability we have to assess how much we don’t know. It is only when we try to become an expert on some complex topic that we truly realize how complicated it is, and how much more there is to learn about it.

This new theory of stupidity I have proposed here — that stupidity is not a lack of intelligence or knowledge, but a lack of awareness of the limits of one’s intelligence or knowledge — is more important right now than ever before, and I’ll tell you why. The same study by Anson mentioned above showed that when cues were given to make the participants “engage in partisan thought,” the Dunning-Kruger effect became more pronounced. In other words, if someone is reminded of the Republican-Democrat divide, they become even more overconfident in their uninformed positions. This finding suggests that in today’s unprecedently divided political climate, we are all more likely to have an inflated sense of confidence in our unsupported beliefs. What’s more, those who actually have the greatest ignorance will assume they have the least!

What we are dealing with here is an epidemic of stupidity that will only get worse as divisions continue to increase. This should motivate all of us to do what we can to ease the political division. When we can clearly see the social factors that are causing people to become increasingly stupid, our anger and hatred toward them should dissipate. We do not have much control over our level of intelligence or ignorance, or our ignorance of our ignorance.

But this does not mean that we should accept stupidity as the result of deterministic forces that are beyond our control. After gaining a deeper awareness of our own cognitive limitations and limited knowledge base, we should do what we can to instill this higher awareness in others. We must not just educate the public and our youth; we must teach them to become aware of their own ignorance, and give them the skills they need to search for more knowledge, and to detect when they or others are overestimating their knowledge or competency

.

we have good reason to be optimistic that this is possible. A 2009 study showed that incompetent students increased their ability to estimate their class rank after being tutored in the skills they lacked. This suggests that we can learn a type of “meta-awareness” that gives us the power to more accurately assess ourselves and our own limitations. Once we can do that, then we can know when we need to do more research on a given topic, or to defer to experts. We can also get better at distinguishing between true experts and those who only claim to be experts (but are really just demonstrating the Dunning-Kruger effect).

We are all victims of the Dunning-Kruger effect to some degree. An inability to accurately assess our own competency and wisdom is something we see in both liberals and conservatives. While being more educated typically decreases our Dunning-Kruger tendencies, it does not eliminate them entirely. That takes constant cognitive effort in the form of self-awareness, continual curiosity, and a healthy amount of skepticism. By cultivating this type of awareness in ourselves, and making an effort to spread it to others, we can fight back against the stupidity crisis that threatens our nation. azorian sys guy?

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yikes see state GOP:  how much xian nat'l wacko?  see earth2 polarization; mtg nat'l divorce; feels like some sort of rupture immanent?

an kos 2 23

In today’s Republican Party it is no longer enough to deny that Donald Trump lost in 2020. The true Republican diehards demand that their leaders deny that Republicans ever lose any election.

That played out at the Michigan GOP convention over the weekend, with Trump’s pick for state party chair being defeated by a candidate who is even more extreme an election denier. It took three rounds of voting—counted by hand because Republicans have also made it an article of faith not to accept voting technology, even at their own convention—but Kristina Karamo prevailed over second-place finisher and Trump endorsee Matt DePerno.

Karamo ran for secretary of state in 2022, losing by 14 points. DePerno ran for attorney general, losing by 8.6 points. But DePerno conceded that he had lost, while Karamo refused to concede. At the state party convention, she made that part of her campaign message, saying, “Conceding to a fraudulent person is agreeing with the fraud, which I will not do.”

When it comes to 2020, DePerno has been an election denier in good standing, having made his name as a Republican and earned Trump’s endorsement on the basis of his quest to prove fraud in that election. He’s even faced a criminal investigation for tampering with voting machines in 2021. That is the kind of stuff that gets you Donald Trump’s endorsement to lead a state Republican Party. But apparently it is not enough for Michigan Republicans. “Matt ran out on us; he didn’t fight for us,” one delegate told The Washington Post.

Election denial isn’t Karamo’s only angle, though. At the convention, she said, “My goal number one as a Christian is to bring people to Christ, and secondarily to save our country.” A few nights earlier, in a speech to a far-right “patriot” group, she went into a little more detail.

“When we start talking about the spiritual reality of the demonic forces, it’s like, ‘Oh, my God, this is crazy, we can’t go there,’” Karamo said. “No. It’s like, did you read the Bible? Didn’t Jesus perform exorcisms? … Scriptures are clear. And so if we’re not operating as though the spirit realities of the world exist, we’re going to fail every time.”

The convention that elected Karamo to lead thestate party was attended by 2,000 delegates—but not one of the outgoing party co-chairs or any member of the state congressional delegation. But Karamo claimed the party would move forward unified. “We cannot wait to get work done as one Michigan Republican Party,” she said. “And we are going to beat the Democrats.”

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aha trump cato libtard GOP say dereg will revive rural blue collar economy but // EJ, poor white ppl hurt; poor white and POC endangered in covid, corps given immunity, and public health officials not allowed to report rates

see working class heroes

palestine OH neglected

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Donald Trump Juniorconjured up a new conspiracy theory over the weekend regarding train derailments. His hypothesis is thathackers working on behalf of the Russian government were responsible for the February 3rd East Palestine, Ohio Norfolk Southern disaster as well as, perhaps, other incidents involving railcars disconnecting from their tracks.

Shortly after the crash that spilled toxic substances like vinyl chloride and forced thousands of residents to evacuate, many began to recall that Junior's father, former President Donald Trump, loosened regulations on braking mechanisms and safety features during his term.

But that is not the narrative that Junior was presenting.

READ MORE: 'This is why God made pipelines': GOP senator gives nonsensical explanation of Ohio train derailment

"No MSDS for the chemicals on train. Yeah, I don't know what that, I don't know what the acronym is. I'm sorry. Um, but yeah, there, it's just gonna keep going. And I read about a spill in Houston and another one in Detroit," Junior said. "And again, it feels like a lot. Hey, maybe there's a train derailment every day. I, I don't know, but like, it seems like we're having an awful lot of train derailments that we're finally hearing about, uh, in the last few days."

Statistically, these are common occurrences, with around three per day on average according to the United States Department of Transportation Federal Railroad Administration. Junior also was unaware that MSDS stands for Material Safety Data Sheet, which is used to catalog hazardous materials and the potential harm that they can cause.

Nevertheless, Junior pressed on, positing that Moscow could be retaliating for the destruction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline last September:

And all of that happens to come, after, you know, an alleged US attack on a Russian pipeline. And, you know, we know they have very sophisticated, uh, hackers working in the systems and like, does anyone even ask the question? I'm not saying it is. I'll say I'm a conspiracy theorist. Like, uh, I, I don't know, seems like a question we'd wanna ask even if it's refuted with actual evidence. That would be nice. Like, I'd love that for it to not be the case, but maybe it's just a whole sh*t ton of coincidence. Uh, but, I don't believe in that much coincidence anymore.

MSDS material safety data sheet. Ah, yeah. I don't, they have 'em, but they have 'em, but they burned them up. Yeah. That wouldn't surprise me. It seems like the evidence always magically disappears, right? It, it always goes away. Or it, it's discovered conveniently after the other side gets what they want. Uh, again, if you still believe in this much coincidence, folks, I got some, uh, oceanfront property in Colorado to sell you.

Watch below or at this link.

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The political media fascination with Rep. George Santos, the New York Republican who appears to have faked approximately 95% of his life, is such that it was inevitable that it would draw a "savvy" backlash piece scolding the press about their priorities. The wannabe party pooper finally emerged last week at the Washington Post in an opinion column headlined, "Real people don't care about George Santos." In it, self-assigned buzzkill David Byler argued "America doesn't seem to care" about Santos, which he can tell based on Google search traffic.

Our nation was founded by puritans, so as soon as people had a laugh over Santos, inevitably someone would shake their finger disapprovingly. But there were some flaws in Byler's argument, starting with his assumption that Santos' own embarrassed constituents are not "real" people. There's also the fact that Google Trends isn't a very exacting measure of interest in a subject, as it only measures if people are searching out information. It doesn't capture people who read articles they saw on social media or directly on a news website. Traffic to stories about Santos is plenty healthy on that front.

But perhaps most importantly, this narrow-minded focus on search traffic ignores what a lot of the sneered-at political observers saw coming a mile away: The imminent George Santos makeover into MAGA's Next Top Superstar.

Santos may not matter to "average" Americans, but his story is being leveraged directly into the right-wing propaganda machine that currently controls the Republican Party. On Thursday night, for instance, Santos was sanctified into the echelon of MAGA saints by the Pope of neo-fascism himself, Tucker Carlson. In a typically dishonest segment on his wildly popular Fox News show, Carlson painted Santos as a hapless victim of the bigoted news media by pretending that the only thing Santos lied about was his volleyball career. (Which is one of the more minor fake careers and hobbies Santos has claimed on his resume.) Media Matters has a sample of the extremely silly diatribe:

It was a tissue of lies constructed to deceive the American people. There was no volleyball scholarship. There was not a single dollar of volleyball scholarship. George Santos made it all up out of whole cloth, out of thin air. George Santos is an ersatz volleyball player. A fraud, a ghoul. People voted for this man believing he had played collegiate volleyball on a scholarship and he hadn't.

And yet tonight ladies and gentlemen, this thief of volleyball glory strides the halls of the United States Congress unimpeded by law enforcement. It's like another insurrection.

Carlson doesn't really have arguments or evidence, but he does do a bang-up impression of someone sarcastically brushing aside nonsense. Except what he's brushing away is usually pretty serious stuff, such as fascist attacks on democracy, attempts to save lives during a pandemic, or, in this case, unbelievable amounts of fraud that look potentially criminal in many cases. With Santos, the number of lies Carlson is ignoring is truly staggering. Santos lied about his resume, his religion, his marriage, his family history, and claimed connections he doesn't have to the Holocaust, 9/11, the Pulse nightclub shooting, and an assassination attempt that appears fictional. It is really no exaggeration to say it's easier to list the things he hasn't lied about (his age and his birthplace in Queens).

But just as Catholic saints get their status through martyrdom, the saints of MAGAdom must get theirs through falsified tales of victimhood at the hands of "woke mobs" or the "fake news media."

People right-wingers hate are alarmed at Santos and his staggering trail of fraud. So if the "libs" have a negative reaction to Santos, in the troll-based logic that drives the modern GOP, that must mean he's their newest champion. And let's just state for the record that, while Byler may not see left-leaning news consumers as "real people," he probably wouldn't say the same about the millions of Trump voters whose entire worldview is shaped by the crap that Fox News pours into their heads every day.

Carlson didn't reach the conclusion that Santos is the latest MAGA idol all on his own. Practically from the moment that Santos's deceit was exposed by the New York Times, Steve Bannon, the Joseph Goebbels-wannabe who frequently sets the GOP agenda with his popular "War Room" podcast, was championing the pathological liar. Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia have also rallied to Santos' side, claiming he's only a target because he's a "fighter." It's unclear who he has ever "fought" for besides himself, but then again, the same could be said of most MAGA figures, from Donald Trump on down.

It's not a mystery why these leaders think the right-wing audience is ready to accept Santos as the next MAGA savior. All that matters to the modern right is "owning the liberals," and who better to do that than someone who lies constantly for no apparent reason other than the sheer thrill of it?

Certainly, Santos seems to grasp that the move that will take him from a low-level con man to the ranks of the richest MAGA grifters is to lean into trolling. So he's been rolling out the standard issue liberal-owning stunts for weeks now: Flashing the white supremacist-aligned "OK" hand signal during a House vote. (He even knew how to do it so it was clear enough to photograph but so quick he could pretend later it wasn't intentional.) Wearing an assault rifle pin while playing dumb about why it offends people to celebrate the preferred weapons of mass shooters. Feeding the press donuts and actinglike they had somehow become complicit in the evil by eating them. Getting into Twitter fights with drag queens, who are the favorite punching bag of the authoritarian right. (Santos seems to have a past as a drag queen, as well, but this is just part of a favorite right-wing trolling tactic, to recruit members of a hated minority to speak out against their own.) Dunking on former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., for criticizing him by tweeting "cry about it."

Reports suggest Santos is delighted by all the negative attention he's getting in the press. An exceptionally short-lived aide recorded a conversation in which Santos was dressing him down, and right in the middle of it, Santos suddenly exclaims, "Don Lemon just texted me — I'm sorry, I'm listening to you — Don Lemon just texted me!" Getting his name on CNN, even during a story on how he is the worst, was just that thrilling to Santos.

Santos even hired former Steve Bannon employee and professional troll, Vish Burra, as a top aide. Burra's defense of Santos is cynical and self-congratulatory: The lying is a form of "shitposting," which is internet speak for saying outlandish things to draw outrage and attention. For the Trumpist right, aggressive trolling is what politics is all about.

Imagining that they're outraging the left is what the GOP audience gets out of this. (No one tell them that the left's reaction to Santos is more amusement than genuine fury.) But there's an even darker reason that Carlson, Bannon, Taylor Greene, etc. have decided to rally round Santos: He's very useful as a weapon in their larger war on truth.

As with Trump, it's overly simplistic to look at these people, with their non-stop disinformation, as mere liars. Liars are people who are sincerely trying to deceive people. In many cases, it's not at all evident that right-wing audiences actually believe the asinine B.S. that is rolled out by the likes of Carlson and Bannon. For instance, the "outrage" over M&M spokescandy shoe choices is less sincere anger than it is a collective bit of performance art. Both Carlson and his audience merely pretend to be mad as a way to keep ironic distance from their own weird sexual hang-ups. Similarly, conspiracy theories like Trump's Big Lie are often less about true belief and more about displaying fealty to their tribe.

There's a point to right-wingers constantly saying and "believing" things they know not to be true. It's about devaluing empirical reality. Fascists want "truth" to flow from what the right-wing authority figures say is "true," not from lived experience or verifiable facts. They are trying to construct a world where facts don't matter, and only power does. The first step is getting their tribal community to agree collectively to stop distinguishing between true and false and to only claim to believe what is convenient for their leaders or their cause.

For that goal, Santos is useful. He is living the fascist dream of a man whose entire existence seems unmoored from the power of facts. If the MAGA leaders can turn him into a hero, he'd be a living exemplar of their post-truth yearnings: "Truth" can be whatever you want it to be. After all, right-wingers already hate the way facts — Trump lost the election, COVID-19 is real, LGBTQ people exist — get in the way of their desires. They just need permission to let go of that last tendril of reality and start living purely in their authoritarian fantasy world. Santos shows the way. It's unlikely he will be going away any time soon.

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CHRIS HAYES (HOST): There's also another thing that I've been watching happening on the right, and I think this is because of the sort of polarization around low trust, high trust. But the InfoWars-ization of right-wing media, and I say this even in the like, even when you move it outside the bounds of polarizing, like did aliens build the pyramids? This is like a hoary conspiratorial cliché for decades, right? That’s the kind of thing you’re seeing right-wing media people talk about now. It doesn’t even score a political point. It's just this view that, like, everything they tell you is a lie, that is more and more taking over that entire universe.

ANGELO CARUSONE (GUEST): Yes, and I think that what's concerning about that, and sort of the fact that has led into it is that, one, obviouslysocial media and, in particular, the metastasizing of the QAnon conspiracy in the spring of 2020 coupled with all of the COVID stuff really helped that sort of, just that toxicity spill over.

But the other factor is that, it's worth keeping in mind that a very large segment of Republican leaders started to organize power on what used to be considered the fringes. And as they started to increasingly organize power on what used to be considered the fringes, using the right-wing media as a conduit for accessing that, they brought all that stuff that, you know, used to be on the fringes more toward the center. That's why something like groomers and pedophilia would be sort of far out there stuff years ago. And that is mainstream Republican orthodoxy now, it's not even controversial to say that, you know, Democrats are sexualizing children. Everyone is saying that in Republican politics. You don't have to be an extremist to make that point.

HAYES: There is a final point here, which I didn't note in the monologue, which is Elon Musk's particular role in this, who purchased Twitter and one of the first, most notable things he did in Twitter. And it was the first time I ever encountered this ludicrous, gross conspiracy theory that the two men had some relationship and that this was, like, a lovers' quarrel or something like that, was Elon Musk tweeting about it in a response to Hillary Clinton. That really put rocket fuel. He has since said he's apologized, but, like, Elon Musk owns a huge share of this entire thing.

CARUSONE: He does, because -- and this is exactly the danger for him being in charge. I mean, he supercharged that conspiracy theory. And it's worth noting that that is sort of the function of Twitter now after Elon Musk, is that it's kind of become a red pill PEZ dispenser, where these conspiracies, these really far out things are increasingly getting supercharged because they're gettingalgorithmic boosts.So even things that Elon Musk doesn't promote, we're actually seeing get supercharged all the time now.

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In February 2020, the late far-right radio host Rush Limbaugh insisted that COVID-19 was no more dangerous than “the common cold” and that it was “being weaponized” by Democrats “as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump.” Limbaugh, who repeatedly claimed that smoking cigarettes wasn’t dangerous before dying of lung cancer in February 2021, believed that mainstream media reporting on the dangers of COVID-19 was overblown. But according to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, COVID-19 has killed more than 6.8 million people worldwide; that includes over 1.5 million deaths in the United States.

Three years after Limbaugh tried to convince his listeners that COVID-19 was a political issue instead of a health/medical issue, the MAGA far right is still politicizing the pandemic. Libertarian/conservative journalist Cathy Young, who is very much a Never Trumper, calls out MAGA “covidiots” and “conspiracy theorists” in an article published by The Bulwark on January 31.

Young isn’t without criticism of Democrats, liberals and progressives in her article, pointing out that some of them are now acknowledging that they were overly “aggressive” in 2020 when it came to “school closures and lockdowns.” But Young is much more critical of MAGA “covidiots” who continue to push unscientific claims, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk and Twitter owner Elon Musk.

READ MORE: How right-wing 'bloviation' over 'military wokeness' may harm the US armed forces: journalist

“The covidiot ecosystem on the right — and, to some extent, in ‘anti-woke’ and ‘cultural dissident’ circles that don’t always explicitly identify as right-wing — continues to flourish,” Young observes. “Most recently, it’s been manifesting itself in the rather fanciful notion that people didn’t ‘suddenly’ die of heart attacks and strokes before ‘the jab’ came along.”

By “the jab,” Young is referring to COVID-19 vaccines, which even Donald Trump credits with saving lives. MAGA “covidiots,” she notes, are pushing anti-vaxxer claims while saying that Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s top White House health official, deserves criminal prosecution for his response to the pandemic.

“Once again,” Young writes, “covidiocy — usually dressed up as ‘COVID dissent’ — is not just the province of some radical and marginal right-wing fringe: It also implicates mainstream figures on the right. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who’s nowadays being touted as kinder, gentler, saner heir to the MAGA mantle, falsely claimed earlier this month that people who get the bivalent booster shot are ‘more likely to get infected.’ And in December, he threw a big, juicy chunk of red meat to the conspiracy theorists by asking the Florida Supreme Court to investigate ‘wrongdoing’ related to the COVID vaccines, including supposedly false claims about their safety and efficacy.”

READ MORE: How right-wing 'bloviation' over 'military wokeness' may harm the US armed forces: journalist

Read The Bulwark’s full article at this link. ==

01/27/23  MMA Tucker Carlson says white people are victims of “racial hatred” amid coverage of Tyre Nichols killing

TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): So, whatever you think of them, white people did not play any role in this particular tragedy.Whatever this story may be about, it's not about racial bias. Any honest person could see that immediately. But you would never know it from watching the so-called news coverage of this tape today. The only person whose race most media outlets identified was the victim. "Another unarmed black man murdered by the police," they said.

Moments ago on MSNBC, they just described what you just saw as white supremacy. Really? How? CNN's Van Jones did acknowledge that the police who hit Tyre Nichols were black, but, "they might still have been driven by racism." Van Jones didn't take the time to explain how. It was a lie, of course.

They're all lying, and Joe Biden himself, the president of the United States, swiftly reinforced that lie.Referring to an event in which every single participant -- and their supervisors -- was the same color, Biden lectured the United States that "fatal encounters with law enforcement have disparately impacted black and brown people."

So the one thing we know, no matter how you feel about the video, most people don't think that's right. But the one thing we know for sure is that there is a highly aggressive propaganda campaign underway tonight, designed to manipulate you, and using the sad death of a young man in Memphis to do it. That propaganda campaign, like all propaganda campaigns, is, by definition, dishonest.

But it's more than that. It's worse than that. This is yet another attempt by our leaders of our country to inflame racial hatred in the United States.

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mma 1 23 no vid

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/meta-fox-news-and-collapse-anti-january-6-consensus

Meta’s Wednesday announcement that it plans to let former President Donald Trump back on the Facebook account he used to encourage the January 6 insurrection is perhaps the final sign that the right’s propagandists have demolished the consensus that the Trumpist riot at the U.S. Capitol was a horrific event and that there should be accountability to prevent it from happening again.

It seemed for a brief period after the smoke cleared from the Capitol on January 6, 2021, that America’s sclerotic and oft-maligned institutions might bestir themselves to rise to the defense of the nation’s democratic principles. 

In government, Republican leaders like Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) — even Trumpist lickspittles like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) — vocally denounced the former president’s actions, with some of the party’s governors going so far as to call for him to leave office. 

In corporate America, a flood of blue-chip companies announced that they would terminate or suspend donations to the Republican members of Congress who voted against certifying the electoral votes of one or more states. Even staid trade groups like the National Manufacturers Association condemned the mob and Trump’s role in fomenting it. 

In the press, journalists contemplated whether it might be appropriate to refuse TV airtime to Republican members of Congress who had encouraged the insurrectionists by denying the election results.

And in social media, platforms like Facebook and Twitter recognized the role they had played in helping Trump stoke his supporters’ ire and the devastating consequences thereof, and cut the former president and some of his most incendiary allies off from their accounts.

But Fox News and its allies on the right quickly went to work unraveling that fragile consensus. They successfully convinced the GOP to adopt the narrative that criticisms of Trump’s plot to overturn the 2020 election through lies, subversion, and finally mob violence had been overblown, and in fact that Republicans had been the real victims of Democratic overreach. 

The very night of the mob attack, Fox’s stars began validating the actions of the Trumpist mob, minimizing the violence and suggesting that leftist infiltrators might have been to blame. In the weeks that followed, they downplayed the former president’s responsibility for the mob’s actions; concocted an alternate reality in which the actions of a relatively sedate crowd were being used by sinister Democrats as a pretext to punish average Republicans; and mocked the law enforcement officials who were assaulted during the attack and denounced the Democrats and Republicans who took their reports seriously. 

In service of their duplicitous narrative, they lifted up from kooks and internet fever swamps false-flag conspiracy theories that the federal government was behind the attack; valorized the “patriots” jailed for their alleged participation; and shielded their viewers from contrary evidence.

This treatment of the attack by Fox and other right-wing media outlets helped create a sea change within the Republican Party. As the GOP’s volatile commentators whipped up its base, party leaders swiftly determined that there was no political future in standing firmly against Trump and the mob he had encouraged. Some backed off their prior condemnations while others who remained vocally against Trump’s attempt to unlawfully retain power were purged. The House GOP swelled its ranks in the 2022 midterms with even more election deniers; they are a power center that its leadership courts and rewards with slots on key committees.

With only one of the nation’s two major political parties willing to forthrightly oppose the attempted coup, insurrection became a partisan issue and the national consensus collapsed. Major companies abandoned their promises not to fund the campaigns of election deniers, who also found themselves invited back to major national TV news programs. And after right-wing billionaire Elon Musk took control of Twitter, he lifted Trump’s ban. 

And now Trump will be back on Facebook, too. This is a manifestly terrible idea with dire potential consequences – Trump used Facebook to fuel the bigotry and violence of his hardcore supporters and channel support for the insurrection; he has shown no remorse whatsoever for his actions and in fact still claims the election was rigged against him; and he has spent his suspension from mainstream platforms using his own Truth Social to push virulent election denial and violent QAnon conspiracy theories. In allowing him back on their platform, Meta executives are making themselves responsible for any effort Trump makes to generate another January 6.

But without a national consensus that there is a public interest in preventing a recurrence of Trumpist violence, Meta’s pecuniary and political interests returned to the fore. Facebook’s user growth has stalled out, helping to send its parent company into a spiral. Trump’s return to the platform might give it a boost; so might the return of his campaign’s massive ad spending as the 2024 presidential election heats up (Trump’s personal page is the largest buyer of Facebook political ads since 2018, spending more than $113 million). And Meta’s leadership likely hoped to avoid a contentious public hearing about why the former president was not welcome on Facebook, since “we don’t want him to use it to promote a coup” was apparently no longer an effective response with insurrectionist Republicans running the House. 

Fox and the broader right-wing information ecosystem manufactured dissent, helping to keep the GOP on the side of Trump and his insurrectionists and grinding away at the political consensus against the storming of the Capitol. As long as the Republican Party remains trapped within its bubble, the American public will have to reckon with the influence of these bomb-throwing propagandists.

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Conservative pundit Sean Hannity claimed without evidence on Thursday that President Joe Biden and his son Hunter have "hired" Special Weapons and Tactics units to hunt down and destroy their political detractors.

:{:{First, Hannity and his guest alleged that the Bidens conducted nefarious business with China. They agreed that there were secret recordings of the two men kanoodling with foreign nationals, and determined that the Bidens acted illegally based on what was left "unsaid" in the supposed clandestine phone calls. LACK OF EVIDENCE IS EVIDENCE}:

}:

Next, Hannity stated in a fake Russian accent that Libya may have "real compromising materials" about Hunter.He then transitioned into the Biden-SWAT conspiracy theory.

READ MORE: 'Is this a game show?' :{Hannity, Boebert clash :(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}:in heated debate amid House lawmakers’ House speaker feud

"The amount of money, the sheer amount of money, and a number of countries, andJoe's outright lie about never having discussed this with Hunterare now coming to light. Now there's going to be pushback because they have nowhired, you know, SWAT teams and are creating a war room to slander and smear and attack every single solitary person that either reports it or is investigating it," Hannity said.

He also accused Biden and Democrats of weaponizing investigations, which is what House Republicans are doing through their congressional committees.

"That's, you know, that's Democratic politics 101. That's who they are. That's what they do. So we have to know this, understand this fully," Hannity continued. "And, you know, I think it's pretty obvious what's going on."

Listen below viaMedia Matters for America or at this link.

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On Sunday's edition of Meet the Press, Punchbowl News founder Jake Sherman expounded on why Republicans in the United States House of Representatives are acting as if they came out of the November 2022 midterm elections with a broad mandate from the American people.

Historically speaking, the GOP's performance was abysmal, having failed to retake control of the Senate and only managing to secure a narrow five-seat majority in the House. The four-day-long, 15-ballot vote-o-rama that finally resulted in California Congressman Kevin McCarthy's election to the speakership further highlighted the schisms within the conservative conference.

NBC moderator Chuck Todd was curious about what could be fueling the right-wing lawmakers' apparent clash with what is obvious to outside observers.

READ MORE: 'We’re not going to be a cheap date': House Democrats to capitalize on Kevin McCarthy's fractured GOP caucus

"Why, Jake, is there so much divorcing from the reality of the midterms?" Todd asked Sherman.

:{:{"I mean, the irony here is that we don't have, you know – the faction that held McCarthy hostage is the faction that prevented them from getting control of the Senate and more House seats," Todd pointed out, referring to the "red tsunami" that conservatives foresaw but that failed to materialize in the November contests.}:

}:

Sherman agreed and explained that the roots of the GOP's problems are its voting base's unflinching fondness of former President Donald Trump, who endorsed McCarthy's campaign for speaker. And although it had little effect on McCarthy's detractors, Sherman would nonetheless note that the localized loyalty to Trump creates echo chambers that are impervious to objective facts such as Trump's landslide loss to President Joe Biden in 2020.

"Yeah. This is a long – long been a problem in House Republican circles. They oftentimes take the wrong or no message from political fallout, from political elections. Listen, most ninety percent – or I'm making that number up – but a huge chunk of House Republicans go home to districts in which Donald Trump still retains ninety-five percent approval rating and they live in their own political bubble," Sherman said. "And now, I guess, a little bit less because you have Republicans from New York and from kind of the Northeast that have been, that are in Biden districts, but that's – they just go home to their own bubble and the leadership doesn't do anything to talk truth to them. And this has kind of been going on forever."

Watch below or at this link.

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...The report said that there were maybe six cases where people were observed carrying guns. Which, by the way, shows this was not an organized physical insurrection, because the weapons of use in insurrections are not screwdrivers. The weapons of use in insurrections typically happen to be firearms. There were very few of those among the thousands of people at the rally, maybe 100,000 people at the rally by some estimates. And there were very few of them, I'm not even aware of any, that actually got into the Capitol Building, in terms of guns.

Ben Shapiro defends Trump's alleged remarks about taking down metal detectors at his Jan 6 rally

06/29/22

Sinclair aired a misleading interview about the Capitol attack withSen. Ron Johnson, who promoted election fraud lies

04/20/21

Fox personalities dismiss January 6 committee’s criminal referrals for Trump

12/20/22

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roger stone sees demon portal over WH and

https://www.alternet.org/meadows-2658957827/

an raw 12 22

The massive trove of text messages turned over by Mark Meadows to the House select committee show Republican elected officials were willing to violate the U.S. Constitution on "bizarre" and obviously phony evidence.

Talking Points Memo reporter Hunter Walker obtained the messages, which show the former White House chief of staff communicating with GOP officials at all levels of government about far-fetched conspiracy theories to justify overturning Donald Trump's election loss, and he told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that their lack of sophistication was genuinely shocking.

"We're touching on something that is really a central thing here," Walker said. "I covered the Trump White House, and a big question is how many people are in on the joke and how many people are true believers. I first, you know, became familiar with the text log when i was working on my book, The Breach, which is about the Jan. 6 investigation. I co-wrote it with [former GOP lawmaker] Denver Riggleman. He knows a lot of these people, and he was shocked when he opened the text log. He led the [select committee's] phone team, it was like looking into the mouth of madness, and even with that introduction, I had a similar reaction."

RELATED:Reporter reveals 'frightening' gaps in Mark Meadows texts laying out 'broad plot' to overthrow government

"Adults in government, not only engaging in frighteningly undemocratic language, but their base intelligence is called into question," Walker continued. "You're talking about the wild Italian theory, people were taking it seriously. We see another instance where someone has a bizarre theory from a Romanian YouTube video that any of us would know not to tweet, based on stuff from 2005 that they somehow thought carried over to 2022.The information literacy of our members of Congress is called into question here, and that's part of why we thought it was more important to present more of the totality of the these texts you have seen anywhere before, and our text team made sure you can see them in a phone as they were received, because the typos, the wild links, all of this is really important."

"One last point, and this is something that shouldn't be lost in this discussion," he added. "We see the pressure, we see it in real time in these texts on people like Doug Ducey, that was on people like Brad Raffensperger, that was on people like the Arizona attorney general. Scott Perry, the same guy sending this Italian theory, is talking about lobbying to have Trump pressure the Italian government and Pennsylvania legislatures, and you know, I think one of the things we see is if these people had given into the pressure, all of this plotting just might have worked."

Watch belowor at the link

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herschel walker ~ BO BS birther?! etc

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Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis received a fact-check on an outlandish claim about United States history that he made at his only debate with Democratic challenger Charlie Crist.

"You have people that are teaching — and actually his running mate has said this in the past — that teaching the United States was built on stolen land," DeSantis said. "That is inappropriate for our schools; it's not true."

PolitiFact, a nonprofit operated by the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida, reached out to the DeSantis campaign for documentation that the statement was not true, but did not receive a response.

"We reached out to historians of Native and non-Native descent. All of them said it is well documented that the U.S. acquired Native American land through dubious treaties and, at times, forcefully confiscated ancestral territories to bolster the country's expansion," PolitiFact reported. "Sometimes the U.S. and Native American tribes struck treaties that defined boundaries and determined land sale prices and forms of compensation. Other times, tribes signed land-ceding agreements under duress."

DeSantis was not just wrong about U.S. history, but was also specifically wrong about Florida.

"Andrew Frank, a Florida State University professor who specializes in the history of the Seminoles, said the U.S. annexed much of Florida through treaties that a majority of the tribal leaders opposed," PolitiFact reported. "The U.S. military drove out more than 3,000 Seminoles from the state, according to the Florida Department of State. Around 300 members of the tribe remained in Florida."

The fact-check ranked DeSantis' claim as "Pants on Fire!"

"Historians of Native and non-Native descent said DeSantis' characterization is wrong. It's well-documented that the U.S. repeatedly made treaties with Native Americans and then violated them using force and other means to accommodate non-Native settlement. Courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have time and again affirmed that as fact," PolitiFact reported. "DeSantis' claim is wildly historically inaccurate."

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[[aha see deny deflect ctr-attack accusation

related to mirror and crypto, possibly evil

CRT is racism disguised as free speech? anti-racism? whole lotta quoting of MLK by right wingers lately? "color-blind" reverse discrim?

in some way probably just taking standard and correct critiques of right and trying to claim the left does it too(thus ok for right to defend themselves) or everyone does it so ok if we do and you're hypocrites if you call us right out on it in the future.

or most extreme we don't do it only YOU left do.

recall gang of 5 new right we are the true radicals/revolutionaries, but that was trying to steal/co-opt a positive (tho somewhat badass) term.

we're not the racist/oppressors/censors, you the left are: AA is reverse discrimination, you are trying to cancel/ silence us, white ppl xiansare the true victims.

this req alt fact earth2 lack of history/context/critical thinking? echo escalator = lack of filter/rebuttal

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herschel walker lies about abortion, no effect on trumpistas

rww -->

the Fourth Estate reports:

Up until this year, Mark Finchem, the conspiracy theorist, stop the steal, election denying Republican candidate for Arizona Secretary of State automatically received his ballot via the mail since he was a Libertarian in 2008.

Despite that, Finchem has been a strong advocate of ending no-excuse mail-in voting for all Arizonans which has been in place for decades and used by at least 80% of the electorate. Finchem during his debate against Democratic challenger Adrian Fontes, the former Maricopa County recorder, last month claimed he always votes at the polls. This is a lie.

“I don’t care for mail-in voting. That’s why I go to the polls,” Finchem said. Finchem voted early and by mail in every single election since the 2004 general except for the 2007 City of Tucson general election. That’s 28 of 30 total elections (including this year’s).

Read the full article.

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an 922

The invasion of Ukraine has not gone as planned for the Russian government. When Russian forces invaded Ukraine on February 24, President Vladimir Putin and his Kremlin allies were obviously hoping to take over the country in a hurry; instead, the Ukrainian military have fought back much more aggressively than Putin anticipated — and done so with the support of the Biden Administration and the United States’ European allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). September has found Russian forces suffering some major humiliations at the hands of the Ukrainian military.

Liberal economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman examines the state of the conflict in a September 12 column, drawing a parallel between Putin and his allies in Russia and MAGA Republicans in the United States. Both of them, Krugman argues, underscore the fact that “tough-guy swagger” doesn’t automatically translate to military victories.

Krugman opens his column by noting that on August 29, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson — who Krugman slams as a “Putin cheerleader” — happily told viewers that Putin was “winning the war in Ukraine.”

READ MORE: Russia pursues North Korean arms deal as fighting around Ukrainian nuclear power plant risks disaster

“Carlson’s timing was impeccable,” Krugman writes. “Just a few days later, a large section of the Russian front near Kharkiv was overrun by a Ukrainian attack. It’s important to note that Putin’s forces weren’t just pushed back; they appear to have been routed. As the independent Institute for the Study of War reported, the Russians were driven into a ‘panicked and disorderly retreat,’ leaving behind ‘large amounts of equipment and supplies that Ukrainian forces can use’…. The Russian collapse seemed to validate analyses by defense experts who have been saying for months that western weapons have been shifting the military balance in Ukraine’s favor, that Putin’s army is desperately short on quality manpower and that it has been degraded by attrition and missile attacks on its rear areas.”

Krugman goes on to explain why “Putin cheerleaders” like Carlson are so flawed in their thinking.

“There’s something special about the MAGA embrace of the mystique of Russian might: a worldview that equates tough-guy swagger with effectiveness,” Krugman writes. “This worldview has warped the right’s perception not just of the Russian Army, but also, of how to deal with many other issues. And it’s worth asking where it comes from. Many Republicans have admired Putin for a long time — even before Donald Trump took over the GOP. Back in 2014, for example, Rudy Giuliani said of Putin, ‘That’s what you call a leader.’ And Trump continued to praise Putin even after he invaded Ukraine.”

Krugman continues, “So, it’s not hard to see where the MAGA right’s admiration for Putinism comes from. After all, Putin’s Russia is autocratic, brutal and homophobic, with a personality cult built around its ruler. What’s not to like?.... On the right…. approval of authoritarian regimes is all bound up with assertions about their military prowess…. The MAGA ethos is all bound up with exaltation of tough talk and denigration of expertise.”

READ MORE:How Vladimir Putin's spies in Ukraine blew it for him in Ukraine: report

MAGA Republicans, according to Krugman, “needed to see Putin as a leader made powerful by his rejection of liberal values.”

“There’s growing speculation about what will happen inside Russia if the invasion of Ukraine ends in outright defeat,” Krugman observes. “But you also have to wonder how the U.S. right will handle the revelation that sometimes, tough guys finish last.”

READ MORE:'Cancelling' Russia: Robert Reich explains why Putin, Trump and Tucker Carlson parrot the same 'culture war' rhetoric

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mma 9 22

mehdi h: one word, projection

 GUTFELD (HOST): This is hilarious. You can't be like the media, you can't be like the Democrats when every time Donald Trump spoke or was at a rally or the inauguration, their hair was on fire. Right? And Trump supporters would be attacked.This is what the media wants you to do right now. This is what Joe Biden wants you to do right now. They're trying to goad you into an emotional state for violence. That is what they actually want.

GREG GUTFELD (CO-HOST): I am pro-disinformation because one man's disinformation is another person's fact, right? A censor never says they're a censor, they just say they're concerned about your health. And so, they use medical information now as kind of the -- as the weaponry to start curtailing information. So, disinformation has now become the new hate speech, right?

THE LATEST

On MSNBC's American Voices, Angelo Carusone explains how right-wing media “started using the language of QAnon” following Biden's speech

09/04/22 8:24

On MSNBC's The Cross Connection, Angelo Carusone explains how mainstream cable networks are embracing a “shift towards authoritarianism”

09/03/22

Fox News host Greg Gutfeld: “I am pro-disinformation”

09/02/22 6:00 

Greg Gutfeld says Biden’s speech warning of extremism is an attempt “to goad you into an emotional state for violence”

09/02/22

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9 22

msnbc MH host says only need 1 word, projection = rubber glue? ~ j6

https://www.mediamatters.org/dan-bongino/dan-bongino-says-joe-bidens-speech-independence-hall-was-incredibly-hostile-incitement]]

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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-knew-it-was-pushing-lies-about-dominion

no lnx

Fox News knew it was pushing lies about Dominion

Fox largely chose to ignore its own reporting as it focused on spreading the “Big Lie” and wild conspiracy theories about voting machines

WRITTEN BY GIDEON TAAFFE & ZACHARY PLEAT

PUBLISHED 09/02/22

Reports from Fox News in mid-November 2020 make it clear that the network knew it was peddling falsehoods about Dominion voting machines, yet many of its personalities continued to overwhelmingly spew conspiracy theories on prime-time cable television.

Dominion is suing Fox for defamation after the right-wing cable channel extensively pushed false claims about the 2020 election and Dominion’s voting machines. In the two-week period after Fox News declared Joe Biden the president-elect, the network questioned the results of the election or pushed conspiracy theories about it almost 800 times, including by using Dominion as a scapegoat. Fox became an outlet that aired Trump campaign lies about Dominion voting machines getting hacked without any evidence. The channel’s coverage of the election mimicked the baseless claims of Trump lawyer and conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell.

For Dominion to prove that Fox acted with “actual malice,” the company must show that Fox knew the allegations made about Dominion were false, or that Fox acted in reckless disregard for the truth. In addition to pursuing how culpable the Murdochs were in this regard, Dominion lawyers are deposing Fox prime-time hosts and appear to have text messages that show employees knew Fox was peddling lies, according to Washington Post reporting.

While these lines of inquiry may be already sufficient to meet the “actual malice” standard, brief moments in Fox’s own programming also show the network was contemporaneously aware the Dominion allegations were lies, even if these few examples were drowned out. The Washington Post noted that Dominion may currently be trying to ascern “whether Fox personalities who challenged election fraud claims on air faced any repercussions.” 

Some articles and newsletters on FoxNews.com from November 2020 included statements from Dominion rejecting the baseless conspiracy theories or Fox staffers mocking the conspiracy theories. On the channel’s programming, some Fox personalities made the effort to debunk what their own colleagues were pushing and encouraged the Fox audience to accept the election. This included directly fact-checking lies about Dominion, labeling such claims as disinformation, and explaining that no evidence for these conspiracy theories had been presented. Unfortunately, vastly outnumbered by Fox lies about the election, these moments were brief and few:

Fox correspondent Eric Shawn debunked Trump lies about Dominion, citing cybersecurity experts at the Department of Homeland Security to call it an example of “disinformation.” [Fox News, Special Report, 11/12/20]

Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy debunked guest Jonathan Turley’s claim that Dominion voting software “had glitches.” Doocy said: “With that Dominion software: Five counties in Michigan and Georgia had problems. And the Dominion software was used in two of the counties. And in every instance, largely, it was human error – a problem, but the software did not affect the vote counts.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 11/13/20]

Days later, Doocy and Turley acknowledged that there was no evidence for the Dominion conspiracy theories. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 11/16/20]

Shawn offered to “clarify the election facts as we know them right now,” debunking several baseless claims of voter fraud on-air, reading off the response from Dominion to one particular claim about the company. Shawn also noted that the conspiracy theories are “designed to undermine your faith in American democracy.” [Fox News, America’s News HQ, 11/15/20]

Fox correspondent Rick Leventhal said Rudy Giuliani “offered no evidence” for his claims that Dominion is “a radical left company with ties to Venezuela, outright accusing it of fixing the 2020 results.” [Fox News, Fox News at Night, 11/16/20]

Fox News anchor Dana Perino and contributor Karl Rove recognized on-air that the accusations were all potential grounds for lawsuits by Dominion against Giuliani and Powell.[Fox News, The Daily Briefing, 11/19/20]

Shawn interviewed Dominion representative Michael Steel for nine minutes to debunk specific right-wing allegations against the company. [Fox News, America’s News HQ, 11/22/20]

Just two days before the Jan. 6 insurrection, Doocy repeatedly pointed out that Trump’s supporters have shown no evidence to support Dominion conspiracy theories. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 1/4/21]

THE LATEST

On MSNBC's American Voices, Angelo Carusone explains how right-wing media “started using the language of QAnon” following Biden's speech

09/04/22 8:24 PM EDT

On MSNBC's The Cross Connection, Angelo Carusone explains how mainstream cable networks are embracing a “shift towards authoritarianism”

09/03/22 11:48 AM EDT

Fox News host Greg Gutfeld: “I am pro-disinformation”

09/02/22 6:00 PM EDT

Greg Gutfeld says Biden’s speech warning of extremism is an attempt “to goad you into an emotional state for violence”

09/02/22 5:36 PM EDT

Fox News knew it was pushing lies about Dominion

09/02/22 5:35 PM EDT

IN THIS ARTICLE

Fox News

Voter Fraud and Suppression

Voter Suppression

Related

Dominion's lawsuit against Fox could have severe consequences

07/05/22 11:21

Fox News’ Mark Levin and Sarah Palin suggest Dominion computers are being used as part of a “fraud and abuse” scheme in Alaska

05/04/22

Uncovered documents from defamation case show that Fox News legal strategy is full election denial

05/02/22

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magical thinking, a winner b/c you THINK/declare you are? earth2 facts # do not matter not real?

plus practically speaking she has to lie to keep grift going, plus just consistent with schtick that she is victim of conspiracy, but here it's the estbmnt

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/far-right-congressional-candidate-laura-loomer-predictably-refuses-to-concede/

no lnx twt

Far-Right Congressional Candidate LauraLoomer Predictably Refuses to Concede

By Kristen Doerer | August 24, 2022

Laura Loomer poses with Roger Stone, a leader of the so-called "Stop the Steal" campaign. Photo from campaign Facebook page.]

Laura Loomer—a far-right activist so extreme that she would have easily eclipsed Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene as the most far-right congresswoman—lost her bid for the GOP nomination to Congress in Florida’s 11th Congressional District.

The Associated Press called the race in favor of longtime Republican Rep. Daniel Webster late Tuesday night. Webster, who was the preferred candidate of religious-right groups like the Family Research Council, had clinched 51 percent of the vote;Loomer had won 44 percent.

Nevertheless, Loomer refused to concede and declared the election fraudulent.

:{:{}:

}:

“I’m not conceding because I’m a[not THE?] winner, and the reality of this is our Republican Party is broken to its core,” she said to supporters after the results came in Tuesday night.

“What we have done tonight has really honestly shocked the nation, we have further exposed the corruption in our own feckless, cowardly Republican Party.”

“It breaks my heart that we are in a position in this country today where the Republican Party establishment is participating in the voter fraud machine. And I stand on the stage before you today with the American flag behind me to tell you that we do not live in a free country. We do not live in a country with free and fair elections,” she said.

Only about an hour before, Loomer seemed to acknowledge that she would lose to Webster, Mike DeForest of News 6 reported. “A win’s a win, and a loss is a loss,” Loomer told a supporter who was trying to cheer her up. White nationalist Lauren Witzke interjected. “No, no, no. You are our next congresswoman,” she told Loomer.

Loomer’s baseless accusation of fraud and refusal to concede was predictable—if not still damaging to public trust in the integrity of our elections. Since former President Donald Trump refused to concede his loss in the 2020 election, every Trumpian Republican candidate running for federal, state, and local level who loses can now claim electoral fraud and allege a grand conspiracy against them even if they’ve only won a few hundred votes.

A score of far-right activists attended Loomer’s planned “victory party,” including Witzke, who was the Delaware GOP nominee for Senate in 2020, Nick Fuentes and Tyler Russell of the white nationalist America First movement, Peter Brimelow of the white nationalist-promoting VDARE website, and Edward Szall, who has somehow only become more extreme since he left his job at the brazenly antisemitic TruNews.

“We’re so proud of you, Laura!” Witzke posted on Telegram with a photo of the “celebration.”

Lauren Witzke shared a photo from Laura Loomer’s 2022 planned “victory” party on Telegram. Among those who attended were far-right activists Ed Szall, Tyler Russell, Peter and Linda Brimelow, Lauren Witzke, and Nick Fuentes. Loomer is pictured center in yellow.]

Far-right activists and operatives predictably jumped on Loomer’s false election fraud narrative or else tried to spin her loss into a win.

Radical conspiracy theorist Stew Peters said that the election must be rigged, writing on Telegram, “Here’s some fake results from a fake election – because, every election is fake and rigged.” Tyler Russell, who has dubbed himself the leader of the Canadian offshoot of the America First movement, agreed. “LOOMER IS RIGHT FOR NOT CONCEDING! RINOS ARE RIGGING!” he wrote on Telegram.

Even ahead of voters casting their votes, Trumpian operative Ali Alexander—who led the so-called “Stop the Steal” campaign to keep Trump in power and who baselessly alleged voter fraud to justify such efforts—suggested the only way Webster could win would be through fraud: “don’t put cheating and grifting past the establishment,” he wrote.

On Tuesday night, Alexander briefly seemed to acknowledge Loomer’s loss, blaming Reps. Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene for not donating to Loomer as well as Trump’s advisers for keeping the former president from endorsing her.

“Real talk: Gaetz or MTG could’ve put Loomer over the top. $200,000 more dollars could’ve,” Alexander wrote on Telegram. “Trump’s advisors not blocking a Loomer endorsement could’ve put her over the top.”

But Ali went on to call the primary a “Rigged game,” and suggested something nefarious was afloat. “Just magically outside the margin of a runoff? What a coincidence!” he wrote. In another post, he wrote, “STOP THE STEAL.”

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}:

Fuentes—who has referred to Loomer “as one of our own”—spun her loss as a win for the white nationalist America First movement.

:{:{}:

}:

“Despite being the most cancelled woman in America,” Fuentes wrote, “She out-raised her opponent in every single quarter and came within 6,000 votes of Congress.”

“Tonight showed that there is very little left in the way of REAL AMERICA FIRST PATRIOTS like Laura Loomer from TAKING OVER!”

As Right Wing Watch reported ahead of the GOP primary, Loomer was eager to spread her extremism throughout the halls of Congress and promised to promote both white nationalism and Christian nationalism. We reported:

Loomer has long rallied behind white nationalist figures, spread right-wing conspiracy theories, and promoted disinformation. She proclaimed that she did not care about what happened to Muslims in the 2019 Christchurch shooting in New Zealand, where more than 50 people were murdered by a white supremacist.

In March, Loomer joined white nationalist Jared Taylor’s podcast and told him that she thought her white nationalist views would get her elected to Congress. She switched districts, she said, because Florida’s 11th District has more white people and she could be more honest about her extreme right-wing views. She went on to praise Taylor’s “white advocacy”—the preferred term of white nationalists to describe their efforts to secure a nation ruled by white people.

Loomer addressed her supporters in a Telegram post Wednesday afternoon. In it, she accused the Republican Party of being “an active participant in the voter fraud machine here in America,” called for Webster to resign, and again, refused to concede, illustrating the monster the Republican Party itself created by choosing to peddle election fraud conspiracy theories in its effort to keep Trump in power.

.

Tags: Ali Alexander Daniel Webste rLaura Loomer Lauren Witzke Nick Fuentes Peter Brimelow Stew Peters Tyler Russell conspiracy theories Election 2022 election fraud Stop the Steal

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https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/steve-bannon-and-jim-hoft-claim-**democrats-are-planning-steal-midterm-elections

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see maralogo BS, garland pretty good at ctr BS? subpoena released

https://www.mediamatters.org/mar-lago-search/fox-news-pushes-dishonest-smear-campaign-against-merrick-garland-over-threats

no lnx vid

Fox News pushes dishonest smear campaign against Merrick Garland over threats against public officials

Fox personalities promote the lie that Garland refused to protect right-wing Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

 The Justice Department is actually prosecuting a man who threatened him.

WRITTEN BY ERIC KLEEFELD

PUBLISHED 08/16/22

Fox News personalities are now dishonestly engaging in rhetorical whataboutism in response to threats against federal law enforcement from supporters of former President Donald Trump after the FBI searched his Mar-a-Lago resort. In their fictional retelling, the Department of Justice under Attorney General Merrick Garland has taken a hard line against Trump and his supporters, yet has done nothing to protect right-wing Supreme Court justices such as Trump-nominated Justice Brett Kavanaugh who have also received violent threats.

In fact, when an armed suspect was arrested outside Kavanaugh’s home in early June for allegedly threatening to kill Kavanaugh, Garland strongly condemned threats of violence against the justices and described the measures that the Justice Department has taken to protect them.

“Threats of violence and actual violence against the justices of course strike at the heart of our democracy, and we will do everything we can to prevent them and to hold people who do them accountable,” Garland said on June 8. He further outlined actions he had taken the previous month to increase security at the justices’ homes “24/7,” and a meeting he had with court security and law enforcement officials “to ensure every degree of protection available as possible.”

Fox News, however, is telling a different story now. Last Thursday, the network posted an article on FoxNews.com promoting a million-dollar ad buy from the right-wing activist group Judicial Crisis Network attacking Garland for neglecting to protect Kavanaugh, specifically. The article quoted Carrie Severino, the group’s president and a frequent Fox guest, who accused Garland of “continuing to not enforce the law,” apparently referring to a federal law prohibiting protests outside judges’ homes. Many experts believe, however, that this law poses serious constitutional difficulties on free speech grounds regarding protests of Supreme Court justices, and in response the Justice Department has resolved to prosecute any threats of violence or actual violence.

The ad itself, however, did not even discuss the specific law about protests at judges’ homes. Instead, it simply declared that Kavanaugh was being “harassed,” and “threatened,” adding, “even an armed assassin was after him.” The ad then falsely concluded that Garland “could stop it, but doesn’t.” It currently has nearly 1.2 million views on YouTube in addition to viewers who may have seen the commercial airing on TV.

Video file

CitationJudicial Crisis Network, via YouTube, August 11, 2022

Other Fox News programs have pushed the same flagrantly dishonest talking point in the past several days, attempting to discredit Garland and the Justice Department in the wake of the search at Mar-a-Lago.

On Jesse Watters Primetime, a program which has pushed multiple conspiracy theories following the search at Mar-a-Lago, Watters wrongly claimed Friday night that Garland “wouldn't lift a finger to protect Supreme Court justices, even after a lunatic showed up at Brett Kavanaugh's front door trying to assassinate him.”

Video file

CitationFrom the August 12, 2022, edition of Fox News’ Jesse Watters Primetime

Likewise, Fox host Mark Levin claimed on his show Sunday night that Supreme Court justices were being threatened by people gathered at their homes, “and we have an attorney general who will not enforce federal criminal law against them.” In fact, the man who allegedly threatened Kavanaugh is currently facing federal charges.

Video file

CitationFrom the August 14, 2022, edition of Fox News’ Life, Liberty & Levin

And, on Tuesday’s edition of Fox Business’ Varney & Co., host Stuart Varney asked former Trump administration Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker about a man who was just arrested for posting online threats to kill FBI personnel. Whitaker at first claimed that “the American people, I think, are upset, especially Donald Trump supporters are upset,” essentially reiterating similar comments he had made on Monday blaming the FBI.

He then pivoted to the spurious claim that threats to Supreme Court justices were not being similarly punished. “In my experience, we need to make sure that we treat all political violence as not only abhorrent, but treat it similarly,” Whitaker said. “And there are examples where that hasn’t always been the case, including the threats to, you know, Supreme Court justices.”

Video file

CitationFrom the August 16, 2022, edition of Fox Business’ Varney & Co.

The entire point here is that the Justice Department is addressing far-right threats against the FBI just as it is treating far-left threats to conservative justices. But this whole story has revealed the extent to which conservative media have demanded that the laws may not be applied against their side.

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earth2

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-attacks-biden-surging-gasoline-prices-they-fall-27th-consecutive-day

https://www.mediamatters.org/immigration/first-half-2022-fox-news-feverishly-pushed-debunked-racist-and-inflammatory-narratives

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https://www.mediamatters.org/blazetv/right-wing-host-line-between**-blazetv-fox-news-and-infowars-getting-blurred-most-healthy-way

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BBB--> IRA

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-incorrectly-attacks-inflation-reduction-act-claiming-it-will-raise-taxes-individuals

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omfg, recall polls on 30%(?) GOP thinks violence inevitable/justified

6 22  an  CDV

it has been almost a year and a half since Jan. 6, 2021, when Donald Trump and his cabal attempted to nullify the results of the presidential election, and by doing so effectively bring an end American democracy. By any reasonable standard, this was the greatest crime committed by an American president in the country's history.

Last Thursday night, the House committee tasked with investigating Jan. 6 and the larger threat to American democracy held the first in a series of televised hearings. Its preliminary findings are that Trump and numerous allies, including Republican members of Congress, orchestrated a sophisticated, well-funded, nationwide effort that included the Big Lie and other propaganda about "election fraud," dozens of spurious legal challenges designed to subvert the electoral outcome and undermine public faith in democracy, and other attempts to rig the outcome in Trump's favor.

The coup plot also involved premeditated political violence and terrorism as seen in the attack on the Capitol by right-wing paramilitaries and thousands of other Trump followers. Trump's coup plot also involved proposals to invoke martial law and use the military and other security forces to "confiscate" voting machines and presumably engage in other nefarious tasks as ordered.

The ultimate goal of this elaborate plot was for Trump to remain in power indefinitely as an political strongman who rules by declaring a perpetual "national emergency" or finding some other quasi-legal justification to end democratic government.

Trump and his cabal's plan came much closer to succeeding than most people recognized at the time. In that sense, the events of Jan. 6 were practice for a future coup attempt — one far more likely to succeed, given that America's pro-democracy forces are being defeated at almost every turn.

There are many people who would prefer to erase this fact from memory and history: Russian President Vladimir Putinordered his intelligence services to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, with the goal of putting Donald Trump in power and thereby undermining and destabilizing American democracy. As confirmed again by the House Jan. 6 committee's presentation, Putin's plan was remarkably successful.

In fact, none of this is a revelation; with the exception of a few new details, all this information has been public knowledge for some time. The real power of the House committee's first hearing lay in efficiently connecting the dots, navigating a mountain of evidence, and ultimately framing a devastating case that Donald Trump and his co-conspirators should be prosecuted and convicted on numerous criminal charges.

In just over two hours, the committee provided new information that confirmed some of the rumors and rumblings around Trump's coup plot and the events of Jan. 6. Some of Trump's Cabinet members, including Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, discussed invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from power following the attack on the Capitol. Vice President Mike Pence reportedly refused to consider this despite ample justifications given Trump's erratic and dangerous behavior.

Trump was reportedly elated that his followers wanted to kill Mike Pence for refusing to cooperate with the coup plot. But Trump cannot plausibly claim that he didn't know he had lost the election: He was repeatedly told by political advisers and legal experts, including Attorney General Bill Barr, that Joe Biden had won the election and that voter fraud had not played a role.

At least one Republican member of Congress sought a pardon from Trump for his role in the coup plot, a de facto admission of criminal culpability. As for the violence on Jan. 6, to a significant degree it was premeditated and planned well before Jan. 6 and Trump's speech urging his followers to march on the Capitol. Members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys have now been indicted by the Justice Department on charges of seditious conspiracy.

In total, as outlined by the House select committee during their first public hearing on Thursday, the unifying theme so far is that Donald Trump is a criminal mastermind, with a remarkable ability to corrupt the people around him by ensnaring them in a web of antisocial and pathological values and behavior.Donald Trump is a political cult leader, an apparent sociopath and an incipient fascist strongman who commands the loyalty of tens of millions of Americans.

To discuss the current state of the Trump cult I recently spoke withSteven Hassan, one of the world's leading experts on cults and other dangerous organizations, as well as how to deprogram people who have succumbed to "mind control." Hassan was once a senior member of the Unification Church, better known as the "Moonies." He is now founder and director of the Freedom of Mind Resource Center and has written several bestselling books, including "Freedom of Mind," "Combating Cult Mind Control" and, most recently, "The Cult of Trump."

In this conversation, Hassan discusses Trump's enduring power over his followers and why it has outlasted his presidency. He argues that right-wing Christian churches, Fox News, conspiracy theorists, right-wing social media and other propaganda machines are keeping Trump's cultists loyal and further radicalizing them. He warns that the cult is actually bigger than Donald Trump and may outlast him, because "today's Republican Party is part of an authoritarian cult movement that hates democracy and freedom."

Hassan also reflects on his own experience as a cult member who was conditioned to be willing to kill on command. He warns that Trump's most loyal followers would likely obey such orders targeting Democrats, liberals, progressives, Muslims, black and brown people, or other designated enemies.

Donald Trump is a political cult leader, but he is no longer president. How does that influence his power over the cult members? What happens next?

My thesis was completely confirmed after Jan. 6 and all the efforts by the GOP to avoid being held accountable for their role in Trump's coup attempt.

I agreed to write "The Cult of Trump" with the knowledge that Trump was a malignant narcissist.He fits the stereotypical profile of a cult leader. I viewed him as the leader of a cult of personality. His business is also part of his cult. As I began to do the research for my book, it became very clear to me that he would not have been elected president if not for the thousands of new apostolic reformation ministers supporting him and then telling their millions of followers to believe in Trump as someone doing the work of God. They represent a right-wing Christian religious movement that does not believe in equality under the law, or in civil rights for women and those not of their faith. These right-wing Christian leaders want to destroy any type of organized effort to advance liberty and freedom and knowledge. Trump as a cult leader and authoritarian is a perfect fit for their beliefs.

What is the role of the Big Lie in Trump's cult and the larger movement?

The Big Lie operates on the assumption that the more extreme the lie, the average person cannot even imagine making up such a lie. The average person then rationalizes the Big Lie as being true because the opposite somehow cannot be true. The Big Lie is ultimately bigger than most people's ability to contemplate it. It is just too much of a lie to not be true. What solidifies it is constant repetition, and it also works because the leader projects the Big Lie onto some type of enemy. Mind control cults always need an enemy — a devil to focus people's anger and negative emotions on.

What is the relationship between the Republican Party and Trump's cult? So many journalists and other professional politics-watchers still do not understand that Trumpism is much bigger than one man, or that it's a mistake to say that the Republican Party was "taken over" by Trump and his cult.

Today's Republican Party is part of an authoritarian cult movement that hates democracy and freedom. They want blind obedience. They want people to distrust science and reason and critical thinking. Another example of how cults work is the belief that a person can create their own reality, where if a person truly believes something then it must be true. Of course that is ridiculous.

That is why it is important for the Department of Justice to prosecute Donald Trump and the other top Republicans who were involved in the coup attempt. A message needs to be sent to the cult members that reality exists and that there are consequences for criminal behavior. Right now, these Trump Republican cult members believe that manmade laws do not apply to them, because they exist on some higher plane or alternate reality.

The Trumpists and other fascists are now burning books they deem to be "dangerous" or "un-American," and targeting books by Black and brown authors or by and about the LGBTQ community. What is the role of book-burning and book-banning, in terms of cults and mind control?

Book burnings are an example of information control. That is a key part of the authoritarian cult. Book burnings are part of an escalating pattern that ends with arresting and killing journalists and other truth-tellers.

Republicans and other right-wing authoritarians have wanted to destroy public education for decades. Why? Because an educated citizen is what a democracy needs. To have a theocracy, for example, or some other type of authoritarian regime, you need uneducated citizens, especially young people. That is one of the main reasons why the right wing pushes for homeschooling and charter schools. The dumbing down of Americans is a hugely important part of their anti-democracy project.

Donald Trump has suggested that his followers must be ready to kill and die for his cause. He praises the Jan. 6 terrorists as patriots, victims and political prisoners. Michael Flynn has told people at his events that they should be prepared to "charge machine-gun nests" to defend their children against "critical race theory." How does this fit into the relationship between the cult leader and his followers?

I was taught such things when I was in the Moonies. I was told to be prepared, if North Korea invaded South Korea, to go to the front lines and die. I was later trained to die or kill on command without hesitation. Michael Flynn is an expert on military intelligence. He knows exactly what he is going to do. Flynn is creating an army of people to engage in a civil war.

Who do you think is likely to follow such orders?

We need to start with the military vets who feel betrayed by the U.S. government. Some of them may also have emotional or psychological issues as well. There are many veterans in the cult of Trump, and they're trained killers. If you make moral appeals and claim that you are acting in the name of God and country, then it is easy to get people to sacrifice their comfort and even their money, their marriage and their families for the cause. Once you make it into a matter of good and evil, and then psychologically condition a person that the other side are not really human, it is easy to get people to engage in lethal violence.

How do you explain Trump's enduring power over his followers, and over Republican voters as a whole?

The biggest single bloc of true believers are the members of right-wing Christian fundamentalist churches and other groups. These are authoritarian religions where the members believe that their pastor is an apostle who is directly connected to God and getting direct revelations.

If the pastor says, "God wants Trump," you're going to believe in Trump. If the pastor says, "God gave me a revelation where we are now following Ron DeSantis. God's taken the blessing away from Donald Trump," then those people are going to blindly follow DeSantis. Why? Because they're already in a mind-control cult.

How have Trump, the Republican Party and other right-wing leaders been able to successfully create an alternate reality for their followers?

It started with an increasingly extreme Republican Party and right-wing movement. They have their own media, churches and so forth. The members are just voting for the party now, without doing much critical thinking. It was incremental at first, but now the Trumpists are the hardcore base of the authoritarian political movement. These diehard Republicans and other conservatives are in Christian religious cults, or they've been sucked into QAnon and other apocalyptic, "end of days," great-reset conspiracy theories.It is all related.

Outsiders often say that Trump is dumb or stupid and make fun of his rallies. They say his speeches are incoherent. When I listen to Trump and observe his rallies, I see a dangerous and sophisticated propaganda machine and brainwashing operation. The use of repetition and the manipulation of emotions and violent imagery is highly intentional.

If they are already indoctrinated, these rallies and other repeated messaging are just more confirmation, reinforcement and community-building. It makes these Trump cultists feel like they are not alone, that they are part of a big powerful movement. Fox News is an integral part of this as well. When Fox News keeps claiming that it is the most powerful cable news network, that makes the viewers feel like they are part of a powerful community and movement. It is very strategic.

Many experts on national security, terrorism and related topics are warning that the United States is on the verge of a second civil war or a sustained right-wing insurgency, and that Jan. 6 was just the beginning. What is your estimate of the likelihood of Trump's cult members engaging in widespread violence?

Ninety-five percent. I am certain there will be a civil war or other type of massive violence. I say this as a former cult leader who wanted to take over America and thought that democracy was Satanic, and that we must take over the world for God. Part of that mission was getting rid of Satan's army. The likelihood of a second civil war in America, because of Trumpism and these other authoritarian cults, is very high.

Will the average Trump supporter participate in this violence?

I'm going to apply the rule of thirds: One-third will double down and engage in acts of violence. Another third will not follow the commands. The middle third will make their decision based on what their peers are doing. I wish the news media would understand the danger we're in.The people who believe that Donald Trump is an agent of God are going to be the ones committing most of these violent acts.

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/hillary-clinton-fox-news-sedition/

no 1/6 hearings

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https://techcrunch.com/2022/02/10/researchers-warn-that-social-media-may-be-fundamentally-at-odds-with-science/

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esearchers Warn That Social Media May be ‘Fundamentally at Odds’ with Science

Social media in its current form may well be fundamentally broken for the purposes of presenting and disseminating facts and reason. Read more at TechCrunch

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a special set of editorials published in today’s issue of the journal Science argue that social media in its current form may well be fundamentally broken for the purposes of presenting and disseminating facts and reason.The algorithms are running the show now, they argue, and the systems priorities are unfortunately backwards.

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In an incisive (and free to read) opinion piece by Dominique Brossard and Dietram Scheufele of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the basic disconnect with what scientists need and what social media platforms provide is convincingly laid out.

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“Rules of scientific discourse and the systematic, objective, and transparent evaluation of evidence are fundamentally at odds with the realities of debates in most online spaces,” they write. “It is debatable whether social media platforms that are designed to monetize outrage and disagreement among users are the most productive channel for convincing skeptical publics that settled science about climate change or vaccines is not up for debate.”

The most elementary feature of social media that reduces the effect of communication by scientists is pervasive sorting and recommendation engines. This produces what Brossard and Scheufele call “homophilic self-sorting” — the ones who are shown this content are the ones who are already familiar with it. In other words, they’re preaching to the choir.

“The same profit-driven algorithmic tools that bring science-friendly and curious followers to scientists’ Twitter feeds and YouTube channels will increasingly disconnect scientists from the audiences that they need to connect with most urgently,” they write. And there’s no obvious solution: “The cause is a tectonic shift in the balance of power in science information ecologies. Social media platforms and their underlying algorithms are designed to outperform the ability of science audiences to sift through rapidly growing information streams and to capitalize on their emotional and cognitive weaknesses in doing so. No one should be surprised when this happens.”

“But it’s a good way for Facebook to make money,” said H. Holden Thorp, editor-in-chief of the Science family of journals.

Thorp, who also wrote an editorial on the topic, told me that there are at least two distinct problems with the way scientists and social media interact these days.

“One is that, especially with Twitter, scientists like to use it to bat things around and openly air ideas, support them or shoot them down — the things they used to do standing around a blackboard, or at a conference,” he said. “It was going on before the pandemic, but now it’s become a major way that kind of interchange happens. The problem with that, of course, is that there is now an enduring permanent record of it. And some of the hypotheses that get made and turn out to be wrong, overturned in the ordinary course of science, get cherry picked by people who are trying to undermine what we’re doing.”

“The second is naivete about the algorithms, especially Facebook’s, which put a very high premium on disagreement and informal posts that spread disagreement. You know, ‘my uncle wore a mask to church and got COVID anyway’ — that’s going to beat out authoritative info every time,” he continued.

As Brossard and Scheufele point out, the combination of these things puts scientists “at a distinct disadvantage…as some of the very few participants in public debates whose professional norms and ethics dictate that they prioritize reliable, cumulative evidence over persuasive power.”

Sadly, there isn’t much anyone can do on the science side. Arguably the more they participate in the system, the more they reinforce the silos around themselves. No one is arguing that we should just give up — but we really need to acknowledge that the problem isn’t just a matter of the science community being less effective communicators on social media than peddlers of disinformation.

Thorp also acknowledged that this is only the latest phase of growing anti-factual tendencies and politicization that goes back decades.

“I think people tend to get a little more emotional about this without recognizing it’s a very simple thing: The political parties aren’t going to take the same position — and when one of those positions is scientifically rigorous, the other is going to be against science,” he explained. That the Democratic party is more often on the side of science is true enough, but it has also been on the other side with GMOs and nuclear power, he pointed out. The important thing is not who is for what, but that the two parties define themselves by opposition.

“That’s a political party coming to the realization that it was more politically useful to be against science than to be for it,” he said. “So that’s another thing scientists are naive about, saying ‘we’re not getting our message across!’ But you’re up against this political machine that now has the power of Facebook behind it.”

Brossard and Scheufele make a final parallel in the defeat of Garry Kasparov by Deep Blue — afterwards, no one called for special training to outplay supercomputers, and no one blamed Kasparov for not playing well enough. After the shock wore off, it was clear to everyone that we’d turned a corner not just in chess but in the possibilities of computing and algorithms. (Kasparov’s own views have evolved as well, as he told me a while back.)

“The same understanding is now here for scientists,” they write. “It’s a new age for informing public debates with facts and evidence, and some realities have changed for good.”

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/05/comedian-factchecks-nra-attendee-hammers/

note retreat to feeeeelings

Outside of the National Rifle Association's convention in Houston, Texas over the weekend, an attendee attempted to diminish the number of Americans that lose their lives to gun violence. But as comedian Jason Selvig quickly pointed out, the facts were not on his side.

The raw footage was posted to Twitter on Tuesday.

"More people and more crime is committed and more people are killed by hammers every year than guns. Look at the facts," the unnamed gentleman claimed to Selvig of The Good Liars, who had infiltrated the event to deliver a parody speech mocking NRA leader Wayne LaPierre.

"I will look that up. I don't think that's true actually," Selvig replied.

"That is true," the man interjected.

"In the United States though?" asked Selvig.

"Yes sir, that is true, look it up," the NRA guest insisted. "You can Google it. It's true, it's actually true."

Selvig did just that, running a quick search for, the "number of murder victims and the weapons used."

The man's confident assertion was not true.

Selvig ran through the figures that he pulled from a 2021 report from Statista.

"Number one: handguns, 8029. Number two: firearms type not stated, 4,863. Number three: knives or cutting instruments. Number 4: personal weapons, hands, fists, feet. Then rifles at 455. Then blunt objects, clubs, hammers at 393," he read. "The hammers, that stat is just wrong."[graf]

...

But the man appeared to be unmoved and reverted back to a boilerplate defense of the Second Amendment.

"Back to your question," he said, "the Second Amendment is still my right and it's still important to me."

Watch below via The Good Liars:

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in  wake of the back-to-back mass shootings that have taken place inBuffalo, N.Y., and Uvalde, Texas, right-wing conspiracy theorists have begun spreading lies and misinformation about the deadly attacks.

According to Axios, a growing "pipeline of misinformation" that spans from "obscure internet platforms to the mouths of sitting members of Congress 'seems to be going a lot faster now.'" Speaking to the news outlet, Bryce Webster-Jacobsen, who serves as the intelligence operations director at the firm GroupSense, weighed in on the narratives he has been seeing online.

"The misinformation narratives that start on places like 4chan or Reddit make it to the public consciousness really quickly," he added.

Jared Holt, a Digital Forensic Research Lab resident fellow at theAtlantic Council, also noted that they are "getting picked up by individuals with more power and louder voices. Holt added, "So the effect of misinformation has felt like it's multiplying."

Many of the conspiracy theories circulating on social media platforms have aligned the mass shooters with politically-motivated narratives. Per Axios:

• In Uvalde, misinformation falsely claiming the shooter was transgender appears to have quickly spread from 4chan, an anonymous message board, to the mainstream. The pictures used to support the falsehood were pulled from a user on Reddit. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) tweeted that the shooter was a "transsexual leftist illegal alien," but later deleted the post.
• In Buffalo, misinformation falsely claiming that the shooting was a "false flag" operation — an attack disguised to look like it was made by the opposite side in a conflict — spread quickly in the aftermath of the massacre. A conservative Arizona state lawmaker is under investigation by the Arizona Senate for her Telegram post endorsing the theory.

"Often, it strikes me that these kinds of communities or figures ... want to believe a certain thing, and someone on the internet finds something to provide source material," Holt said. "They come up with the concept first and then scour the internet to patch details in there so that it can live on."

The so-called "great replacement theory" is said to have motivated the Buffalo shooter, according to his "manifesto."

"There are some common stories that always get spread, and they’re usually about the shooter's identity — and they usually use the same pictures and names," Webster-Jacobsen also noted.

Caroline Orr Bueno, a behavioral scientist who conducts research on social media manipulation also explained the rise in conspiracy theories. "People want answers, and if they’re not getting them from authorities, they’ll get them somewhere else," said Bueno.

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avowed white nationalist' House Republican torched for tweeting 'despicable' lies about Uvalde shooting

David Badash The New Civil Rights Movement

May 25, 2022

U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) is being criticized after falsely identifying the Uvalde, Texas shooter who massacred 19 children and two adults at an elementary school as being a “leftist,” undocumented, and LGBT..."

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/elon-musk-2657236693/

d badash ncrm

many twt graf

Elon Musk in a court agreement with the Securities and Exchange Commission is required to get his tweets pre-authorized after being forced to pay $40 million in a fraud case ($20 from him, $20 million from Tesla). It is not clear he is doing so.

Musk, the richest man not just in the world, but in the history of the world, this week bought Twitter, the social media platform that likely has the strongest ability to shape public opinion. (Kind of like his tweets, the deal is subject to Federal Trade Commission approval.)

On Thursday Musk posted a demonstrably false tweet that suggests conservatives have not changed positions since 2008. It basically also says that liberals have moved much more to the extreme left. And it provides precisely zero evidence to back up the claim.

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Many on Twitter blasted Musk, providing ample proof of just how wrong he is.

One of those leading the charge against Musk’s erroneous and divisive claim is Parker Malloy, a former Media Matters editor-at-large who just penned a piece at Substack that begins, “Maybe if Twitter had actually enforced its policies, it wouldn’t have become the type of hellhole a guy like Elon Musk would want to buy.”

Malloy points to aPew Research Center study that states outright: “Republicans have moved further to the right than Democrats have to the left.”

Why is Musk’s erroneous tweet divisive? Because it’s false, yet feeding the already non-reality-based right wing — which is the exact concern many have about what the social media platform that shapes public opinion and legislation will become under Musk’s ownership.

Alexander Howard, the Director of the Digital Democracy Project, also pushed back on Musk’s claim. Pointing to a piece in The Economist, Howard tweets: “The GOP has shifted to the far-right since the 1990s, embracing illiberalism & anti-democratic views. The Democratic Party has not shifted far-left.”

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/alex-jones-sandy-hook-kremlin/

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Reporter lays out the ‘eerie’ parallels between Kremlin media and America’s ‘mass shooting deniers’

Alex Henderson April 26, 2022

During Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, some of the propaganda and disinformation coming from Kremlin-controlled media uses language that — when translated from Russian into English — sounds a lot like terms coming from far-right MAGA media in the United States, including “fake news” and “false flag.” Journalist Elizabeth Williamson, author of the book “Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and The Battle for Truth,” takes a look at this type of terminology in an article published by the New York Times on April 25. And she notes the disturbing parallels between Kremlin propagandists in Russia and right-wing media figures in the U.S.

“The similarity is eerie,” Williamson explains. “Russia has long used incidents of American gun violence to support its propagandistic claims of cultural superiority. Now, during this war, the Kremlin is adopting the language of American mass shooting deniers to deny towering evidence of its army’s atrocities in Ukraine, including calling injured and killed Ukrainians crisis actors.”

One of the “mass shooting deniers” and far-right conspiracy theorists that Williamson discusses in her article is Infowars’ Alex Jones, who claimed that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting of December 14, 2012 was a false flag operation. Williamson points out that the term “crisis actors” has been used by the Infowars crowd in connection with Sandy Hook as well as by Russian media in connection with massacres of Ukrainian civilians by Russian troops.

“The term ‘crisis actors,’ used by Sandy Hook fabulists to mean people pretending to be victims or survivors of the massacre, was used after the Sandy Hook shooting by James Tracy, a Florida Atlantic University professor and Infowars guest whose side hustle as a conspiracy blogger cost him his job,” Williamson notes. “Some believers of Infowars’ lies about Sandy Hook have tormented the relatives of the victims ever since.”

Similarly, Williamson observes, Kremlin propagandists have been claiming that reports of atrocities in Ukraine are “fake news.”

“After being condemned around the world for bombing a maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine,” Williamson explains, “Russia advanced a bogus conspiracy theory last month that was chillingly familiar to me. Using unrelated images from social media, dodgy ‘reports’ and constant repetition, the Russian Defense Ministry falsely claimed the airstrike was a ‘staged provocation’ by Ukraine. The hospital, Russian officials falsely said, was nonoperational and a base for Ukrainian fighters. Moscow’s ambassador to the United Nations dismissed Associated Press photographs of the aftermath as ‘fake news,’ and the Foreign Ministry alleged that bloodied, pregnant women evacuated from the rubble were crisis actors.”

In the U.S., Williamson observes, far-right conspiracy theorists have also downplayed the violence that occurred when Donald Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021.

“In my recent book, ‘Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth,’ I wrote that the Sandy Hook conspiracy theories — once believed to be true by one-quarter of Americans — foretold the world of delusion that we live in today,” Williamson writes. “Through my reporting, I traced the through line from Sandy Hook to Pizzagate; to QAnon, and its claims that Democrats were trafficking children; to anti-Semitic tropes invoked by neo-Nazi marchers in Charlottesville; to coronavirus myths; and to the 2020 election lie that fomented the January 6 Capitol riot. And now, to the war in Ukraine.”

Williamson wraps up her article by noting that as a reporter, her “first close experience with wartime disinformation” came “during the Balkan wars of the 1990s.”

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“In Belgrade,” Williamson recalls, “a Serbian foreign ministry official gave me an armload of books, all of them falsely claiming that victims of the region’s genocidal wars had fabricated evidence of atrocities or committed the crimes themselves. But today, as I watch Russia spread disinformation about the war in Ukraine with terms that developed in America, and then American conspiracy theorists regurgitating that disinformation, I’ve realized that those books are not the discredited relics I imagined they would be.”

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When comedian Al Franken’s book “Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations” was published in 1996, the former “Saturday Night Live” star humorously slammed radio host Limbaugh as a master of distortion and disinformation. And in a video posted on YouTube on April 13,the liberal ex-senator, now 70, laments that the right-wing media ecosystem is much worse in 2022 than it was when he wrote that book 26 years ago.

Franken revisited the subject of right-wing media in his 2003 book “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.” In his video, the ex-senator notes, “The point of both books was that the right was deliberately spreading a lot of disinformation, and that that was very dangerous.” And he goes on to describe how often former President Donald Trump lied during his four years in the White House, using George Orwell’s dystopian science fiction novel “1984” to make his point.

“Trump lied thousands and thousands of times throughout the presidency, from the size of his inaugural crowd all the way through to the Big Lie that the election was stolen,” Franken explains. “And of course, he has no intentions to stop. Now, here’s the thing: Two-thirds of Republicans now believe the Big Lie.”

The right-wing media ecosystem, according to Franken, has as blatant a disregard for the truth as state-operated Kremlin media in Russia.

“What strikes me now at this moment — this horribly tragic moment in Ukraine — is that what we are seeing in Russia, where its people are being told and believing that their army is fighting Nazis, is not that far from the Big Lie,” Franken warns. “How far are we really from ‘1984,’ where one of our two political parties attempts to overturn an election with an act of political violence…. How far are they away from Orwell’s thought police and the ministry of truth? How far is 2022 from ‘1984?’

During the 1980s and 1990s, Franken was both a staff writer and a performer on “Saturday Night Live” — where he famously mocked new age self-help culture with his Stuart Smalley character. Politics became his main focus after “SNL,” and Franken was elected to the U.S. Senate via Minnesota in 2008. Franken was reelected in 2014 but resigned in January 2018 due to allegations of sexual harassment.

In his video, Franken draws a parallel between Trump supporters who believed the Big Lie violently attacking the U.S. Capitol Building on January 2, 2021 and Kremlin media convincing people in Russia that the invasion of Ukraine is justified.

“The Republican Party is still Donald Trump’s party,” Franken warns. “There are no alternative facts; there are only big lies. The Russia Army is not killing Nazis; they are killing civilians, they are killing children. Donald Trump did not win the 2020 election; he lost it…. As long as his party is committed to suppressing votes…. we are headed down a steep, treacherous road.”

Watch the video below:

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Ginni Thomas’ election conspiracy theories offer a ‘window into' a 'very distorted, very disturbed world’: conservative

Ginni Thomas speaking at the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, Gage Skidmore]

Alex Henderson March 30, 2022

CBS News and the Washington Post recently reported that far-right Republican activist Ginni Thomas, who is married to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, exchanged 29 text messages with former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows following the 2020 presidential election — texts in which she promoted the Big Lie and encouraged Meadows to aggressively pursue efforts to overturn the election results.Never Trump conservative Peter Wehner, in an article published by The Atlantic on March 30, warns that those texts speak volumes about the mindset of many MAGA Republicans.

The 61-year-old Wehner has a very right-wing resumé. He served in the administrations of three Republican presidents — Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush — and was a speechwriter for Bill Bennett, former secretary of education in the Reagan Administration. These days, Wehner is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), a conservative think tank.

But Wehner is a blistering critic of former President Donald Trump, who he believes has been terrible for the conservative movement in the United States. And he cites the Thomas/Meadows texts as a glaring example of Trump’s toxic influence on the Republican Party.

“It was, by any measure, an extraordinary and unsettling set of exchanges,” Wehner writes in his Atlantic article. “President Donald Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and the right-wing political activist Virginia ‘Ginni’ Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, texted each other at least 29 times in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election. Their purpose was not to lament the result; it was to encourage efforts to overturn it.”

Wehner continues, “That would be worrisome enough, but what makes it doubly so is the arguments invoked, the sources cited, and the mindset revealed in these raw, unfiltered texts. They are a window into a very distorted, very disturbed world — a world of true believers, and a world that has largely influenced and defined the American right during the Trump era.”

The Never Trump conservative describes Ginni Thomas’ texts to Meadows as “fully marinated in QAnon conspiracy theories.”

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“Thomas thought that the attorney Sidney Powell — who, at a December (2020) press conference, blamed Cuba, Venezuela, the Clinton Foundation, George Soros, and Antifa for making Trump votes disappear — should be ‘the lead and the face’ of Trump’s legal challenge,” Wehner notes. “Thomas believed that the ‘Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators’ were being arrested and detained for ballot fraud before being shipped to Guantánamo Bay for military tribunals. And she believed that Joe Biden and the left were ‘attempting the greatest Heist of our History.’”

Ginni Thomas, Wehner adds, expressed her “contempt” for then-Vice President Mike Pence when, in one of her texts to Meadows, she wrote, “Most of us are disgusted with the VP and are in listening mode to see where to fight with our teams. Those who attacked the Capitol are not representative of our great teams of patriots for DJT!!”

Those texts, according to Wehner, underscore a larger problem in the Trumpified GOP.

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“To assume that the majority of Republicans hold all the same views that Thomas and Meadows expressed in their texts would be a mistake, but they don’t have to for there to be a problem,” Wehner argues. “Plenty of people on the right, although not as radical as Thomas and Meadows, share their basic attitudes, at least for now…. They disdain Republicans who don’t share their fervor, especially those who have spoken critically of Trump.They fear that America is on the edge of the abyss, and they view our politics as a battle between good and evil. They see themselves, too, as God’s instruments — his foot soldiers — in this great political-spiritual battle.”

Wehner warns that U.S. democracy is in trouble when many Republicans reject facts and live in the same “fearful, angry, imaginary world” as Ginni Thomas and Meadows.

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“It’s difficult to sustain a democracy when there aren’t shared truths, when false perceptions become false gods,” Wehner laments. “And what becomes really dangerous is when people with power — of whatever party or ideology — don’t just enter a hall of mirrors, but try to force the rest of us to follow them there.”

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stop steal and coup fueled by qanon wingnuttery?  that in turn spawned by (russian) disinfo?

https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/gop-qanon/

Over the last few years, QAnon has slowly infiltrated the Republican Party, replacing its traditional conservative values with far-right conspiratorial theories that have nothing to do with reality.

Now, NY Mag's Jacob Silverman is explaining how QAnon has practically overtaken the Republican Party. While the radicalized beliefs were previously verbalized among factions of the political party, Silverman notes how those beliefs are progressively becoming more mainstream.

"QAnon’s adherents tend to espouse some selection of bizarre beliefs from the conspiracist’s buffet that includes accusations of pedophile politicians eating children, secret political tribunals in Guantanamo Bay, a great bloodletting, and Donald Trump swooping in to free us from evil. One day. Or maybe the day after. The prophecy is flexible, which is why it has evolved and endured."

Explaining the timeline of the political party's downward spiral, Silverman noted how the actions of Ginni Thomas, wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, are an example of the radical shift in Republican values and belief systems.

"The latest exemplar of the GOP’s descent into anything-goes nuttery is Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and a well-connected conservative activist who recently admitted to attending the January 6 Stop the Steal rally in Washington, D.C.," he writes. "Ginni’s right-wing beliefs have long been known, but leaked texts between her and then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows revealed Thomas’ commitment to overturning the election, based on an apparently sincere belief that Joe Biden had stolen the presidency. She encouraged Meadows to help put a stop to Democratic perfidy. 'The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History,' went one message to Meadows, encouraging him to stand strong."

Silverman is also highlighting Republican lawmakers' latest actions that signal the party's shift toward more extremist beliefs.

"The signs of the Republican slide towardfull epistemic crackup are all around us," Silverman writes. "One can see it everywhere lately, not only in the 'why do you want to hurt children?'-type questions hurled by Republican senators at Jackson, but also in the revanchist anti-LGBTQ laws being introduced in Texas and Florida and in fearful talk of teachers 'grooming' children on Fox News. The ginned-up moral panic, centered around the child exploitation themes that helped give life to QAnon, is now a regular part of Republican political rhetoric."

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aha yikes never thought of civil society as target, but putin disinfo trump big lie; // koch libtard attack on gubmint b/c it includes norms/institutions

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3/22 some kook conspir neglected here

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yikes aha: // heartland reverse engr: we will be destroyed by evil dems, so therefore they did not win/will not rule?  =EARTH2 ; thus voter suppression is unfair (unAmerican in trad sense) but necessary ; mypillow guy sent gunmen to polls?

an 3 22

https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/far-right-biden-presidency/

a Georgetown University history professor is shedding light on the real reason why far-right Republicans still believe the unfounded claim that President Joe Biden's presidential win was illegitimate.

While its no secret that election conspiracy theories and false claims of widespread voter fraud have run rampant since former President Donald Trump lost his bid for re-election, there is a reason why Republicans "are convinced the outcome of the election was illegitimate regardless of whether or not there were specific procedural irregularities."

In an analysis published via The Guardian, Thomas Zimmer, a Georgetown University history professor with a concentration on the United States' democracy, referenced a controversial essay written from the perspective of a far-right conservative.

The essay, titled “ ‘Conservatism’ is No Longer Enough,” was penned by conservative writer Glenn Ellmers for The Claremont Institute's right-wing publication, American Mind.Zimmer notes:

"It is notable that Ellmers makes no claim that the 2020 election was 'stolen' – he doesn’t allege manipulation, voter fraud, or conspiracy, and in fact explicitly acknowledges that more people voted for Biden than for Trump. He does not peddle conspiracy theories. Yet Ellmers maintains that the outcome of the 2020 election is illegitimate and must not be accepted."

Zimmer then highlighted another key takeaway from Ellmer's piece:

"Ellmers is outraged precisely because he accepts the fact that a majority voted for Biden, that 'authentic Americans' have become the minority in a country which they are supposedly entitled to dominate. Here we have a striking glimpse of the depth of despair underlying the pervasive siege mentality on the right. What’s scandalous about the 2020 election, in this interpretation, is not that it was “stolen”, but that “un-American” forces straightforwardly won."

Zimmer's analysis also delved into the disturbing ideology behind the majority of Republican voters' thinking in regard to Biden being an illegitimate president.

"What is most alarming is the underlying ideology that leads so many on the right to consider Democratic victories invalid – even if they concede there was nothing technically wrong with how the election was conducted," Zimmer wrote. "It has become a core tenet of the Republican worldview to consider the Democratic party as not simply a political opponent, but an enemy pursuing an 'un-American' project of turning what is supposed to be a white Christian patriarchal nation into a land of godless multiracial pluralism."

Zimmer added, "Conversely, Republicans see themselves as the sole proponents of 'real' America, defending the country from the forces of radical leftism, liberalism, and wokeism."

He went on to explain Republicans' beliefs of the Democratic Party. "Even if they don’t subscribe to the more outlandish conspiracies propagated by Trumpists, many Republicans agree that the Democratic party is a fundamentally illegitimate political faction — and that any election outcome that would lead to Democratic governance must be rejected as illegitimate as well."

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https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2022/03/new-report-destroys-gop-talking-points-blaming-dems-for-crime-trump-states-have-8-out-of-the-10-highest-murder-rates/

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New Report Destroys GOP Talking Points Blaming Dems for Crime: Trump States Have 8 Out of the 10 Highest Murder Rates

Published on March 16, 2022 By David Badash

Consider these explosive headlines from Fox News over the past several months: “Democrat-run cities overwhelmed by crime surge,” “Murder and crime rates spike in Democrat-run cities – is it a control play?” or, “Democrat-run cities experience record breaking homicide rates.”

Ten days before Christmas last year House Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy falsely blamed Speaker Nancy Pelosi for a “crime wave” that’s “spreading across the country.”

“Speaker Pelosi should look in the mirror to see what caused the ‘attitude of lawlessness’ spreading across the country,” he wrote. “Democrat politicians defunded police, raised money for rioters, and pushed policies that are soft on crime. They own this crime wave.”

And here’s McCarthy just days ago, again lying, claiming crime is “created by Democrats.”

A new report from Third Way destroys all these GOP talking points – and points out that “murder rates are far higher in Trump-voting red states than Biden-voting blue states. And sometimes, murder rates are highest in cities with Republican mayors.”

About that claim Leader McCarthy made? He should look in the mirror – and at his own district before pointing fingers.

The report notes that “the homicide rate in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco was half that of House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy’s Bakersfield, a city with a Republican mayor that overwhelmingly voted for Trump.”

In fact, in all of 2020, “per capita murder rates were 40% higher in states won by Donald Trump than those won by Joe Biden.”

It gets worse for the GOP.

“8 of the 10 states with the highest murder rates in 2020 voted for the Republican presidential nominee in every election this century,” the report reveals.

The actual facts blow away what an average Fox News watching die-hard Republican voter would think.

“We found that murder rates are, on average, 40% higher in the 25 states Donald Trump won in the last presidential election compared to those that voted for Joe Biden. In addition, murder rates in many of these red states dwarf those in blue states like New York, California, and Massachusetts.”

“Mississippi had the highest homicide rate at 20.50 murders per 100,000 residents,” Third Way reports, “followed by Louisiana at 15.79, Kentucky at 14.32, Alabama at 14.2, and Missouri at 14. The national average was 6.5 per 100,000 residents, but the top five states had rates more than twice that high.”

These red states are not generating “murder is out of control” national headlines. They seem to generate no headlines at all. The rest of the top ten were filled out by South Carolina, New Mexico, Georgia, Arkansas, and Tennessee—all states rarely talked about in breathless media reports about rampant crime in Democratic strongholds.

The report does not even mention guns, which are a massive part of the problem, exacerbated by red state gun free-for-all policies.

And for those Fox News watching die-hard Republican voters who may say Third Way is a left-wing think tank, it’s actually been criticized by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders. And former bank regulator William K. Black has accused Third Way of being a “group that pretends sometimes to be center-left but is actually completely a creation of Wall Street.”

Read the full report here.  https://www.thirdway.org/report/the-red-state-murder-problem

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/kellyanne-alternative-facts-conway-slammed-for-saying-biden-has-a-fact-problem/

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apparently not Joe and Greta's fault?!:

no lnx twt

These 5 ‘deeply malevolent’ things that Trump did to hurt Ukraine must not be forgotten: journalist

Alex Henderson March 01, 2022

With Ukraine now being invaded by Russian troops on orders from President Vladimir Putin, MAGA messaging on the crisis has ranged from praising Putin to blaming President Joe Biden for the crisis. One of the most ludicrous MAGA talking points is that Putin wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine if Trump were still president.But liberal Washington Post opinion writer Greg Sargent, in a scathing column/listicle published on March 1, stresses that the things Trump did to hurt Ukraine and President Volodymyr Zelensky when he was president must not be forgotten.

“With the Russian invasion of Ukraine getting more horrific,” Sargent writes, “Donald Trump and his allies are frantically erasing the truth about Trump’s relations with Ukraine. Trump absurdly claims that as president, he stood strong behind Ukraine and NATO, even as his spinners comically downplay his corrupt and deeply malevolent betrayal of our ally.”

Sargent continues, “The obvious rejoinder to this spin is that Trump got impeached for withholding military aid to strong-arm Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into manufacturing propaganda to help Trump’s reelection. This came even as Zelensky pleaded for help against Russian aggression, which the world is now witnessing unfold in all its horror.”

The columnist notes that when Trump was president, he repeatedly “aligned our interests with those of Russian President Vladimir Putin and against those of Ukraine, NATO and the West.” And Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman agrees. Vindman, who testified during House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry against Trump in November 2019, told Sargent, “Trump acted against U.S. interests with the consequence of aiding Russian interests.”

Sargent goes on to list and describe five examples of Trump doing things to hurt Ukraine. Trump, Sargent recalls: (1) “spread propaganda about Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election,” (2) “ousted the well-regarded U.S. ambassador to Ukraine,” Marie Yovanovitch, (3) “froze military assistance to Ukraine,” (4) “withheld a White House meeting from Zelensky,” and (5) “turned Ukraine policy over to (Rudy) Giuliani.”

“All this has important forward-looking implications, now that Trump may run for president again,” Sargent explains. “As president in 2025, he’d be stewarding relations with Russia, Ukraine and NATO, but after this war has unfolded. Right now, we’re seeing extraordinary unity among the United States and its allies as it imposes harsh sanctions on Russia and otherwise tries to dissuade Putin’s invasion. Trump would almost surely rupture that.”

Vindman, during his interview with Sargent, warned that it will be great for Putin if Trump becomes president again.

“With Trump as president in 2025,” Vindman told Sargent, “we’re quite likely looking at a world in which Russia may have achieved its objectives and folded Ukraine back into its sphere of influence.”

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word salad

https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/trump-2656686160/

badash ncrm an

In an “exclusive” Fox News interview Donald Trump, the failed, disgraced, one-term twice impeachedformer president, suggests he’s read the legal filing from John Durham,a special counsel secretly installed in 2020 by then-Attorney General Bill Barr, who revealed the attorney’s status weeks before resigning from office, just before the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Trump referred to him as “Robert Durham”in a statement when the news of the filing broke, and now is suggesting that he has both read the legal filing and predicted its contents “a long time ago.”

The problem is Fox News and many other far-right-wing media outlets, have gotten it wrong, mostly wrong, or all wrong.

“Fox News inaccurately declared that Mr. Durham had said he had evidence that Hillary Clinton’s campaign had paid a technology company to ‘infiltrate’ a White House server,” The New York Times reported Monday. “The Washington Examiner claimed that this all meant there had been spying on Mr. Trump’s White House office.”

On Tuesday Trump told Fox News: “It looks like this is just the beginning, because, if you read the filing and have any understanding of what took place, and I called this a long time ago, you’re going to see a lot of other things happening,having to do with what, really, just is a continuation of the crime of the century.”

“This is such a big event, nobody’s seen anything like this.”

Because it didn’t happen, at least, not as Trump and his right-wing smokescreen allies claim.

“Who would think a thing like this is even possible?” Trump also told Fox News. “Durham is also coming up withthings far bigger than anybody thought possible—Nobody ever thought a thinglike this would be even discussed, let alone an act like this committed.”

“You have experts that do this, but they used experts to do it, and to think they could even think about doing that is not believable and, think—if they do it, foreign countries can do it,” Trump said.

“It is no different than Watergate, except a much more important location,” Trump said. “It is the same theft—just modern day.”

And the “best” lines from his interview: “This is treason at the highest level,” and, “It is not even believable.”

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2 22

two stories straight out of Alabama this week really encapsulate how the panic over "critical race theory," the war on schools and the war on democracy itself are all a piece of a singular racist right wing movement. Last week, AL.com reported that school officials across the state say parents are freaking out over the very existence of Black History Month, accusing schools of promoting "critical race theory" by mentioning it or honoring it in any way.

And on Monday, the Supreme Court declined to enforce the 1965 Voting Rights Actin response to a plainly racist gerrymander in Alabama, on the grounds that doing so would interfere with the state's control of their elections systems. Yes, even though federal oversight of state election systems is literally what the Voting Rights Act was designed to do.

It's been 13 months since Donald Trump incited an insurrection on the Capitol, one that was clearly driven by white supremacy and the belief that the votes of Black Americans simply shouldn't count as much as those of white people. There continues to be a struggle between various factions of the GOP over how to portray the violent insurrection itself — to call it a glorious MAGA revolution or pretend it was a random event unconnected to the larger party — but these two stories show the sentiment that drove it has now taken root in every corner of the GOP. From the school board to the Supreme Court, Republicans are determined to stomp out anything that stands in the way of white supremacy, from history to the law to democracy itself.

The Supreme Court's Monday decision is rife with confusing legalese, and will likely be mostly overlooked by both the media and the public because of it. But it's important. As with the court's recent approach to the Texas abortion ban, it showcases how the three Trump appointees to the court have transformed SCOTUS into an authoritarian body that will throw out the rule of law to enforce a far-right agenda.

In a 5-4 decision, the conservative justices stayed a lower court's ruling that a new Alabama gerrymander disenfranchised Black voters, in a clear violation of section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. In his defense of the decision, Trump appointee Brett Kavanaugh didn't even bother to argue that the gerrymander was legal, but instead insisted that enforcing federal election law nine months out from an election would "lead to disruption" and that it was "unanticipated and unfair" to expect Alabama to obey a law passed 57 years ago.

"It is hard to overstate how lawless the Supreme Court's order is," wrote Mark Joseph Stern, who covers courts and law for Slate, on Twitter. "The five ultraconservative justices broke the court's own rules to intervene with an unreasoned shadow docket decision that effectively nullifies a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. It's profoundly alarming."[twt]

the refusal of the court to enforce the plain letter text of the law is so egregious that even Chief Justice John Roberts — a man who has made it his life's work to gut the Voting Rights Act — voted with the liberal justices. Roberts may share the racist goals of the other conservative judges, but even he clearly feels uneasy with the court simply rejecting the duty to enforce the law simply because they disagree with its aims.

By issuing this decision, the conservative judges are throwing their lot in with Trump and the Capitol insurrectionists — if the law will not uphold white supremacy, the law itself is invalid.

It's the same impulse underpinning the panic over "critical race theory," a cover story for white conservatives trying to stomp out acknowledgment of the country's racist history and contributions made by Black Americans. Republicans spent months gaslighting the public about this, insisting the attacks on school boards and bans on "critical race theory" were about stopping supposedly "divisive" teachings and "anti-white" racism. But their actions speak otherwise, from these complaints about Black History Month to efforts to ban books about Martin Luther King Jr. The goal is erasing history, literature and even facts that conflict with a white supremacist ideology.

What was remarkable about the Capitol insurrection is that it was both an assault on rule of law and on reality itself. The rioters rejected the basic fact that Joe Biden won the 2020 election. They also rejected the basic law that asserts that the winner of the election has the right to take power. The belief that they and people like them — white conservatives — have a "right" to rule overrules everything else.

The insurrection clearly didn't end on January 6, just because the rioters failed to overturn the election and enshrine the Big Lie. On the contrary, the insurrection has mutated and metastasized within the GOP. It has infused the whole party, from the ordinary voters freaking out at school boards to the highest court in the land. There might be a few Republican holdouts — like Roberts or former vice president Mike Pence — who still think things like "rule of law" and "basic facts" matter. But they have clearly lost the battle with the rest of the party, as this 5-4 Supreme Court decision shows. There is no law or fact Republicans feel bound to respect. Anything that stands in the way of the white conservative will to power is expected to give way.

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{{VAXXER:

https://www.mediamatters.org**/tucker-carlson**/fox-guest-demands-covid-vaccines-be-immediately-pulled-market-calls-them-dangerous

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https://www.mediamatters.org/one-america-news-network/oan-guest-claims-coronavirus-vaccines-are-effective-if-you-want-kill

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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-hosts-rally-behind-ron-desantis-push-provide-covid-drugs-dont-work

cf trms govt stopped shipping 2 do not work omicron (3rd hard to get?)

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https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/see-right-wing-diatribes-falsely-comparing-vaccine-mandates-nazis

See the right-wing diatribes falsely comparing vaccine mandates to the Nazis

In fact, the Nazis withheld vaccines from conquered populations — and spread propaganda that vaccines were bad

WRITTEN BY ERIC KLEEFELD & JOHN KERR

PUBLISHED 01/28/22 no lnx vid

Right-wing media personalities have relentlessly pushed a disgusting set of talking points comparing present-day vaccine requirements to the atrocities of Nazi Germany — a comparison that is not only wrong in ethical terms, but also contrary to the actual history of Nazi policies on vaccines.

The commentators spreading this message have included Fox News prime-time host Tucker Carlson, Infowars’ Alex Jones; podcast host Joe Rogan; religious right broadcaster David Brody; YouTuber Steven Crowder and his co-hosts; One America News Network host Dan Ball; and others. (And just to top it off, Fox host Will Cain has compared vaccine requirements to life under East Germany’s post-war communist regime.)

In fact, Nazi Germany overturned the mandatory vaccination laws it had inherited from the earlier Weimar Republic. The regime also deliberately withheld vaccines from conquered peoples, with Adolf Hitler explaining that providing such benefits would “would result only in an enormous increase in local populations.” Furthermore, Hitler told his chief of staff to propagandize against vaccines for this very reason: “No inoculations and other preventative measures for the natives! We must even try to stifle any desire for such things by persuading them that vaccination and the like are really most dangerous.”

Oddly enough, Fox News’ Carlson has pursued a dual-pronged approach: On the one hand, he has fearmongered against “eugenics” and warned that “whites would go last” in line for the vaccines. But at the same time, he has compared universal vaccine requirements to “what the Imperial Japanese Army and the Nazis did in their medical experiments.” And, of course, Fox News is waging a propaganda campaign telling its own viewers that the vaccines are dangerous, while the company also practices a strict vaccine and testing regimen for itself.

And in a truly outrageous comparison, multiple right-wing hosts including Jones and Brody have invoked the Nuremberg Code, a set of medical ethics adopted in the wake of Nazi war crimes including medical experimentation on concentration camp inmates. These claims about vaccines have circulated online since mid-2020, before the COVID-19 vaccines had even become widely available.

In fact, the codes do not declare that medical care such as vaccines “could never be imposed on anyone,” as Carlson claimed— if that were true, it would prohibit all the other vaccine requirements that already exist for schoolchildren. Instead, the Nuremburg Code was formed in response to the gruesome and evil medical experiments the Nazi regime forcibly conducted on concentration camp prisoners, who were often murdered immediately afterward if the experiment itself did not kill them.

As a result, the Nuremberg Code’s text governs the circumstances of any medical experiments on human subjects, and says they must involve only subjects who have consented and be conducted under circumstances that would “avoid all unnecessary physical and mental suffering and injury.” The COVID-19 vaccines are no longer experimental, precisely because they went through vigorous testing on volunteer subjects as required by medical ethics.

And just to make it clear how outrageous this comparison really is — and how people like Carlson, Jones, and Brody are trafficking in sheer historical ignorance — consider exactly the sort of conduct the Nazis committed, to which the Nuremberg Code was written in response:

For the benefit of the German Army, whose frontline soldiers suffered greatly from gas gangrene, a type of progressive gangrene, doctors at the Ravensbruck concentration camp performed studies to test the effectiveness of sulfanilamide and other drugs in curbing such infections. They inflicted battlefield-like wounds in victims, then infected the wounds with bacteria such as streptococcus, tetanus, and gas gangrene. The doctors aggravated the resulting infection by rubbing ground glass and wood shavings into the wound, and they tied off blood vessels on either side of the injury to simulate what would happen to an actual war wound. Victims suffered intense agony and serious injury, and some of them died as a result.

In short, to compare a vaccination campaign providing the public with lifesaving drugs to the genuine war crimes against captive subjects that gave birth to the Nuremberg Code is simply a moral abomination.

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an 1 22  https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/gretchen-carlson/

no lnx vid

Watch: Former Fox News anchor explains how network's viewers have been brainwashed into believing conspiracy theories

Meaghan Ellis January 28, 2022

Former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson offered a damning assessment of the network as she explained just how bad its spread of conspiracy theories and misinformation has become.

During an appearance on the CNN segment, "Democracy in Peril," Carlson discussed many aspects of Fox News' critical role in the spread of misinformation and falsehoods. Since former President Donald Trump took office, conspiracy theories have been on the rise and Fox News has become a driving force for it.

Conservative primetime news anchor Tucker Carlson has been at the center of misinformation and the power of his opinion has begun to influence Republican members of Congress.

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“This is the result of fake news,” Carlson said. “You know, we're seeing not only the fallout from fake news during the Trump era, but what happened with the insurrection on January 6th. Now it's moving into other areas. Not just news, now it’s hitting science with vaccines, and now it’s into Cold War politics.”

Carlson also touched on another significant topic as she shed light on the actions of herformer Fox News colleagues, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. While they reportedly sent pleas to the White House for the violence to stop on Jan. 6, they still put up a united front on-air and circulated a completely different narrative about the series of events that unfolded.

“I think the bigger story coming out of that is how disingenuous it was to be sending those texts of warning while then going on the air to the American people and doing a complete injustice and disservice by saying something completely opposite,” Carlson said, “and ginning up this whole reaction that it was just fine and patriotic for people to be there on January 6th.”

She went on to express concern about the journalistic state of her former network since the rise of Trump. Carlson also noted how conspiracy theories have become a fallacious replacement for opinion.

“Slowly but surely, this has morphed into eradicating any other point of view since the Trump era that is not just opinion,” Carlson said. “It's gone from an opinion, which was fine, to completely devolving into non-fact-based conspiracy theories and outright dangerous rhetoric, in my mind, and I think it’s a complete disservice to our country.”

Noting the dangers of biased journalism, Carlson explained how dangerous it is to only get information from one news source. She also stressed how imperative it is for Republican leaders and lawmakers to use their platforms to offer clarity regarding some of the dangerous false narratives perpetuated by Fox News.

“For the safety of the Republican Party and for our democracy, I wish more would, because this is not going to end well, in my mind,” Carlson said. “It's really hard to change people's opinions because they're only watching what they want to hear, you know? And that's the other problem that we have in society with the media right now, is that we're so siloed into only watching what we agree with. And so every day that thought process just gets reinforced time after time.”

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Carlson also conceded that conservative media has changed considerably over the last five years as there is no longer a clear line between opinion and conspiracy theory. “Conservative television news is certainly not the conservative news that was out there even just five years ago,” Carlson said, later adding, “There’s a big difference between having a conservative opinion and having one that supports conspiracy theories.”

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70% GOP think election stolen, 30% think violence needed to fix?!

chris hayes WITH good series on loss of democ 12/21 incl linear step by step lock-picking of trump coup; that needs corrupt collaboration but also neutralize ppl trying to do the right thing via intimidation and elimination;

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1 22 an no lnx

arizona Republican State Representative Jake Hoffman made news this week when it was revealed he signed a forged “certification” falsely stating Donald Trump, not Joe Biden, won his state’s Electoral College electors.

Video that’s gone viral of Hoffman shows him defending signing the forged documents in which he falsely identifies himself as a duly elected elector for Trump.

His defense: “in unprecedented times, unprecedented action does occur.” He goes on to claim, “there is no case law, there is no precedent that exists as to whether or not an election that is currently being litigated in the courts has due standing.”

He called the forged electoral documents “dueling opinions” in this video:

NEW In Arizona, journalism can be a team sport. GOP State Rep. Jake Hoffman refused to answer 12News photojournalist's question (which I provided) re why he signed phony declaration in 2020 that Arizona electors voted for Trump. Watch as AZRepublic's @ruelaswritings folos up...pic.twitter.com/Qp3YOLyBl9

— Brahm Resnik (@Brahm Resnik) 1642034260

The video has been viewed over 800,000 times in just 14 hours.

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Hoffman, it turns out, was banned from Twitter after his company, Rally Forge, worked with Charlie Kirk’s far right wing political activist group, Turning Point USA during the 2020 election, establishing “a domestic ‘troll farm’ in Phoenix, Arizona, that employed teenagers to churn out pro-Trump social media posts, some of which cast doubt on the integrity of the US election system or falsely charged Democrats with attempting to steal the election, the Washington Post revealed,” according to The Guardian.

The Washington Post also reported that “the posts are the product of a sprawling yet secretive campaign that experts say evades the guardrails put in place by social media companies to limit online disinformation of the sort used by Russia during the 2016 campaign.”

Some of those teens, The Post noted, were minors.

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yay win scalp

no lnx

DirecTV just dealt a major blow to right-wing viewers

Meaghan Ellis January 15, 2022

DirecTV has announced its decision not to renew its contract with the right-wing media operation, One American News Network (OANN). On Friday, January 14, the cable service provider released a statement to Bloomberg with details about the decision.

“We informed Herring Networks that, following a routine internal review, we do not plan to enter into a new contract when our current agreement expires,” DirecTV said in a statement to Bloomberg.

Angelo Carusone, president of the left-leaning non-profit Media Matters, also released a statement on Friday commending the cable provider's decision as she acknowledged how influential OAN has been for the spread of misinformation “DirecTV made the responsible decision to drop OAN. OAN is a cauldron of misinformation and extremism,” Carusone said in a statement.

The decision comes after Media Matters' relentless campaigning in hopes of getting cable television providers to drop the right-wing operation. Although they acknowledged DirecTV's effort to make better decisions for the new year, Carusone went on to explain how the damage has already been done.

Media Matters highlighted how miscommunication continued to run rampant for the last 12 months due to the cable provider's renewal of the contract last year. In short, the organization described the 2021 contract renewal as "a negligent mistake."

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“DirecTV made a negligent mistake in 2021 when it renewed its contract with OAN even after OAN spent weeks attacking the election and stoking the embers that helped fuel the Jan. 6 insurrection. They gave OAN a full year to undermine our democracy — and our country suffered for it.”

She added, DirecTV has been “functionally propping up OAN for years. Without DirecTV, OAN would certainly not exist in its current form, and possibly not at all."

Following the heightened controversy surrounding the politicization of the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 presidential election, OAN emerged as an epicenter for misinformation often echoing election falsehoods and conspiracy theories promoted by former President Donald Trump and his allies.

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

Mystery Surrounds Decision By DirecTV to Drop One America News ... ›

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DirecTV says it will not enter a new contract with OANN - CBS News ›

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no lnx

'To defy Trump's wishes is to defy God's plan': The scary truth about modern right-wing misinformation

https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/right-wing-misinformation/

John Stoehr January 13, 2022

Death threats will change a person. During previous testimony before a Senate panel, the nation’s top infectious disease expert was calm and deferential. This week marked a break from the past. Enough is enough, apparently. Dr. Anthony Fauci was no longer in the mood.

Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas kept pressing the question of financial disclosures, implying that Fauci was benefiting from the effort to vaccinate the country against the covid pandemic.

Fauci, as head of the White House pandemic response, is a public servant. By law, he must disclose financial information. So of course he didn’t understand Marshall’s question, because his “financial disclosure is public knowledge” and has been for more than three decades.

Two things. Marshall knew this and was pretending not to or he didn’t know this, which should be embarrassing for a sitting senator. Either way, Marshall said his staff could not find the document. Well, it’s here. Ultimately, he was pandering to believers of rightwing misinformation.

READ: One sentence from the Supreme Court's ruling against an OSHA vaccine rule reveals its upside-down logic]

After a heated exchange in which Marshall kept insisting Fauci was hiding something and Fauci kept insisting he’s not – “all you have to do is ask” for the disclosure – Fauci said, “What a moron! Jesus Christ!” (He said this to himself, obviously, not realizing his mic was still on.)

Is Fauci showing us how to handle rightwingers? That’s what I asked Sara Aniano on Wednesday. She’s a Monmouth University graduate student studying rightwing rhetoric and conspiracy theories on social media. She co-authored a new report for the Global Network on Extremism and Technology analyzing QAnon trends a year after J6.

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She said Fauci’s pushback felt good, but in the end, it probably doesn’t help. “The reality is pretty dire,” she said. Propaganda, conspiracy theory and misinformation have “already infected the population.” It’s too late even for the Washington press corps to do much about it.

The way Anthony Fauci talked to the Republicans is how everyone should talk to rightwing extremists. Am I on to something?

READ: A right-wing talking point about Jan. 6 just completely collapsed after indictment of the Oath Keepers]

Absolutely. For a lot of people on the left, Fauci's pushback was refreshing.People are tired of the pandering, and of watching misinformation be lumped into the category of “free speech.”[ = wht priv?]

While Fauci’s “moron” comment was indeed a great moment of transparency, we should also consider his ability to humanize the situation with the anecdote about his own harassment.

The left is often considered "soft” in contrast with the alleged "hard truth" attitude of the GOP. While Fauci's position is not about partisanship, anti-vaxx movements have unfortunately aligned with the right and the far-right. So it feels like Fauci is speaking for us, even though he's really speaking on behalf of everyone.

It seems to me speaking for everyone is often interpreted as soft. In other words, acting for the benefit of the common good immediately marks you as an enemy by rightwingers.

READ: DOJ unveils explosive sedition charges against the Oath Keepers for the Jan. 6 attack]

:{:{}:

}:

For a party that increasingly demonizes collectivism, it's in their best interest to continue promoting "individual responsibility,” as it works for their messaging politically. But for the extreme far-right, it's more sinister. In their minds, there is a war going on between good and evil. And if you're not on their side, their black-and-white thinking places you into the "enemy" category.

The irony is that they are actually collectivists, too, no?

I hear that a lot. In comparison to other countries, America is not a collectivist culture. In my opinion, anyone who pushes extreme nationalism here is also pushing extreme individualism.

As a leftist researcher of far-right misinformation, I admit to a certain level of bias. But January 6 marked a clear turning point in how we view partisanship, I think, and we can't discard that.

READ: Michigan Republicans who circulated fake 'Electoral College' documents are being investigated by the Jan. 6 committee: report]

Why is it a turning point? We turned from what to what?

For a lot of us studying far-right extremism and misinformation, we couldn't help but feel this collective "we told you so" when January 6 happened. For the first time, we had a visual manifestation of far-right conspiracism that wasn't limited to social media or fringe news programs. In other words, everyone saw people act on the ideologies that misinformation researchers sift through every day.

Of course, how people interpret what they saw is what's shaping their opinion now.

Which is where misinformation comes back, right?

Here's something I tweeted on the anniversary of the insurrection: “By the end of January 6, 2021, Americans were left with the most damaging relic of all: Yet another unfathomable event, born of hate and delusion, for far-right conspiracy theorists to contort into a self-serving narrative that unfairly demonizes the innocent.”

I want to cry.

A lot of us can relate to that.

To what extent is anti-vaccination about purity of blood? To what extent is anti-vaccination cover for plain old white supremacy?

It's interesting, because even if anti-vaxxers don't realize it, the "pure blood" characterization of the unvaccinated has roots to eugenics, which of course has roots to white supremacy.

But to go back to the idea of "infiltration," I think vaccine skepticism ties into that too.

Please go on.

I've been thinking about what types of infiltration the far-right finds most threatening. So far I've come up with three categories: 1) member infiltration, 2) spiritual infiltration and 3) bodily infiltration.

Member infiltration seems to stem from a fear of the "other" hiding in plain sight, trying to live among them but with heinous intentions. We see that a lot with paranoia about Antifa, the feds, Jews or journalists "posing" as patriots.

Spiritual infiltration has a lot to do with "demonic forces" among us. Satanic panic stuff. With QAnon, we see allegations of Satanic rituals in Hollywood or even reptilians wearing skinsuits to pass as humans.

Physical infiltration is a lot about co-opting "my body my choice" messaging to push back against the vaccine, which many think is the mark of the beast or a 5G transmitter or radioactive or a microchip. A lot of crossover with pseudo-science.

There is so much overlap that it's hard to make exclusive categories, but you get the idea.

We haven't talked about religion. What does your research say?

Yes, religion or spirituality is inextricable from far-right narratives overall. My thesis, currently in progress, focuses on QAnon Instagram comments in the week leading up to J6.

Rhetoric that pushes a higher power is always mixed in with far-right narratives, and overwhelmingly, that's Christianity. A lot of people who believe election fraud theories in QAnon circles genuinely think that Donald Trump was anointed by God – he is the chosen leader to usher in "the storm" and defeat the evil Democrats, once and for all.

In their minds, to defy Trump's wishes is to defy God's plan. I wouldn't say that this is ubiquitous across the right, to be clear. That's a pretty extreme version. But religion presents itself across far-right rhetoric in general, even when it doesn't involve Donald Trump.

Trump abruptly hung up on Steve Inskeep after the host of NPR’s “Morning Edition” challenged him repeatedly on the big lie? Are such challenges what a democratic republic needs?

I think Inskeep did a great job, although many were upset with NPR for bringing Trump on in the first place. Your question is a hard one. People asked the same thing during and after the 2020 election when Trump alleged fraud on TV before the ballot counting was even complete. Some networks cut his speech off, while others aired it.

Any time we platform misinformation, especially when we can see it coming, we must provide context and a good reason for showcasing it. If we can shut it down in the meantime, then yes, we should.

But if I'm being honest, I think that ship has sailed.

I don't know if it matters anymore if we cut off conspiratorial rhetoric from Trump and others when it's already infected the population.

Are you suggesting the press can’t really mitigate the spread?

Once Trump normalized discourse that was hateful, xenophobic, conspiratorial and sexist, he made it more mainstream. People who previously self-censored those thoughts felt free to not only think them, but say them – particularly on social media, where anonymity removes accountability. That hasn't really changed.

I guess my point is – the press should do what it can to mitigate misinformation, of course, but the reality is pretty dire.

There's a serious epistemological crisis going on, and that's gonna require systemic change.[// heated pod occupy sunrise guy too late to stop authoritorian, congress paralyze so only prez can at, crisis will give opening]

Again, I want to cry.

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see rubber glue inverse:

rand paul vs fauci  https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/rand-paul-fauci/

https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/fauci-rand-paul-hearing/

'There you go again': Dr. Fauci destroys Rand Paul for 'distorting virtually everything' in explosive hearing

'

Meaghan Ellis

Fauci claims public disagreements with Trump would lead former president to do 'terrible things'

David Badash and The New Civil Rights Movement January 11, 2022

U.S. Senator Rand Paul once again combatively attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci on Tuesday, falsely blaming him for the deaths of 800,000 Americans from the coronavirus.

Dr. Fauci was forced to defend himself against Paul's false attacks during the Senate Health Committee's televised hearing on COVID-19.

"In usual fashion, you are distorting everything about me," Fauci told Sen. Paul. "You just do the same thing every hearing."

“You're distorting virtually everything," Fauci charged. "You keep distorting the truth. It is stunning that you do that.”

“You keep distorting the truth. It is stunning that you do that.”

— Dr. Anthony Fauci to Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who repeatedly asks Fauci about Fauci’s emails. pic.twitter.com/AFaYp5K3fq

— The Recount (@therecount) January 11, 2022

“In usual fashion, Senator, you are distorting everything about me.” — Dr. Anthony Fauci after Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) asks him about one of his emails. “There you go again, you just do the same thing every hearing.”

“You are absolutely incorrect … as usual.” pic.twitter.com/An6kgOctS9

— The Recount (@therecount) January 11, 2022

==

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/maga-or-antifa-the-right-wing-war-for-control-of-the-insurrection-narrative/

no lnx many vids

MAGA or Antifa? The Right-Wing War for Control of the Insurrection Narrative

Kyle MantylaBy Kyle Mantyla | January 4, 2022

In the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, a battle broke out for control of the narrative regarding the events of that day. The battle was not between the left and the right, but rather between varying factions of the right-wing movement, as a variety of MAGA activists sought to shape the narrative about what had unfolded at the Capitol. Would they take pride in the Trump loyalists storming the Capitol, or would they baselessly blame the insurrection on left-wing insurgents?

To objective outside observers, it was clear that supporters of former President Donald Trump had violently stormed the Capitol in an effort to intimidate members of Congress into refusing to certify Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. Threats of violence had filled social media and calls for war and revolution were ubiquitous at right-wing rallies in the days and weeks leading up to Jan. 6. As such, it was no surprise when MAGA activists immediately began praising the “patriots” who stormed the Capitol in the days after Jan. 6.

For example, just two days after the insurrection, radical right-wing anti-Islam activist John Guandolo praised the insurrectionists for showing remarkable “restraint” by not summarily executing the “traitors” in Congress.

A few days later, Guandolo asserted that those who condemned the insurrection were “enemies of the republic” and should be “swinging from a rope because these are traitors to the country.”

QAnon conspiracy theorist DeAnna Lorraine was equally proud of the “patriots” who ransacked the Capitol. Lorraine, who had been covering the Jan. 6 events for radical conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ InfoWars network, filed a report on her way back to Texas in which she gushed that she had “never felt more pride in my heart and soul than yesterday.”

Lorraine lashed out at those in the MAGA movement who were already trying to distance themselves from the insurrection by falsely blaming the attack on the Capitol on left-wing activists. “No one should be blaming antifa for what happened,” Lorraine said. “American patriots did this. And it’s a good thing. It’s not a bad thing.”

Likewise, Brandon Straka, a speaker at the Jan. 5 so-called Stop the Steal rally who has since pleaded guilty to joining the mob storming the Capitol, took to Twitter on Jan. 6 to shame conservatives who weren’t supporting “freedom loving Patriots” storming the Capitol.

“Be embarrassed & hide if you need to- but I was there. It was not Antifa at the Capitol. It was freedom loving Patriots who were DESPERATE to fight for the final hope of our Republic because literally nobody cares about them. Everyone else can denounce them. I will not,” Straka wrote on Twitter, according to a criminal complaint.

Not everyone agreed with Lorraine and Straka’s assessment. Even as Trump loyalists fought Capitol police, right-wing conspiracy theorists like Lin Wood and Mark Burns took to various social media platforms to claim that “antifa”—conservatives’ shorthand for anti-fascist activists—was behind the attack. Fox News personality Laura Ingraham—whom the House select committee revealed to have pleaded with Trump’s chief of staff to get Trump to tell his supporters to go home on Jan. 6—went on her show in the hours following the attack to claim “antifa sympathizers may have been sprinkled throughout the crowd.” Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson echoed similar messages.

Perhaps nobody better illustrates the “blame antifa” camp than former Rep. Michele Bachmann. Just hours after the insurrection, Bachmann was baselessly declaring those who breached security and ran loose through the Capitol were actually left-wing “rabble-rousers paid to put together a coup.”

In the following weeks, Bachmann repeatedly insisted that the attack on the Capitol was actually carried out by “the progressive left.”

“It is my opinion that this was a theatrical event that the progressive left put on,” Bachmann said. “The individuals who were the instigators, who brought this about, these were agitators brought in to create this problem. I believe it was specifically done to rebrand Donald Trump as being an insurrectionist and a leader of a terrorist movement. I also believe that this was done to rebrand the Make America Great agenda—because remember, that was considered extremely popular by about 80 million Americans—so they wanted to rebrand Make America Great as an evil thing and those of us who supported Donald Trump and that agenda as evil and terrorists.”

By July, Bachmann was claiming that MAGA activists had nothing to do with the events of Jan. 6 and that left-wing activists dressed in black clothing had been bused in to attack the Capitol.

“There were some bad actors who had climbed up … and they actually were pounding on the glass,” Bachmann claimed. “Now, a normal person doesn’t do that. A normal person would never think to pound on the glass. I’ve seen the videotape of the first 14 people who went into the building. They were all dressed in black. They look like they’d been trained as warriors, the people who went in. This was clearly a planned event; that was not the Trump supporters who were around the building. What my conclusion was on-site is that this was nothing short of a coup.”

Despite the initial elation experienced by many MAGA activists in the wake of the insurrection and the endless praise for the “patriots” who had carried it out, the right-wing narrative about the events of Jan. 6 eventually solidified once the reality of the situation began to set in. As hundreds of Trump-loving activists began to face arrest and conviction stemming from their actions on that day and the disgrace the insurrection began to stain the MAGA movement, parts of Trump’s base and the former president himself collectively embraced the baseless belief that the entire thing had been a “false flag” orchestrated by left-wing groups.

So complete has the collective brainwashing been that even those who had initially celebrated the attack on the Capitol reversed course.

John Guandolo, who initially praised the insurrectionists for showing remarkable “restraint” by not summarily executing the “traitors” in Congress, now claims that he was outside the Capitol during the events on Jan. 6 and saw “several busloads” of “antifa people and non-patriot hostiles” mixing with the crowd and entering the Capitol.

“It makes you wonder what is actually going on,” Guandolo said. “We know what’s going on. What happened on Jan. 6 was the surrender of the republic and the takeover of the republic.”

John Guandolo | ReAwaken America Tour Dallas

Likewise, DeAnna Lorraine, who was on the ground at the Capitol during the insurrection and initially declared that she could not have been prouder about what happened, completely changed her tune and began insisting that the insurrection was a “false flag” operation set up to “trap” Trump supporters and provide justification for their persecution.

Lorraine eventually so thoroughly repudiated her initial support for the “patriots” who carried out insurrection that she ultimately began spreading a conspiracy theory that police officers who had been in the Capitol that day—several of whom have since died from suicide—were being murdered by the “deep state” to cover up the truth about the events of Jan. 6.

A new NPR/Ipsos poll released Monday shows how deeply this narrative has burrowed its way into the public’s beliefs.. According to the poll, nearly one-third of Republicans falsely say the attack on the Capitol was carried out by “opponents of Donald Trump, including antifa and government agents.”

Of course, this entire narrative shift regarding the events of Jan. 6 raises the question of why MAGA and the GOP have been intractably opposed to the efforts by the House select committee to investigate the attack. After all, if Jan. 6 was nothing but a “false flag” operation carried out by left-wing operatives for the purpose of discrediting Trump and his supporters, wouldn’t Trump and his supporters want that truth to be exposed?

Tags: Brandon StrakaDeAnna LorraineJohn GuandoloMichele BachmannCapitol Insurrection

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-milton-mankoff/the-reality-based-community-and-trumps_b_13351438.html

no link

The Reality-Based Community And Trump’s Orwellian Dystopia

By Dr. Milton Mankoff

Back in 2004, journalist Ron Suskind interviewed a top aide to President George W. Bush, later identified as Karl Rove. As Suskind reported:

“The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” ... “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

The quote was chilling, because it implied that the most powerful government on earth was confident it could be guided, not by empirical evidence, but by its ideological inclinations. Reality, of course, does matter and Rove and his boss learned, both in Iraq and when the economy collapsed in 2008, that there are costs to denying it. Happily, for them, those costs were primarily borne by those who had little choice but to live in the reality-based community: soldiers and civilians in Iraq; US homeowners and workers.

==

aha:

recall early graphic of blogs red/blue but red more insular/echo

flood the zone bannon/ troll it is a deliberate strategy to overwhelm correction [by lamestream media, fake news?!]  and thus moderation; you cannot trust news nor gubmint thus civil society erodes and --> authoritartian/fascism strong MAN/strict FATHER to fix, maga

flood the zone with shit/disinfo  might originally been troll tactic to deflect accurate critiques/blame and rubber glue inverse crypto bizarro mirror world --> Earth2; but always hype fear about THEM enemy threat to all that's good, grift for $ to fight the evil

amplify/accelerate --> radicalization; enemy // target // tyrant

aha echo is the opposite of correction,[WELL THERE'S A SORT OF CORRECTION BUT IN THE WRONG DIRECTION BY A SMALLER AND SMALLER SUBSET OF WACKOS THAT IS IRONICALLY GETTING LARGER AND LARGER AND FINDING/MAKING EACH OTHER [[CRAZIER]];  and algo gives incremental DOSE of crazy that builds on previous slightly less crazy:--> earth2 delusional break from reality is phase shift/level up/ tip pt? doom spiral?

12 21 an salon https://www.alternet.org/2021/12/tucker-carlson/

the TV was talking to me. I was in the midst of a delusion that the news anchors on CNN were operatives of a shadow government run by the Clintons. Every time I crossed the living room of my father's dingy basement apartment, their heads followed me and the news anchors interrogated me about my role in the Russia investigation. I believed "Russia investigation" was really code for a global conspiracy to enslave humanity through mind control. President Donald Trump and the Republicans were secretly working to overturn this shadow government and end the deep state programs. Targets of torture like me would be set free.

I turned the channel to FOX News. They repeated over and over that Hilary Clinton was a criminal. Even though I was a Democrat and had voted for Bill Clinton twice, I mailed in the form to join the Republican Party. Then I faxed evidence to the Russian consulate and sent a letter to the CIA offering to cooperate in the investigation.

What I didn't know I was that I was in the advanced stages of untreated paranoid schizophrenia. I was experiencing a psychotic break from reality.

It all seemed so real.

When I was eventually treated, my psychiatrist explained to me, "With paranoid schizophrenia it's just like "The Bourne Identity" — there are people for you, people against you, and somebody always has to be the villain."

I know what you're thinking — thank God they have medication for these people.Now, I wonder, is the average American so different from me? Are we all susceptible to paranoid thoughts, conspiratorial thinking and bias when executive function in the frontal lobes and our ability to reason are disabled by fear?

Terrified by a global pandemic, there are people who believe Bill Gates is an evil mastermind who engineered the coronavirus, with plans to depopulate and microchip the world's population, while profiting in the process. Antivaxxers refuse to take a vaccine they think will alter the structure of human DNA. Our brains seek to impose order. Conspiracy theories can provide answers to people who feel overwhelmed. But ideally the frontal lobes should step in to challenge strange thoughts by asking the question: Is what I am perceiving based in reality?

Dr. Oliver Freudenreich, Co-Director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Psychosis Program, states that there is no generally agreed-upon definition on what constitutes a delusion. From a psychiatric or biological perspective, delusions are driven by excessive amounts of the neurotransmitter dopamine. There is a biological basis to them, and treatment can correct this abnormality. A person with such delusions (e.g., somebody with schizophrenia) is expected to respond to being treated with an antipsychotic medication which blocks dopamine. In other words, one can take a pill and think rationally.

However, many people can't do that if their delusional thinking is part of a worldview that is more an ideology. According to Dr. Freudenreich, when people create their own insular groups — where delusional ideas are never corrected, but simply bounce around in an echo chamber — it is much harder to fight those types of delusions.

Policy divides are now often framed as a battle between good and evil.The most obvious consequence of overheated partisan rhetoric is that someone with an untreated psychiatric illness can go on to commit an act of violence against a person or group that they believe is a perpetrator of their suffering. This is rare. More common is the normal person who goes down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole and finds a world that makes sense to them.

On January 6th, 2021, incited by President Trump and believing the election had been stolen, a mob attacked the Capital building. Some in the crowd showed up for the "Storm," which is a QAnon conspiracy theory that posits that Trump was planning mass arrests of a secret cabal of satanic pedophiles and coup plotters, headed by Hilary Clinton and George Soros. Capitol police described the scene as being like fighting a medieval battle.

Social dynamics can propagate conspiracy-based thinking that mimics biologically triggered delusions. But there is no medication that will stop mass violence fueled by conspiracies.

I was a forty-six-year-old filmmaker when I suddenly began to have paranoid thoughts that people were following me. When I lost my day job due to bizarre behavior, I lost my excellent health insurance. I was dumped into America's broken mental health care system that offers substandard psychiatric care to patients on Medicaid, while spending vast amounts of taxpayer money. Misdiagnosed and neglected at the county hospital, I got sicker and sicker … until the TV started talking to me.

Years of my life are now gone. I try not to be bitter that I ended up unemployed, bankrupt and almost homeless, when all I needed was proper medical care. Every day I am grateful that I didn't wind up living on the streets or locked up in prison, like so many people with schizophrenia.

It's easy to mock people who think Bill Gates wants to put a microchip in them with the coronavirus vaccine. But it's much harder to separate conspiracy theorists' larger existential fears from our own. We're approaching the second year of a global pandemic, which is causing mass anxiety and depression. The internet routinely displays images of future roads in major cities as gushing rivers due to climate change. Billions of fish were boiled in the American Northwest and Canada during an unprecedented heatwave this summer. If someone's mind starts spinning with their wildest fears and finds solace in a conspiracy theory, can you really blame them?

Television is a powerful medium. CNN and FOX News repeat the same headlines, the same phrases, over and over in the same news day. Back then, these read to my unhinged mind as coded speech; to the unsuspecting public, it is more akin to propaganda. When I was psychotic, I thought a shadow government had a ministry of propaganda and they colluded across networks. I worry about living in a country where the two major political parties are always at war, unable to get anything done, and the public is fed a delusional world by networks and social media companies competing for viewers.

People with paranoid schizophrenia see patterns that don't actually exist. Just like conspiracy theorists, they are constantly scanning the news for pieces of information to connect the dots about unseen forces controlling events. Both groups believe they are being persecuted by others. I had grandiose beliefs that I was at the center of every news story on TV. My mind was looking to cast a villain to account for the symptoms of a brain disease. The media handed me a culprit to blame. [q or trump sent me]

Dr. Anthony Fauci has complained about the extraordinary divisiveness surrounding the public health crisis created by the pandemic. The current battle is over masks and vaccines. FOX News paints the Democratic Party as a threat to democracy that has invented domestic enemies, such as the unvaccinated, to desperately cling to power. News anchors across CNN repeat the phrase "viral blizzard" to warn the public and scare the unvaccinated about the new variant. Fear mongering is psychologically destabilizing to the most normal person. But this media environment can be toxic to someone with an untreated psychiatric illness. I wish politicians and their media allies would stop contributing to the collective unraveling of the American mind.

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Carlson’s ‘baseless conspiracy theory’ about the Jan. 6 rioters has been forcefully debunked

Alex Henderson

December 10, 2021

January 6, 2021 was among the most horrifying days in U.S. history — a day in which a violent mob of far-right insurrectionists attacked the U.S. Capitol Build in the hope of preventing Congress from certifying now-....

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an 10 21 amanda

wildest thing about Donald Trump's Big Lie is that his own supporters don't actually believe it.

Oh, they say they do to any pollster who will ask them. A recent Morning Consult poll, like so many before it, shows nearly "7 in 10 GOP voters don't believe the 2020 election was free and fair and/or have little to no trust in the U.S. election system, while 49 percent doubt that next year's midterms will be free and fair."

But when pollsters dug a little deeper, they found that Republican voters don't behavelike people who think the elections are rigged. On the contrary, Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to act like people who both believe that they will get a chance to vote and that their vote will be fairly counted.

"A full 92 percent of self-identified Republican voters said that they planned to vote in the 2022 elections, with just 4 percent saying they did not plan to," explains Meredith McGraw at Politico. "By contrast, just 70 percent of self-identified Democrats said they planned to vote, and 29 percent said they did not plan to."

People who think their vote doesn't matter don't get fired up to vote. So Democratic demoralization, for instance, is perfectly explicable in light of both widespread voter suppression and the rapidly dwindling possibility that President Joe Biden's bold economic promises will ever come to pass. Feeling like your vote never changes anything isn't unreasonable for Democratic voters, and they are accordingly less enthused about voting.

Republicans, on the other hand, are acting very much like people who believe their vote matters. Indeed, as the poll reports, GOP voters who espouse faith in the Big Lie are more likely to believe their vote has power[twt stat]

what gives? How can people both "believe" elections are rigged against them, but behave like people who have total faith in the system?

The likeliest answer is also the simplest one: They're lying.

Like their hero, Donald Trump, Trump voters know full well that the 2020 election wasn't stolen. They just repeat the lie, like a bunch of trolls. It's a useful cover for their true agenda, which is seizing power in 2022 and 2024 by any means necessary — even if doing so requires cheating.

As Greg Sargent of the Washington Postnoted on Twitter Thursday morning, "Their collective agreement to pretend the lies about 1/6 and 2020 are true is best understood as a collective unshackling of themselves from any obligation to abide by future election losses -- the precondition to overturning them by whatever means are necessary."

Sargent was responding to reports that Tucker Carlson of Fox News plans to do a "special" to amplify conspiracy theories that the January 6 insurrection was a "false flag" operation. As with the claims that the 2020 election was "rigged," it's important to understand that not only does Carlson not believe this, neither do his viewers — even as they eat up and repeat these conspiracy theories.

We know this for a very simple reason: The same people making claims that January 6 was a "false flag" will, depending on the situation, flip around and make the contradictory claim that the insurrectionists were patriots and martyrs. It's why Carlson will claim one minute that QAnon is a mythliberals made up to smear conservatives, and then the next minute defend the very real QAnon as a bunch of freethinkers resisting liberal hegemony. It's how MyPillow CEO-turned-fascist-propagandist Mike Lindell can keep moving the date for Trump's miraculous reinstallation in the White House without most of his followers starting to ask questions about why his predictions never pan out. It's why Republicans aren't rattled by the failure to turn up any real incidents of "voter fraud" for Biden. It wasn't something they ever believed to begin with.

Contradictions don't faze right-wingers for the same reason they don't change their minds in the face of facts: The truth does not matter. All that matters is power. Trolling through lies and contradictory claims is viewed as a crucial weapon in getting power.

To be certain, there is absolutely nothing new about this observation. On the contrary, it's quite clear that Trumpism is just fascism by another name, and the rhetorical game-playing of fascists is a subject that's been well-scrutinized. Semiotician Umberto Eco wrote in his 1995 analysis of fascist rhetoric, fascism is "a beehive of contradictions," because the point is to destroy rational discourse. To the fascist, Eco writes, "Thinking is a form of emasculation" and should be rejected in favor of a raw will to power. And, of course, there's the popular quote from philosopherJean-Paul Sartreabout how fascists "know that their remarks are frivolous" and they "are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words."

This is why conservatives are so impervious to facts and become more so as the GOP slides further and further down the fascist path. Facts are only persuasive to people who believe that truth and empiricism matter. For the authoritarian right, however, facts are understood as inconveniences and obstacles. In that light, it makes sense why they take so much delight in rejecting facts and driving liberals bonkers by doing so. It's a show of power, to relish how reality itself cannot defeat them.

Like many on the left, I was amused watching perennial GOP troll Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia freaking out at the possibility that her robotic repetition of the Big Lie might actually cause her followers to believe it and choose not to vote. And certainly, there are a small percentage of numpty-heads in the GOP coalition who don't realize it's all a big con and might elect to sit out elections because of it. In close elections, that extremely small percentage of Republicans who aren't in on the joke may matter. But that 92% of Republicans are feeling confident and excited about voting in future elections shows that the faith in the Big Lie is, for the vast majority of them, an act performed for the cameras and not a sincerely held belief.

Republican voters are not misled by Trump's Big Lie. They are empowered by the opportunity to join in. If there's any chance of beating back the rising fascist movement in America, it starts with understanding this crucial difference.

==

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an hunter kos 10 21

Here's an entire New York Times story about a genuinely bad, malevolent person. It's not framed that way, of course, because Neutrality, but the Times tossed a reporter in the direction of Great Falls, Montana, to give us another report from the Trumpian underbelly of America and once again, it's a paranoid, conspiracy-obsessed, strategically dishonest sh-tshow that explains a lot about why the True Americans nesting comfortably in Trumpism have steadily been gravitating toward fascism as a matter of natural course.

The Times story is a long explainer about Rae Grulkowski and her quest to keep local civic-minded Montana residents from getting a token amount of federal funds by designating a chunk of the state a "national heritage area." It's a largely meaningless designation that provides minor federal funds to help preserve local points of interest and boost history-minded tourism.A bunch of Montana folks got a bee in their bonnets about it, part of the general True American suspicion that the federal government is evil and just out to trick people (thanks again, Ronald Jackass Reagan), and it became the local version of critical race theory, and hydrocorto-whateveritall, and ingesting horse dewormer because some friend of a friend of a cousin of an Online Influencer said horse paste cures gunshot wounds or whatever the latest version of that theory is.

But here's the thing: Rae Grulkowski—hero of the paranoid Montana class and partial impetus for Montana's reporter-attacking Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte's theatrical ban on the federal government from creating any such heritage designation in the state—attacked the civic-minded proposal by lying her ass off, constantly, inventing or perpetuating a web of fabricated claims that the tourism designation would, in the Times'telling, "forbid landowners to build sheds, drill wells, or use fertilizers." It would ban septic systems! It would raise taxes!

And it was all utter bullshit. As the Times noted and gave evidence of, Grulkowski was lying about all of it.

It was a local campaign dependent on crafting outright propaganda against something she didn't personally like, disseminating it to people who didn't give a damn whether it was true or it was false, rallying a crowd of like-minded liars to attack the opposition with furious disinformation, and turning it into the nextFarm Bureau and Republican paranoia campaign in which allies compared the National Heritage Area program to Hitler and nobody involved can stammer their way through any plausible defense of the nonsensical claims they're making.

So then, what are we to make of this? Well, Grulkowski and her allies are flat-out liars, that's for sure. They have disseminated provably false information as a political strategy, and local Republican (Trump) voters snorted it all up like ideological cocaine.Team Lying Bullshit has done its level best to make the lives of those evil civic do-gooders miserable.

It's only in the very last quarter of the story that we get to the kicker that explains all the rest of it: Rae Grulkowski is apparently a "QAnon" devotee, according to The New York Times. She claims to believe in conspiracies about "child trafficking that leads to everything," and believes that Donald Trump won the November election even though he most demonstrably got flattened, and thinks Black Lives Matter supporters were the actual culprits behind the Jan. 6 insurrection, and there we go. She appears to be someone who read a lot of hoaxes on Facebook and turned them into a personality, just one of a new "movement" of Americans radicalized by a single company's eagerness to monetize the nation's most deep-seated paranoias.

Well of course someone who believes an assortment of the most malevolent, antisemitic, racist, pro-fascist conspiracy theories being passed around the internet is going to be similarly loose when inventing anti-government reasons to oppose whatever her neighbors are doing. But—and this is the crux of the Times story and the lesson to be taken from all of this—it worked.

It worked, because of course it did. The propaganda effort was overwhelmingly successful, enough to gain the support of conservative state lawmakers who did not give a damn whether the claims were true. Nobody involved appears to have given a damn whether they were promoting lies. The invention of propaganda was the core strategy: taking a minor civic issue and turning it, through lies, into a new conservative touchstone.

The lying part is the most consequential "value" at play here. "Heritage" designations have nothing to do with any of it. Nobody gives a flying damn whether or not local historic landmarks get new plaques or whether they don't. The important part is for local Republicanism to stick it to anyone who tries to do an inch of good by inventing whatever lies are necessary to do it.

In battling a largely meaningless recognition of the area's rich history, Grulkowski was following the playbook of Steve Bannon, and Stephen Miller, and Donald Trump himself. It is the fascist playbook: If the facts are against your beliefs, ignore those facts and lie. Create new "facts" that will galvanize the movement despite their fraudulence; rather than seeking the consent of the governed by explaining why the movement's ideas will solve current problems, manufacture a new reality in which the "problems" are whatever hoaxes the movement needs to produce in order to justify taking whatever actions the movement wants to take.

We are in a world of danger when flagrant political lies can so swiftly result in success rather than condemnation. That is the endgame to all of this. If a government can be established that governs the nation through fraud—and it is happening, in each Republican-held state using provably false election hoaxes to justify new voting restrictions, and in the establishment of Facebook as the nation's new news source, one in which false information is treated by the company as marketable entertainment rather than a poison, and in the pre-disgraced thug of a Montana governor adopting ananti-government propaganda campaign to attack a federal government program instituted by Ronald Reagan himself as a supposed secret attack on True American rights—then elections are already irrelevant.

Central to battling all of it, however, is to recognize that Rae Grulkowski disseminated lies in order to attack an action she didn't like; she did so while wallowing in an absolute sea of other lies. She succeeded in mustering a populist revolt against better people and better ideas by lying, outright, about the thing she was fighting against.Now, says the Times, she has further political ambitions, given that her equally toxic and cowardly neighbors proved to be so furiously supportive of her campaign of lies.

This is a person who should be scorned. This is a person who should be shunned, boycotted, considered a crackpot, and treated with universal contempt. This is a person who is attacking democracy itself, by attacking it at its root premise: Whatever civic challenges are presented to the voters, they must be based on truth. Democracy is meaningless, is absolutely meaningless, if each election is a competition not of competing solutions to civic problems but of the inventiveness of each campaign in creating new hoaxes and convincing the governed to believe them.

Instead, we get national debates over whether some of the most infamously dishonest people in government have been treated too roughly if private restaurant owners do not want to serve them. The pressure is not to shun liars as anti-American, anti-democracy propagandists seeking to manipulate public opinion through rampant dishonesty, but whether we are allowed to direct any scorn their way at all.

How did it come to this?

The short answer might be Bernard Goldberg. Goldberg was one of those who made a name for himself insisting that American journalism was intrinsically "biased" against conservatives, a claim which is now taken as a central movement tenet because it fits pleasingly with every other movement theme of displacement and victimhood. The evidence for this "bias," even decades into the claims, was almost always an assertion that because conservative ideologues were not given exposure equal to actual issue experts, it amounted to oppressing the conservative "side" of an argument.

Ideological claims, in other words, were being shortchanged because journalists were looking to scientists, medical experts, historical data, and other providers of hard facts rather than letting lobbyists, think-tank heads, and other professional political provocateurs speak with equal authority and at equal volume.

From there conservatism moved to a very successful crusade to reformulate "news" so that facts were always debatable, so long as there was a single professional spinner who could be paid to claim they were. The cable networks, especially, transitioned from that into new forms that rarely gave scientists or other experts a voice at all, preferring instead to pit one pre-determined ideologue against another for orchestrated spats in which nobody could beproven to have lied because the segment would be over before any actual journalist or expert could even phone the studio.

We moved on to public bellowing about "the elites must respect my beliefs," where "beliefs" consisted of believing that climate scientists were sabotaging world government or, eventually, that livestock dewormer was a miracle cure for a pandemic hospitals themselves could not keep up with.

But it was the Goldberg camp that insisted that liars and propagandists should not just be heard from but also treated with respect.That if there was a conflict between facts and conservatism, then it was biased to highlight one over the other. It was treated as a given, from the beginning, that conservatism was a counter to scientific and policy expertise. It was treated as a given that conservatism was the rightful and just opposition to such expertise.

We have reached that conservative promised land. All of the news now follows the formula of pitting ideologue against ideologue, the facts wedged in somewhere—or not, depending on the journalist—but with no reproach given to those who insist that the facts are something else. The paid propagandists and crafters of outlandish, impossible lies are now treated with impeccable respect by the media. The American people are taught to treat professional liars as dignified combatants—nay, true Americans, speaking powerful emotions in the face of uncomfortable, irritating data.

And, after hounding media relentlessly into giving respect to professional fraudsters, the conservative movement itself has now shed from itself everything but the professional fraudsters. The lies are the movement; the movement is defined by the lies, and shifts as rapidly as required to adopt new ones. tucker 1/6 false flag]

You need not look at anything beyond the last election to see that. Respecting, or actively propagating, the anti-American hoax that claims Republicans secretly "won" the last election only to have it stolen by invisible forces, is now a requirement inside the so-called "conservative" movement.Trump lied constantly, about everything, in genuinely malevolent ways, and he was a product of both Bernard Goldberg's insistence that sneering know-nothings be given media respect and the shouter who finally erased all further attempts to pretend Republicanism was anything but a collection of spite-based antipathies and hoaxes.

But Rae Grulkowski is, genuinely, a bad person. Steve Bannon is a liar, a propagandist, and a hack. Stephen Miller is a white nationalist who crafts propaganda demonizing immigrants to justify brutality against them. Mitch McConnell is a relentless liar, one who flaunts his absolute contempt for whatever ideal he blustered about a month, a week, or a day beforehand in order to invent an entirely opposing one. Sarah Huckabee Sanders promoted fraudulent information as a professional, and ideological, career move. Donald Trump is quite possibly the most loathsome sack of malignant neuroses to ever have shuffled through Washington and that is saying something.

Creating hoaxes for the purpose of manipulating public opinion is contemptible, evil behavior. It deserves fury. It deserves the scorn of the entire nation; journalism, and political media especially, should have such seething contempt for the propagandists that exposure of each lie and value judgments about those that perpetrate them should be, as they once were, the profession's central ambition.

It is not enough to point out that this or that person is fabricating a hoax in order to deceive their fellow Americans into holding a new political position. Those that do so are enemies of democracy. They are, in the true sense of the word, anti-American. They are frauds. They are doing direct harm to their neighbors, their towns, their states, their nation. They are ideological soldiers seeking to do harm to the government by taking, from the public, the ability to use their vote as means of steering that government. They are anti-civil rights. Their propaganda is stealing democracy by stealing votes by stealing political debate itself so that voters simply cannot discern what government is doing, what the parties are doing, what the issues are, where the dangers are, and where the future catastrophes lie.

These are all bad, evil, rotten people who need to be shunned with ferocity. They do not warrant respect. They do not warrant civil treatment. They do not warrant malicious burbles about how dare Americans seek consequences for their fraud; newspaper editors should be devoting themselves to identifying each face and name and lie and treating them as public enemy, not both sides denizen.

These are the footsoldiers that will end democracy, if we cannot throw them from our civic spaces and treat them with the contempt that hoax promoters deserve. These are not the days of tar and feathers, but they can certainly be the days of belittlement, consequences, and public reproach. These are the vapid, self-serving cowards whose lies spur domestic terrorists to violence, and who kill Americans by the thousands by pushing fraudulent information about a deadly pandemic. These are not people who lie of happenstance or impulse, but people who specifically seek to bend government through a pattern of anti-American deceit.

There is no neutrality to be had in reporting like this. Someone who manipulates American politics by lying to the American public is acting with malevolence; reporters should feel a civic duty not just to expose them, but to strip them of the usual deference and pleasantries. Treat propagandists with more scorn than those who craft financial hoaxes to prey on the elderly, or those who hide the deadly effects of a product so that they may sell more of them. The propagandists are attacking the soul of our very democracy. To hell with them. Shun them and those who enable their plots out of greed, ideology, or apathy.

Conservatism has now reached Bernard Goldberg's promised land in which facts and malevolent fictions are treated as equals. The movement itself has become a mass of hoaxes cowering under a red hat. If it cannot be condemned as a fraud, it will grow in power until it strips all truth from around us.

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badash n c r m

an 10 21

stuart Stevens is calling out News Corp founder and chief Rupert Murdoch as a "domestic threat" in response to a stunning preview clip from Fox News' top personality, Tucker Carlson, that falsely paints Donald Trump's January 6 insurrection as a false flag operation by Democrats.

"If Rupert Murdoch were applying for American citizenship today, there would be ample evidence to classify him as a domestic threat and deny citizenship," Stevens says of Murdoch, an Australian-born naturalized U.S. citizen. "He's a dangerous man who should be treated as the anti-democratic propagandist he is."

Stevens is known as one of the top Republican strategists who became a never-Trumper and co-founded The Lincoln Project. Murdoch owns News Corp, the parent company of Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, and numerous other outlets across the globe. He became a U.S. citizen in 1985 to meet the requirements to purchase and own TV stations.

The clip of Tucker Carlson's three-part series on the January 6 insurrection (below) is being called "fucking insane" by fellow never-Trumper Tim Miller, a former GOP strategist.

"I'd like to focus in on the fact that Fox is hosting one of the main architects of the Stop The Steal insurrection Ali Akbar Alexander for this 1/6 special," Miller adds. "Going full Newsmax."

In a scathing strike against Carlson, former Obama HUD deputy assistant secretary Brandon Friedman compared the Fox News personality to a radio stationknown for helping to incite the Rwandan genocide**in which more than one million people died and up to half a million women were raped.

Here's the clip, which is loaded with falsehoods and anti-American, anti-democracy propaganda:

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/ted-cruz-2655236983/

Dallas Morning News torches Ted Cruz for blaming Trump's debt crisis on Democrats

Meaghan Ellis

October 06, 2021

The Dallas Morning News is pushing back against Sen. Ted Cruz's (R-Texas) attempt to blame Democrats for the massive debt the United States is faced with as the party tries to pass the much-needed, trillion-dollar infrastructure package.

Its no secret that the Republican lawmaker is worki....

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aha see CRT // texas law to praise alamo heroes  https://www.npr.org/2021/06/16/1007186936/challenging-the-myths-of-the-alamo

;  urban legend anxiety; simple story to explain complex, make hearer center/hero of story, wht ppl here before nat am:

https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/tucker-carlson-2653475417/

salon

The American people live in the same country. That does not mean they share a common reality. This inability to agree upon basic empirical facts and the nature of the truth is undermining the country's democracy.

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/fox-news-vaccines/

Fox News is moving even further toward being fully anti-vaxx.

Tuesday night on the conservative channel's "Ingraham Angle" host Laura Ingraham booked Dr. Peter McCullough, who falsely told America, "There's no reason right now, no clinical reason to go get vaccinated."

That's just plain false, according to the CDC and credible medical professionals.

"Virtually all Covid-19 hospitalizations and deaths in United States are now occurring among unvaccinated individuals," White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients said last week. Almost no fully vaccinated patients have been admitted to hospitals.

Ingraham herself wrongly claimed – or creatively framed – her response.

"Deaths and hospitalizations in almost everywhere is down. Way down."

That too is just plain false – hospitalizations are up.

Just look at these headlines over the past 24 hours:

Spike in hospitalizations due to Delta variant underscores need for COVID-19 vaccination, experts say

Young, unvaccinated people are being hospitalized with Covid-19 as delta variant spreads, officials warn

Covid-19 cases are surging in 46 states. In one hot spot, hospitalized patients are younger than ever, doctor says

Notice she left out the rise in coronavirus cases. The daily average of coronavirus cases has more than doubled over the past two weeks, and hospitalizations are also on the rise.

Dr. McCullough on Wednesday wrongly claimed, "the Delta variant really is not responsive at all, or protected by the vaccines."

That is a curious construction. Vaccines protect people, not viruses. And vaccine manufacturers have said the current slate of US vaccines do protect against the Delta variant.

McCullough is a cardiologist and an affiliate professor at Texas A&M College of Medicine.

He also claims "42% of 90,000 Delta cases in the UK have been vaccinated."

NCRM could find nothing that accurately substantiates that claim.

The vaccine is well over 90% effective in preventing infection, but for those who are infected after being fully inoculated, symptoms are almost always mild and do not require hospitalization. The number of fully vaccinated Americans who have died from coronavirus is infinitesimally small.

The Associated Press late last month reported "only about 150 of the more than 18,000 COVID-19 deaths in May were in fully vaccinated people. That translates to about 0.8%, or five deaths per day on average."

Dr. McCullough acknowledges to Fox News viewers there will be a "mild rise" in coronavirus Delta variant cases for vaccinated people, says those cases are "easily treatable in high risk patients," but then says, falsely: "There's no reason right now, no clinical reason to go get vaccinated."

NCRM has reached out to Dr. McCullough but did not immediately receive a response.

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