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extra-judicial kill police

disambig for now PRIMARY 9 25 ON RULE OF LAW

see crm 4 fox

SEE HEGSETH 3 2X TAP BOAT STRIKES 12 25

SEE MILITARISM MARTIAL LAW INVASION BS EMERGERNCY

militia types wear helo t-shirts, RWDS

TDA boat 11 KIA 8 25 war on drugs meld w war on terror // duterte bukele

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VENEZ TANKER GRABBED IRAN OIL TO CUBA?

  1. ### Fox Noticias host suggests military buildup in the Caribbean could lead to a US invasion of Cuba

12/11/25

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MMA

  1. ### Sean Hannity criticizes “insane” Trump supporters who “praise Hitler”

12/08/25 7:39 PM EST

  1. ### Jesse Watters says criticizing boat strikes makes people sound “effeminate”

12/08/25

  1. ### Nick Fuentes says Trump’s national security policy is “an explicit acknowledgement of white genocide”

12/08/25

  1. ### Fox praised and validated Trump's legally questionable boat strikes in the Caribbean

10/29/25 3:31 PM EDT

  1. ### Brian Kilmeade says “either you’re pro drug dealers” or “you’re for taking out those boats”

12/05/25 7:13 PM EST

  1. ### Fox anchor on those who question legality of Trump's missile strike on Venezuelan boat: “Are they working against America and for the drug cartels?”

09/05/25

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MMA

Andrew Napolitano says the entire chain of command involved in double tap boat strike “should be prosecuted for a war crime”

12/02/25 9:44 PM EST

  1. ### Jesse Watters calls double tap boat strike a “hoax”

12/02/25 6:24 PM EST

  1. ### Greg Gutfeld on double tap boat strike: “It's just better for us to kill them in the ocean, make them shark feed, be done with it”

12/02/25 5:59 PM EST

  1. ### Scrounging for a Hegseth defense, right-wing commentators seize on NY Times report

12/02/25

Right-wing media praise Trump’s made-up excuses for war against Venezuela

Trump massively inflated threat from Venezuelan “narco-terrorists” smuggling fentanyl into the US

Written by Zachary Pleat

Research contributions from Jane Lee

Published 11/24/25

President Donald Trump and right-wing media have been quick to cite fentanyl interdiction as the supposed justification for the administration’s likely illegal strikes against vessels in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, which they have blamed on so-called “narco-terrorists” tied to the regime of President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela. But reporting has shown the Trump administration’s excuses are built on lies — with virtually no fentanyl arriving in the United States via routes currently being targeted by the military in a bombing campaign that has already claimed at least 83 lives.

This isn't the first time Trump and his media allies have used fentanyl as an excuse for his out-of-control policies, as it was used to justify his instigation of a trade war with Mexico and Canada earlier this year. The Trump administration’s military buildup also follows multiple actions that undermine efforts to combat fentanyl trafficking into the U.S.

Reporting based on government data makes clear that Venezuela is not the source of the fentanyl problem America faces

MMA //

  1. ### Fox parrots Trump's “drug war” justification for Canada/Mexico tariffs, even as he weakened fentanyl smuggling enforcement

03/05/25 2:56 PM EST

  1. ### Right-wing media outlets are claiming regime change in Venezuela would be easy. Evidence and history suggest otherwise.

10/29/25 4:26 PM EDT

  1. ### Fox praised and validated Trump's legally questionable boat strikes in the Caribbean

10/29/25 3:31 PM EDT

  1. ### Right-wing media's campaign for military intervention and regime change in Venezuela

09/05/25 6:34 PM EDT

  1. ### Right-wing media concoct their own legal justification for Trump’s extrajudicial strike on Venezuelan boat

09/05/25 10:00 AM EDT

  1. ### An intelligence report debunked MAGA media claims about Tren de Aragua and Venezuela. A Trump official is now under fire for reportedly ordering the report be redone.

05/28/25

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Retired major general 'big time' alarmed by missing military lawyers at critical briefing - Alternet.org

an 11 25

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AN 11 25

CNN reports the United Kingdom is no longer sharing intelligence with the U.S. about suspected drug trafficking vessels in the Caribbean, sources familiar with the matter told CNN, because it does not want to be complicit in “illegal” attacks.

The U.K. controls a number of territories in the Caribbean where it bases intelligence assets, and for years it had helped U.S. administrations locate and track vessels suspected of carrying drugs so the U.S. Coast Guard could interdict them, sources said. Under earlier administrations that meant military officials would merely stop and board suspect ships, and then seize drugs and detain the crew.

But now President Donald Trump and his military heads have decided to launch lethal strikes against the boats and treat criminal suspects without due process rights, which prompted the U.K. to worry the U.S. is abusing British intelligence to select targets and break international laws.

United Nations human rights chief Volker Türk said last month that the strikes violate international law and amount to “extrajudicial killing.” Sources told CNN that the U.K. agrees with Türk’s assessment.

Critics on X cheered the decision by U.K. officials and worried Trump was obliterating U.S. standing in the international community.

“The UK is correct: these strikes are indeed illegal,” said Valerie Morkevičius, an author and Associate Professor of Political Science at Colgate University on X. “Trump is burning through American soft power at an incredible rate.

CNN White House correspondent Betsy Klein noted the international drama on X, saying “Next season on The Diplomat.”

“Our closest ally doesn’t trust that we’re handling these alleged drug boats in the Caribbean lawfully. That’s concerning, to say the least,” said another X user, while a majority of opinions confirmed the U.K. was doing the right thing because what Trump was doing is “plainly illegal.”

“Good. We can’t be trusted not to do war crimes with dumb-dumb and Whisky Pete in charge,” commented yet another critic on X.

Read the CNN report at this link.

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Fox praised and validated Trump's legally questionable boat strikes in the Caribbean

Some at the network have been pressing for further US intervention – even regime change in Venezuela

Written by Jack Winstanley & Emma Mae Weber

Published 10/29/25

Fox News has celebrated the Trump administration's lethal strikes against supposed drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean, despite concerns from legal experts over the strikes’ legality and bipartisan warnings from congressional members that they have seen no evidence to support the administration's claims that the strikes are targeting drug traffickers.

Along with championing the strikes — many of which have targeted boats coming from Venezuela — as “pretty spectacular” and a “great move” and praising the administration’s “aggressive” approach, some Fox figures and guests have gone so far as to suggest they would support regime change in Venezuela, claiming that the Maduro government is “part of the cartel.”

\Trump’s attacks on boats in the Caribbean draw legal questions from experts and legislators

NPR noted that the Trump administration “has designated several South and Central American drug cartels and gangs as foreign terrorist organizations, but Congress has not authorized the use of force against them” and quoted a former State Department legal adviser, who said, “Outside of armed conflict, there is a word for the premeditated killing of people, and that word is 'murder.'" He added, “And just because the administration puts together this fig leaf of a legal justification does not legitimize these premeditated killings in the Caribbean.” The New York Times, [10/24/25; NPR, 10/24/25]}:

mma //

  1. ### An intelligence report debunked MAGA media claims about Tren de Aragua and Venezuela. A Trump official is now under fire for reportedly ordering the report be redone.

:{:{05/28/25}:

  1. ### Right-wing media's campaign for military intervention and regime change in Venezuela

:{:{09/05/25}:

  1. ### Right-wing media concoct their own legal justification for Trump’s extrajudicial strike on Venezuelan boat

09/05/25

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digby an 10 25

President Donald Trump's former "tormenter" turned Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has become a "MAGA powerhouse," driving an "illegal war on Venezuela," writes Salon's Heather Digby Parton.

Digby Parton recalls Rubio's "most-cringe prime time performances" when he gave the rebuttal to President Barack Obama's 2013 State of the Union speech andawkwardly reached for a bottle of water, "cementing his reputation as the thirstiest man in the U.S. Senate."

What was viewed by many as the end of Rubio's career has long been forgotten, or at least ignored, and, Digby Parton writes, "it’s a testament to his limitless ambition that he came back from that and is now one of the most powerful people in the world."

The former Florida senator, she writes, "showed early on an aptitude for sensing which way the wind was blowing," and "over the years he held both moderate and conservative positions on most issues."

Rubio, she says, initially "rejected the scientific consensus on climate change and then, a few years later, decided it was true." He was also "once one of the Republican Party’s most vocal advocates for comprehensive immigration reform and even sponsored the DREAM Act," she writes.

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"Now he energetically supports Donald Trump on the most draconian deportation program in American history," she writes, adding that "he broke with the GOP on more than one occasion when it came to budget battles, at times striking a pose as populist defender of the little guy, but overall he was a standard-issue right-wing conservative on taxes and spending."

Rubio's focus, she says, has always been national security and foreign policy as an "unreconstructed hawk," but has also taken a hard-line stance against human rights violations in China, Turkey and Venezeula.

Rubio also served as co-chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence with Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), with whom he led a three-year investigation that found clear evidence of Russian interference on Trump’s behalf in the 2016 election, exactly as Robert Mueller’s investigation had established, Digby Parton notes.

Rubio even once taunted Trump about his "small hands," something that Digby Parton says "for a man who carries around grudges like precious offspring, it’s odd that Trump has apparently decided to overlook all that, but Rubio worked hard to abase himself and get into the inner circle."

And while the political establishment and many Democrats were "relieved" when Trump chose Rubio as Secretary of State, thinking he would "keep Trump foreign policy from going off the rails," Digby Parton writes, "little did they know that Rubio had happily made a deal with the devil and now seems to relish the idea of ripping up the world order in Trump’s image."

"They certainly couldn’t have anticipated how eagerly Rubio would join in thedeportationcrusade by targeting foreign students for visa violations, as well as for unauthorized opinions about Israel and Charlie Kirk," she writes.

Among Rubio's other turns include his endorsement of the Trump administration's shutdown of medical and food programs of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), of which Rubio had always been supportive.

"It came a something of a shock," she writes, adding "he even agreed to betray informants under U.S. protection to Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele in exchange for an agreement to lock up purported Venezuelan gang members in El Salvador’s gruesome gulag."

When Russia first invaded Ukraine, Rubio condemned President Vladimir Putin's aggression, but then quickly "changed his tune," "voting against military aid early on and adopting the Trump line that a negotiated settlement was the only way out."

Rubio's stance on Venezuela, she says, comes from his background as a member of "the anti-Castro Cuban-American community of South Florida."

"Rubio has a strong strain of anti-left ideology which has made him especially obsessed with Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s socialist authoritarian president," Digby Parton says.

According to recent reports in the *Wall Street Journal*, "the extrajudicial killings, CIA covert actions and pending war plans against Venezuela are all being driven by Rubio," she writes. "Rubio and deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller have carried the day with a full-fledged plan to pressure and perhaps depose the Venezuelan leader."

Rubio's future ambitions, she says, is the driving force in all of his actions.

"Marco Rubio almost certainly intends to run for president in 2028 and sees his service in that cause as the best way to fulfill his own agenda and expand both his power and his political profile," she says, adding "He’s a fully paid-up MAGA fanatic now, and no one should think otherwise."

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AN 10 25

During Wednesday’s White House roundtable on “Antifa,” Trump Cabinet secretaries compared it to international drug cartels and vowed to dismantle it “brick by brick,” while the President described Antifa as “treasonous, probably.”

Antifa, which the President has labeled a “domestic terrorist organization,” is widely seen as a movement of people opposed to fascism and racism. It is not believed to be a formal organization. BBC News describes it as “a loosely organized, leftist movement that opposes far-right, racist and fascist groups,” and which “lacks a distinct leader, membership list or structure. In 2020, then-FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress that Antifa was better defined as an ideology than as a formal organization.”

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem told roundtable attendees, “One of the individuals we arrested recently in Portland was the girlfriend of one of the founders of Antifa.”

Secretary Noem said they are “hoping that as we go after her, interview her and prosecute her, we will get more and more information about the network and how we can root them out, and eliminate them from the existence of American society.”

READ MORE: ‘Full-Blown Authoritarianism’: Governor Fires Back After Trump Says He Belongs ‘in Jail’

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She also said that “this network of Antifa is just as sophisticated as MS-13, as TdA, as ISIS, as Hezbollah, as Hamas, as all of them.”

“They are just as dangerous. They have an agenda to destroy us, just like the other terrorists we’ve dealt with for many, many years. And today is the day that we have a president that won’t tolerate it, and will stand up and fight for the American people.”

Similarly, Attorney General Pam Bondi said that “fighting crime is more than just getting the bad guy off the streets. It’s breaking down the organization, brick by brick. Just like we did with cartels. We are going to take the same approach, President Trump, with Antifa, destroy the entire organization from top to bottom. We’re going to take them apart.”

“Their hatred for President Trump, and for law and order agendas, fuels their violence,” Bondi said. “We saw what’s happening in Portland and Chicago, and you saw what happened in Dallas. No longer. It is not activism, it’s anarchy. We can’t, and we will not, let masked terrorists burn our buildings, attack our law enforcement, and intimidate our communities.”

She declared that the Trump administration is “deploying the full might of the federal law enforcement to crack down on Antifa and other domestic terrorist organizations.”

READ MORE: ‘The Ground Has Shifted’: Experts Warn After Trump’s ‘Gnat’ Speech to U.S. Navy

President Trump said, “we’re going after Antifa criminals and all who fund and support their campaigns are in serious trouble, and we have a lot of records already, a lot of surprises, a lot of bad surprises — people that you would never think.”

He also asked the group to identify the “funders” of Antifa: “These are people that do not have good intention for the country, and that’s treasonous, probably.”

Critics blasted the event.

“After the US bombed multiple boats in the middle of the ocean, murdering people on grounds that they were allegedly ‘carrying drugs,’ the US Attorney General says ‘Just like we did with cartels, we’re going to take the same approach…with Antifa,'” wrote Zeteo News’ Prem Thakker.

Attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council observed, “Cartels have actual leadership structures, central funding, command and control, and more. ‘Antifa’ is mostly a philosophy. That the Attorney General doesn’t know the difference is quite the thing to admit!”

Bill Kristol, the director of Defending Democracy Together, wrote: “Which is more alarming? That the Homeland Security secretary might actually believe that ‘Antifa’ is as dangerous as Hezbollah or Hamas? Or that she’s willing to engage in this level of lying and demagoguery? Neither is good!”

Olga Lautman, a Russian intelligence expert and senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, pointed to Bondi’s remark about cartels and asked: “Are they planning on sending missiles to American cities to carry out extrajudicial killings.”

SiriusXM host Dean Obeidallah issued this warning: “Please understand that This is Trump regime explaining how they will use the government to prosecute Democrats. Page 1 of the fascist playbook is imprison political opponents so that the fascist has one party rule.”

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AN 9 25

Experts are raising the alarm on the United States' three recent attacks onVenezuelan ships, saying that military lawyers would have advised against them. The incidents raise "serious questions about the availability and effectiveness of government lawyers," according to former judge advocate officer Dan Maurer in Lawfare.

"I have grown increasingly concerned," Maurer says. "When those bulwarks are removed or ignored, force is used in criminal ways that delegitimize the armed forces."

Although Trump insists that Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is attempting an "invasion," experts and intelligence officials say the gang is weak and decentralized, according to theLA Times.

Maurer says the framing of Trump's Tren de Aragua boat attack as a strike on a terrorist group in a foreign country during Congress-sanctioned military operations is a dangerous one. Military lawyers, he says, "should have raised red flags before this operation commenced."

He also says that the undermining of judge advocates general (JAGs) — commissioned military officers licensed to practice law and assigned to positions where that knowledge, skill and expertise is used to counsel commanders and represent the interests of the Department of Defense — is dangerous.

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TheDepartment of Defense must, Maurer explains "comply with applicable laws and regulations when executing missions for the latter."

"If these lawyers were kept in the dark during the strike, it would reflect a serious breach of a norm (and established administrative and military doctrinal processes) meant to ensure U.S. military operations are vetted for legality constantly," Maurer says.

He also points to what he calls Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's "notable contempt for JAGs" as cause for alarm.

Hegseth's "unprecedented relief of the top JAG generals in the Army and Air Force in February, and the current plan to shift 600 JAGs out of their military assignments and into temporary immigration judge robes justifies suspicion that either JAGs in the chain of command were not invited to the planning of this attack or their legal advice — which surely would have pushed back on this plan — was ignored," Maurer says.

The administration's sidelining of or disregard for military legal advice, Maurer notes, is doing serious damage to U.S. military operations, he says.

It "bodes ill for the perceived and actual legitimacy of U.S. military operations, diminishes trust that the military follows the rule of law over the rule of command and erodes confidence in the nonpartisanship of the armed forces," Maurer says.

Former U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Geoffrey Corn calls it a "dangerous precedent."

"If ‘principled counsel’ is steamrolled in this new Department of War, what will constrain the future abuse of military power?” Corn asks in a thinkpiece for national security website The Cipher Brief.

"That this attack occurred at all, under the conditions Trump himself admits, should give all Americans reason to be skeptical that the life-and-death decisions and actions taken by the U.S. military will continue to have the basic protections of thorough, unbiased legal analysis by the very officers that commanders have long trusted for that counsel," Corn adds

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CALL ALL SR OFFICERS TO MTG 9 25

women recruit bd set up by truman cut 9 25

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MMA

September 25, 2025, edition of Vigilance Elite's The Shawn Ryan Show

SHAWN RYAN (HOST): What does it look like if they get into, I mean — I don't even know what we would call it here. I was just gonna call it a TIC, a troops in contact. But I mean, you know, with the MS-13 gangs, the cartels, the Bloods, the Crips, I mean, you know, Hell's Angels, I don't know. You know, there's gang members all over the place, you know, tons of different gangs — I mean, what does it look like if MS-13 pushes back against the National Guard and happens to fire upon them? I mean, do they have ROEs or?

DANIEL DRISCOLL (SECRETARY OF THE ARMY): Yeah, I mean, I think, I think they would see the full might and fury of our United States Army. They would see the full might and fury of the most powerful government in the history of the world. And, I think the president and secretary of war have been very clear that we — they are taking a hard line, and that kind of violence is no longer acceptable in our nation.

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an 9 25

On September 1 in the Caribbean, U.S. Navy forces attacked, on orders from President Donald Trump, a Venezuelan boat he alleges was operated by members of the dangerous Tren de Aragua gang and contained drugs that were headed for the United States. The boat was in international waters, and everyone on board was killed.

The Trump administration continues to aggressively defend that attack and subsequent attacks on boats carried out September 15-19.

But the New York Times' editorial board, in a scathing editorial published on September 24, stresses that Trump acted without concrete proof that people on those boats were smuggling drugs.

"Somewhere mingled in the foam and debris of the Caribbean Sea are the remains of at least 17 people who were killed this month by U.S. military forces on the orders of President Trump," the Times editorial board writes. "They were aboard three speedboats that the Trump Administration said were carrying drugs and smugglers from Venezuela. Perhaps they were. Yet the administration has produced no evidence for its claims. And even if the allegations are correct, blowing up the boats is a lawless exercise in the use of deadly force."

Trump, the Times editorial board notes, "assured the public that the passengers were not only drug traffickers, but also, 'narcoterrorists' and members of the Tren de Aragua criminal gang, which he said was under the control of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela."

"The self-defense justification looks especially weak after The Times reported that the first of the three boats turned away from the United States before being destroyed," the board warns. "With these attacks, Mr. Trump has ordered the summary execution of people who are not at war with the United States in any traditional sense of the term and who may not even have been committing the crime of which he accused them. It is a violation of legal due process that should alarm all Americans. It is even more extreme than his policy of sending migrants to a brutal prison in El Salvador, based on questionable claims that they belonged to Tren de Aragua and without any chance to contest the government's claims."

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The Times board continues, "The United States, created in opposition to monarchy, should never become a country where the president can order the indefinite imprisonment or the unilateral killing of people merely because he has deemed them to be criminals."

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MMA

LISA KENNEDY MONTGOMERY (CO-HOST): I don't like it. I don't like it because of the nuns. Because all it takes is one fishing boat with a broken radio or people who don't speak English and you're killing innocent civilians and I do not like that.

The war on drugs failed the first time around. Things can go very badly here. We have not properly addressed demand in this country. That has not gone away. That is one of the reasons that the cartels proliferated during and after the war on drugs. So we do have to address demand in this country. We do have to address why do people, especially kids, in this country want to put things in their body they know can kill them? It is terrifying.

And instead, we're doing it wrong because we are, you know, we're giving people heroin to shoot up instead of taking people who need the most mental health treatment and who need the most drug treatment and getting them into facilities which can extend their lives and make them better. So, you know, I do agree with Rand Paul here that if there are people we want to go after, instead of just killing them without any due process, put them on trial. And, you know if they get tried in a state where they do have the death penalty, then let due process play out.

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BLEW UP 2ND BOAT? AN 9 25

'Deeply troubling': Military expert warns Trump is unilaterally 'deciding to kill people'

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mma

Right-wing media's campaign for military intervention and regime change in Venezuela

Conservative pundits have spent August and September beating the drums of war

Written by Media Matters Staff

Research contributions from John Knefel, Alyssa Tirrell, Gideon Taaffe, Pete Tsipis, Jane Lee, Bushra Sultana & Helena Hind

:{Published 09/05/25

Right-wing media outlets have spent August and September agitating for the Trump administration to take military action against Venezuela, including possibly toppling the government of President Nicolas Maduro.

On August 8, The New York Times reported that President Donald Trump ordered the Pentagon to begin targeting “foreign drug cartels” including the Venezuelan group Cartel de los Soles, which the administration recently labeled as a “specially designated global terrorist” organization supposedly headed by Maduro. Later that month, Trump directed U.S. warships carrying thousands of Marines and sailors to Venezuelan waters. On September 2, Trump ordered the military to strike a boat in the Caribbean allegedly carrying illicit narcotics, killing the 11 people aboard.

Right-wing pundits reacted by defending the legality of the strike even before the White House had offered its official legal rationale. Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner asked whether critics of the airstrike were “working against America and for the drug cartels with their support."

Right-wing media’s push for war on Venezuela

Throughout August and September, right-wing pundits pushed for the Trump administration to carry out military action — which is to say, to wage war — against Venezuela. These commentators sometimes praised Trump for revitalizing the Monroe Doctrine, a longheld dream of MAGA media that connotes U.S. imperial dominance in the Western Hemisphere.

Right-wing pundits also called for the toppling of the Maduro government.

Even as experts challenged the supposed legal basis of the airstrike on the boat that killed 11 people, right-wing pundits continued to praise Trump and celebrate what they characterized as his decisive action.

Conservative pundits suggested that we need more military intervention like Trump’s actions regarding Venezuela, that “Mexico may be next,” and that his campaign thus far signals to other Latin American countries that “the U.S. means business.” Trump has contemplated bombing parts of Mexico for years.

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11 PPL ON BD SO LIKELY HUMAN SMUGGLING?

MMA

September 5, 2025, edition of Fox News' The Faulkner Focus

HARRIS FAULKNER (ANCHOR): We begin with this Fox News alert. The Trump administration ramping up its mission to stop narco-terrorists who are bringing in deadly drugs to the United States. Now he has slowed things down to a crawl at the border. So that has helped. But we have a tremendous amount of things coming into the country in other ways. I mean, you know, they are being pushed from China, we know that. That's where the original sourcing is. The Pentagon is reportedly deploying ten advanced fighter jets to Puerto Rico now to join the fight against the drug cartels. Those jets will join a growing military build-up into the Caribbean. So I want to get into how this is still getting into the country. We will. I'm Harris Faulkner. You are in the Faulkner focus.

This week the U.S. Military took out a vessel the administration says was carrying Venezuelan gang members and drugs. It's hard to believe that that wouldn't be a good thing for everybody — because it is. Somebody's not really telling the truth on this. Under a Trump administration, the people on the left and the legacy media say this is a bad thing. Why?

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FAULKNER: I love that part about: It feels to me. That's not exactly how any of this works. So are they just fooling around on the left or do they realize what they actually sound like? Are they working against America and for the drug cartels with their support? These are questions they need to answer.

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MMA

September 3, 2025, edition of The Charlie Kirk Show, streamed on Rumble

CHARLIE KIRK (HOST): I want start with a story yesterday, which I love, and it was not getting enough coverage. We can go to the b-roll. President Donald Trump has been very clear that he wants to shrink the map and focus on hemispheric dominance. He was trying to end wars abroad and really focus on our own hemisphere being abused. Yesterday — this is the MAGA doctrine, otherwise known as the Monroe Doctrine 2.0 — President Donald Trump authorized a military strike yesterday of drug runners and drug traffickers of Tren de Aragua that were bringing life-ending drugs to the United States, you can kind of see here in a speedboat.

They're in international waters. I don't know all the legal technicalities here. Obviously, it passed the muster because they authorized it, and they did a drone strike in the Caribbean. Alex, what are your thoughts here? I'm at least thrilled finally that we're using military force in our own hemisphere against people that would have done harm against the American homeland. They actually are a much greater threat, what you are seeing on-screen are a much greater threat than Vladimir Putin. Those drug traffickers would've killed a lot more people than Russian soldiers. Alex Marlow.

ALEX MARLOW (EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, BREITBART): Yeah. You're absolutely right about this, Charlie, and this is just perfect in terms of Trump national security doctrine focusing on our hemisphere first, which — I will tell you, our national security editor at Breitbart News, Frances Martel, she's a Latin American woman, and I'll tell you, this hits such close to home with people who've survived — of ancestry who survived communism in our hemisphere, and have seen Democrat after Democrat and establishment Republican after establishment Republican in this country focus on Europe, focus on the Middle East, and not remember our own hemisphere.

Now we're all aware of the threat of Far East in China, but China's has an encroachment that's taking place into that exact hemisphere, into Central and South America, and so I look at all of this as countering China. But let's be specific about fentanyl and drugs and these gangs that are taking advantage of our open border and have created these industries that bring devastating drugs, the type of stuff that not just ruin lives, that ruin families, ruin communities. They come up into our country, and we've allowed it. We've tolerated it. And Trump comes in one fell swoop, wipes out a bunch of them, sends an unbelievable signal that if you try to bring this poison into America, you're going to face deadly consequences. It is just peak Trump, and I love it.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/in-trumps-america-there-is-before-due-process/

IMI

The federal government's killing of Michael Reinoehl exactly two months before the November 3 presidential race ought to have been one of the most high-profile election issues being discussed in America. Instead, it has been almost forgotten save for some media outlets starting to question the official narrative of his death. The little-known self-proclaimed "antifa" activist was killed by federal agents on September 3. Officers claimed that he had fired shots at them before being gunned down. But a week after his killing, the Washington Post found that "the wanted man wasn't obviously armed."

The Thurston County sheriff in Lacey, Washington, where the suspect was killed, released a public statement saying his investigation team "can confirm… that Mr. Reinoehl pointed the handgun that he had in his possession at the officers at the time of the shooting." The U.S. Marshals Service whose forces were the ones that shot Reinoehl released a similar statement claiming that the fugitive task force that had been sent to his location "attempted to peacefully arrest him," but, after being shot at, "Task force members responded to the threat and struck the suspect who was pronounced dead at the scene."

News outlets took the official statements at their word and dutifully reported the incident as one where a suspected killer opened fire on officers and was fatally shot in the course of his arrest. In other words, there was "nothing to see here." But according to a New York Times investigation six weeks after his death, it remains unclear "whether law enforcement officers made any serious attempt to arrest Mr. Reinoehl before killing him."

According to nearly two dozen witnesses that the New York Times spoke to, "all but one said they did not hear officers identify themselves or give any commands before opening fire." Even though Reinoehl was armed at the time of his death, his handgun was found in his pocket and an AR-style rifle in a bag in his car, suggesting he did not threaten the officers trying to arrest him as official accounts had initially claimed.

Reinoehl was wanted in connection to the fatal shooting of a Trump-supporting right-wing activist named Aaron J. Danielson during Black Lives Matter protests in Portland, Oregon. President Donald Trump ranted on Twitter on the day he was killed, "Why aren't the Portland Police ARRESTING the cold blooded killer" and adding,"Everybody knows who this thug is." Later he hailed the fatal shooting triumphantly, saying in a Fox News interview:

"We sent in the U.S. Marshals for the killer, the man who killed the young man on the street.… Two and a half days went by, and I put out [on Twitter], 'When are you going to go get him?' And the U.S. Marshals went in to get him, and theyended in a gunfight. This guy was a violent criminal, and the U.S. Marshals killed him. And I'll tell you something—that's the way it has to be. There has to beretribution when you have crime like this."

In referring to Reinoehl as a "cold blooded killer" and "violent criminal" even though at the time of his death he was a suspect, Trump made clear that in his America, "law and order" means you are guilty before being proven so and can be targeted for extrajudicial assassination if those in power decide you deserve it. Such shocking words coming from any other head of state in the world would trigger instant condemnations from the U.S. State Department. Speaking to his supporters, Trumpboasted of the "great job" that U.S. Marshals did in Portland, adding meaningfully, "you know what I mean."

Attorney General William Barr, who appears to have no understanding of how the nation's system of criminal justice is supposed to work, released a statement praising the federal troops' actions and echoing Trump's words in more official-sounding language. Barr called Reinoehl, "a dangerous fugitive, admitted Antifa member, and suspected murderer," and said before any investigation into the killing was complete that "[w]hen Reinoehl attempted to escape arrest and produced a firearm, he was shot and killed by law enforcement officers." In doing so, Barr too justified this extrajudicial assassination as Trump did and went as far as calling the whole incident, "a significant accomplishment in the ongoing effort to restore law and order to Portlandand other cities." He applauded "the fugitive task force team that located Reinoehl and prevented him from escaping justice."

To Barr, the top law enforcement official in the nation, "justice" meant death, rather than arrest followed by charges and a fair trial. To Barr and Trump, the constant drumbeat of "law and order" is essentially a promise to fatally punish those perceived as enemies of the government.

In addition to the Washington Post and the New York Times, several other media outlets have corroborated that Reinoehl's killing appeared unjustified. Rolling Stone characterizes one eyewitness's account of the scene as "a violent ambush" that "resembled an execution." Oregon Public Broadcasting in collaboration with ProPublica spoke to witnesses who said that the officers shot him without warning and "looked less like law enforcement officers than members of a right-wing militia."

In a VICE News interview released just after his death, Reinoehl can be seen claiming that he acted in self-defense in Portland—just as an attorney for Kyle Rittenhouse, the Trump-supporting armed suspect in the Kenosha, Wisconsin, killing of two Black Lives Matter activists, said. With Reinoehl dead at the hands of U.S. Marshals, we will never know the truth.

Instead, Reinoehl now serves as the perfect symbol of the shadowy enemy that Trump rails against. A participant in Black Lives Matter protests, Reinoehl claimed he was "100% ANTIFA all the way." The president's promise to designate "ANTIFA" (which is an ideology, not an organization) as "a Terrorist Organization" has fed into dangerous notions designed to create panic among his base. It has raised the specter of "violent mobs" terrorizing communities that only swift government action of the sort aimed at Reinoehl can quell.

But who are the "violent mobs" really? In Trump's world, armed self-defense is acceptable only for white supremacists who support him, not for the left-wing activists they routinely threaten and hurt. Since protests began earlier this year, according to NPR, "Right-wing extremists are turning cars into weapons, with reports of at least 50 vehicle-ramming incidents" at protests against police brutality. Conservative news outlets including Fox News and the Daily Caller have encouraged such attacks. Even the Department of Homeland Security's latest threat assessment identifies, "racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists—specifically white supremacist extremists," as "the most persistent and lethal threat in the Homeland" among what the agency designates as "Domestic Violent Extremists" or DVEs.

As if to underscore the threat, more than a dozen white men were just arrested (without being harmed) in connection with a kidnapping plot aimed at Michigan's Governor Gretchen Whitmer. The governor, who is among several women who have faced Trump's online ire, said, "I do believe that there are still serious threats that groups like this group, these domestic terrorists, are finding comfort and support in the rhetoric coming out of Republican leadership in the White House to our state house."

In Trump's America, white nationalist armed vigilante men reign supreme while those of us speaking out against fascism are symbolized by Reinoehl—and like him will be not be considered innocent until proven guilty. We will never know whether or not Reinoehl was guilty of murdering Danielson, as he was not given a chance to stand trial. In Trump's America, there will be no law, only order. To Trump, "[t]here has to be retribution," rather than due process. Among the many issues at stake in the November 3 election, this ought to be a central concern.

Sonali Kolhatkar is the founder, host and executive producer of "Rising Up With Sonali," a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/trump-draws-criticism-for-praising-what-he-thought-was-an-extrajudicial-this-is-so-beyond-the-pale/

https://theintercept.com/2020/09/30/neo-fascist-proud-boys-exult-trump-telling-stand-not-stand/

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Robert Mackey

September 30 2020,

neo-Fascist Proud Boys Exult Over Trump Telling Them to “Stand By,” Not Stand Down

Asked to tell white supremacists and militia groups to stay away from protests, the president told some to be on alert.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP thrilled members of the violent far-right gang known as the Proud Boys on Tuesday when he responded to a question from debate moderator Chris Wallace, about whether he would be willing to tell white supremacists and militia groups that support him to stand down, by instead telling that group to “stand back and stand by.”

While the president’s reply struck some observers as more evidence of his inability to stem the torrent of half-digested thoughts and phrases that fly from his lips in an incoherent jumble, leaders of the neo-fascist group exulted on the social media platforms Telegram and Parler, seeing the answer as a call to inflict violence on left-wing antifascist activists and protesters.

A screenshot from the Parler account of the Proud Boys founder, Gavin McInnes.]

“Trump basically said to go fuck them up! this makes me so happy,” Joe Biggs, who organized a Proud Boys rally that drew an embarrassingly small crowd of a few hundred in Portland, Oregon on Saturday, wrote. Biggs had reason to be encouraged, since Trump did stop short of actually condemning the group, pivoting instead to say: “But I’ll tell you what, I’ll tell you what, somebody’s got to do something about antifa and the left, because this is not a right-wing problem… this is a left-wing problem.”

A screenshot from Parler, a right-wing social media platform.]

In response to Trump’s comment, Biden noted that Christopher Wray, “his own F.B.I. director, said the threat comes from white supremacists; antifa’s an idea, not an organization.” Wray told Congress two weeks ago that “we look at antifa as more of an ideology or a movement than an organization.”

“Oh come on,” Trump replied, clearly shocked to hear the truth — that loosely affiliated antifascist groups dedicated to confronting white supremacists and neo-fascists like the Proud Boys are not a domestic terrorist organization. “Antifa is a dangerous, radical group,” Trump insisted, echoing the core imaginary belief of the Proud Boys he was supposed to be condemning.

The Proud Boys founder, Gavin McInnes, who also co-founded Vice media, has described what the Southern Poverty Law Center calls a hate group as a “Western chauvinist” fraternal order that promotes violence against left-wing protesters, and embraces anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim bigotry that dovetails with Trump’s own beliefs.

Trump’s failure to disavow the group echoed his refusal to condemn the white supremacists who marched with torches in Charlottesville in 2017, chanting, “Jew will not replace us!” at the Unite the Right rally, which was organized by Jason Kessler, a former member of the Proud Boys.

On Wednesday afternoon, Trump tried to undo the damage by telling reporters at the White House that he really did not know what he was saying during the debate.

“I don’t know who the Proud Boys are — you’ll have to give me a definition, cause I really don’t know who they are,” Trump said.

“I can only say they have to stand down, let law enforcement do their work,” the president continued, apparently equating the violence inflicted on left-wing protesters by the Proud Boys to the work of the police.

He then continued to deflect a question about right-wing violence by his supporters with the suggestion that it was entirely justified by the behavior of protesters. “Law enforcement will do the work, more and more, as people see how bad this radical, liberal, Democrat movement is.”

On Tuesday night, however, the Proud Boys founder had posted video of himself watching Trump’s comments with excitement during a livestream.

A screenshot from Parler.]

The group’s current chairman, Enrique Tarrio, a Cuban-American from Miami who attended the Charlottesville rally, also boosted an excited comment about Trump’s apparent endorsement posted on Tuesday by another member, who describes himself as a “33rd Degree Proud Boy,” as well as a“right-wing death squad general,” an “ANTIFA Butcher,” a “Commie Killer” and a “BLM Skull Stomper.”

A screenshot of a Parler post from a member of the neo-fascist Proud Boys gang.]

Tarrio, who spent a year in federal prison for his part in a scheme to rebrand stolen diabetic test strip kits and sell them online, wrote on his own Parler account that he was “extremely PROUD of my Presidents performance tonight,” saying that Trump “did an excellent job and was asked a VERY pointed question. The question was in reference to WHITE SUPREMACY…which we are not.”

Despite Tarrio’s comments, photographs of the rally in Portland on Saturday showed him and other members making the O.K. hand gesture, which has evolved in recent years from a 4chan hoax — intended to trick the media into reporting that it meant “white power” on the internet — into a symbol actually embraced by racists in real life.

PORTLAND, OR - SEPTEMBER 26: Proud Boys flash the OK hand signal, a gesture often associated with far-right groups, during Proud Boy rally on September 26, 2020 in Portland, Oregon. Oregon Governor Kate Brown declared a state of emergency prior to Saturdays rally as fears of political violence between Proud Boys and Black Lives Matter protesters grew.  (Photo by Nathan Howard/Getty Images)Proud Boys flash the OK hand signal, a gesture often associated with far-right groups, during a rally in Portland on Saturday. Photo: Nathan Howard/Getty ImagesGetty Images]

Even if they don’t consider themselves racist, it is quite clear that the Proud Boys are openly antagonistic to racial justice protesters in Portland and other cities.

As my colleague Ryan Devereaux reported from the rally on Saturday, it was largely dedicated to praising two new martyrs of the far-right: Aaron Jay Danielson, a supporter of the far-right group Patriot Prayer, who was shot and killed by a self-described anti-fascist in Portland last month, and Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old Trump supporter who was charged with two counts of murder for killing two Black Lives Matter protesters and wounding a third in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

The debate moderator, Chris Wallace, had specifically referred to the way violent right-wing groups had stoked violence in both Kenosha and Portland.

Moments before he failed to condemn the Proud Boys in the debate, Trump had seemed to take credit for the police killing of Michael Reinoehl, the suspected left-wing gunman who had fatally shot Aaron Jay Danielson, a right-wing activist from a group allied to the Proud Boys, following a raucous pro-Trump caravan confronting Black Lives Matter protesters in downtown Portland.

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“I sent in the U.S. Marshals to get the killer of a young man — in the middle of the street, they shot him, and for three days Portland wouldn’t do anything,” Trump claimed. “They took care of business,” he said with obvious satisfaction.

In fact, the new, progressive district attorney for Portland, Mike Schmidt, had charged Reinoehl with murder and obtained a warrant for his arrest hours before he was shot and killed by police officers in Washington state working with the U.S. Marshals Service to track down the fugitive. While the police said Reinoehl had a handgun, one witness told The Oregonian that the officers had made no attempt to arrest the suspect, who did not seem to be armed. Antifascist activists in Portland then accused law enforcement of carrying out an extrajudicial execution of a man who was wanted for killing a member of a pro-police group.

Trump also seemed to be overstating what role, if any, he had played in the effort to detain Reinoehl. In fact, on September 3, the president tweeted a public complaint about the case — demanding that the Portland Police arrest the suspect — a full hour and 40 minutes after he had already been killed by the federal fugitive task force. The president’s tweet was sent 13 minutes after the suspect’s death had been reported by The New York Times.

On Wednesday, District Attorney Schmidt announced that a member of the Proud Boys, “50-year-old Alan Swinney is in custody and is being charged with multiple offenses for alleged crimes and assaults that involved weapons.” Swinney was charged with assault, the unlawful use of mace, threatening a protester in Portland with a gun and using a paintball gun to wound people at recent demonstrations in the city.

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Trump’s praise of Reinoehl’s shooting in the debate also echoed his own previous bloodthirsty remarks, in which he sounded more like a sectarian warlord than the president of a democracy. “U.S. Marshals killed him,” Trump said of the suspected left-wing gunman in an interview with the debate moderator’s Fox News colleague Jeanine Pirro. “And I’ll tell you something, that’s the way it has to be. There has to be retribution,” he added.

Trump’s rush to declare the killing of the left-wing gunman from Portland perfectly justified contrasted with the staunch defense he has offered of Kyle Rittenhouse, the right-wing gunman who has become a hero to neo-fascists worldwide for bringing a rifle to a Black Lives Matter protest and provoking a confrontation that left two men dead.

At a news conference last month, Trump was asked if he would disavow the provocative behavior of armed supporters like Rittenhouse, who was charged with six crimes based on evidence gathered by the Kenosha police department. Suddenly skeptical of the police, the president said that video of the teen gunman being pursued by protesters before the second and third shootings, which was played without context in heavy rotation on Fox News, suggested to him that the young vigilante had acted in self-defense.

What the president left out of his description of the video that showed Rittenhouse, in his words, “trying to get away from” protesters who were chasing him, who then “very violently attacked him,” is that those three men were trying to disarm him because he had just shot another man in the head, minutes earlier.

“I guess he was in very big trouble — he probably would’ve been killed,” Trump claimed, ignoring the sequence of events laid out in clear detail in the police complaint charging Rittenhouse with murder.

That context was mostly absent from Tucker Carlson’s selective presentation of the facts of what Rittenhouse did, but it was carefully detailed in the indictment based on the work of three Kenosha homicide detectives. It is not hard to imagine which source of information Trump had studied more carefully. So when Trump excused the reckless killing of protesters by Rittenhouse, a young man who had been in the front row at one of the president’s rallies in January, the self-described “law and order” candidate was choosing to disregard the actual work of law enforcement carried out by Kenosha’s police department because it was politically inconvenient for him.

At another point in the debate, Trump claimed that his provocative approach to the protests in Portland was endorsed by the city’s sheriff, “who just came out today and said, ‘I support President Trump.'” While the city of Portland does not, in fact, have a sheriff, the county it is in, Multnomah, does. Before the debate was over, Multnomah County Sheriff Mike Reese had tweeted to debunk the president. “I have never supported Donald Trump and will never support him,” Reese wrote. “Donald Trump has made my job a hell of a lot harder since he started talking about Portland,” he added, “but I never thought he’d try to turn my wife against me!”

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/there-has-to-be-retribution-trump-openly-endorses-extrajudicial-s-of-suspects-by-law-enforcement/

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discussing the recent police killing of a self-described anti-fascist suspected of fatally shooting a far-right activist in Portland, Oregon, President Donald Trump openly endorsed extrajudicial executions in a Fox News interview Saturday, declaring that “there has to be retribution.”

“I put out, ‘When are you going to go get him?’ And the U.S. Marshals went in to get him,” the president told Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, referring to Michael Forest Reinoehl. “This guy was a violent criminal, and the U.S. Marshals killed him. And I’ll tell you something—that’s the way it has to be. There has to be retribution.”

Trump’s comments came days after an ordained minister who lives in an apartment complex near where Reinoehl was shot and killed by members of a law enforcement task force earlier this month in Lacey, Washington said it was not at all clear that Reinoehl was armed when police gunned him down.

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As the Washington Post reported, the witness alleges that “Reinoehl was clutching a cellphone and eating a gummy worm as he walked to his car… That’s when officers opened fire without first announcing themselves or trying to arrest him.” The witness account contradicts the law enforcement narrative that Reinoehl “produced a firearm” when officers attempted to arrest him.

In VICE interview before he was killed by police, Reinoehl said he was acting in self-defense late last month when he fatally shot Aaron Danielson, a member of the far-right group Patriot Prayer.

Watch Trump’s remarks:

Lawmakers and other observers immediately raised alarm at Trump’s celebration of the police killing of Reinoehl, which the president explicitly characterized as retaliatory.

“State violence to advance the end of ‘retribution’ is death squad logic,” tweeted Brian Beutler of Crooked Media.

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Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) noted that “extrajudicial killings are something many Republican U.S. senators oppose if they happen outside of the United States.”

“But they won’t say anything about this,” Schatz added. “Every single member of the Senate who talks about the rule of law needs to speak up, or forever hold their peace.”

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