Trump 16 Verdict

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SEE 17 ASSASS 7 24

estb 6/24

merri ok

see earth2 claim no evidence, reality distortion field

see rnc 2 lara trump

see pjt 2025

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Right-wing media and social media users spread conspiracy theories about the Trump rally shooting

WRITTEN BY ALEX KAPLAN & PAYTON ARMSTRONG

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM JASON CAMPBELL & NOAH DOWE

PUBLISHED 07/16/24 4:35 PM EDT

Following the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania on July 13, right-wing media figures and social media users have spread baseless conspiracy theories and claims about the shooting.

They have amplified a 4chan hoax that the Secret Service gave a stand-down order during the shooting; made baseless allegations that Alex Soros was connected to the shooting; falsely claimed a protester at a 2016 Trump rally was the shooter; suggested the shooting could be attributed to the intelligence community, the “deep state,” foreign actors, or an “RNC/Israeli hit job”; and connected the assassination attempt to biblical prophecy and “the hand of God.”

## A gunman attempted to shoot Trump at a July 13 rally
On July 13, a gunman opened fire at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania, injuring Trump, killing one rally attendee, and seriously wounding two others. The 20-year-old suspected gunman reportedly opened fire from a rooftop near the rally, and was fatally shot by the Secret Service. His motivation remains unclear. The New York Times, [7/14/24]
## Far-right figures spread a 4chan hoax that there was a stand-down order before the shooting
A 4chan poster falsely claimed to be a law enforcement sniper who was at the Pennsylvania rally and said the Secret Service “refused to give the order to take out the perp.” A user on 4chan’s far-right “politically incorrect” message board (commonly known as “/pol/”) claimed to be “the officer in the famous photo of the two snipers on the roof at Trump's rally” and said that they “had the assassin in my sights for at least 3 minutes, but the head of the secret service refused to give the order to take out the perp.” The Associated Press reported that the claim was false, noting that “the Secret Service and the Butler Police Department say they have no agents, officers or employees with the name of the person claiming to be the sharpshooter.” 4chan, [7/14/24; The Associated Press, 7/15/24]

Social media users earned tens of thousands of shares and likes promoting the 4chan post. Multiple users, including QAnon figure Nicholas Veniamin, shared the 4chan posts or its claims, raking up tens of thousands of shares and “likes” on X and Instagram. According to CrowdTangle, posts on Instagram sharing the 4chan hoax received more than 80,000 interactions. Twitter/X, [7/14/24, 7/14/24, 7/14/24, 7/15/24; Instagram, 7/14/24; CrowdTangle, accessed 7/16/24; Media Matters, 3/4/22]

A post amplifying the 4chan hoax was one of the top posts on Reddit’s conspiracy subreddit. On the prominent subreddit “r/conspiracy,” a user posted an image of the 4chan post — though they added, “BIG grain of salt recommended.” The post was one of the top posts in terms of “upvotes” in a 24-hour period between July 14 and July 15. Reddit, [7/14/24, 7/15/24; Media Matters, 9/18/23]

## QAnon figures revived a baseless conspiracy theory that Alex Soros had threatened Trump, apparently suggesting it was connected to the shooting
In January, Alex Soros was baselessly accused of threatening Trump after posting an article from The Atlantic on social media. Conspiracy theorists baselessly accused Alex Soros — the son of billionaire philanthropist George Soros and a frequent target of right-wing attacks and antisemitic conspiracy theories — of threatening Trump after he posted an Atlantic article that featured stock photos of a bullet hole and someone holding cash on X (formerly Twitter). Media Matters, [1/23/24]

QAnon figure Woke Societies after the shooting: “Don’t forgot Alex Soros posted this in January of this year. Demons.” Telegram, [7/13/24; Media Matters, 4/18/22]

QAnon figure Pepe Lives Matter: “Remember when Alex Soros tweeted a bullet shot with the number 47 in this ominous tweet that people thought was about Donald Trump and now he was just shot.” Telegram, [7/13/24, 1/7/21]

QAnon figure Ben Moore, known online as “Sun Tzu,” responded to a user claiming Alex Soros “hinted at what was coming in a X post” by asking if George and Alex Soros should “be designated as enemy combatants at this point.” Twitter/X, [7/15/24; Media Matters, 4/24/24]

Ann Vandersteel, who has promoted QAnon, posted an image of Alex Soros’ tweet with the text “Remember this?” Twitter/X, [7/13/24; Media Matters, 6/7/24]

A user on the online forum GreatAwakening, which is dedicated to the QAnon conspiracy theory, shared a post saying “Y’all remember when Alex Soros posted $47 and a bullet hole?” GreatAwakening, [7/14/24; Media Matters, 6/30/20]

## Far-right figures falsely claimed a protester at a 2016 Trump rally was the shooter
QAnon figure QAnon John falsely claimed that “a guy affiliated with ANTIFA” was actually the shooter. John Sabal, known online as “QAnon John,” falsely posted that the shooter was actually “a guy affiliated with ANTIFA that was actually arrested back in 2016 for being involved in an Anti-Trump protest in Pittsburgh,” and that in response he was “calling on the FBI, DHS & DOJ to designate ANTIFA AS A DOMESTIC TERRORIST ORGANIZATION.” Reuters reported that the claim is false, noting that the 2016 protester was “not the suspect identified by the FBI as the shooter” and that the photo shared online “does not resemble the suspect identified by authorities.” Gab, [7/14/24; Dallas Observer, 8/31/21; Reuters, 7/15/24; WTAE, 4/14/16]

Longtime Trump ally Roger Stone claimed that “a number of people have contacted me to say that the shooter is not the man they’ve identified.” During an appearance on conspiracy theory network Infowars, Stone said that “a number of people have contacted me to say that the shooter is not the man they’ve identified, but rather” someone else — the same person mentioned by QAnon John — “who appears to more closely resemble the picture we've been shown that is allegedly the corpse of the shooter.” [Infowars, The Alex Jones Show, 7/15/24]

## Far-right figures baselessly suggested the shooting could be attributed to the “intelligence agencies,” the “deep state,” foreign actors, or “an RNC/Israeli hit job”
White nationalist Nick Fuentes floated the idea that “the intelligence agencies” could have been behind Trump‘s shooting. During an X Space discussion following the attempted shooting, Fuentes claimed that “it was either the intelligence agencies or it was these other guys who are gonna benefit with a more favorable advocate in the White House” — after listing people and entities including former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Ukraine — who “tried to knock him out” with the attempted shooting. Twitter/X, [7/13/24]

Alex Jones claimed that the Trump shooting was “clearly” done by the “deep state.” In the X Space with Fuentes, Jones claimed of the attempted shooting, “Clearly this was deep state.” He said it was evidence of “the deep state trying to kill him,” adding, “This was no accident, in my view.” Twitter/X, [7/13/24]

White nationalist Stew Peters baselessly claimed it was “an RNC/Israeli hit job.” According to Peters, “Everyone is blaming Biden and the Dems when this was clearly an RNC/Israeli hit job.” Twitter/X, [7/13/24; Media Matters, 3/13/23]

Right-wing personality Candace Owens said that if she were a conspiracy theorist, she might think the FBI was behind the Trump shooting. While discussing on her YouTube show the FBI’s efforts to access the alleged shooter’s phone (which it has since done), Owens said, “If I were a conspiracy theorist, and I’m not — I’m not a conspiracy theorist — some people might be thinking, though, those conspiracy theorists might be thinking, like, maybe it’s because the FBI did it. Maybe the FBI doesn’t want to get into the phone that connects the kid to the deep state.” YouTube, *Candace Owens*, [7/15/24; The New York Times, 7/15/24]

QAnon figure Clandestine claimed, “Whether this was a CIA-coordinated plot, or just a lone shooter, the Deep State are responsible regardless.” Jacob Creech, known online as “Clandestine,” added, “Either they planned the hit, or their years of violent rhetoric and endless MSM propaganda, created the vitriol that led to the attack.” Telegram, [7/14/24; Anti-Defamation League, 4/5/22]

## Far-right Christian media and right-wing social media influencers invoked biblical prophecy and “the hand of God” in discussing the shooting
Charisma News, which has been a sponsor of the ReAwaken America Tour led by Michael Flynn, published multiple articles linking the assassination attempt to biblical prophecy. An article titled “3 Prophecies Fulfilled with the Trump Assassination Attempt” claimed that “at least three different prophetic voices have had words about something massive that was coming to America.” Another article, titled “Prophecy Foretold Attempted Assassination Months in Advance” and focused on a March 2024 interview with guest Brandon Biggs, stated that “the events of Saturday, July 13, appear to have fulfilled the prophecy Biggs gave in startlingly accurate fashion.” Charisma News, [7/14/24, 7/14/24; Rolling Stone, 2/28/23]

Self-described prophet Amanda Grace said “prayer matters” because the assassination attempt was “meant to kill him and by the hand of God it grazed him” and claimed the “Lord warned” her that it would happen. Grace added: “Saul did this to David. This is that same spirit rising up. Saul attempted to kill David on multiple occasions and never was able to succeed.” She also suggested that God had warned her multiple times that Trump would be hurt, claiming that “the Lord warned [on] June 8” and “he warned it again two days ago.” YouTube, *Ark of Grace Ministries*,[ 7/13/24 ; Media Matters, 5/30/24] VID]

While discussing the assassination attempt on FlashPoint, commentator and self-described prophet Lance Wallnau mentioned a prophetic “decree” and attributed Trump’s survival to “the impulse of God or an angel that enabled him to not be hit.”Wallnau said that “the brush with mortality is a moment also for President Trump to realize that God himself is preserving him. And let’s agree together in this decree that he will have an ear to hear in every key situation what the spirit of God is actually saying. And he’ll wisely and shrewdly navigate, turning to the left or to the right as the wisdom of God dictates, and that he will stay one step ahead of death.” Twitter/X, [7/13/24; Rolling Stone, 9/29/22]

Far-right figures Dom Lucre and Jack Posobiec shared a video of supposed prophet Brandon Biggs predicting three months ago that Trump would be injured. Lucre wrote that “the prophet Brandon Bible’s prophecy about Donald Trump’s assassination attempt from 3 months ago has resurfaced” and said, “This has been biblical since day one.” Posobiec, who has a penchant for spreading conspiracy theories, amplified the video to his 2.5 million followers. Twitter/X, [7/14/24, 7/14/24; The Washington Post, 8/15/17; Forbes, 7/27/23]

Christian nationalist pastor Sean Feucht shared the video of Biggs and wrote, “Prophecy from March 14, 2024 about Trump being shot in the ear in an assassination attempt!” Twitter/X, [7/14/24; Media Matters, 9/14/23]

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Fox has run nearly 1,000 weekday segments on “migrant crime” in 2024. The GOP turned that bogus narrative into a convention night theme.

07/16/24

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an 7 24

Hours before announcing he had chosen U.S. Senator JD Vance (R-OH) as his vice presidential running mate, Donald Trump met in Milwaukee on Monday with conspiracy theorist and anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is an independent candidate for President of the United States.

Tucker Carlson, the far-right wing former Fox News host, “helped broker the meeting,” The New York Times reports. Politico adds the meeting took place “to discuss the possibility of the independent candidate endorsing the Republican nominee, according to multiple people familiar with the huddle.” The Kennedy camp denied he has any intention of dropping out of the race, despite his inability to gain any substantial traction that would make him a serious contender for the White House. RFK Jr. is polling in the high single digits to about 10 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight, which is enough for him to be a spoiler, likely helping Trump more than President Joe Biden.

The Kennedy family back in April endorsed President Joe Biden for re-election.

But in a stunning move, the Kennedy camp reportedly “leaked” video of RFK Jr. speaking on the telephone with Trump, according to the MeidasTouch Network. That video was was quickly removed, but not before NBC News’ senior reporter Brandy Zadrozny was able to obtain a copy and post it on social media (video below.)

In that video, Donald Trump can be heard telling Kennedy, “I would love you to do stuff and I think it’d be so good for your and so big for you. And we’re gonna win. We’re way ahead of the guy.”

It was not clear in what context Trump meant “do stuff,” although he could have possibly meant endorse Trump, or hand Kennedy a post in his administration. There had been some speculation, including in the betting markets, Trump would make RFK Jr. his running mate.

Deadline reported Trump “sounded like he was wooing [Kennedy] for his support.”

“Leaked video of a phone call between the two exposes just how aligned they are,” The New Republic reported.

In his remarks about vaccines, about which RFK Jr. has “spent years stoking fear and mistrust,” and left a “trail of false and misleading claims,” Trump shared some of his own false theories.

“When you when you feed a baby a vaccination that is like 38 different vaccines, and it looks like it’s meant for a horse not a, you know 10-pound or 20-pound baby,” Trump said. “It looks like you’re giving you should be giving a horse this and did you ever see the size of it right? You know, it’s this massive – And then you see the baby all of a sudden starting to change radically. I’ve seen it too many times. And then you hear that it doesn’t have an impact, right? But you and I talked about that a long time ago. And anyway, I would be, I would love you to do stuff and I think it’d be so good for your and so big for you. And we’re gonna win. We’re way ahead of the guy.”

Trump in the video also positively spoke about President Joe Biden calling him after Saturday’s assassination attempt.

RFK Jr. on Tuesday posted an apology to Donald Trump on social media, writing: “When President Trump called me I was taping with an in-house videographer. I should have ordered the videographer to stop recording immediately. I am mortified that this was posted. I apologize to the president.”

“Whoops,” Zadrony reported. “Seems like RFK Jr.’s son posted and has since deleted video of a call between RFK Jr. and Trump after the shooting. In the video Trump repeats his old (false) claims about childhood vaccines, suggesting the vaccine schedule causes injuries in babies.”

She included a screenshot of Bobby Kennedy III’s statement, which reads, “I am a firm believer that these sorts of conversations should be had in public. Here’s Trump giving his real opinion to my dad about vaccinating kids — this was the day after the assassination attempt.”

Watch video below or at this link.

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an 7 24

thiel pal of musk?, jd vance VP jdv praise musk at pvt teneo talk

Musk donates $45m to pro-Trump PAC — after promising he wouldn't

Alex Henderson

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Wife of dead rally-goer says she hasn’t heard from Trump — but won’t take Biden’s call

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gaslighting? earth2 trump polarizing racist so conv rnc theme of unifying cty utter BS ca rep spout talk pt

Only two days after former President Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt at a rally in Western Pennsylvania, the 2024 Republican National Convention got underway in Milwaukee on Monday, July 15. Trump officially received his party's nomination, and Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) was announced as his running mate.

Far-right Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) was among the speakers and vigorously attacked President Joe Biden on stage.

But now, the far-right GOP senator is saying that he read the wrong speech.

"Today's Democrat agenda, their policies, are a clear and present danger to America, to our institutions, our values and our people," Johnson told the Milwaukee crowd.

However, Johnson later told PBS that the teleprompter had loaded a previous version of the speech that he had decided not to use.

Johnson told PBS, "That speech was written last week. They literally loaded the wrong speech. I had taken that out. …. We should heed President Trump's call to unite."

The senator added, "We must heal and unify this nation. I didn't know how to take that out without screwing up the teleprompter."

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an 7 24

Despite Donald Trump’s promise of “Uniting our Nation,” top Republicans kicked off the 2024 Republican National Convention Monday with attacks on LGBTQ Americans, at times invoking religion, to raucous applause and approval from the GOP delegates.

“This fringe agenda includes biological males competing against girls and the sexualization and indoctrination of our children,” declared U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), a common right-wing attack on transgender children (video below). The GOP delegates, who hours before had pumped their fists in the air and chanted “Fight! Fight! Fight!” were quick to respond to Johnson’s denigrations with waves of booing.

“Today’s Democrat agenda, their policies, are a clear and present danger to America, to our institutions, our values and our people,” Johnson continued. “Democrats have forgotten American families. They’ve abandoned the hard-working middle class. But with President Trump and Republicans, those forgotten Americans are forgotten no more.”

IFrame Content

U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), a self-avowed Christian nationalist, declared Trump the “founding father of the America First movement,” and said, “I thank God that His hand was on President Trump” during the assassination attempt that took the life of a 50-year old retired fire chief sitting behind him.

“The establishment in Washington has sold us out,” Greene went on to say. “They promised unity and delivered division. They promised peace and brought war. They promised normalcy and gave us Transgender Visibility Day on Easter Sunday,” she charged, another common right wing attack that ignores Easter Sunday is on different days each year.

After the crowd booed, she continued.

“And let me state this clearly: There are only two genders,” Greene declared, raising her her hand with two fingers up. “And we are made in God’s image. Amen.”

“And we won’t shy away from speaking that simple truth, ever.”

At the end of her speech, Greene vowed, “as God as my witness, He will finally give us the country we deserve. Because Donald John Trump is the leader American deserves. God bless the American people. God bless President Trump, and God bless the United States of America.”

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'These people should read a book': GOP derided as 'absolute clowns' after booing McConnell at RNC an 7 24

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matt g says scotus

Andrew Weissmann, an attorney who served as a lead prosecutor in former special counsel Robert Mueller’s office, on Monday detailed the impact of Judge Aileen Cannon’s decision to dismiss special counsel Jack Smith’s classified documents case against Donald Trump, telling MSNBC she “stands alone” in her ruling.

Cannon, a Trump appointee, delivered the shocking ruling on Monday, dismissing the classified documents case against the former president. Cannon decided the appointment of Smith violated the Constitution under both the Appointments Clause and the Appropriations Clause.

Weissmann, speaking to MSNBC, noted “under both those constitutional provisions, [Cannon] said that the executive branch does not have that power. “

“She’s restricting the power of the executive branch of government — that is the president, the attorney general — from appointing a special counsel, saying that's something that would have to be done by congressional statute, or the president himself would have had to appoint this person, not [Attorney General] Merrick Garland.”

“It is in distinct contrast to all of the other cases that have dealt with this,” Weissmann said.

Weissmann noted various special counsel appointments, including Robert Hur, who investigated President Joe Biden, and the special counsel who prosecuted Hunter Biden.

“All of those other judges, where there's been this challenge, have rejected the view of Judge Cannon,” Weissmann said. “She stands alone.”

“What she's doing in many ways is putting in writing what she has done de facto in this case: she’s delayed this case at every step,” Weissmann continued. “The one difference now is that by making this ruling in writing — not just sort of slowing the case to a complete standstill, which has been her want — this will go to the 11th Circuit [Court of Appeals]. The government can appeal this because every other case they have won.”

Weissmann explained he “actually litigated this issue when [he] was part of special counsel Mueller's investigation.”

“And the courts, I think quite correctly, rejected what Judge Cannon did, and said that the attorney general has ample authority to appoint a special counsel as an inferior officer,” he said. “This, though, is the kind of issue I think will go to the 11th Circuit and I think it might go to the Supreme Court.”

Weissmann added a “final point” for “cynical viewers,” telling MSNBC “they can put this decision by Judge Cannon alongside the Supreme Court's immunity decision from two weeks ago to really think about the problem with rule of law in this country.”

“This is the kind of decision that would affect the D.C. case,” the attorney later added. Remember, D.C. is where Jack Smith has the January 6th insurrection case. The D.C. Court of Appeals has rejected Judge Cannon's decision. They do not believe there's a problem with the way in which the special counsel was appointed. That's what they held in the Mueller investigation. they said there was ample authority.”

Weismann said in that case, a Trump-appointed judge “held there was no problem at all with the attorney general appointing [special counsel Mueller].”

“Her reasoning was that the attorney general can follow any sort of internal guidance he wants in running the Department of Justice,” Weismann said. “He can appoint all sorts of people to help him. He can hire people. He has all sorts of underlings that are at his beck and call.”

“There’s no problem in the attorney general hiring all sorts of people beneath him to carry out the work of the Department of Justice,” the attorney explained. “She said that's true of special counsel Mueller, it would be true of special counsel Jack Smith. That's the reasoning in D.C. It was rejected by Judge Cannon. So there's now conflict between the D.C. cases and Judge Cannon.”

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an ah 7 24

Some Never Trump conservatives have long since left the GOP, while others are still registered Republicans but are no longer influential in their party. And some conservatives who were critical of former President Donald Trump in 2022 and 2023 have given him lukewarm endorsements, including House Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu.

According to Politico's Jonathan Martin, the assassination attempt that Trump survived in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday afternoon, July 13 is likely to quell the small amount of opposition to Trump that remains in the Republican Party.

Martin warns Trump's "GOP critics have retired, lost, died, capitulated or fallen silent as the former president has all but made the Party of Lincoln a wholly owned subsidiary of his MAGA movement."

"The complete and total, to borrow a phrase, realignment of the GOP into the Party of Trump was nearly complete after he avoided being seriously challenged, let alone defeated, through the primaries," Martin explains in an article published on July 15 — the opening day of the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. "But it was cemented in Butler, Pennsylvania, when Trump escaped death and seconds later rallied his stunned audience to forge a bond few American presidents have enjoyed with their supporters."

Martin adds, "With that instant moment of political iconography, Trump is well-positioned to stifle what little intra-party dissent remains in the GOP. More worrisome for his opponents, and perhaps the country, the shooting and his defiant response will strengthen his case for a brand of strongman politics to which our democracy had mostly been immune."

Two days before the assassination attempt, Trump hosted far-right Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán — often described an authoritarian strongman by critics — at Mar-a-Lago.

The Politico reporter notes that previously, Haley said she wouldn't be attending the convention — but following the assassination attempt, has indicated that she will be there.

"Haley was not only the former president's last standing GOP opponent this year, she was also a symbol of opposition from the pre-Trump party," Martin explains. "For months after she dropped out of the race, she still claimed tens of thousands of votes in state after state, as Republican holdouts registered their discontent with the presumptive nominee."

"Instead of spending Biden’s first term determining who could block Trump’s return, they slept-walked into Armageddon," Martin said. "Democrats are now attempting to compress what should have been a three-year-long conversation into three weeks, the summer of the election. And they’re speaking in existential terms about the stakes."

*Read Politico's full report at this link.

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7 13 sat assass attempt hit by glass?, fist pump, get my shoes

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an 7 24

After the attempted assassination of Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday afternoon, July 13, a long list of prominent Democrats — including President Joe Biden, former President Barack Obama and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) — forcefully condemned the attack, emphasizing that such violence has no place in U.S. politics.

Regardless, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) — once a scathing critic of Trump but now a devoted loyalist and possible running mate — blamed Democrats for the assassination attempt. Some other Republicans have pointed the finger at Democrats as well.

During an MSNBC segment on July 14, national security reporter Ken Dilanian warned that the Proud Boys and other far-right extremist groups have responded to the attack by calling for a civil war.

, "Several Republican members of Congress have directly blamed President Biden, the Democrats and the media for the assassination attempt. They claim it was a result of overheated rhetoric about Trump and part of a campaign to jeopardize his safety. So, for example, Georgia Republican Congressman Mike Collins posted, quote, 'Joe Biden sent the orders.'"

Dilanian continued, "And Trump campaign surrogate Nick Adams posted, on social media, quote, 'Joe Biden's rhetoric is directly responsible. There can be no discussion. This is a fact.'"

The that although Democrats have "called Donald Trump an authoritarian and a threat to democracy," they "have never hinted that violence was an appropriate response to that."

, vid?]

"After this shooting, Democrats, including President Biden, have condemned it in the strongest possible terms, and they've called this political violence a threat to democracy…. And experts are worried that this kind of rhetoric increases the risk of more violence."

The MSNBC reporter warned that according to national security experts, "extremists" are "seizing on this incident.

"Telegram channels for branches of the Proud Boys militia group have been calling for civil war and violence,". "According to Advance Democracy — that's an NGO that tracks this stuff — a user on one forum wrote that the Democratic National Committee, RINOs, and the feds, quote, 'should all be hung in the streets of D.C.' And users on a pro-Trump platform, Patriots.Win, are calling for violence and civil war. One user wrote, 'War now. They don't want to live and let live.' Some really dangerous rhetoric coursing around out there, Kate."

Dilanian observed that although some members of Congress are trying to calm the situation down, "flame-throwing politicians" are "not doing that at all."

"As long as there is some group of people who are throwing gasoline on the fire,"](https://youtu.be/eYfvEBLDohI), "there are sort of a group of deranged individuals out there that are listening to it, paying close attention, and think they are essentially in a civil war."

Watch the full video below or at this link.

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an 7 24

former President Donald Trump just tore into several House Republicans, and made sure to let his millions of followers know their names.

In a post to his Truth Social platform Friday night, the 45th president of the United States attacked six House Republicans for their role in the failure of an anti-DOJ amendment to pass a committee vote. He also That amendment would have made it illegal for federal and state funding to be used in the criminal prosecution of former presidents.

"Just heard from Great Congressman Andrew Clyde of Georgia that the Amendment to Defund the Prosecution of a Presidential Candidate prior to November’s Election did not pass, 26-25," he wrote. "It lost by only one vote, because one Republican, Mike Simpson of Idaho, stupidly voted NO, and two “Republicans,” David Valadao of California and Dan Newhouse of Washington, the only two remaining Impeachers in the House of President Donald J. Trump, didn’t show up to vote. They must have had more important things to do. Also, Mike Garcia of California, David Joyce of Ohio, and Juan Ciscomani of Arizona, didn’t show up to vote."

"Thanks very much, fellas, for your great support!" He sarcastically added.

The former president's attacks on these Republicans for the amendment's failure may have unintended consequences, particularly for Garcia, who represents a swing district. House Republicans will be struggling to keep their razor-thin majority this fall, as control of the House of Representatives may come down to just a handful of close races nationwide.

Trump's post also represents an obstacle House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) has faced since being handed the gavel last fall: Actually whipping the votes necessary to pass legislation. Johnson learned that lesson the hard way earlier this year when Republicans' first attempt to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas narrowly failed due to several lawmakers' absences.

GOP infighting between Trump's handpicked candidates and other House Republicans has been seen recently in Virginia's 5th Congressional District. Rep. Bob Good (R-Virginia), who chairs the far-right House Freedom Caucus, just filed for a recount in his recent primary race he lost by less than 400 votes out of roughly 63,000 ballots cast.

Good was forced to fight for his political life after Virginia Republican state senator John McGuire earned the former president's endorsement. Trump backed McGuire largely due to Good endorsing Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis in his short-lived bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

In an earlier Truth Social post, Trump ripped into the Freedom Caucus chairman despite acknowledging that Good later endorsed the former president after DeSantis dropped out of the race.

"Bob Good is BAD FOR VIRGINIA, AND BAD FOR THE USA,” Trump wrote in May. “He turned his back on our incredible movement, and was constantly attacking and fighting me until recently, when he gave a warm and ‘loving’ Endorsement – But really, it was too late. The damage had been done!”

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tries to dist from 2025 but linc pjt? has ad w him praising it an 7 24

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'Betrayal': Trump hosts 'Russian puppet' Viktor Orbán as Biden hosts NATO leaders

an 7 24

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Former President Donald Trump told one of his least convincing lies last week, posting on his Truth Social platform that he “has nothing to do” with Project 2025, the devastating plan by former Trump administration officials and MAGA movement allies to “take the reins of government” if he wins in November. “I have no idea who is behind it,” Trump claimed.

Reporters and commentators were quick to call out Trump’s ridiculous claim. Rolling Stone noted, “Meanwhile, over at the Republican National Committee, at least seven of the individuals tasked with overhauling the party’s platform in anticipation of Trump’s second term in office have connections to Project 2025 — starting with Russell Vought, who was director of the Office of Management and Budget during Trump’s administration.”

Robert Reich took on Trump’s lie in his substack newsletter Saturday, pointing out the central role played by former Trump administration officials and noting, “The Trump campaign platform is basically Project 2025. Trump’s Make America Great Again PAC is running ads calling it‘Trump’s Project 2025.‘ The Make America Great Again PAC also created the website TrumpProject2025.com.”

President Joe Biden’s campaign also weighed in on Trump’s claim, noting in a statement Saturday that Project 2025 “was written for him, by those closest to him.”

Trump’s literally unbelievable claim was repeated by campaign surrogates J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio on Sunday talk shows, suggesting that the attempt to distance Trump from Project 2025 is a strategic decision by his campaign, one driven by extensive news coverage of Project 2025’s far-reaching and devastatingly harmful agenda. Former Trump aide Stephen Miller claimed that he has “never been involved” in Project 2025 even though the organization he runs—America First Legal—is on the project’s advisory board.

Columnist Will Bunch wrote on Sunday, “Republicans are in a state of panic now that voters are paying attention to Project 2025, their plan for dictatorship.” In the two years since Right Wing Watch reported on the Heritage Foundation’s launch of Project 2025, and with greater intensity in recent months,[VID? JPHN OLOVER]

and advocacy organizations have been digging into the agenda for simultaneously giving the president virtually dictatorial power over the federal government while gutting federal agencies’ ability to protect Americans’ safety, health, environment, and fundamental rights.

Bunch credits actress Taraji P. Henson’s warning about Project 2025 at this year’s BET awards—and her challenge “Look it up!”—for initiating a “major vibe shift.” Notes Bunch,

An electorate that largely rolled its eyes when Biden or other Democrats told them that “democracy is on the ballot” in November suddenly has an ominous, TikTok-friendly two-word catch phrase for the very real and growing fearsthat a cult-like GOP, aided by the corrupt Supreme Court it imposed on America, has a scheme for dictatorship. Indeed, “Project 2025″ sounds a lot like the kind of conspiracy theory about a run-amok government that goes viral in the Age of Disinformation — except it’s not a conspiracy. It’s real — and set in type for anyone to read.

In a conversation on Political Research Associates’ “Inform Your Resistance” podcast, I suggested that Project 2025 has actually done a bit of a public service by making it clear just how serious the threat is. By making the unpopular right-wing agenda so explicit, Project 2025 organizers have given those of us who disagree with that agenda an opportunity to remind Americans how much of the progress made over the past century could be reversed if the far right takes power.

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While the beltway media spent the last week haranguing President Joe Biden over his lackluster performance in the CNN presidential debate, former President Donald Trump largely got a pass despite several days of shenanigans that Rolling Stone described as a "week from hell."

In a Friday article, Rolling Stone reporters Tom Dickinson and Asawin Suebsaeng summed up how the former president exhibited increasingly unhinged behavior while the press scrutinized Biden's debate mistakes. On his Truth Social platform, Trump posted a meme of him and his wife, Melania, with the text "Where We Go One We Go All" – the slogan of the far-right cult QAnon. The graphic also featured the letter Q, in another nod to the conspiracy theorist movement that Trump is secretly battling a cabal of wealthy elite pedophiles and will one day bring them to justice (also known as "the storm").

This is merely the latest instance of the former president flirting with the movement that researchers have described as "a danger." A 2021 study by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism And Responses to Terrorism (START) found that QAnon adherents are prone to committing "acts of interpersonal violence, often targeting those around them, including their own children." Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) was a devout QAnon believer before she was elected to Congress, though she has since tried to distance herself from the movement.

That same year, Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-New Mexico) released a report by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. That report found that, following Trump's defeat in the 2020 election, QAnon believers "likely will begin to believe they can no longer ‘trust the plan’ referenced in QAnon posts and that they have an obligation to change from serving as ‘digital soldiers’ towards engaging in real world violence."

Trump was also caught this week in a hot-mic moment in which he unleashed a profane tirade against both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris while he was golfing. The ex-president wrongly stated that he had already forced Biden out of the race and that Harris would be his general election opponent.

"She’s so bad. She’s so pathetic. She’s just so f—ing bad," Trump was heard saying.

Dickinson and Suebsaeng also characterized Trump as having a "God complex" this week, in which he praised his debate performance as "the greatest single debate performance in the long and storied history of Presidential Debates." Opining that he was "feeling himself," the two journalists noted that Trump felt his 2024 bid for the White House was "guided by divine providence."

As Rolling Stone reported, Trump reposted a Truth Social user's post of a photo of Trump with the text: "GOD HAS CHOSEN HIM TO LEAD THIS FIGHT FOR FREEDOM. GOD WINS!"

Also this week, Trump called for former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) to be prosecuted for "treason" via a "televised military tribunal." Former Republican National Committee senior official Doug Heye told the outlet that Trump is benefiting from a media double standard in which Biden's every slip-up is meticulously torn apart, while Trump's increasingly erratic behavior is given a ho-hum treatment.

"[H]is language, for years, has been so over-the-top that even with his record as president, he still gets graded on a massive curve by so many voters,” Heye says. “It’s already factored in, in a way that it could never be for almost any other candidate for the presidency. Trump saying something crazy is the oldest news there is at this point. It doesn’t mean it’s not crazy, and it doesn’t mean it’s not damaging. But this [dynamic] benefits him greatly.”

Click here to read Rolling Stone's report in its entirety (subscription required).

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badash an 7 24

Political strategists and journalists are responding to Donald Trump’s sudden, strident, and illogical denial that he has any knowledge of Project 2025, the far-right Heritage Foundation’s 920-page action plan to entirely remake the executive branch of the federal government, creating an all-powerful president in charge of a Christian nationalist authoritarian America. A Trump campaign official reportedly said the criminally convicted ex-president’s denial Friday was “a direct response” to “the Biden campaign running ads on Project 2025.”

Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, a self-avowed Christian nationalist who’s been described as a “cowboy Catholic” and a culture warrior, has been making the cable news rounds recently, promoting Project 2025. Late last month he gave a lengthy interview to MSNBC’s Symone Sanders-Townsend, declaring Heritage’s goal is to institutionalize “Trumpism” as a new version of conservatism.

IFrame Content

On Tuesday, Roberts went all-in on celebrating the U.S. Supreme Court’s declaration that presidents have “absolute” immunity for “official” acts.

He then issued remarks some have called “threatening violence“: “we are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

Roberts’ comments made headlines, apparently so much so that Trump late Friday morning moved to wholly distance himself from the multimillion dollar far right wing project that is authored in part by, according to an NCRM review, at least 18 former Trump officials, and, as of February, had 100 right-wing partners.

Insisting he both knows “nothing” about Project 2025 and has “nothing” to do with it, while insisting he “disagrees” with some of it but wishes them luck, Trump declared: “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”

HuffPost’s Jennifer Bendery notes, “All three of the guys behind Project 2025 worked in the White House for Trump when he was president.”

CNN’s Alayna Treene reports: “A senior Trump adviser noted [Trump’s] post is a direct response the Biden campaign running ads on Project 2025 & tying it to the Trump campaign.”

“Project 2025’s agenda would radically reshape the federal government & includes many objectives Trump himself has floated,” she adds.

Democratic strategist Josh Schwerin responded, “Trump is lying because he knows his agenda is toxic with voters.”

Another Democratic strategist, Max Burns, calls Trump’s denial a “great sign that Democrats should be doubling down on highlighting the extreme far-right plans contained in Project 2025. The @GOP is obviously seeing some internal polling showing how unpopular it is. Now is the time to make sure every single American knows Project 2025.”

Attorney and MeidasTouch.com editor in chief Ron Filipowski observes, “Trump’s move today claiming to disavow Project 2025 is just like how he bragged about overturning Roe then tried to distance himself from extreme laws implemented by many states after he saw the polling. Same drill. Wasn’t me!”

The Biden campaign blasted Trump:

“FACT CHECK:

—His Super PAC is running ads promoting Project 2025, calling it “Trump’s Project 2025”

—His top aide and former bag boy John McEntee is the guy behind Project 2025

—His press secretary is starring in recruitment ads for Project 2025

—Trump himself said he “needs” the Heritage Foundation, the organization behind Project 2025, to enact his MAGA agenda”

Wonkette managing editor Evan Hurst added, “Trump and his campaign are terrified that people are learning about #Project2025.”

===}:

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A controversial campaign tactic is backfiring on former President Donald Trump as powerful celebrities warn of an imminent authoritarian regime that could put an end to "recreational sex" as part of a "fascistic game plan," according to a new political analysis.

Actors Taraji P. Henson and Mark Ruffalo, and Last Week Tonight host John Oliver have managed a novel political feat this summer with warnings about Trump's potential return to the

White House: they've made millions of Americans care about campaign platforms, Salon reported Friday.

"Swing voters and people who aren't sure yet if they're going to vote are starting to hear about this 'Project 2025' — and they do not like it," writes columnist Amanda Marcotte.

"Trump's campaign likely went with scary-sounding names on purpose, both to thrill their sadistic foot soldiers and to cause liberals to react fearfully. But those monikers also make them memorable enough to break into the consciousness of people who aren't paying close attention."

Project 2025— a platform crafted by the Heritage Foundation whose president this week delivered veiled threats of bloody revolution — is described by Marcotte as "a laundry list of the far-right's most politically toxic ideas" that includes a nationwide abortion ban, mass federal firings and the dismantling of the Education department.

It was unusual for Trump's campaign to come forward with so blatant a policy shift, but not that surprising, writes Marcotte. She likens MAGA to a man who pinches a woman's butt at a bar then calls her hysterical when she reacts.

"Authoritarian thought leader Christopher Rufo is the most prominent example," says Marcotte. "He frequently speaks loudly of his machinations, such as boldly announcing on Twitter that the right is trying to take away birth control, claiming women should not have 'recreational sex.'"

The benefit, Marcotte argues, is that it fires up Trump's base while making his nay-sayers sound deranged — and she points as proof to one of the former president's favorite phrases: "Trump derangement syndrome."

There's just one problem, argues, Marcotte: It only works if Americans don't pay close attention.

"However, there are promising signs that people who aren't political junkies are starting to hear about Project 2025," writes Marcotte. "Even better, those folks aren't immediately dismissing it as progressive theatrics but may be genuinely alarmed."

Marcotte credits Henson and her viral speech at the BET Awards last weekend for the sudden focus on Trump's policy promises.

"The Project 2025 plan is not a game," Henson told viewers. "Look it up!"

Ruffalo shared Henson's speech on X and added, "Project 2025 is not a game, it’s white Christian nationalism. It is the Sharia Law of the “Christian” crazy people who aren’t Christian at all but want to control every aspect of your life."

The fact-checking team Snopes reports it has received a "flood" on inquiries about Project 2025 — which has begun to surge on Google Trends.

"One of the most telling signs that this is beginning to backfire on Trump, however, is the way the MAGA forces on social media are starting to freak out," Marcotte writes. "As Democratic activist and researcher Will Stancill pointed out, the MAGA people who pretend to be leftists to sow confusion online are busy at work trying to pretend Project 2025 is, uh, a Biden thing."

The freak out stems from the fear that Project 2025 could prove fatal to Trump's campaign, Marcotte concludes.

"Trump cannot win without a large percentage of voters backing him under the false belief he's 'not so bad,'" she writes. "The more they find out about what he intends to do in office, the more will have second thoughts about risking another Trump term."

===

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National security expert Marcy Wheeler is probing a report recently released by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) that targets the intelligence officials who discounted the Hunter Biden laptop story during the 2020 election as Russian interference.

While those intelligence officials agreed that the laptop had been tampered with, Jordan feared a "deep state" conspiracy — and dug into every aspect of the officials' identities and responsibilities in contracts with U.S. intelligence agencies.

In the interviews with the officials, Wheeler found a number of details previously unknown to the public. At one point in the questioning, former U.S. Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency Michael Morell revealed he was concerned about Donald Trump's "deep narcissism."

Speaking to the House Judiciary Committee on April 4, 2023, Morell had already retired from government but was questioned about signing onto an intelligence letter dismissing the laptop concerns, along with a number of other communications he had despite being a private citizen.

At one point, the committee asked about an email that he sent to others who signed the letter in which Morell called the 2020 election, "The most important election since 1860 and 1864 when the very existence of the country was on the ballot."

"You know, it's funny, reading the letter from the generals supporting President Trump, I agree with a number of the points that they make," Morell said when asked why he thought the election was so important. "I'm as concerned about the defense budget. I'm a pretty conservative guy when it comes to national security.

"But I have to tell you that, you know, spending 33 years at CIA and watching literally hundreds of world leaders during that time, President Trump's personality traits deeply concerned me, what I believed to be deep narcissism, what I believed to be deep paranoia, what I believe to be a type of sadism where you — not sexually, of course, but a type of sadism where you, you know, are happy when your opponents have been injured in some way — I'm talking politically — that those were all traits that I saw in foreign leaders who did significant damage to their country and significant damage to the democracies of their country," Morell continued.

He specifically cited leaders he felt match that kind of Trump personality: Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Vladimir Putin in Russia.

"So, I was deeply concerned about the potential impact of President Trump on our democracy," Morell explained. "And, you know, my fear, in my view, was borne out by his failure to act on January 6, 2021. So that's what I meant when I wrote that. That's what I was thinking."

Read the full transcript of the interview here.

===

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chief Justice John Roberts and his right-wing colleagues on the Supreme Court are projecting their own insecurities and "hurt feelings" onto women who are calling out their flawed and dangerous rulings, wrote Dahlia Lithwick in a scorching analysis for Slate.

This comes after Roberts concluded the court's term with a ruling that gives former President Donald Trump a presumption of absolute immunity for "official acts," without clearly defining what those acts are.

And, in his majority opinion, he put down Justice Sonia Sotomayor's furious dissent as sounding "a tone of chilling doom" — a dismissal many described as condescending.

That was reinforced when former Trump White House attorney Ty Cobb dismissed the dissent on CNN as “a little hysterical, and it really offered no analysis. A lot of screaming, no analysis.”

"Screaming. Insubstantial. Hysterical," wrote Lithwick. "What men call banshees, women call prophecy. And of course if there are any sitting justices on the Roberts court whose entire jurisprudence can be reduced to a soggy skein of hurt feelings and self-pity, they are not females."

On the contrary, she wrote, Sotomayor's dissent, "Added interpolations that were not in her printed text and all but castigated her conservative colleagues. This is what frustration embodied looks like. And the failure to take that respectfully or even seriously? That is a play as old as the hills."

It's hard to swallow this criticism, wrote Lithwick, given that warnings that Roe v. Wade would be overturned were similarly dismissed as “hysterical” including by senators who voted to confirm Trump's Supreme Court Justices, like Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE).

Furthermore, the warnings that Trump will be emboldened by this ruling to defy the law and extrajudicially target opponents with the expectation he'll be immune from prosecution for it is completely founded, she noted — as Trump is already posting about the idea of a "televised military tribunal" for former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), who voted to impeach him and investigated him over January 6.

"This isn’t hypothetical. This isn’t fearmongering. This is how Trump lives and will continue to live. It is how he governs and how he will continue to govern," Lithwick concluded — and people in power should stop laughing off women whenever they voice real fears about their rights and prospects.

"It’s almost as if the conservative justices’ commitment to originalism requires them to believe that women who raise any objection to their tidy paradigms should be viewed as either empty vessels or scheming witches. It’s almost as if they wish to lay down the tracks for just such a project. It’s almost as if in granting Donald Trump immunity, they may have found their path there."

===

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// dissent

On Monday morning, July 1, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its anxiously awaited decision on former President Donald Trump's claim that he enjoys absolute immunity from prosecution in special counsel Jack Smith's federal election interference case.

The 6-3 decision came down along party lines, with the dissent from Democrat-appointed justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Sotomayor was especially scathing in her dissent, arguing that the ruling gives presidents way too much authority.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett was part of the GOP majority in the ruling. But journalist Jonathan Allen noted that there is some nuance in her reasoning.

On X, formerly Twitter, Allen posted, "This SCOTUS opinion is near-total victory for Trump legally and a total win in terms of delaying/possibly vitiating prosecution. A president enjoys *presumptive immunity* for any acts inside and extending to the outer perimeter of his official duties Also big win for prez power."

But in a separate tweet, Allen also pointed out that "Barrett's partial concurrence is worth reading."

Allen noted, "She takes issue specifically with the idea that protected conduct can't be introduced as evidence at trial of a president. Also says it is hard to see pressuring state legislators - namely AZ House speaker — as an official act."

In an article published by Newsweek on July 1, reporter Katherine Fung said of Barrett, "While she agreed with the Court's opinion at large, she disagreed with one part of the ruling that held the Constitution prevents protected conduct from being introduced as evidence in a criminal prosecution against a former president, siding with the bench's three liberals instead."

Barrett wrote, "The Constitution does not require blinding juries to the circumstances surrounding conduct for which Presidents can be held liable. To make sense of charges alleging a quid pro quo, the jury must be allowed to hear about both the quid and the quo, even if the quo, standing alone, could not be a basis for the President's criminal liability."

Some MAGA Republicans are highly critical of Barrett's concurrence.

Trump supporter Sharon Cooper tweeted, " What is going on with Amy Coney Barrett? Who is she? She is a Supreme Court Justice, with a misguided view of our justice system."

Hans Mahncke posted, "Of course, Amy Coney Barrett had to disagree with something (she thinks that it should be allowable for a jury to be presented with official presidential acts as evidence of crimes having been committed)."

@GingerAmero wrote, "ACB is horrible and whoever recommended her should never be taken seriously ever, again." And @HoneywellNTodd attacked Barrett as "Justice Karen."

Meanwhile, legal expert Steve Vladeck

said of Barrett, " There's an important sub-part of the Trump immunity ruling in which #SCOTUS holds that "protected conduct" (that can't be prosecuted) also can't be used as *evidence* to establish other charges.

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no lnx

alternet

What’s behind the lie that Biden is on drugs?

President Joe Biden answers a question as former President Donald Trump listens during the second and final presidential debate at Belmont University on October 22, 2020 in Nashville, Tennessee. (Photo by Morry Gash-Pool/Getty Images)

John Stoehr June 27, 2024

Donald Trump has been preparing for his first debate by accusing the president of being on drugs. This is not new. He did it to Hillary Clinton in 2016. He did it to Joe Biden in 2020. The GOP leadership, including the House speaker, is backing up the lie. “Everybody wants to know,” Mike Johnson said. “Which Biden is going to show up? It doesn’t matter if he drinks a whole gallon of energy drinks. He’s not going to be able to match the acumen and the readiness of Donald Trump.”

This is being interpreted as a confession – that Republican elites are worried that, on Thursday, their nominee is going to get smoked. They should be worried. Trump’s habitual incoherence has been obvious to those of us who have been paying attention. It was abundantly clear to America’s top CEOs during a recent meeting. And it will become more obvious, as millions of people who have not been paying attention will be checking in on politics for the first time since the last election.

The hope is that by advancing the lie that the president is on drugs, whether through direct language or innuendo, the Republicans can raise the specter of cheating. That way, Biden’s aggression won’t seem like an asset, but instead a liability, as it will seem to prove the allegation. Meanwhile, Trump, who is greatly degraded, won’t seem so degraded. He’ll seem like a victim, as if he were cheated out of a chance to show his acumen and readiness, because Biden was coked.

While many people seem concerned about Biden’s age, partly on account of outlets like the Timeshaving made a fetish of it, the allegation that he’s on drugs – or “a gallon of energy drinks” – won’t convince anyone who’s not already in the tank. Whatever swing voters think, they don’t think Biden is a snowblower. That’s convincing only in the upside down, backwards and prolapsed world of rightwing politics.

It’s important to think about the intended audience for the lie that the president is on drugs (or on performance-enhancing supplements), because that tells us a lot about the election. Specifically, it tells us a lot about Trump – that there’s more going on than merely masking his cognitive decline. Lies like this tell us he can’t win if he plays by the normal rules of presidential elections. And he knows he can’t. What he can do, however, is cheat. This lie helps pave the way toward that end.

“I don’t need any votes,” Trump said last weekend at a meeting of the so-called Faith and Freedom Coalition. “We got all the votes we need. All I want to do is make sure we guard our vote. We stop the steal. I want the vote guarded. I want the steal stopped. We don’t need the votes. We have the votes. We have more votes than we need.”

That’s what you say when you refuse to respect one of the fundamentals of modern presidential politics. A successful candidate can’t win with his base alone. He must add to his base by doing something to attract the support of some of the other party’s supporters, or more accurately, some of the voters who call themselves independents but who regularly support one of the parties. (Swing voters do exist. Last time, they delivered victory to Biden.)

The president is doing that. Right or wrong, many (not just white) Americans believe the government isn’t doing enough to regulate the influx of migrants at the southern border. So Biden is implementing policies toward that end. Some are rather illiberal, but they seem to be working. “Border encounters” are reportedly down by 40 percent.

I can’t think of a policy idea that Trump has offered conservative Democrats and independent voters. (Flip-flopping on a national abortion ban doesn’t count.) I may be wrong, of course, but the only thing I see is what’s already appealing to the people whom he already has. In fact, whenever he’s given a chance to appeal to non-base supporters, as he was when asked repeatedly to set aside his thirst for revenge, he pointedly declines, choosing to say things that will rile up his base while alienating the very people he needs to beat Biden.

Indeed, you could say Trump’s campaign has devolved from one that used to at least pay lip-service to solutions – “I alone can fix it” – to one that has abandoned problem-solving altogether. (He famously killed, via Johnson, a bipartisan package that would have addressed the “border crisis,” because he wanted a live issue to campaign on.) There’s only one thing on the menu these days, and while vengeance is mine may sound good to people he already has, he needs more than that.

Trump’s thinking, if you can call it thinking, seems to be if he smears his opponent hard enough – and if he gets enough help from his party, the rightwing media apparatus, and Russian and Chinese operatives – he’ll poison the electorate and come out on top. That worked in 2016 but only because the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state gave credibility to the smear. (Without James Comey, Trump’s allegation that Clinton should be locked up for her “crimes” would have been merely that.) The only equivalent external force this time around is a press corps that’s made a fetish of the president’s age. Anyway, Trump is the criminal now.

Trump knows a lot of people who have not been paying attention to politics are going to pay attention to Thursday night’s debate. If he were behaving as if he intended to win, he would see the moment as an opportunity to expand his base, and he would offer something, really anything, to people who are not already on his side.

Instead, he’s choosing to smear Biden with lies that will, again, rile up his base while alienating people he needs. That suggests he knows he can’t win by ordinary means and that he’s not really going to try. As he did in the above clip, he’s practically admitting his path to victory is by invalidating as many of Biden’s voters as possible. He isn’t trying to win. He’s trying to cheat. We should expect that from a criminal.

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06/18/24 mma

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an 6 24

alternet-NO LNX

Republicans are playing a dangerous game by weaponizing ignorance

Sabrina Haake, Raw StoryJune 15, 2024

Donald Trump’s felony convictions are fueling another disinformation campaign, this one equal in destructive force to his Big Lie. Orchestrating a unified response reminiscent of Germany in the 1930s, House Speaker Mike Johnson and his Trump acolytes are weaving Trump’s criminality into a false indictment of the American legal system.

Republicans are falsely blaming Joe Biden for outcomes over which a sitting U.S. president has no control: convictions of Trump on 34 felony counts, pursued by an independently elected DA, pursuant to a state criminal code, as determined by 12 independent jurors, selected with the help of Trump’s own trial team.

The GOP’s target? Low-information voters.

Their weapon? Blatant disinformation.

Their allies? Fox News and the right-wing propaganda machine.

Their illiberal objective tracks the geopolitical strategies of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping, and strongman dictators adversarial to democratic systems in general: Weakening institutions through chaos that exhausts voters, allowing oligarch-backed extremists to seize power, peacefully or otherwise, amid the mayhem.

Feigned outrage to entertain the masses

The performative outrage in this week’s program includes eight Republican senators vowing retaliation for Trump’s convictions by opposing any legislation authored by Democrats; they also promise to withhold Senate confirmations.

Meanwhile, Johnson revealed his “three-pronged approach” to retaliation, including withholding congressional appropriations for the Department of Justice. Declaring that Republicans would “do everything we can” to exact revenge for Trump, Johnson and his Republican colleagues are currently pursuing legislation that would allow Trump to pardon himself of state crimes if he retakes the presidency.

Johnson has also suggested the "Trump-ed up" Supreme Court would “step in” to overturn Trump’s state convictions, the irony of simultaneously claiming that Biden controls the judiciary apparently over his head.

Advocating illegal acts is itself illegal.

Trump strategists Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon — the latter headed to prison soon himself — are openly urging Republican officeholders to use their offices to attack Democrats. They clearly need reminding — almost as much as they need fast, effective counsel — that using public resources for partisan purposes violates federal law.

Demanding that Republican district attorneys open investigations into Democrats, they urge attorneys general in Republican-controlled states to target Democrats for unspecified crimes.

Jeff Clark, the former Trump Justice Department official indicted in the Georgia election case, has broadened the call, urging “brave” district attorneys in conservative areas to file lawsuits in federal court against anyone involved in criminal cases against Trump.

Openly advocating illegal acts, and doing so in writing no less, suggests these fools have themselves for clients.

Republicans’ gaslighting campaign is reckless

Trump, for his part, is priming Fox News viewers for violence in the event he is sentenced to serve time in prison, saying, "I'm not sure the public would stand for (my potential prison sentence) ... You know, at a certain point, there's a breaking point."

The right’s gaslighting-of-the-uninformed campaign is working, as evidenced by online demands for bloody revenge. In trying to dox the jurors in Trump’s Manhattan hush money case, one of Trump’s supporters posted, “Hang everyone. 1,000,000 men (armed) need to go to Washington and hang everyone. That's the only solution.”

A Proud Boys writer chimed in, “Now you understand. To save your nation, you must fight. The time to respond is now. Franco Friday has begun.”

Without considering what comes next when the rule of law is hobbled — paramilitary hillbillies rounding up foreigners come to mind, as do drug cartels dropping roadside bombs from drones — Republicans are defending Trump by viciously attacking the judge, jurors, prosecutor, evidentiary rulings, jury instructions, the attorney general, the Department of Justice and mainstream media; they have also threatened to end the career of any GOP candidate who dares to voice respect for the American legal system.

So much for “law and order.”

Like a man blaming his wife as he kicks her down the stairs, Trump tells anyone who will listen — which apparently includes most media outlets — that Democrats have “forced” him to “take revenge” against government adversaries. Salivating over the possibility that he will finally get to imprison his political foes, brandishing his prison shiv, Trump told Newsmax, “It’s a terrible, terrible path that they’re leading us to, and it’s very possible that it’s going to have to happen to them…”

One is almost tempted to have compassion for Melania.

From whence does the GOP’s amnesia come?

Republican outrage is overplayed, as if everyone has forgotten about Trump’s well-documented criminality, played out over decades.

In 1998, the Treasury Department imposed the then-largest fine of $477,000 on Trump Taj Mahal casino for money laundering; Trump admitted that he pocketed millions of dollars raised from charity; he was ordered to pay $2 million for diverting donations from a televised fundraiser for veterans; in 2023, a civil jury adjudicated him a rapist; he was previously found to have engaged in business fraud to the tune of $354 million dollars.

When his niece Mary Trump sued him for allegedly defrauding her out of tens of millions of dollars — she said Trump extorted her by threatening to withhold medical coverage from a severely disabled nephew — she declared “Fraud was not just the family business — it was a way of life.”

Despite his consistent criminality and organized crime connections, Trump’s felony convictions hit differently, triggering the GOP’s kamikaze declaration of war as three more criminal trials and 54 combined felony counts loom.

Democrats must punch back harder

Republicans are using disinformation as a weapon against uninformed voters to keep them aligned with Trump. Their ploy seems to be working, as Trump informally reported a $52.8 million haul in online donations in the first 24 hours after the verdict was announced.

Instead of confessing to the obvious that Trump’s criminality is driving his legal woes — not Biden, not the “Deep State,” not rigged justice — MAGA Republicans would prefer to round up Trump’s adversaries as political prisoners.

After Trump’s deadly mob wanted to hang Vice President Mike Pence to block Trump’s 2020 loss, they are lusting for another fight; historically, coups are regularly attempted more than once.

It is clear that the United States is under siege by illiberal forces, aided by a relentless propaganda machine committed to fomenting violence. My money is on the justice system — and on voters being smart enough to detect the ruse.

The politically moderate sports announcer Colin Cowherd recently summed it up: “If everybody in your circle is a felon, maybe it’s not rigged. Maybe the world isn’t against you… Trump’s campaign chairman was a felon. So is his deputy campaign manager, his personal lawyer, his chief strategist, his national security adviser, his trade adviser, his foreign policy adviser, his campaign fixer, and his company CFO. They’re all felons… It’s a cabal of convicts.”

Here's to slapping back.

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25 year litigator specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.

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an 6 24

One of former President Donald Trump's talking points on the campaign trail has been that respect for the United States in other countries plummeted after he left the White House on January 20, 2021 and Joe Biden was sworn in as president.

That talking point has been echoed repeatedly by Trump's supporters at Fox News and Fox Business, while many pundits on MSNBC — including and ex-GOP congressman — have countered that the United States' North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies dread the possibility of Trump returning to the White House if Biden is voted out of office.

Similarly, Washington Post columnist Max Boot, another pro-Biden Never Trump conservative, has been quite critical of the United States' withdrawal from Afghanistan under Biden's watch but overall, considers Biden a vast improvement over Trump on foreign policy.

In his June 17 column, MSNBC's Steve Benen cites some polls countering Trump's talking points on Biden and foreign officials.

"This has been a rhetorical staple for the presumptive GOP nominee for quite a while," Benen argues. "In fact, as recently as April, Trump told a Pennsylvania audience, referring to his White House tenure, 'We were the most respected country in the world. We were the most respected that we were ever respected. We were never more respected than we were four years ago.'"

But polls on other countries, Benen emphasizes, don't bear that out — including a Pew Research survey released on June 11.

"There's quite a bit of data to review in the report, which gauged public attitudes in 34 countries, across several continents, but there were a couple of key takeaways," Benen observes. "First, internationally, more people have confidence in Biden to do the right thing regarding world affairs, as compared to Trump. And second, while confidence in the White House slumped badly, during Trump’s presidency, those numbers have rebounded under Biden."

Pew's poll, Benen notes, is "consistent with other data from the last few years."

"Revisiting our earlier coverage," Benen explains, "a Gallup report in 2021 found that approval ratings of U.S. leadership around the world had 'largely rebounded from the record-low ratings observed during the Trump Administration.' Around the same time, the Pew Research Center released a related report documenting 'dramatic' improvements in the United States' international stature once Biden replaced Trump in the Oval Office."

The liberal MSNBC columnist continues, "A year later, Gallup released another report on the United States’ standing among NATO members, concluding that U.S. leadership in the Biden era 'was stronger across much of NATO than it had been in years, after languishing at low levels during the Trump Administration.'"

*Steve Benen's full MSNBC column is available at this column.

===

an 6 24

Trump's fundraising emails have long been viewed as over-the-top. But recently, they have, according to Rolling Stone and The New Republic, taken an especially dark turn.

On Wednesday morning, June 12, Trump's campaign sent out an e-mail that read, in all caps, "HAUL OUT THE GUILLOTINE!"

Rolling Stone's Nikki McCann Ramirez notes that "thankfully," the e-mail "was not a declaration of intent by Trump, but a melodramatic fundraising pitch accusing his political opponents of wanting to behead him."

The e-mail read, "Remember when that Sicko Kathy Griffin made the rounds parading my BEHEADED head when I was President?! The radical-left CHEERED! Obama and Biden were SILENT! And the Fake News BLASTED it everywhere! The SAD and HORRIFIC TRUTH is that this is STILL the Sick Dream of every Trump-Deranged lunatic out there! And it's not just me they want gone, THEY'RE REALLY COMING AFTER YOU."

In an article published by The New Republic the same day, reporter Talia Jane cites the "guillotine" pitch as an example of how paranoid Trump's fundraising pitches are sounding.

"The e-mails, written by Trump's campaign but styled to sound like they're coming directly from Trump, intend to provoke supporters into donating," Jane observes. "A fundraising e-mail sent last week falsely claimed Biden directed the FBI to assassinate Trump, saying, 'He tried to publicly torture and humiliate me.… but he failed. He tried to raid my home and take me out with deadly force.… but he failed."

When CNN's Jim Acosta noted the "guillotine" e-mail on X, formerly Twitter, historian/author Ruth Ben-Ghiat — known for her expertise on fascism and authoritarianism — gave her take on Trump's email with a tweet.

"From Fascism onward, authoritarians have prepared people to accept and commit violence by conjuring existential threats," she wrote. "Those threats must be not only to the beloved leader, but also to his followers. Jan. 6 was another [example]: it was a rescue operation of a cult leader in distress. Now a desperate convicted felon, Trump conjures a guillotine meant for them too. #Strongmen."

*Read Rolling Stone's full article at this link (subscription required) and The New Republic's reporting here.

===

6 24 rww

johnny Enlow, a Seven Mountains dominionist and QAnon conspiracy theorist, declared this week that all three branches of the federal government have been so “corrupted” that the U.S. military will have to “step in.” Enlow called it a “long shot” that the November 5 election would take place “before the whole thing is interrupted by military presence.”

Enlow, who is associated with the dominionist New Apostolic Reformation movement, appeared Monday with Steve Shultz, who runs Elijah Streams, a streaming platform for modern-day “prophets.” As of noon Friday, the interview had been viewed more than 200,000 times.

After the 2020 election, Enlow said former President Donald Trump would be justified in imposing martial law and calling for revolution. This week, Enlow railed against Trump’s criminal convictions, making a big deal out of Trump’s frequent use of the term “election interference” to describe legal proceedings against him. According to Enlow, the convictions provide “absolute proof” of the corruption in the system, giving the “white hats” in the military full justification to step in. “There’s good reason why a lot of the people are like, ‘What in the world are you waiting for?’ with the proof that has already been made directly to the American people with all that’s taking place.”

In his conversation with Shultz, Enlow compared Trump to biblical figures God used to advance his will, including Cyrus, Moses, Joshua, and Jesus. “The Lord says, ‘I love Trump. He is my ally,’” Enlow claimed, insisting that Trump is a shepherd and “anointed” by God.

Other dominionists like Lance Wallnau have compared Trump to Cyrus, a Persian king who God used to free Jews from in exile in Babylon. On Monday, Enlow read multiple Bible verses about Cyrus, urging listeners to replace “Cyrus” with “Trump” as he and Shultz marveled at how “specific” the scriptures are in applying to Trump. “This is like Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump,” Enlow said, adding that Trump’s “assignment” comes with “higher consequences for global and kingdom matters.” Enlow said even many of Trump’s supporters fail to understand the “destiny” and “mantle of God” on him. “Trump’s assignment, if anything is 10 times larger than what Cyrus’s assignment was.”

Enlow brought in classic antisemitic and modern QAnon conspiracy theories to describe the forces that God has called on Trump to battle: “The Lord has chosen Trump as his ally,” he said. “He will use him to put an end to the empire of Babylon. And now where you see Empire of Babylon, think Federal Reserve, central banks, Rothschild dynasty.”

“So that is what’s being taken now,” Enlow said. “The Federal Reserve, even the religion of those who are what we would call the deep state, the Illuminati, those that are that are part of the cabal, this ruling corrupt pedophilic elite around the world, they really religiously connect completely with the same practices, even the same gods as Babylon, the same Babylon, that Cyrus had to deal with.”

Enlow is currently promoting a documentary called “Big God.” His latest book, “Kingdom Come: Understanding the Reign of God on Earth,” was published this week.

===

an 6 24

Trump once again is threatening to jail his political opponents, including President Joe Biden. And unlike his 2016 presidential debate remark to Hillary Clinton, this time there’s an actual plan in place to do just that.

In addition to saying, “lock her up,” Trump has a history of repeatedly threatening or calling for Clinton to be thrown in prison. One month before the 2016 election Trump told a Florida crowd, .” That was just days after the second presidential debate, when Trump told Clinton she would “be in jail” if he were president.

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Trump has been strongly focusing on prosecuting and putting President Joe Biden in prison.

“Since the start of last year, Trump has issued direct or implied threats on Truth Social to use the powers of the federal government to target Joe Biden during a second Trump administration 25 times. Specifically, Trump has threatened him with FBI raids, investigations, indictments and even jail time,” government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) wrote last month.

Tuesday night on the right wing media outlet Newsmax, Trump again threatened to jail his political opponents.

“So, you know, it’s a terrible, terrible path that they’re leading us to,” he said, NBC News reported, blaming Democrats for his criminal conviction, “and it’s very possible that it’s going to have to happen to them.”

Trump, according to Newsmax, also called his New York criminal conviction last week on 34 felony counts, “a terrible precedent for our country. Does that mean the next president does it to them? That’s really the question.”

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“One of Trump’s most consistent talking points on the trail centers on his intention to prosecute Biden if he regains executive power,” NBC News reported in February.

“I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of America, Joe Biden, and go after the Biden crime family,” Trump said last year in June. That was “just hours after being arraigned at a federal courthouse in Miami on charges alleging willful retention of classified documents.”

When Trump first entered the Oval Office, he had institutional guardrails, as many experts have noted. He appointed former government officials, including his “generals,” to top posts and they worked to steer him away from his most extreme desires.

Over time, those institutionalists resigned or were fired.

Now, thanks to a massive multi-million dollar enterprise funded in part by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, Project 2025, there’s a plan in place to jail Trump’s political opponents, should he win back the White House.

Project 2025 is the far-right’s plan to entirely remake the Executive Branch to hand Trump massive, unchecked power, via a 920-page policy “mandate.”

“Trump and his aides are reportedly assembling a list of people to be investigated, prosecuted, and possibly jailed,” The Atlantic‘s Tom Nichols wrote last year. Nichols is a former U.S. Naval War College professor and expert on Russia, nuclear weapons, and national security affairs.

“Trump also wants to go after President Joe Biden for ‘corruption,’ which (like so many of Trump’s accusations) is pure projection,” Nichols continued. “If Trump follows through on all of this lunacy, half the government will spend its days investigating the other half, while the military is put on alert in case too many Americans object to Trump’s destruction of their constitutional rights.”

“If you’re wondering how Trump plans to accomplish all of this, he likely has no idea. But his cronies at the Heritage Foundation (including former administration officials) do, and they are busily making plans. They’ve even written them down in something called Project 2025, a detailed blueprint for a right-wing takeover of the United States government. Trump, who seems to be losing his grip on reality more each day, might be devolving into a flaming piñata of offensive nonsense, but his enablers and the authors of Project 2025 know exactly what they’re doing.”

Take Steve Bannon.

Last year Media Matters called Bannon’s “War Room” podcast “the media home of Project 2025 and Trump’s retribution plans.”

Last week, Bannon made the right’s plans clear.

“The DOJ is completely corrupt from top to bottom,” he said on his podcast in video reposted by The Recount. “It’s going to have to be purged, it’s going to have to be restructured,” he said, insisting “they’re going to have to get rid of lots of personnel on the afternoon of January 20, 2025.”

“The FBI is the American Gestapo,” Bannon added, also insisting it be “totally restructured.”

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Axios on Wednesday reported on “MAGA’s jail plan.”

“If former President Trump wins in November, top supporters will push him to investigate, prosecute — and even try to imprison — Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D), who won Trump’s conviction in the hush-money case,” the news outlet reported.

“‘Of course [Bragg] should be — and will be — jailed,’ Steve Bannon, one of the top voices of the MAGA movement, told us — saying for the record what many Trump supporters are privately plotting.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

6/4/24 podsave? 90 min interview they wd propose any wacko rw idea and he takers the hardest line possible[ tho vague? at least on details get rid of 10 bad guys and one beautiful mother mass deportation

===

Trump, the Republicans’ 2024 presumptive presidential nominee and a convicted felon, is claiming Russian President Vladimir Putin will release a U.S. reporter arrested on espionage charges who the U.S. says is being wrongfully detained, if the American people elect him president again.

“Evan Gershkovich, the reporter for The Wall Street Journal who is being held by Russia will be released almost immediately after the election, but definitely before I assume office,” Trump says in a video (below) posted to his Truth Social account Tuesday. “He will be home, he’ll be safe. Vladimir Putin, President of Russia will do that for me. And I don’t believe he will do it for anyone else.”

President Biden has strongly denounced Russia’s unlawful imprisonment of Evan Gershkovich, and he and his administration have publicly discussed Russia’s detention of the reporter at least 38 times, most recently May 3, according to a count of documents on the White House’s website.

David Corn, Washington D.C. Bureau Chief for Mother Jones blasted Trump.

===

an 6 24

take gaza

Trump vies for Adelson campaign cash — but there’s one major catch

===

alternet-no lnx

Buckle up for Trump's 'October Surprise'

Thom Hartmann June 02, 2024

Donald Trump has overtly taken the side of dictators including Putin, Xi, Orbán, and Kim over the past eight years, most likely because he admires the way each has crushed efforts toward democracy and ruled their respective nations with an iron fist.

Now US intelligence agencies say their big worry is that one or more of these nations will reciprocate Trump’s love by launching some sort of October Surprise to push voters closer to Trump in time for this fall’s election. Such an action could swing our election toward Trump, but also risks provoking a third world war.

The phrase October Surprise, of course, refers to the successful deal that the Reagan campaign cut with Iran’s Ayatollah’s government to hold the American hostages in the US Embassy in Tehran until after the 1980 election to destroy President Jimmy Carter’s chances. Both Iran’s then-president, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, and the former Lt. Governor of Texas, Ben Barnes, have verified the plot, the latter last year in The New York Times.

An earlier (unknown until the past two decades) plot by the campaign of candidate Richard Nixon to blow up the 1968 Paris peace talks and thus sabotage President Johnson’s deal with the Vietnamese was the first known successful Republican effort to use treason to steal an election. It qualified for the October Surprise label, but wasn’t known until well after Reagan’s efforts had earned the title.

READ: 19 fabulously worthless things Trump will give you for your money

And, of course, there was the October Surprise in Florida in 2000 when Florida Governor Jeb Bush’s administration got the 68% Black and Hispanic list of Texas felons from his brother, Texas Governor George W. Bush, and used them to purge tens of thousands of Black and Hispanic Florida voters with similar names from the Florida voter rolls in the months immediately before that year’s election.

George “won” the 2000 election by 537 votes (he lost the national popular vote by a half-million), although the Florida Supreme Court-ordered recount that was blocked by five corrupt Republicans on the US Supreme Court would have revealed that setup and several other ways Jeb had rigged the election that year for his brother, and put Al Gore into the White House.

Two of the three October Surprise events employed by Republican candidates for president involved colluding with foreign governments to harm a Democratic candidate; Reagan’s hit on Carter was particularly treasonous and effective. Nixon’s — appropriate to remember on Memorial Day — caused the death of an additional 20,000+ American GIs in Vietnam.

So, it’s entirely reasonable to assume that Trump — still in touch with Putin, Kim, and Xi, even if only through media proclamations — is either planning or expecting help this fall from his autocratic pals.

Putin, desperate for more weapons to crush democracy in Ukraine, has formed a strong alliance over the past year with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, trading battlefield weapons for submarine and other technology that Kim can use along with nuclear weapons to threaten the US.

In an NBC News article from May 24th titled “Are Russia and North Korea planning an ‘October surprise’ that aids Trump?” reporters Cortney Kube and Carol E. Lee note that there could be serious consequences arising from the fact that North Korea is today giving Russia more weaponry to use against Ukraine than all of Europe has been able to provide to President Zelenskyy:

“U.S. officials are also bracing for North Korea to potentially take its most provocative military actions in a decade close to the U.S. presidential election, possibly at Putin’s urging…

“The increasingly close relationship between Putin and Kim represents a major shift from when Russia worked with the U.S. in the past to try to rein in North Korea. Now, Moscow is using its veto power on the U.N. Security Council to give Pyongyang cover to evade sanctions enforcement measures intended to constrain its nuclear program.”

North Korea firing missiles into the demilitarized zone between it and South Korea to help Trump could represent a major escalation of tensions in the region, as would an October nuclear test or attack on South Korea’s border islands. It could also precipitate a major war in the region with the potential to spread worldwide.

While China has, in the past, counseled Kim to refrain from overly bombastic or provocative behavior to keep tensions in the region low, their increasingly bellicose actions and rhetoric toward Taiwan suggest they may welcome regional chaos which Xi could then use as a pretext to attack that island nation.

As Michael Schuman wrote for an article titled “Why Xi Wants Trump to Win” in The Atlantic:

“By weakening U.S. standing abroad and democracy at home, Trump would offer Xi more opportunities than Biden to extend Chinese influence and win hearts and minds within the developing world.”

Our government has noticed: Three months ago, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) published their Annual Threat Assessment. It was unambiguous about what they’re already seeing in the works for this election year:

“The PRC [People’s Republic of China] may attempt to influence the U.S. elections in 2024 at some level because of its desire to sideline critics of China and magnify U.S. societal divisions. PRC actors have increased their capabilities to conduct covert influence operations and disseminate disinformation. … The PRC aims to sow doubts about U.S. leadership, undermine democracy, and extend Beijing’s influence.”

Similarly, The New York Times reported last month that China — in a move reminiscent of Putin’s millions of Internet Research Agency troll posts promoting Trump on Facebook leading up to the 2016 election — is all in on using social media, including, apparently, TikTok, to crush Biden and lift Trump into the White House:

“Some of the Chinese accounts impersonate fervent Trump fans, including one on X that purported to be ‘a father, husband and son’ who was ‘MAGA all the way!!’ The accounts mocked Mr. Biden’s age and shared fake images of him in a prison jumpsuit, or claimed that Mr. Biden was a Satanist pedophile while promoting Mr. Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ slogan.”

Any of these actions by China could be a trigger for an international conflagration pitting America and Asian democracies against an axis of China, North Korea, and Russia. If Europe jumped in to help, we’d be in the middle of World War III faster than most imagine possible.

Another hostile dictatorship that believes a Trump presidency would work to its advantage is Iran, which has worked with Republican presidential candidates before. It’s today run by the heirs to the regime that successfully handed the 1980 election to Reagan, and tried to help Trump get elected in 2020.

As the DNI’s Annual Threat Assessment noted:

“Ahead of the U.S. election in 2024, Iran may attempt to conduct influence operations aimed at U.S. interests, including targeting U.S. elections, having demonstrated a willingness and capability to do so in the past. During the U.S. election cycle in 2020, Iranian cyber actors obtained or attempted to obtain U.S. voter information, sent threatening emails to voters, and disseminated disinformation about the election.

“The same Iranian actors have evolved their activities and developed a new set of techniques, combining cyber and influence capabilities, that Iran could deploy during the U.S. election cycle in 2024.”

Given Iran’s role in supporting Hamas’ brutal raid on Israel last October and the increased pressure the Biden administration is putting them under, disrupting our election to put Trump — no fan of democracy — into office apparently makes a lot of sense to the violent mullahs clinging to power in that country. At the very least, Trump may dial back (as he did when president before) the efforts of Voice of America and other US propaganda and outreach efforts aimed at destabilizing the Iranian regime.

Combine Iran’s efforts with those of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu — who is both openly hostile to President Biden (as he was to President Obama) and fond of Trump — and an expansion of conflict in the Middle East also has the potential to both influence the US election and lead to a larger international war.

Netanyahu, under indictment for bribery and corruption with the cases against him paused until he’s no longer in office, has a powerful personal incentive to drag out the war (and the deaths of Gazans) just to stay out of prison. An alliance with a second Trump presidency would be political gold for him.

Every time Netanyahu commits another war crime or gives America and the international community the middle finger over his use of famine as an instrument of war, more young Americans peel away from Biden in frustration. While they probably won’t vote for Trump, polling from 2020 shows that if they hadn’t shown up for Biden in that election, Trump would have held onto the presidency. And Netanyahu knows it.

This past week, Trump told a group of wealthy Jewish donors that if student protests of Netanyahu’s policies in Gaza happened during his presidency, he would not only arrest them but he would strip them of their American citizenship and deport them from the country. It’s his most explicit shout out so far to Netanyahu, and will certainly encourage the Prime Minister to continue to ignore President Biden and enrage the Democratic base.

Finally, Russia’s President Putin knows that a second Trump term will be like a gift from the gods. He’s lost over a half-million soldiers and a massive amount of equipment in his brutal war against Ukraine, and is facing rising anger at home. Trump, who has essentially promised to cut off US support for that besieged nation, could literally save Putin’s life if his generals are thinking of taking him out the way Hitler’s tried to do.

To that end, Russia and Saudi Arabia recently collaborated to cut oil production by 1.4 million barrels a day in an effort to drive up gas prices here in the US, just like they did in October/November of 2022. Since Trump let the Saudis buy the largest refinery in America (at Port Arthur, Texas), expect gas prices to be over $5/gallon this fall.

The stakes are incredibly high for Putin; he may well think an attack against a NATO country, if not answered with a swift, massive response, would reveal weakness in the Biden administration that could help Trump this fall. And if NATO does respond vigorously, that could toss us into WWIII.

Most recently, Trump shouted out to Putin in an echo of Reagan’s traitorous embrace of Iran, essentially asking him to humiliate Biden by holding onto imprisoned Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich until after the election. This has to encourage Russia’s truculence in the face of international pressure to stop killing Ukrainian civilians.

Both the American Civil War and World War II came about when explicitly authoritarian leaders used military force to try to violently destroy democratic nations’ way of life. A predatory new axis has formed including Iran, North Korea, Russia, and China that is every bit as opposed to representative government as was Hitler’s Third Reich.

And Trump empowered them by killing the Iran nuclear deal President Obama had negotiated, allowing them to resume making nukes; embracing Kim and Xi; and giving top-secret information to Putin.

Meanwhile, three of those nations are actively involved in propaganda operations — principally exploiting social media and Republican politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene and JD Vance — to denigrate democracy and majority rule and elevate oligarchy and strongman rule.

Will one of these “help Trump get elected while advancing our own interests” scenarios by one or more of these axis nations lead to the end of democracy in America or a third world war? At this point it’s too early to tell, but EU and Asian democracies are increasingly worried about that exact scenario.

In war, things can change suddenly in ways nobody anticipated; events frequently spiral out of control (as did the events leading to WWI). We all need to stay alert and remain outspoken about the dangers Trump represents, and do what we can to support democracy worldwide.

Forewarned is forearmed: pass it along.

NOW READ: Why the media doesn't talk to Biden's supporters

‘That's the Kool-Aid’: Dems blast Republicans as they triple down on Trump

So. Very. Guilty.

The GOP has chosen hell over America — and there should be no coming back from it

#story_page_sidebar

mAGA Martyrdom Machine Portrays Felon Trump as Victim, Vows Revenge

Peter Montgomery | May 31, 2024 Kyle Mantyla | May 31, 2024

Former President Donald Trump, top Republican officials, MAGA movement leaders, and dominionist religious-right figures, all reacted badly to Trump’s May 30 conviction on 34 felony counts. A jury of citizens found that he repeatedly broke the law while trying to prevent embarrassing information about his sexual dalliance with a porn star from hurting his 2016 presidential campaign.

Even before the verdict, Trump and his allies had denounced the trial as rigged, smeared the judge, and portrayed Trump as the victim of political persecution. When the jury’s verdicts were announced Thursday afternoon, the MAGA Republican martyrdom machinery went into full swing. Right-wing figures attacked the judge, jury, prosecutors, and President Biden, who they accused of masterminding the prosecution. Trump cultist Joey Mannarino accused them all of committing treason before taking to Twitter to have a vulgar meltdown.

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Trump himself denounced the trial as “rigged.” In a series of text messages tied to fundraising asks, Trump called himself a “political prisoner” and declared, “JUSTICE IS DEAD IN AMERICA! Our country has FALLEN!” Trump called on his supporters to mobilize “IMMEDIATE PUSHBACK SO MASSIVE IT WILL GO DOWN IN HISTORY!” and added, “WE MUST MAKE JOE BIDEN REGRET EVER COMING AFTER US!”

Trump, his son Don Jr., and daughter-in-law Lara, all sent fundraising emails. In one of them, Trump said the trial was a “sick & twisted” effort to turn his supporters against him. “NOW IT’S TIME FOR ME & YOU TO SHOVE IT BACK IN THEIR CORRUPT FACES!” he ranted. Trump called the day of his convictions the “darkest day in American history!” Junior repeated the claim that his dad is a “political prisoner” and called America “a third-world shithole.” Lara called Trump’s conviction an “assault on America” and accused Democrats of “using a SHAM TRIAL to silence, imprison, and ERASE PRESIDENT TRUMP FROM HISTORY!” Right-wing media reported that the flood of contributions from Trump supporters overwhelmed his fundraising site.

Trump’s capture and corruption of the Republican Party is on full display. When the guilty verdicts were announced, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson declared, “Today is a shameful day in American history.” Johnson claimed the trial was “evidence that Democrats will stop at nothing to silence dissent and crush their political opponents”—some high-level gaslighting considering that is actually what Trump has been promising to do if he gets back into power. The Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell fumed that the criminal charges “never should have been brought in the first place.”

Right-wing Trump supporters went ballistic. Culture warrior Matt Walsh railed that he didn’t want to hear statements from Republicans condemning the verdict. “The only thing I want to hear from these people is which Democrats they will have arrested,” he posted on social media. “Don’t tell us that you’re sad about the verdict. We don’t give a shit about your feelings. We want to see corrupt Democrats frog marched on camera in handcuffs. If you won’t do that, then shut up.”

Eric Metaxas declared that the guilty verdict was “like a lynching” while fellow right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk proclaimed that “they just executed a legal assassination.” Far-right activist Ali Alexander claimed that “Today is January 6th for the entire nation,” and former Trump administration official William Wolfe welcomed everyone “to the United Soviet States of America.”

Mark Meckler, who heads the Convention of States movement to do a right-wing rewrite of the U.S. Constitution, demanded that officials in “deep red” parts of the country “bring immediate prosecutions of every Dem official they can tag with even the most spurious charges.” Meckler was so outraged that he even did an to demand that every district attorney in every conservative county in every red state bring “the most brutal changes we can possibly bring” against every Democrat they can.

Radio host Todd Starnes asserted that “There MUST be payback. The judge and the district attorney should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. The House must immediately defund the Justice Department. Justice must be served.” Religious-right activist Carol Swain lamented that “for the first time in my life, I am ashamed of my nation.”

Trump’s religious-right backers also rallied around him. “Jesus was a convicted felon. Convicted by political enemies,” declared dominionist Mario Murillo. Like many other far-right figures, Murillo predicted that the convictions would strengthen Trump by energizing his outraged supporters. He invoked the Japanese admiral who planned the World War II attack on the U.S. at Pearl Harbor, who wrote afterward in his diary, “I fear all we have done is to awake a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”

:{:{“Apostle” Dutch Sheets, a leading figure in the New Apostolic Reformation,[vid]}:

God to “strengthen President Trump” because “he is being martyred politically.”}:

Speaking of terrible resolve, far-right pastor Joshua Feuerstein asked, “At what point do we take up arms?” Never one to be outdone, far-right broadcaster Stew Peters, who has a record of calling for political violence, did so again, tweeting, “Our judicial system has been weaponized against the American people,” adding, “We are left with NO other option but to take matters into our own hands,” a statement he followed with an emoji of crossed swords. In case Peters wasn’t clear enough, he followed that up with a tweet that simply said, “It’s time” and featured a photo of a noose.

===

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May 31, 2024 RWW

Glenn Beck reacted to the conviction of former President Donald Trump by recalling “something that Ben Franklin asked himself during the writing of the Declaration of Independence”: “As they were going through what they went through, he sat in his chair, and he had been looking at John Hancock’s chair, and it had a half sun on it. And he said, this whole time I had been sitting here thinking, wondering, praying, is that a setting sun or a rising sun? He deemed at the end that it was a rising sun.” That happened after the Constitutional Convention and it was George Washington’s chair.

Charlie Kirk calls on attorneys general to respond to Trump’s conviction by “getting creative” and finding ways to bring charges against “Open borders NGOs, Democrat ‘Civil rights’ foot soldiers, Leftwing COVID tyrants, [and] Democrat 501c3s gaming our elections.”

Someone should explain to Kandiss Taylor that “furries” is not “bestiality.”

Just a reminder that Stew Peters is racist.

Finally, Dalton Clodfelter finds out that being a racist, antisemitic streamer is not quite as great as it seems.

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MAGA media rage in response to Trump's 34 guilty verdicts

Trump found guilty:

mAGA media rage in response to Trump's 34 guilty verdicts

WRITTEN BY MATT GERTZ & JOHN WHITEHOUSE

PUBLISHED 05/31/24

Fox News stars and other MAGA media commentators have responded to former President Donald Trump’s historic criminal conviction in a New York court with apocalyptic rhetoric and demands for retribution.

On Thursday, a jury found Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with hush-money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels, which were intended to prevent Daniels’ claims that she had an affair with Trump from becoming public during the 2016 presidential election.

Right-wing media have followed the same time-tested strategy deployed in innumerable previous Trump scandals. Since the charges were brought, they have worked hand in hand with the former president to run interference, denounce Trump’s foes, and shape the way the GOP base perceives the events, thus keeping the Republican Party squarely behind him.

The convicted former president’s media allies responded to Trump’s indictment and arraignment last March by claiming that Trump was the victim of a politicized persecution that made the U.S. a “Third-World banana republic” and demanding legal retribution against Democrats.

Over the last seven weeks, the MAGA media sought to delegitimize every aspect of the trial. They attacked the judge, jury, prosecutors, and witnesses while pushing an array of false claims about the case.

### Following the guilty verdict, Trump’s media allies piled more attacks on the justice system

Fox News co-host Jeanine Pirro claimed America had “gone over a cliff,” called the verdict “warfare,” and spoke of the country being “born of revolution.” Media Matters, [5/30/24, 5/30/24, 5/30/24]

- War Room host Stephen Bannon claimed that Trump’s convictions for falsifying business records to cover up his affair with a porn star were really an attack on his viewers: “It's not President Trump they're trying to destroy — they're trying to destroy you.” Earlier in the show, he had reassured viewers about the damage Trump might take as a result of the verdict. *War Room*, [5/30/24, 5/30/24]

- Prompted by a quote from actor Rob Schneider, Donald Trump Jr. argued that “we don't have a choice” and that the GOP will have to prosecute Trump critics as retribution. *Triggered*, [5/30/24]

- On his radio show, Fox News host Sean Hannity lashed out at Judge Juan Merchan. *The Sean Hannity Show*, [5/30/24]

- Fox News guest Brett Tolman: “I really blame the judge.” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [5/30/24]

- A Newsmax host made clear that Trump jurors can never go anywhere without being harassed. Newsmax, [5/30/24]

- Fox News reporter Shannon Bream hyped criticism of the judge’s jury instructions. Fox News, *Special Report*, [5/30/24]

- Laura Ingraham speculated that two attorneys on the jury steered the rest of the jury’s deliberations. Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [5/30/24]

- A Fox News guest called Trump’s conviction a result of a “show trial” and said it shows why presidents “need immunity from criminal prosecution to do their jobs.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [5/30/24]

- Newsmax guest Joseph di Genova warned jurors to be “very careful.” Newsmax, *Rob Schmitt Tonight*, [5/30/24]

---

Steve Bannon: “It's not President Trump they're trying to destroy -- they're trying to destroy you”

05/30/24 6:19 PM EDT

Newsmax host says the jurors in Trump's hush money trial “can never go anywhere without worry about being harassed”

05/30/24 6:07 PM EDT

Reacting to Trump's guilty verdict, Jesse Watters promises to “vanquish the evil forces that are destroying this republic”

05/30/24 6:24 PM EDT

Fox News coverage of Trump's guilty verdicts

Fox co-host on Trump's 34 guilty verdicts: “Lawfare is far too soft. It's far too benign. This is warfare.”

05/30/24

Steve Bannon's initial reaction to 34 guilty verdicts: “This is not going to damage President Trump at all”

05/30/24 5:41 PM EDT

Watch Fox News' initial reaction to Donald Trump being found guilty of 34 felonies

05/30/24 5:35 PM EDT

The Fox News campaign to undermine the jury in Donald Trump’s hush money trial

05/09/24 11:22 AM EDT

---

Myths and facts: Debunking right-wing lies and misinformation about Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial

04/19/24 10:37 AM EDT

---

How Trump's Fox News feedback loop powers his Manhattan trial defense

05/20/24 8:57 AM EDT

---

fox Business host falsely claims New York trial and conviction of Trump “was Biden's idea” and is “election interference”](https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-business/fox-business-host-falsely-claims-new-york-trial-and-conviction-trump-was-bidens-idea)

05/31/24 11:02 AM EDT

### Megyn Kelly on Trump's 34 guilty verdicts: “The only way to save the republic now is to give them a taste of their own medicine”

05/31/24 10:57 AM EDT

### Media Matters weekly newsletter, May 31

05/31/24 10:49 AM EDT

### Fox guest brings up “stolen election,” “warfare” rhetoric in response to Trump conviction

05/31/24 10:44 AM EDT

### MAGA media rage in response to Trump's 34 guilty verdicts

05/31/24 9:23 AM EDT

### Newsmax guest tells the jurors in Trump's hush money trial to be “very careful”

05/31/24 8:38 AM EDT

### Jesse Watters calls for an investigation into “whether Soros was involved” in Trump's conviction

05/30/24 9:34 PM EDT

### Donald Trump Jr. promises that the GOP will “retaliate” for the conviction of Donald Trump

05/30/24 8:37 PM EDT

### Watch Andrew Weissman eviscerate the MAGA attacks on Trump's conviction

05/30/24 7:57 PM EDT

### Donald Trump Jr. calls Fox News' Shannon Bream a “fucking dolt” for questioning Trump's claim that his felony trial was partisan

05/30/24

===

an 5 24

Trump is taking an overt transactional approach to his campaign fundraising, and experts say he's toeing the line of legality in how he's approaching donors.

According to the Washington Post, the beleaguered ex-president — struggling under the crushing weight of tens of millions of dollars in legal expenses — is now all but promising donors favorable policies in exchange for ever-larger campaign checks. When one GOP donor offered Trump $1 million and asked for a lunch meeting, the 45th president of the United States reportedly responded by not only telling the donor he wasn't going to have lunch with him, but that he expected more.

"You’ve got to make it $25 million," donors who attended the meeting recalled Trump saying.

Trump has lately been telling wealthy donors that they should be motivated to donate large amounts to his campaign in order for them to have an extension of the $1.9 trillion tax cut package he signed into law in 2017 (which overwhelmingly benefited the rich). During the Republican donor meeting at the Pierre Hotel in New York City, Trump reportedly dangled the extension in front of prospective contributors, reminding them that the tax cuts would expire at the end of 2025, and that President Joe Biden likely would not extend them if he was elected to another term.

"[T]axes are going to go up by four times," Trump said, with the Post'sJosh Dawsey noting that his estimate was an exaggeration. "You’re going to have the biggest tax increase in history... So whatever you guys can do, I appreciate it."

Dawsey wrote that the overtly transactional nature of Trump's more recent entreaties to donors is "testing the boundaries of federal campaign finance laws." Veteran campaign finance lawyer Larry noble told the Post that federal law dictates that Trump can only solicit a maximum contribution of $3,300 per donor. However, his super PACs can accept contributions of any amount, provided Trump doesn't ask for those amounts directly.

"He can’t say, ‘I want you to give me $1 million,’" Noble said.

One recent meeting with oil industry executives and lobbyists, in which Trump promised concessions to the industry in exchange for $1 billion in campaign donations, is now being investigated by the Senate Budget Committee.

Among the promises Trump reportedly made to the oil industry included repealing Biden's wind energy and electric vehicle credits and subsidies, and opening new oil and gas drilling leases in lands the Biden administration declared as off-limits. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island), who chairs the Budget Committee, said he was particularly alarmed over reports that the industry had already drafted executive orders ready for Trump's signature upon taking office that effectively amount to a policy wish list.

"Put those things together and it starts to look mighty damn corrupt," Whitehouse said.

Click here to read the Post's report in full (subscription required).

RSS Trump has now amplified QAnon-promoting accounts over 800 times on Truth Social](https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-conspiracy-theory/trump-has-now-amplified-qanon-promoting-accounts-over-800-times-truth)

05/23/24

===

mma

the MAGA movement and the Trump assassination plot that wasn’t

WRITTEN BY MATT GERTZ

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM JACK WHEATLEY

PUBLISHED 05/29/24

Stephen Bannon’s Tuesday appearance on Alex Jones' show provided a perfect window into the state of the MAGA movement: It’s an unhinged echo chamber running on deranged conspiracy theories and wildly overheated rhetoric, aimed at fomenting grievance and seeking retribution, and it’s unwilling or unable to self-correct in the face of contrary facts.

Bannon, a key Trump ally, told Jones that the FBI’s August 2022 court-ordered search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and resort had been a planned “assassination attempt,” promoting a conspiracy theory that the agents’ standard use-of-force orders revealed the search was part of a scheme by President Joe Biden to kill his predecessor.

“Let me be blunt: This was not a standard operating procedure. Alex Jones, you know that better than anybody,” Bannon told Jones, a notorious false-flag enthusiast.

The host replied that “they were hoping for a confrontation” in which the “Secret Service would think it was an attack.”

Bannon went on to claim that the FBI “had use of lethal force approved” and “wanted someone to bleed out. This entire thing was thought through in a high level of detail, and they weren’t absolutely sure Trump wasn’t going to be there.” He added, “They were looking to have a confrontation that would be an armed confrontation.”

Jones agreed, adding that the agents’ plainclothes attire, instead of uniforms, showed they were “looking for somebody to think it’s a burglary” and “make a mistake.”

In reality, the FBI reportedly picked a date when Trump would not be present for the search, contacted the Secret Service in advance of their arrival, and wore white polo shirts and khakis rather than their usual FBI jackets to avoid attracting attention from guests at Trump’s club.

Bannon subsequently claimed this assassination plot was part of a “vast conspiracy” that requires congressional investigations to “adjudicate” alongside the 2020 “stolen election” and the January 6 “Fed-surrection.” He concluded that when Trump is elected in November, “we’re going to take apart the administrative state brick by brick, and we’re gonna purge the deep state.”

Video

CitationFrom the May 28, 2024, edition of Infowars' The Alex Jones Show.

The FBI’s Mar-a-Lago search triggered an immediate MAGA firestorm in August 2022, with Trump’s media supporters comparing the bureau to the East German Stasi and Nazi Gestapo. They have not been deterred by revelations that the search uncovered a trove of highly classified documents Trump had refused to return, by special counsel Jack Smith charging Trump with 40 federal criminal counts, or by an armed and enraged Trump supporter’s attack on an FBI field office.

In their latest salvo, MAGA commentators used last week’s unsealing of filings in that case to argue that the FBI search had been part of a Biden plot to assassinate Trump. Their theory was facially absurd, and the evidence they cited — an unsealed court filing in the classified documents case which stated that the FBI agents conducting the search had been advised that they “may use deadly force when necessary” — was swiftly debunked. Reporters, legal experts, and the FBI itself pointed out that this “generic” language is part of “every FBI operations order” as part of the bureau’s “standard policy” — and had been similarly provided for document searches conducted at Biden’s own home.

After Trump responded to the MAGA frenzy by claiming that the FBI order showed Biden “was locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger,” special counsel Smith noted that the former president’s statements “pose a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to the law enforcement agents.” But neither the debunking of the assassination claim nor the potential danger to FBI agents is slowing down the likes of Bannon and Jones.

And they aren’t alone — Julie Kelly, the self-proclaimed “J6 conspiracy theorist” who launched the story in the first place, is still at it.

IFrame Content

This is sadly typical. The MAGA right is a constant font of zombie conspiracy theories which are spun up and maintained indefinitely, unaffected by the emergence of contrary facts.

The fervor ignited by their unhinged claims can have serious consequences, as Smith noted — consequences measured in massacres and an insurrection, a shot-up pizza parlor and gym bomb threats, threatened legislators and an assault on an FBI office. And at the end of that yearslong drumbeat, a Trumpist plot to overturn the 2024 election results if Trump loses is looming.

===

mma 5 24

===

As supporters of Donald Trump flood right-wing platforms with threats against the jurors and judge following guilty verdicts Thursday in his criminal case regarding hush money payments, fears are growing that the influence the Republican presumptive presidential nominee has over his supporters will soon lead to violence.

"Until and unless he accepts the process, the extremist reaction to his legal troubles will be militant," Jacob Ware, a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, toldReuters.

The former president gave no sign of accepting the legal process Friday as he held a press conference at Trump Tower, repeating claims that the case had been "rigged."

Shortly after a New York jury announced its verdict in the case regarding documents that were falsified to cover up payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniel just before the 2016 election to keep her from publicizing an alleged sexual encounter she had with Trump, right-wing websites like Gateway Pundit, Truth Social, and Patriots.Win saw an uptick in violent posts from users.

READ: The GOP has chosen hell over America — and there should be no coming back from it

"Time to start capping some leftys," said the user. "This cannot be fixed by voting."

The reaction is a direct result, said Ware, of Trump's "insistence that he is being mistreated."

On Patiots.win, one commenter called for 1 million armed Trump supporters to "go to Washington and hang everyone," while another said the former president "should already know he has an army willing to fight and die for him if he says the words...I'll take up arms if he asks."

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who has said she would not endorse Trump in the 2024 election, said Manhattan District Attorney charged Trump for politically motivated reasons and falsely claimed that he campaigned on prosecuting the former president.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said the "charges never should have been brought in the first place," while House Speaker Mike Johnson accused the Biden administration of the "weaponization of our justice system."

Progressives agreed with Trump on one point Friday, after he pledged that the hush money case is "long from over" and said that "the real verdict is going to be November 5" when U.S. voters go to the polls in the general election.

While celebrating that a jury of "everyday people" held the former president accountable and proved that "despite his worst efforts, Trump is not above the law," People's Action executive director Sulma Arias said Democrats "must beat him at the ballot box" to keep him from further eroding U.S. democracy, climate action, and other progressive values.

===

mma 5 24

NO accident day after hush money def implodes after fox pushed fail guy?

over a handful of hours on Tuesday, the right’s conspiracy theory ecosystem concocted a sinister plot by President Joe Biden to assassinate his predecessor out of the banal fact that FBI agents received standard instructions on the use of force before conducting a court-ordered search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in 2022.

Hundreds of pages of filings (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/21/us/trump-mal-motion-to-suppress-govt-response.html) were unsealed (https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/21/politics/mar-a-lago-documents-walt-nauta-donald-trump?cid=ios_app) on Tuesday in Trump’s classified documents case, revealing that the former president — who is charged with 40 federal criminal counts (https://www.politico.com/interactives/2023/trump-criminal-investigations-cases-tracker-list/) related to his alleged willful retention of documents after leaving the White House — had multiple documents marked “classified” in his bedroom that were discovered months after the 2022 search.

Credible outlets reviewed the documents and produced a wave (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna153337) of news (https://abcnews.go.com/US/special-counsel-suspected-additional-obstruction-effort-trump-classified/story?id=110438582) stories (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-mar-a-lago-documents/) detailing (https://www.axios.com/2024/05/21/trumps-classified-documents-bedroom-mar-a-lago) what a judge described as “strong evidence” of Trump’s allegedly criminal acts (https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/05/21/trump-florida-classified-documents-motions/). Meanwhile, Trump’s MAGA media supporters ginned up a counternarrative based on a credulous reading of a deceptive argument from Trump’s lawyers that was included in the unsealed documents.

The story that emerged from the right-wing media echo chamber posits that pro forma language provided to FBI agents before the 2022 search which stated that “law enforcement officers of the Department of Justice may use deadly force when necessary” was actually part of a Biden scheme to assassinate Trump. This is both a horrific accusation to make without evidence and facially absurd for any number of reasons. (Why would the Biden administration issue assassination orders in writing and then conduct the Mar-a-Lago search (https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/03/01/fbi-dispute-trump-mar-a-lago-raid/#::text=Terry%20Renna/AP%29-,The%20raid,-But%20prosecutors%20appeared) on a date specifically selected because Trump would be in New York instead?) But it spread quickly from its initiation by a key figure in the right’s January 6 disinformation community, through the ranks of MAGA influencers, to Trump himself, and then to the Fox News airwaves.

By Tuesday night, Trump’s campaign had issued (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/21/trump-mar-a-lago-raid-fbi-deadly-force/) a fundraising email in which the presumptive Republican presidential nominee alleged of the Biden administration, “You know they’re just itching to do the unthinkable … Joe Biden was locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger.”

The startlingly quick adoption of an unhinged conspiracy theory shows how the right-wing media apparatus operates (https://www.mediamatters.org/fake-news/right-wing-ecosystem-created-paul-pelosi-conspiracy-theory), dreaming up convoluted but inflammatory nonsense and bombarding their audience with it. Here’s how it happened.

Right-wing fabulist turns standard FBI policy into “mind-blowing” story

The right-wing writer Julie Kelly, in a series of Tuesday afternoon posts on X (formerly Twitter), purported to reveal the “bombshells” (https://x.com/julie_kelly2/status/1792984700388077655) she had uncovered by scouring the unsealed documents.

“Tons of new unsealed filings on classified docs case--I will try to post as much as I can (there goes the workout) but this is mind-blowing,” she posted (https://x.com/julie_kelly2/status/1792969008657948733) at 1:21 p.m. ET. “FBI authorized the use of deadly force at Mar-a-Lago.”

She included a screenshot of a filing (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/21/us/trump-mal-motion-to-suppress.html?partner=slack&smid=sl-share) from Trump’s lawyers which stated that the FBI’s “Operations Order” for the Mar-a-Lago search “contained a ‘Policy Statement’ regarding ‘Use of Deadly Force,’ which stated, for example, ‘Law enforcement officers of the Department of Justice may use deadly force when necessary.’”

IFrame Content (https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&features=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%3D%3D&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1792969008657948733&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mediamatters.org%2Ffox-news%2Fhow-right-wing-echo-chamber-constructed-biden-assassination-plot-against-trump&sessionId=a50becd16cc7f1af38ff08efa56801d32c73fb67&siteScreenName=mmfa&theme=light&widgetsVersion=2615f7e52b7e0%3A1702314776716&width=550px)

Kelly went on to post the “Policy Statement” and claim (https://x.com/julie_kelly2/status/1792972717781586109) that the instructions show that “the FBI risked the lives of Donald Trump, his family, his staff, and MAL guests for a publicity stunt to make it look like Trump stole national security files.” She added, “People need to be arrested for this.”

In reality — and as more credible journalists pointed (https://x.com/KFaulders/status/1793058947152121926) out (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/gop-lawmakers-conflate-fbi-policy-trump-assassination-attempt-rcna153413) — those instructions are standard for FBI searches.

“These are the rules that apply to FBI agents whenever they do anything,” Reuters reporter Brad Heath wrote (https://x.com/bradheath/status/1792982611016442280) in response to Kelly’s initial claim on X. He added (https://x.com/bradheath/status/1793007919635521694), “Agents - like all cops - can use deadly force when met with a sufficiently serious threat. The policy the FBI followed here applies all the time; they are the same rules agents follow when walking down a sidewalk.”

“One clue that this is the generic DOJ use of force policy — not something cooked up for Mar-a-Lago, let alone ordered by the president — is that it talks about the use of warning shots in prison,” Heath noted (https://x.com/bradheath/status/1793010516966711461) in response to Kelly’s post with the “Policy Statement.”

The FBI would later issue a statement (https://x.com/alex_mallin/status/1793067030029173190) confirming that the bureau had “followed standard protocol in this search as we do for all search warrants, which includes a standard policy statement limiting the use of deadly force.”

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Kelly is among the foremost proponents (https://www.mediamatters.org/january-6-insurrection/here-are-key-right-wing-media-figures-who-rewrote-history-january-6#paragraph--section-heading--3456093) of the right’s January 6 counternarrative. She has argued (https://www.mediamatters.org/january-6-insurrection/bannon-guest-julie-kelly-january-6-was-probably-biggest-instance-police) that the violent rioting at the U.S. Capitol by Trumpists who assaulted scores of law enforcement officers “was probably the biggest instance of police brutality that this country has seen since the Civil Rights movement,” described (https://www.mediamatters.org/january-6-insurrection/frequent-fox-news-guest-calls-officer-testifying-january-6-commission-crisis) a police officer who testified before the January 6 select committee as a “crisis actor,” and suggested (https://www.mediamatters.org/january-6-insurrection/oan-host-and-julie-kelly-push-conspiracy-theory-fbi-fabricated-pipe-bombs) that the FBI fabricated the pipe bombs discovered at the Republican and Democratic national headquarters that day because it is “an enforcement arm, a surveillance arm of the Democratic Party.” And her interpretation of the filings made no sense and was quickly debunked.

None of that slowed down the ranks of MAGA influencers, who quickly seized on her story.

MAGA influencers run with “assassination” nonsense

Within minutes, influential figures in the MAGA movement adopted Kelly’s interpretation and effectively began competing for the most overwrought response as they furiously posted on X. Many alleged that the document showed a Biden-directed assassination plot against Trump.

“The FBI authorized the use of deadly force when they raided Mar-a-Lago,” Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk commented (https://x.com/charliekirk11/status/1792985984516206663). “You read that right. They were authorized to kill Trump employees, possibly even assassinate Trump himself, to exact their political revenge.”

“The FBI authorized the use of deadly force when they raided Mar-a-Lago?” wrote (https://x.com/Liz_Wheeler/status/1792990149766258734) podcaster and former One America News host Liz Wheeler. “Were they hoping to assassinate Trump or his family or employees? This is insane.”

“So that was the real reason for the FBI raiding a president’s home: an excuse to use deadly force against Donald Trump,” offered (https://x.com/seanmdav/status/1792970460591739295) The Federalist’s Sean Davis. “The court case was just plan B for the corrupt DOJ and FBI.” He added (https://x.com/seanmdav/status/1793069619978055684), “The FBI is a domestic terrorist organization.”

Trump ally Laura Loomer similarly argued (https://x.com/LauraLoomer/status/1793010180663160943) that the document shows “a possible assassination attempt of President Trump by the Biden regime and FBI!”

Trump and the GOP lie that this shows Biden is “A SERIOUS THREAT TO DEMOCRACY”

Trump and his campaign are very attuned to the nonsense his online supporters generate, and within hours they adopted their bogus narrative.

At 5:21 p.m. ET — just four hours after Kelly’s initial post — Trump posted (https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/112481173729711738) on his Truth Social account: “WOW! I just came out of the Biden Witch Hunt Trial in Manhattan, the ‘Icebox,’ and was shown Reports that Crooked Joe Biden’s DOJ, in their Illegal and UnConstitutional Raid of Mar-a-Lago, AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE. NOW WE KNOW, FOR SURE, THAT JOE BIDEN IS A SERIOUS THREAT TO DEMOCRACY. HE IS MENTALLY UNFIT TO HOLD OFFICE — 25TH AMENDMENT!”

Trump’s campaign posted his comment to X, where it was quickly reposted by an arm of the Republican National Committee.

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The former president’s most unhinged congressional supporters chimed in.

“The Biden DOJ and FBI were planning to assassinate Pres Trump and gave the green light. Does everyone get it yet???!!!!” commented (https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/1793058483006259472) Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).

His biggest media supporters were not far behind.

Fox “news” and “opinion” sides parrot the MAGA spin

Right-wing commentators have spent the last nine years figuring out how to respond to Trump’s massive lies. At this point, everyone who retains a major platform knows their role is to, at the least, soft-pedal his unhinged claims, and at most, to prove they are on board with the MAGA movement by treating them as truth.

That’s what played out on Fox’s airwaves after Trump declared that the FBI’s use of standard orders for the Mar-a-Lago search showed that Biden is “A SERIOUS THREAT TO DEMOCRACY.”

Fox could have provide credible reporting tamping down on the lies circulating online. The network employs people who report on the Justice Department and FBI and even has Kerri Kupec Urbahn, a former top aide in the Trump DOJ, on the payroll (https://www.foxnews.com/person/k/kerri-kupec-urbahn). If the network wanted to find out if the FBI orders were standard, it would be really easy to do so.

But Fox’s business model and its political agenda both depend on propagandizing for Trump, so that’s not what happened. Instead, around an hour after Trump’s Truth Social post, FoxNews.com sent the following push alert (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4020335): “BREAKING NEWS New docs reveal Biden DOJ authorized ‘deadly force’ in Mar-a-Lago raid.’” Here’s how the story’s promotion looked on the website’s front page:

From FoxNews.com at approximately 6:23 p.m. on May 21, 2024.

When the network first discussed (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4020338) the story later that hour on the flagship “news” show Special Report, the segment focused on the same “deadly force” language Kelly had flagged.

Bret Baier, the network’s chief political anchor, opened by highlighting that “former President Trump's attorneys argue the Biden administration Justice Department authorized the use of deadly force if necessary” during the Mar-a-Lago search. Correspondent Kevin Corke responded that the order is “quite shocking.”

Baier went on to downplay the notion that the FBI instructions were standard.

“There may be some people, Kevin, who say that this is just a policy statement of standard operating procedures put inside this operations order for this specific raid,” he said. “But obviously it's not standard operating procedure when you're going into the house of the former president, who happens to be protected by Secret Service.”

Video file

CitationFrom the May 21, 2024, edition of Fox News' Special Report.

When Baier offered a similar comment later in the hour during a panel segment, contributor Byron York described (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4020325) the situation as “kind of worrisome” because the FBI was supposedly “loaded for bear and prepared for the possibility of some sort of violent confrontation with the Secret Service. … The idea that it was prepared for this way, as opposed to, say, worked out in advance, is really troubling.” (In fact, the FBI ensured that “the Secret Service would receive a heads-up a few hours before FBI agents arrived to avoid any law enforcement conflict,” The Washington Post has reported (https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/03/01/fbi-dispute-trump-mar-a-lago-raid/).)

Fox’s “opinion” hosts have been running with the story ever since.

CitationFox News screenshots, 5/21/24 and 5/22/24

“They were actually thinking of using deadly force, or it's on the table that might be necessary at Mar-a-Lago?” Laura Ingraham asked (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4020326) Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO). “Deadly force? OK. It’s really lawfare, it’s not funny. Something actually could have gone down I guess at Mar-a-Lago, beyond just looking for the documents.”

Jesse Watters and Jeanine Pirro went even further (https://www.mediamatters.org/jesse-watters/fox-news-jeanine-pirro-and-jesse-watters-suggests-fbi-wanted-engage-deadly-physical) on Watters’ show, with the host declaring, “Authorized armed agents to use deadly force in the Mar-a-Lago raid. That is insane. Is there any justification for that?”

“Absolutely not,” Pirro replied, adding that “my mind as a prosecutor goes to maybe they wanted the engagement of physical force. Maybe they wanted to come in without FBI, without DOJ, without all of that identifying so that they could engage in deadly physical force.”

Sean Hannity called (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4020328) the “deadly force” language a “shocking new revelation.” He acknowledged it was “boilerplate language” but nonetheless asked, “Why was Merrick Garland prepping for a possible, what, shootout?”

Fox was still carrying Trump’s water on Wednesday morning:...

---

note // new evidence on keeping docs illegally?

an 5 24

donald Trump and his allies are falsely claiming President Joe Biden, the U.S. Dept. of Justice, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation had a plot to assassinate his top political rival, the ex-president, during the execution of a search warrant in 2022 at Mar-a-Lago. Critics, including law enforcement experts, are blasting Trump and his MAGA associates for the “dangerous” lie.

On Tuesday a U.S. District Judge unsealed court documents in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Espionage Act case against Trump where he faces 40 felony counts (https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/06/09/trump-charges-classified-documents/), most over his alleged unlawful removal, retention, and refusal to return classified documents including some of the nation’s top nuclear secrets.

One of those filings, as The Washington Post (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/21/trump-mar-a-lago-raid-fbi-deadly-force/) reported, was a law enforcement documents that included a standard statement reminding FBI agents on the Bureau’s policy on the use of deadly force, “which says officers may resort to lethal force only when the subject of such force poses an ‘imminent danger of death or serious physical injury’ to an officer or another person.”

But on Tuesday, Trump explosively posted on Truth Social (https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/112481173729711738), “WOW! I just came out of the Biden Witch Hunt Trial in Manhattan, the ‘Icebox,’ and was shown Reports that Crooked Joe Biden’s DOJ, in their Illegal and UnConstitutional Raid of Mar-a-Lago, AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE. NOW WE KNOW, FOR SURE, THAT JOE BIDEN IS A SERIOUS THREAT TO DEMOCRACY. HE IS MENTALLY UNFIT TO HOLD OFFICE — 25TH AMENDMENT!”

READ MORE: Trump Adviser Scanned and Saved Contents of Box That Had Classified Docs: Report (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2024/05/trump-adviser-scanned-and-saved-contents-of-box-that-had-classified-docs-report/)

Later, in a fundraising email Trump went much further.

“They were authorized to shoot me!” the subject line reads, according to an archive of political emails (https://politicalemails.org/messages/1428246).

“TRUMP ALERT,” it begins. “BREAKING FROM TRUMP: BIDEN’S DOJ WAS AUTHORIZED TO SHOOT ME!”

“You know they’re just itching to do the unthinkable… Joe Biden was locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger.”

Attorney and former FBI Special Agent Asha Rangappa observed (https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1793240825259811149), “Including the deadly force policy [in] an ops plan is SOP [standard operating procedure]. But just so I make sure I’m following the plot, according to Trump’s position in court, what he is accusing Biden of would be perfectly legal and within the scope of his ‘official’ powers, right?”

Trump repeatedly has insisted presidents must have complete and total “absolute immunity.” His attorneys have argued in federal court and before the U.S. Supreme Court a president could order Seal Team Six to assassinate his political rival and it would be lawful, as was noted here:

U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) was among the top allies who falsely characterized the court filing.

“The Biden DOJ and FBI were planning to assassinate Pres Trump and gave the green light,” she posted (https://twitter.com/RepMTG/status/1793035321451454482) to her official federal government account on X. “Does everyone get it yet???!!!! What are Republicans going to do about it?” hold my beer

She also wrote (https://twitter.com/RepMTG/status/1792998783480942967): “This is grounds for impeachment of Wray and Garland. Trump and team was cooperating the entire time with the FBI,” Greene claimed, both of which are false.

READ MORE: ‘Incomprehensible’: More Classified Docs Were Found at Mar-a-Lago, Unsealed Court Filing Reveals (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2024/05/incomprehensible-more-classified-docs-were-found-at-mar-a-lago-unsealed-court-filing-reveals/)

“Was deadly force authorized against Biden for his docs? Were they going to shoot SS then Pres Trump, Melania, and Barron too??? Speaker Mike Johnson fully funded the DOJ and FBI plus new building and tied our hands behind our backs to hold them accountable. We have the power of the purse and Johnson has handed the purse to Chuck Schumer. All of this is unforgivable.”

Fox News Business host Maria Bartiromo also promoted the false claims Wednesday morning:

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NBC News’ Ryan Reilly mockingly explained (https://twitter.com/ryanjreilly/status/1793117168634073343) the situation: “GOP members of Congress think the feds wanted to assassinate Trump and so they did a raid on his place in Florida when they knew him to be in New Jersey because Mar-A-Lago was closed for the season.”

Meanwhile, critics are sounding the alarm on Trump’s and the GOP’s lies.

“This is wildly irresponsible, even for professional troll like Marjorie Taylor Greene,” wrote (https://twitter.com/JonahDispatch/status/1793058172329992565) conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg. “FBI knew Trump wasn’t there. It was all coordinated with Secret Service in advance. This is deeply dangerous bullshit.”

“Trump wasn’t there,” said (https://twitter.com/WalshFreedom/status/1793065454430216215) talk radio host Joe Walsh, a former GOP U.S. Congressman, responding to U.S. Rep. Greene’s remarks. “Everything was coordinated with Secret Service & local law enforcement. Even for you, this is a deeply irresponsible and dangerous thing to say.”

David Axelrod, the former top Obama strategist and White House advisor, remarked (https://twitter.com/davidaxelrod/status/1793259992654451117), “This is patently nuts…and dangerously provocative!”

Watch the videos above or [at this link]

:{:{//}:

Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) on Tuesday claimed that President Joe Biden and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) planned to "assassinate" former President Donald Trump.

The MAGA lawmaker also claimed that she attempted to warn the ex-president of such matters.

"The Biden DOJ and FBI were planning to assassinate Pres Trump and gave the green light," Greene wrote via X/Twitter (https://x.com/RepMTG/status/1793035321451454482). "Does everyone get it yet???!!!! What are Republicans going to do about it? I tried to oust our Speaker who funded Biden’s DOJ AND FBI, but Democrats stopped it."

READ MORE:Mike Johnson’s 'triumphant moment' doesn't mean GOP extremists are 'going away': analysis (https://www.alternet.org/mtg-mike-johnson-trump/)

She also claimed, "I made sure that he knew."

The Georgia Republican leader was responding to Truth Social post from Trump, in which he wrote (https://x.com/RepMTG/status/1793035321451454482): "WOW! I just came out of the Biden Witch Hunt Trial in Manhattan, the 'Icebox,' and was shown Reports that Crooked Joe Biden's DOJ, in their Illegal and UnConstitutional Raid of Mar-a-Lago, AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE. NOW WE KNOW, FOR SURE, THAT JOE BIDEN IS A SERIOUS THREATTO DEMOCRACY. HE IS MENTALLY UNFIT TO HOLD OFFICE -25TH AMENDMENT!"

Retired FBI Assistant Director Frank Figliuzzi responded to Greene's claim, noting that (https://x.com/FrankFigliuzzi1/status/1793052687900049735) "every FBI operations order contains a reminder of FBI deadly force policy."

The Dispatch Editor-In-Chief Jonah Goldberg commented: (https://x.com/JonahDispatch/status/1793058172329992565) "This is wildly irresponsible, even for professional troll like Marjorie Taylor Greene. FBI knew Trump wasn’t there. It was all coordinated with Secret Service in advance. This is deeply dangerous bulls—t."

READ MORE:'Spectacular' defeat in Johnson battle leaves Marjorie Taylor Greene 'weak and feeble': analysis (https://www.alternet.org/mtg-johnson-benen/)

Columnist Goldie Taylor's replied to Greene, saying (https://x.com/goldietaylor/status/1793047789619888503), "Something is really wrong with you."

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an 5 24

similarly to his MAGA colleague — US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) — on Tuesday US Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) claimed that President Joe Biden wanted to have former President Donald Trump killed during the FBI's raid on the Mar-a-Lago estate.

Referencing the statement, "Law enforcement officers of the Department of Justice may use deadly force when necessary ...." Gosar claimed via X/Twitter (https://x.com/RepGosar/status/1793013319751684100): "Biden ordered the hit on Trump at Mar-a-Lago."

About an hour prior to the Arizona congressman's claim, Rep. Greene baselessly claimed (https://www.alternet.org/r/dashboard/posts) that "Biden and the FBI planned to assassinate" the former president.

READ MORE:Greene hammered over claiming 'Biden DOJ and FBI' planned to assassinate' Trump and she 'knew' (https://www.alternet.org/mtg-trump-fbi/)

ABC News Justice Department reporter Alex Mallon reported via X/Twitter (https://x.com/alex_mallin/status/1793067030029173190), "FBI issues rare statement directly responding to this attack from Trump and his allies. Says 'standard protocol' was followed - 'No one ordered additional steps to be taken and there was no departure from the norm in this matter."

ABC News contributor Sarah Isgur noted (https://x.com/whignewtons/status/1793060249995477061): Anytime the fbi takes an adversarial action like executing a search warrant, there is a deadly force policy. If there is danger to you or public and there’s no alternatives, you are authorized to use deadly force. This is standard policy.

She added, "And of course they gave the Secret Seevice and local law enforcement a heads up. Authorized to use deadly force is not the same as 'planning to shoot people.' But every briefing has to include a deadly force policy that is acknowledged by every agent before they go in."

Adam Kinzinger replied (https://x.com/AdamKinzinger/status/1793078566500057260): "Gosar is a clown."

READ MORE:'Incomprehensible': More classified docs were found at Mar-a-Lago, unsealed court filing reveals (https://www.alternet.org/more-classified-documents-filing/)

Lawyer Bradley P. Moss said (https://x.com/RepGosar/status/1793013319751684100): "Per Trump, Biden has complete immunity"

A former CIA attorney under the account @secretsandlaws wrote: "As a general rule, I don't judge any lawyer for zealously representing a criminal defendant, but blatant distortions in legal filings like this were clearly designed to generate over-the-top responses from Trump's supporters, just like the one below. It's unethical and immoral."

Lawrence Hurley said (https://x.com/lawrencehurley/status/1793026129697104248): "Based on Trump's arguments in his election interference case, Biden could not be prosecuted if he had actually ordered this..."

Doug Thompson replied (https://x.com/NWADoug/status/1793041997973885235): "I try not to retweet nonsense but this is outrageous.Pre-authorization for use of deadly force is routine when issuing a search warrant. 'Go search for and seize evidence at the scene of a serious crime but go unarmed' would be absurd."

READ MORE:Trump adviser scanned and saved contents of box that had classified docs: report (https://www.alternet.org/trump-adviser-classifed-docs/)

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Trump says he’d consider Texas AG Paxton for US attorney general - Alternet.org (https://www.alternet.org/texas-ag-ken-paxton/)

Inside Judge Cannon’s 'particularly problematic' exception in latest ruling: ex-US attorney - Alternet.org (https://www.alternet.org/cannon-smith-vance/)

Trump blasted for suggesting Biden 'would have been given the electric chair' at NRA convention - Alternet.org (https://www.alternet.org/trump-violent-rhetoric-nra/)

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