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don jr bak gen meme

see trump kids

SEE FASCIST PRESS SUPPRESSION

see CORRUPT 3 ARAB, 1789 DOD LOAN

general in the meme wars, tp kirk pal

merri ok

kim guilfoyle gold grift cpac

see gt replace

see crypto corrency, fail ~ ESG

CZ PARDON: isis hamas etc child porn site money launder

trump failsons don jr eric world liberty have created no fin apps promised, small # employees

SEE WORLD LIBERTY FINANCIAL DON JR WITCOFF JR

ronna bought $300K books?

see new right jdv banks working class BS

120 bak 10 24 bak TRUMPKIDS 11 24

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an 12 25

President Donald Trump's eldest son is poised to benefit from a multi-million business deal secured with the Pentagon, The Daily Beast reports.

Vulcan Elements, a "little known startup" backed by Donald Trump Jr. "is slated for a roughly $620 million Defense Department loan under the deal," the *Financial Times* reports.

The recipient of investments from Trump Jr.'s 1798 Capital venture firm, Vulcan is a tiny rare-earths start-up, whose deal with the Defense Department will increase the domestic industrial supply of magnets, they explain.

The president's "persistent confusion about magnets has spurred mockery from his detractors, who have noted that his public comments on the matter are uncannily reminiscent of a 2010 song by Insane Clown Posse, “Miracles,” writes The Daily Beast, "which features rapper Shaggy 2 Dope delivering the immortal lines: 'F—— magnets, how do they work?'"

The loan is part of a wider $1.4 billion investment in the sector, appears to represent the largest ever granted by the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital, and only the latest plushy government deal handed to a company backed by Trump Jr., The Daily Beast explains.

Vulcan is just the latest to profit off of Trump Jr.'s last name.

"Four firms within 1789 Capital’s portfolio, which also holds significant investments in other government contractors like SpaceX and Anduril, have reportedly landed contracts worth a combined $735 million since the MAGA leader assumed office for the second time in January," they note.

"Vulcan Elements’ deal with the Pentagon stands out both for the record-breaking size of the loan, and for the nature of services it will provide under the arrangement," they explain.

Kedric Payne, an ethics attorney, cries foul, telling the Financial Times, "Presidents are expected to avoid even the appearance that they are using their office to financially benefit themselves or their family."

“While we do not know for certain if, or how, the president may have influenced this loan, it falls under the cloud of conflicts of interest we have seen throughout his administration," Payne adds.

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Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss

The Winklevoss twins became some of the first cryptocurrency billionaires after using a multi-million-dollar legal settlement from Mark Zuckerberg to invest in Bitcoin more than a decade ago. The brothers also founded the cryptocurrency exchange Gemini and an investment company that focuses on tech and blockchain start-ups.

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aha note BS CAN BE USED AS BASIS FOR EVIL ACTION OPPRESSION

mma

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

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 10/22/25

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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MMA

Star Fox host Laura Ingraham is now in business with the president’s son

Written by Matt Gertz

Research contributions from Tyler Monroe

Published 10/20/25

Fox News star Laura Ingraham spent years railing against the purported corruption caused by the business interests of President Joe Biden’s son. But now she’s going into business with Donald Trump Jr., federal records show, a wildly and obviously unethical conflict of interest that no credible news outlet would tolerate.

Ingraham and Donald Trump Jr. are among the directors of “Colombier Acquisition Corp. III,” a special-purpose acquisition company which is seeking to raise $260 million in an initial public offering in order to acquire another company, according to a registration statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday and first reported by Bloomberg. The firm’s CEO is Omeed Malik, co-founder and managing partner of the venture capital fund 1789 Capital, which invests in companies aligned with the MAGA movement and has “grown into a financial powerhouse” since November, when Trump was elected president and his son became a partner. Several other executives and directors for the SPAC are also 1789 Capital employees, the filing shows.

No credible news outlet would allow a conflict of interest of this magnitude

The SPAC’s prospectus positions the company as a way to benefit from “the market’s excitement to fund the next chapter of American Exceptionalism by investing in the Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Growth (‘EIG’) economy, a set of era-defining business and investment opportunities that we believe will build the next period of American prosperity.” It continues: “These opportunities are rooted in America-first cultural shifts after the 2024 U.S. election, a resurgence of merit-based investing in growth equity, a focus on market-based solutions for America, and a celebration of America’s most prominent founders. Opportunities in the EIG economy include but are not limited to companies that reindustrialize the American economy and enhance American prosperity and security.”

Ingraham’s bio in the document identifies her as “the host of ‘The Ingraham Angle,’ an hour-long cable news program, which launched in October 2017, on Fox News (weeknights),” a program which “features Ms. Ingraham’s analysis of politics, business, legal matters and the culture, along with her interviews with prominent individuals in those fields.”

The potential conflicts of interest created by Ingraham’s roles with the SPAC and Fox are legion:

Notably, Ingraham regularly claimed the business dealings of Hunter Biden in the years prior to his father’s presidential election implicated Joe Biden in rampant corruption. Hunter Biden’s name was mentioned during at least 164 episodes of Ingraham’s Fox show in the less than two years from January 3, 2023, when Republicans took control of the House of Representatives after promising to use their power to investigate those business interests, through Trump’s election on November 5, 2024, according to a Media Matters review of the Kinetiq video database.

Ingraham claimed during one such program, in June 2023, that Hunter Biden’s clients were “sophisticated players” who were “prepared to pay millions” because “they believed they would get certain benefits in return from the U.S. government.”

“Every single person in the White House press room knows how all this works,” she added. “The only defense that they have is that we can’t prove that Biden himself did lobbying or was directing Hunter’s business.” Ingraham concluded by bemoaning that “these foreign interests are now encouraged to believe that America is for sale” and arguing that “one pillar of the 2024 campaign for Republicans should be, the Bidens are getting richer while your family is getting poorer.”

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Citation

From the June 26, 2023, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle

A few short years later and President Trump’s son is overseeing a business empire which includes not only the venture capital funding through 1789 Capital but also foreign real estate deals; massive crypto investments; and nebulous advisory roles with several companies. And Ingraham has looked at the various financial schemes involving the president’s family and decided to join him and cash in.

Again, no credible news outlet would allow a conflict of interest of this magnitude, roughly analogous to if Hunter and MSNBC star Rachel Maddow were to have gone into business together during the Biden administration. But don’t expect the Fox brass to step in: Once you’ve put the president’s daughter-in-law on the payroll and given her an hour a week to produce propaganda for the administration, you’ve acknowledged that you are in a different line of work.

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mma 9 25

Right-wing media rushed to blame killing of Charlie Kirk on trans people

Authorities pushed back on unverified claims that the alleged shooter's ammunition was inscribed with “transgender ideology”

Special ProgramsLGBTQ

Written by Gideon Taaffe, Jack Winstanley & Noah Dowe

Published 09/12/25

After the September 10 killing of Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk, right-wing pundit Steven Crowder and The Wall Street Journal separately reported on an internal law enforcement bulletin claiming cartridges possibly connected to the shooting and recovered by police were engraved with “transgender and anti-fascist ideology.”

Some media figures seized on the scant reporting as key evidence of the suspect’s motivations, with right-wing commentators and outlets claiming the killer was a “leftist Trans radical,” labelling the killing an act of “trans terrorism,” and calling for the “trans movement” to be labeled “as a terrorist movement.”

Following a September 12 press conference with law enforcement that detailed the messages inscribed on the ammunition, initial reports suggesting a connection between trans people and the phrases on the bullet casings appear to be based on a misinterpretation of evidence.

] VID]

mma //

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

09/12/25 1:22 PM EDT

  1. ### Right-wing media endorse a potential Supreme Court challenge to same-sex marriage

08/28/25 2:42 PM EDT

  1. ### Anti-trans pundits who championed the idea of protecting women’s sports now say that throwing sex toys at women athletes is hilarious

08/12/25

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AN 8 25

“How much is Trump pocketing off the presidency?” That’s the question driving a major new investigation by journalist David D. Kirkpatrick in The New Yorker, which finds that the first family has been leveraging its place atop U.S. politics to rake in billions. According to Kirkpatrick, Donald Trump and his immediate family have made $3.4 billion from his time in the White House, including more than $2.3 billion from various cryptocurrency ventures alone.

“What really surprised me about all this is just how fast they’re making this money. They seem to turn down no opportunity,” says Kirkpatrick. “It really sharpens the question of what a buyer, so to speak, might be getting for that.”

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

“The Number: How Much Is Trump Pocketing Off the Presidency?” That’s the headline of an exhaustive new investigation published by The New Yorker magazine. In the piece, journalist David Kirkpatrick writes, quote, “Many payments now flowing to Trump, his wife, and his children and their spouses would be unimaginable without his Presidencies: a two-billion-dollar investment from a fund controlled by the Saudi crown prince; a luxury jet from the Emir of Qatar; profits from at least five different ventures peddling crypto; fees from an exclusive club stocked with Cabinet officials and named Executive Branch.”

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In March, Forbes estimated that Trump’s net worth had more than doubled over a year to $5 billion. And a few months later, The New York Times estimated Trump’s wealth had grown to $10 billion. But these estimates and others did not attempt to look at how exactly his fortune is growing.

David Kirkpatrick writes, quote, “Although the notion that Trump is making colossal sums off the Presidency has become commonplace, nobody could tell me how much he’s made. … I decided to attempt to tally up just how much Trump and his immediate family have pocketed off his time in the White House,” unquote.

Well, David Kirkpatrick joins us now in our New York studio.

Welcome to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. Explain how you arrived at the number. And what are the — is the period of time that he has made this money?

DAVID KIRKPATRICK: Well, what’s important here is that I’m trying to be fair to the president. I’m not out to get Trump here. I went through and looked at all the sources of income, the income streams flowing into the Trump Organization, the president and his family, and I asked: Is this money that he would have made absent the presidency? Because he’s got hotels, he’s got golf courses. Sometimes people go there just to play golf or rent a hotel room. We’re not talking about that. So, I only wanted to look at money that he has made because he is or has been in the White House. And then I tried to ask, as best I could: What is each one of those things worth? And that’s how I came up with $3.4 billion. And again, I think what I hope will make this report credible, and the reason I urge people to read it, is that it’s — I’ve tried as best I can to be fair. I’ve shown all my work. And people can make their own conclusions.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, David, could you talk about some of the specifics, from the small to the big, for instance, the ubiquitous MAGA hat at Trump rallies? How is — Trump has a private store that sells these? Can you talk about that, and also the family’s investments in crypto?

DAVID KIRKPATRICK: Yeah, the hats. I was quite surprised to realize that in addition to the campaign merchandise sold by his campaign, which all candidates and all presidents do — that’s money that goes into the campaign coffers, that he can’t really touch for personal purposes — the Trump Organization also has its own online store, and they sell all kinds of Trump merchandise that looks very much like its campaign merchandise, but this money flows to Trump and himself — you know, $20, $40 for a pair of flip-flops, a pair of beer koozies, a baseball hat. He’s making, you know, millions of dollars — you know, I forget what the exact number was, but 20 millions of dollars over the last few years — selling this kind of merchandise, which is arguably competing with his own campaign and diverting some of the money that his supporters might think is supporting the MAGA movement and his candidates to his own pocket. That’s the — you know, that’s the small end. Nobody thinks that anybody who’s paying $50 for a baseball hat is actually going to get any influence, you know, over the president in return for that. That’s just a way of making money.

On the other extreme, there’s significant amounts of money flowing into the Trump Organization now through its various or the president’s various crypto enterprises. Some of these, you know, predate his return to the White House, but I tried to look here at the — you know, all the money that they made off of the White House over the course of the two terms and the time in between, when he remained a kind of kingmaker in the Republican Party, so — and most of it has happened during around his second term, you know, shortly before, through his second term. In terms of crypto, you know, should I go through and break down all the ways they’re making money off of crypto?

AMY GOODMAN: Yes.

DAVID KIRKPATRICK: OK, well, here you go. So, first of all, for people who might not be familiar with crypto, all it is, really, is a kind of online ledger or spreadsheet keeping track of who owns what. There’s a number of ways the Trump family has tried to take advantage of this new technology. He started out by selling NFTs, non-fungible tokens, which are basically sort of digital cartoons of himself.

Then he moved on to setting up a company. His family, his sons set up a company called World Liberty Financial. And that’s done a couple things. It sold a kind of token or online certificate that would ostensibly allow somebody to vote on whatever its futures, plans in the crypto business might be. They raised, you know, $550 million selling those tokens, and 75% of that flows to the Trump Organization. Then it went into a new business, selling what’s known as a stablecoin. A stablecoin is basically the online equivalent of a dollar. It’s not really an investment. It’s just a kind of, like, almost a checking account. It’s a way to transfer money here and there, perhaps more efficiently by doing it digitally. For the company, World Liberty Financial, they get to make money off of investing that money in treasuries while it’s out in the world circulating as a stablecoin. So, they go into the stablecoin business. Their first customer is a company owned by the United Arab Emirates that puts up $2 billion to buy stablecoin. While that money is out circulating as stablecoin, they’re going to get about 4% a year on that, I calculate, by investing it in short-term treasuries. So, that’s a couple.

There’s a few others he’s gone into. His memecoin is perhaps the most famous. President Trump, right around the time he was elected, before he was inaugurated, went into this business selling a kind of online novelty, basically just a joke. It’s a kind of digital certificate that just allows you to say, “I paid money to own a little Trump novelty.” That’s it. That’s all it is. There’s nothing to it. And it doesn’t even purport to sort of hold wealth, although you can trade it back and forth. He’s made about $300 million selling those memecoins.

And the last thing is a little bit of kind of a financial engineering that his company, Trump Media & Technology Group, a publicly traded company of which he’s the chairman — a little bit of financial engineering that that company has done. Now, that is the company that owns Truth Social. Truth Social is a very small online platform, social media platform. It doesn’t have much revenue, maybe a million dollars a quarter. It’s never really made a profit. It doesn’t have much chance of ever making a profit. And yet, the stock that owns it, Trump Media & Technology Group, trades at a kind of surprisingly high price. People on Wall Street consider it a meme stock. It trades basically on how people feel about President Trump. And in the last couple months, really in June, that company has done a remarkable thing, which is they have sold — they’ve issued new shares of stock. They’ve sold the stock at their inflated memecoin price, and they’ve taken that money, and they’ve bought bitcoin. They’ve also done the same thing to try to stockpile some cash, but they’ve bought about $2.3 or $2.4 billion worth of bitcoin, and they’ve stockpiled about $760 million worth of cash. So, in the end of last quarter, they said, “Look, we’ve got $3.1 billion of liquid assets on our books.” So, I calculate that since President Trump owns 42% of that company, he has an ownership interest in that $3.1 billion. So, as I was doing this reporting over the last few months there, my calculation of their net worth, of his net worth, bumped by — I shouldn’t say “his net worth” — of the amount of money he’s made off the presidency, jumped up by a billion dollars.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, other members of the family, for instance, Jared Kushner and his daughter, in terms of the investments by foreign government sovereign funds in them, and what that looks like?

DAVID KIRKPATRICK: I think you’re thinking about Jared Kushner’s private equity firm.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yes.

DAVID KIRKPATRICK: So, after he left — after Trump left the White House in 2020, his son, Jared Kushner, who had been in real estate, went into private equity, a new line of work. And he went to the Persian Gulf to solicit money, and he asked the sovereign wealth fund of the United — of Saudi Arabia to invest. Their panel of advisers said, “This is a mistake. He doesn’t have a track record in private equity, only real estate. There could be some public relations problem here. People are going to say this is a payoff to the family of a president.” The crown prince of Saudi Arabia, who controls the public investment fund, overruled that and, nonetheless, invested the $2 billion with Jared Kushner’s private equity firm.

Since then, he’s accumulated as much as $4.8 billion in assets under management, almost all of it from foreign sources, quite a bit of it also from the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. Under standard private equity terms, he would get 2% a year of that money as asset management fees. With Saudi Arabia, it’s a little bit lower. But that is also, I’m counting as, money flowing into the Trump family coffers as a result of their time in the White House.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you tell us, David, about the family? I mean, in the first term, many of them were advisers to President Trump. They were in the White House. They would have to deal with ethics rules. We don’t see that right now. So, I’m wondering how the family business has changed from the first term to the second term. And I also wanted to ask you about — for example, President Trump says he struck a trade agreement with Vietnam. He’ll apply a 20% tariff on Vietnamese imports, down from the 46% he threatened. The reported deal comes just weeks after the Trump Organization broke ground on a $1.5 billion golf course in Vietnam. A few questions there.

DAVID KIRKPATRICK: Yeah, a few questions there. So, during the first term, President Trump, on his way into office, volunteered that he and his family were not going to do any deals overseas, because they didn’t like the way that looked. Right? It raises the specter that some foreign interest, or even foreign government, is going to try to buy favor with the U.S. government by paying Trump and his family privately.

During the second term, the family has said, “We’re not going to do that anymore. We’re no longer going to abstain from those deals.” Donald Trump Jr. has said publicly, “Look, we restrained ourselves last term, and people accused us of profiteering anyway. So we’re not going to lock ourselves in, quote-unquote, 'the proverbial padded room.' We’re just going to go ahead and be businessmen and do as many deals as we can.” And they’ve done quite a few.

Now, again, in my accounting, I’m not including deals which appear to be extensions of the business they were in before he was elected. You know, he had licensed his name for use on four condominium buildings around India before he ever went into the White House. Now there are five more Indian projects. Fine, let’s leave that aside. That’s, more or less, legitimate Trump business.

On the other hand, since late 2022, when he was really the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, he’s had a whole flurry of new deals around the Persian Gulf with one Saudi Arabian company, and that’s in, you know, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, a couple in Saudi Arabia and one in Qatar. And I don’t think there’s any way those would have happened without the presidency. And that adds up to, I would say, you know, guessing as best I can the various income streams involved — that’s more than $100 million right there in terms of its present value.

You mentioned the Vietnam project. That’s another one that I think, you know, would not have unfolded as it has, were he not returning to the White House. That is probably, you know, physically, going to be the largest Trump-branded property in the world. Its planned size is about three times as big as Central Park with 54 holes of golf. It’s very hard to know how much the Trump family is actually going to make out of that property. On his most recent financial disclosure form, he said that the Trump Organization had already received $5 million in initial licensing fees from lending their name to that property. He’s not going to build it. He’s not going to own it. They’re just lending their name and some management services. So, I figure, over 10 years, which is kind of a minimum term for a management or licensing agreement, he’s likely to make at least $50 million, with a present value of about $40 million. Probably it’ll be a lot more than that.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And how much of this, in your perspective, is legal or — and also, how much of it is unprecedented for a president?

DAVID KIRKPATRICK: As far as I can tell, it’s all legal. You know, I don’t have any evidence of a quid pro quo. I don’t have any evidence of a specific instance where he has explicitly sold a public favor for personal profit. And the remedy that our laws prescribe for potential conflicts of interest is disclosure. Elected officials disclose what they own and how they’re making money, and the voters or the Congress can decide what’s appropriate or inappropriate. And I guess we’ll have to see how voters feel about that. The other part of your question, I think, was — what again?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: How much of this is unprecedented for a president?

DAVID KIRKPATRICK: Oh, yeah. Well, a lot of — that’s been widely reported. There’s nothing like this before, right? A lot of presidents make money after they leave, selling books, you know, various other endeavors. But he and his family are making this money while he’s in the White House. And the scale is really quite novel.

AMY GOODMAN: And in the last 10 seconds, you talk about the frenzy.

DAVID KIRKPATRICK: Well, that’s right. What really surprised me about all this is just how fast they’re making this money. They seem to turn down no opportunity. And that’s what makes the questions about a conflict of interest all the more pressing, because I feel like when they are so evidently zealous, so eager to make money, it really sharpens the question of what a buyer, so to speak, might be getting for that.

AMY GOODMAN: David Kirkpatrick, we want to thank you so much for being with us, reporter with The New Yorker. We’ll link to your piece, “The Number: How Much Is Trump Pocketing Off the Presidency?”

Watch the segment below:

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Winning Team Publishing is a conservative publishing house founded in 2021 by Sergio Gor and Donald Trump Jr.[1][2]

The publisher was founded after Trump failed to secure a memoir deal from the Big Five publishers, in part due to fact-checking concerns.[2][3] Trump has earned millions in royalties from the project.[4][5]

The publisher has published various authors, including Jeanine Pirro, Charlie Kirk, Kari Lake, and President Donald Trump. President Trump's three coffee table style books have been successful including his latest book, Save America, debuting on the New York Times best seller list.[6][7]

In 2023, Hudson Booksellers refused to carry the publisher's books.[8][9]

Publications

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AN 5 25

'Soft underbelly': Investigative reporterS detail 'biggest area of corruption for the Trump family'

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comm dr an 5 25

Monday reporting from the Financial Times that U.S. President Donald Trump's family media company "plans to raise $3 billion to buy cryptocurrencies" sparked a fresh wave of alarm over his administration's policies and potential corruption.

After winning a second term last year, the Republican president transferred his stake in Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG)—which is behind the Truth Social platform—to a revocable trust overseen by his son Donald Trump Jr.

Citing six unnamed sources, FT reported that TMTG "aims to raise $2 billion in fresh equity and another $1 billion via a convertible bond," and "also plans to launch an exchange-traded fund focused on cryptocurrency."

According to the newspaper:

TMTG said in a statement that "apparently the Financial Times has dumb writers listening to even dumber sources" but did not comment further. Representatives for Donald Trump Jr. did not respond to requests for comment. A White House spokesperson declined to comment.

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After Reuters also requested comment on the reporting, the news agency noted, TMTG called both Reuters and FT "fake news."

Responding on social media, Elizabeth Sheppard Sellam, director of the politics and international relations program at the University of Tours in France, said that "the most shocking thing is not the project itself, it is who benefits from it: those close to the president, through an opaque structure, and at the heart of the administration."

"The Trump administration has a very strong pro-crypto policy: favorable taxation, favorable regulation, promotion of investments. And meanwhile, his own family is preparing to raise $3 billion to go all-in on bitcoin," she wrote, highlighting Donald Trump Jr.'s role at TMTG.

Sheppard Sellam also noted that both he and the president's second-eldest son, Eric Trump, are set to speak at the Bitcoin 2025 conference, scheduled to start Tuesday in Las Vegas, Nevada. Other planned speakers include Vice President JD Vance, Trump's "Crypto Czar" David Sacks, and various Republicans in Congress.

"Where does politics end and business begin?" the professor asked. "He is a sitting head of state whose immediate entourage is organizing massive financial operations, with a direct effect on the markets... and on their wallets."

Florian Hollenbach, an economist at the Copenhagen Business School in Denmark, simply said, "So much corruption and all out in the open."

The FT reporting came just days after the president dined with the top investors in his meme coin at his Virginia golf club—an event that drew protesters whose chants included: "America's not for sale," "Lock him up," and "Trump is a traitor."

Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has also generated alarm with his crypto executive order. His administration faced further criticism last month for disbanding a U.S. Department of Justice unit tasked with investigating criminal actors in the digital asset space—a decision laid out in a memo authored by the president's former personal defense attorney.

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an 5 25 beast

President Donald Trump's eldest son, Donald Jr., is opening a new exclusive club in Washington D.C. And he's making it clear that only a certain kind of Republican is welcome.

The Daily Beast reported Monday that the new club, which will be called "Executive Branch," is tailor-made for the MAGA crowd — and its founders are making it clear that traditional conservatives and journalists will be barred from entering. David Sacks, who the Beast described as Trump's "crypto czar," told the New York Times he wants to make sure that the type of conservatives who frequent other GOP-oriented D.C. clubs will be turned away at the door.

“To the extent there are Republican clubs, they tend to be like more Bush-era Republicans as opposed to Trump-era Republicans,” hSacks said. “So we wanted to create something new, hipper, and Trump-aligned.”

READ MORE:'This is a disgrace': Trump ripped for 'outrageous' and 'divisive' Memorial Day diatribe

Aside from Trump Jr. and Sacks, other major investors in the club include Alex and Zach Witkoff (the sons of Trump administration Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff) along with investment banker Omeed Malik (who has separate business ventures with Trump Jr.) and Chris Buskirk, who cofounded the right-wing tech donor group "Rockbridge Network" with Vice President JD Vance. The founders will also be hands-on in approving would-be members.

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"[P]rospective members of the club have to be heavily vetted and approved by its founders," a spokesperson for Executive Branch told CNBC.

Membership fees may run as high as $500,000, in addition to an annual fee. And the spokesperson made it clear that the club was meant to serve as a safe haven for Trump in the event he doesn't want to fly all the way back to Mar-a-Lago in order to be around fellow travelers.

“We want people to feel comfortable having conversations in privacy," the spokesperson said, stressing that the media and corporate lobbyists would be blocked from the club's premises.

READ MORE:(Opinion) A veteran tells Trump 'to go straight to hell'

Click here to read the Beast's article in full, and click here to read the Times' full report (subscriptions required).

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AN 5 25

In an article in The New Yorker published Monday, journalist Evan Osnos argued that the Trump administration's "greed" has motivated the United States' "aspiring oligarchs" — as well as their opponents — into action.

"Even seasoned practitioners of Washington pay-to-play have been startled by the new rules for buying influence. In December, a seat at a group dinner at Mar-a-Lago could be had for a million-dollar contribution to MAGA Inc., a super PAC that serves as a war chest for the midterms," Osnos wrote.

According to Osnos, "more recently, one-on-one conversations with the president have become available for five million. The return on investment is uncertain, a government-affairs executive told me: 'What if he’s in a bad mood? You have no clue where the money is eventually going.' Another lobbying veteran described the frank exchange as 'outer-borough Mafia shit.'"

READ MORE:Fed chair calls out Trump’s Harvard attacks during bombshell Princeton speech

The author further noted that after President Donald Trump returned to the White House this winter, his inner circle began shaping a new institution tailored to their ideals.

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Among them was his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., who helped launch an exclusive, invitation-only club called the Executive Branch. Membership requires a hefty initiation fee that can reach up to $500,000. One of the founding members, Silicon Valley investor David Sacks — now the administration’s point person on artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency — described the initiative as an effort to build something fresh, trendy, and aligned with Trump’s vision.

Though the exact location remains undisclosed, Sacks assured that the club would be a safe space for supporters, free from “fake-news reporters” or unfamiliar, untrusted individuals.

The article also mentioned a launch party co-hosted by Sacks "at the Occidental, a venerable restaurant near the White House where political operatives once worked to defuse the Cuban missile crisis over crab cakes and pork chops."

READ MORE:Struggles to 'even finish a sentence': Behind the obvious signs of Trump's growing dementia

The place had designated spaces for V.I.P.s and V.V.I.P.s, and guests included "an extraordinary range of officials from the new administration," per the article.

"Lobbyists from the pharmaceutical and finance industries were pleased to find themselves in close quarters with the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, and the director of National Intelligence, as well as the chairs of the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, and the Securities and Exchange Commission. One attendee later described it as an improvement over the scene at the Trump International Hotel, which was popular during the first term," the New Yorker piece noted.

But the idea was not received well outside Washington.

Former New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, a two-time Trump voter who has sometimes voiced criticism of him, dismissed the club as a “money grab.”

Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-O.H.) drew a comparison to Nero’s decadence, labeling the club a “grotesque portrait of ruling billionaires.”

READ MORE: ['Graceless soulless ghoul': JD Vance buried over comment about Biden’s cancer diagnosis]

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'An honor to be asked': Donald Trump Jr. teases presidential run

an 525

'A way for Mar-A-Lago to get paid': Don Jr.’s role in 'anti-woke' firm 'raises serious questions'

rs

Sean Moon’s gun-promoting church, in Newfoundland, Pennsylvania, is closely tied to his brother’s gun business, the Kahr Firearms Group, headquartered in nearby Greeley. (Both towns are exurban to Scranton.)

Kahr Arms Groups owns several gun brands including Thompson, and the company makes street-legal Tommy Guns as well as AR-15s. While the NRA touts Kahr as “a Premier NRA Industry Ally,” the company actively partners with the even-more-hardcore Gun Owners of America, and fights gun-control legislation in Congress as part of GOA’s “No Compromise Alliance.”

Sean Moon describes his brother as “a member of our church,” adding that “like any other member, he contributes what he feels in his heart … to the organization.” I asked Moon whether adopting the Rod of Iron branding for his church had anything to do with boosting his brother’s business. “No,” the pastor retorted. “Of course not.”

To honor the leader of the MAGA movement, Justin Moon’s firearms company has launched several lines of weapons emblazoned with Trump’s likeness and slogans.

Like their father, the Moon brothers have sought to cultivate ties with powerful figures of the American right, and the modern GOP is proving a fertile ground.

When Justin Moon’s company opened a firearms emporium called the Tommy Gun Warehouse in 2016, Sean gave the blessing, and Eric Trump gave the keynote speech. The brothers have also both sought photo ops with Don Trump Jr., who features prominently on Sean Moon’s Instagram account, as well as Justin’s.

To honor the dear leader of the MAGA movement, Justin Moon’s firearms company has launched several lines of weapons emblazoned with Trump’s likeness and slogans, including the POTUS 1911 pistol, the Commander in Chief AR-15, and the Trump Thompson Tommy Gun, chambered in .45 for the 45th president.

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Trump aides suggest Warner Bros. give Don Jr. a hunting show to improve White House ties

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A Florida Republican group is facing backlash after extending a formal invitation to Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan, who arrived in Florida on Thursday from Romania. The accused human traffickers were reportedly granted travel clearance following intervention from high-ranking Trump administration officials who “took an interest in their case.”

38-year old Andrew Tate, along with Tristan, 36, are under investigation in both Romania and the UK.

According to the BBC, they were first arrested in Romania in 2022, where they “face trial on allegations of rape, trafficking minors and money laundering, all of which they deny.” They are also, BBC reported separately, “facing separate, unrelated charges of rape and human trafficking in the UK.”

The Tates are “vocal supporters” of President Donald Trump, “have a large US following and are popular figures among some elements of the American right.” Andrew Tate has been called a self-professed misogynist influencer.

READ MORE: ‘Did I Say That? I Can’t Believe I Said That’: Trump’s Remarks Again Fuel Memory Questions

President Trump’s special envoy Richard Grenell, “raised the Tate brothers with Romania’s Foreign Minister Emil Hurezeanu at the Munich Security Conference,” BBC notes. “Hurezeanu said he had not considered Grenell’s approach as a ‘form of pressure.’ Grenell told the Financial Times his support for the brothers was evident.”

On Thursday, Vox reported on the “intra-MAGA fight playing out right now over Andrew Tate,” and explained that “Tate became a far-right podcasting star in the 2020s with his explicitly sexist philosophy of masculinity. He quickly gained a wide following among both young men specifically, and severalprominent MAGAfigures, including Trump’s own former personal attorney and current adviserAlina Habba, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump Jr.”

Indeed, last month Tate appeared on “The Benny Show,” with guest Alina Habba, formerly President Donald Trump’s personal attorney and now Counselor to the President.

“I’m a big fan,” Habba told Tate, as Mediaite reported.

READ MORE: Trump’s DHS Can Now Spy More Easily on LGBTQ Americans

“I think that your anger is the same that President Trump has for our country and the time is now for us to stop being wimps. I think that’s exactly the right sentiment. And I also have to say that I sympathize with you because I think you go through a lot of the same show me the person, I’ll find the crime that President Trump has gone through.”

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Currently pinned to the top of the Tampa Bay Young Republicans’ page on the social media site X is their invitation to the Tate brothers.

Bipartisan condemnation against the Tampa Bay Young Republicans came quickly.

“They BRAGGED about their abuse of women. On VIDEO. What the hell has happened to the Republican Party?” asked former Republican Ron Filipkowski, now the editor-in-chief of MeidasTouch.

Well-known veteran journalist Charlie Sykes, the former Bulwark editor-in-chief, remarked, “Florida YRs embrace sex traffickers.. because of course.”

Mediaite contributing editor Sarah Rumpf commented, “Tampa Bay YRs endorsing abusing women and sex trafficking. Take note, YR women. The Tates’ criminal cases in multiple countries are still pending, but what they’ve admitted — bragged about! — is enough to make the moral decision clear here.”

CNN’s S.E. Cupp, a Republican, wrote: “YRs…I know it seems that way, but you don’t HAVE to embrace every evil asshole just to ‘own the libs.'”

Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis said the Tate brothers are not welcome in his state. His communications director, Bryan Griffin, separately wrote: “It’s not a matter of speech. It’s a matter of conduct. Conservatism is not impartial to morality. In fact, the right must become more selective about the people we amplify. This is a different situation from the smear campaigns of the left. Their admissions alone are repugnant.”

“Wrong move,” remarked Florida State Senator and former Florida Republican Party Chair Blaise Ingoglia. “You can believe in free speech and still not give women-abusing scumbags a platform.”

One of the sharpest criticisms came from Rafael E. Struve, the Director of Communications at Bienvenido, which he describes as “a national political organization that specializes in mobilizing Hispanic conservative voters” to elect Republicans.

“As a former YR club chair,” Struve wrote, “I get it—any press is good press, and controversy’s a cheap thrill. I’ve seen some dumb moves for clicks, but come on Tampa Bay…what the hell is this? You’re rolling out the red carpet for a pair of self-styled pimps and predators, calling it ‘free speech’ as if you’re some sort of First Amendment heroes? These creeps are on record bragging about pimping out and battering women, and you’re still handing them a mic—and then you have the gall to compare them to President Trump?”

“I’m trying to understand what broke in your heads to greenlight this,” he continued. “Platforming trafficking suspects and porn peddlers doesn’t make you free speech rebels—it makes you look desperate and dumb. Dragging President Trump into this, as if his fight’s anything like their circus, is especially insulting. You’re better than this—for your club’s sake, I genuinely hope you’ll ditch the graphic, delete the post, and figure out why you thought this was a win.”

Watch the video above or at this link.

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alternet

It's not just social media that's giving violent white supremacists a pass

Thom Hartmann January 11, 2025

— The fossil fuel industry is apparently paying off Republicans — in a practice legalized by Republicans on the Supreme Court — to make sure Congress never passes legislation to hold them accountable for all the death and destruction they’ve caused by lying about climate change for the past 50 years. }:

Here, for example, are the biggest recipients of their largesse, according to OpenSecrets:

Romney, Mitt (R-UT) $8,291,262; Cornyn, John (R-TX) $4,678,062; Cruz, Ted (R-TX) $4,138,421; McConnell, Mitch (R-KY) $2,852,107; McCarthy, Kevin (R-CA) $2,581,832; Hutchison, Kay Bailey (R-TX) $2,332,021; Inhofe, James M (R-OK) $2,320,139; Pearce, Steve (R-NM) $2,236,714; Barton, Joe (R-TX) $2,211,987; Brady, Kevin (R-TX) $2,087,396; Scalise, Steve (R-LA) $1,847,013; Murkowski, Lisa (R-AK) $1,792,602.

If you haven’t yet noticed the trend, just check out the party affiliation of each…}:

— Convicted Felon Trump now has the “Scarlet F”: Our first felon President. There was a time that many of us remember when America — for all our faults, history, and stupid international meddling — was seen around the world as a beacon of morality and the staunchest defender of democratic values. Now, we’re the laughingstock — or the terror — of the developed world, since a grifting adjudicated sexual abuser, Putin lackey, and chronic liar is about to become president again. Alexander Hamilton warned us, but our media was far too busy fluffing Trump’s ego and sanewashing his BS to remind us that our first Secretary of the Treasury and the main author of the Federalist Papers wrote, in 1792:

“Those then, who resist a confirmation of public order, are the true Artificers of monarchy... When a man unprincipled in private life, desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits—despotic in his ordinary demeanour—known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty—when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity—to join in the cry of danger to liberty—to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion—to flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day

It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may ‘ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.’” (Emphasis added)}:

And “directing the whirlwind” of racial hate, fear, and bigotry — as I regularly point out here on Hartmann Report— is exactly what Trump thinks he can do to reverse the Civil Rights movement and the New Deal (I’m skeptical he can pull it off). The Founders — and FDR and LBJ — must be rolling in their graves…

— It's not just social media that's giving violent white supremacists a pass... Without telling us, so far as I can tell, Bloomberg is reporting that the FBI (and the DHS more generally) stopped seriously monitoring and infiltrating violent white supremacist groups two years ago, around the time they were being trashed for such investigations by sedition-, Putin-, and Trump-loving Republicans in the House. The pressure seems to have worked.

“In 2022, DHS closed its Disinformation Governance Board, designed to offer best practices in countering viral conspiracies,” reports Bloomberg, adding that, “DHS also recently shuttered a unit that swept the internet for threatening materials in public posts, social media messages and online forums…”

Putin’s internet trolls, operating with huge budgets and the resources of the Russian state behind them, have since become a major force on the top social media sites, and both X and Meta are no longer suppressing their lies and attacks on democracy. Is it fossil fuel billionaires or social media billionaires who are the greatest threat to the future of world peace and democracy? Hard to choose…

— Greedy insurer interrupts cancer surgery in shocking mid-procedure call... Dr. Elisabeth Potter was in the middle of surgery on a breast cancer patient when a nurse ran into the operating theater to say that UnitedHealthcare was on the phone demanding to speak with her. She interrupted the surgery, leaving the unconscious patient whose chest was cut open on the table, to take the call. Here’s her story in her own words, as she told it on Instagram and later confirmed with Newsweek:

“So, I scrubbed out of my case and I called UnitedHealthcare, and the gentleman said he needed some information about her. Wanted to know her diagnosis and whether her inpatient stay should be justified. And I was like, ‘Do you understand this? She's asleep right now and she has breast cancer?’ And the gentleman said, ‘Actually, I don’t — that’s a different department that would know that information.’ And I was like, ‘Well, she does need to stay overnight tonight, and you have all the information with you because I got approval for this surgery, and I need to go back and be with my patient now.’ But, yeah, it’s out of control. Insurance is out of control. I have no other words.”

I can think of a few words: Parasitic, thief, malefic, heinous, flagitious, depraved, monstrous, mephistophelean, godless, loathsome, psychopathic, cruel, sadistic, maleficient, and vile for a start… Feel free to add your nouns or adjectives in the comments below.

— Indiana Republicans want to threaten rape victims with felonies if they try to get an abortion. Over at her brilliant “Abortion Every Day” substack newsletter, Jessica Valenti tells us that Indiana State Senator Mike Young has proposed legislation that would subject a woman in that state to 2.5 years in prison if she were to claim rape to get an abortion (about the only way to get an abortion in Indiana, unless your life is in danger) and then can’t subsequently prove to the satisfaction of the state’s GOP that she was actually raped.}:

The bill also makes it a crime to possess the abortion drug mifepristone, evoking the possibility of midnight raids with Indiana police kicking in the doors of women who Indiana Republicans think may have purchased the drug from an online telehealth physician. Freedumb!!}:

— Wondering why Trump is on a jeremiad against Panama? Some suggest his rant was timed to coincide with Jimmy Carter’s funeral to give rightwing media an excuse to trash Carter’s signing the Panama Canal Treaty that Nixon first started negotiating. But consider this story from Newsweek titled “Trump Organization Accused of Tax Evasion in Panama.” Just like the way he scammed New York State out of tax dollars (for which he was adjudicated and sentenced last year) his failed hotel in Panama hadn’t been paying its taxes either. Trump’s involved in a huge lawsuit down their right now, and some speculate that toppling the Panamanian government might work out well for his personal interests. Keep an eye on this one!

— James Carville suggests Jeff Bezos is trying to buy Trump via Melania. Amazon has just announced that they’re going to spend $40 million on a documentary about Melania Trump, who got her legal status in the US with a “genius visa” that’s typically reserved for the world’s top scientists and Nobel Prize winners (there are only around 3,000 issued every year). Carville, who was himself the subject of a recent Netflix documentary, implies that this number stinks of a payoff:

“This is something I’m going to claim some expertise in, the subject of documentaries because I’ve been the subject of two and I’ve been the subject of a recent one… You can produce a world class documentary for $2 million. I know it. You couldn’t spend $40 million on a documentary if you tried 10 times harder to do it, so where’s the money going? Well, we know where the money is going.”

Why? Well, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and 17 state attorneys general are suing Amazon for allegedly maintaining a monopoly through anticompetitive practices, and Bezos apparently hates unions and might want help stopping them in his warehouses…

— Crazy Alert! Greenlanders really hate Trump, so Don Jr. had to hire homeless people to make it look like somebody was welcoming him. Danish Radio (which once loaned me a studio for two weeks to do my show: great people!) is reporting that after having Greenlanders give him the finger in the airport and post “Yankee go home” on Facebook, Don Jr. had to hire a few local “homeless and socially disadvantaged” people to pretend to be Trump supporters for his recent stunt visiting that country. As one local, Tom Amtof of the town of Nuuk, told DR News: “All they have to do is put on a cap and be in the Trump staff’s videos. They are being bribed, and it is deeply distasteful.” Yeah, distasteful. Again, there are other words…

NOW READ: Trump and his minions attempt to make America small, stupid and mean

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Although Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner served as White House senior advisors during Donald Trump's first term as president, neither of them have expressed interest in playing a major role in his second administration. The couple, now based in Miami, has been focusing on business rather than politics.

Meanwhile, Ivanka Trump's brother Eric Trump has been speaking out on politics but spends most of his time operating the Trump Organization.

But Donald Trump Jr. — President-elect Trump's 46-year-old son, Mary Trump's cousin and and Ivanka and Eric Trump's brother — has become a prominent figure in the MAGA movement and his father's political operation.

READ MORE:'Do we advise the president to look elsewhere?' GOP senators uneasy about Tulsi Gabbard

The New York Times' Katie Rogers, in an article published on Thanksgiving 2024, emphasizes that one of Don Jr.'s top priorities is encouraging his father to make the nominees for his second administration as MAGA as possible.

"In recent weeks, as the president-elect builds out his administration, his son has served as something of a loyalty scanner," Rogers reports. "As they review candidates at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, the president-elect is concerned with who looks good and who can deliver a message, people around them say. His son is focused on whether they mean what they are saying, and if they present a threat to the MAGA order."

Don Jr. not only spends a lot of time attacking Democrats — he is equally contemptuous of Republicans he considers RINOs (Republicans In Name Only). Many of the Republicans Don Jr. attacks in his social media posts are quite conservative, but the president-elect's son equates being a traditional non-MAGA conservative with being a "RINO."

"Donald Trump Jr. has championed appointees and nominees who not only share the president- elect's views on policy, but have also passed the most important purity test: They support the falsehood that he won the 2020 election, and downplay his decision to encourage a mob to storm the U.S. Capitol two months later," Rogers explains. "In recent appearances, Donald Trump Jr. has made it clear that he believes that everything that has happened since early 2021 happened because true loyalists dug in and kept on believing, watching in the wings as Democrats made a series of strategically fatal decisions on economic and social policy."

READ MORE:'I have no idea': RFK Jr.’s former staffers question his ability to run a federal agency

Don Jr.'s "loyalty-first approach," according to Rogers, "explains how and why Matt Gaetz, a fierce Trump defender, was selected as the nominee for attorney general."

During a recent appearance on far-right MAGA activist Charlie Kirk's podcast, Don Jr. argued, "Now, you got four years where we know what we're doing, where we have a chance to start from scratch with people who we know are absolute warriors for the movement. Now, you're stuck with that for four years."

READ MORE:'Encouraging decision': Here are the Trump Cabinet picks Russia is most excited about

*Read Katie Rogers' full New York Times article at this link (subscription required).

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AN 11 24

BEWARE PALACE INTRIGUE?

Behind closed doors, President-elect Donald Trump's transition team has become a somewhat fractious and chaotic environment according to a new report.

The Washington Post reported Saturday that "new camps have formed" at Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida with competing visions for how to prepare for the next four years. The outlet described "shouting matches, expulsions from meetings and name-calling" as frequent occurrences between various factions.

"As during Trump’s first term, competing factions have begun to run roughshod over each other, sometimes kicking up clouds of dust," wrote the Post's Josh Dawsey, Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer.

:{:{READ MORE:Trump rips 6 House Republicans for 'stupidly' failing to pass controversial amendment}:

According to the Post, three different factions have formed — each with their own leaders and strategic goals. One of those camps is led by Trump's eldest son, Donald Jr., with Vice President-elect JD Vance on his side as well as "longtime MAGA warriors" like former Fox News primetime host Tucker Carlson, Vance advisor Andy Surabian and ex-Trump White House official Cliff Sims.

Another faction is led by Trump White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, who also co-chaired Trump's 2024 campaign. Wiles' camp mostly includes her advisors and acolytes, like Trump campaign political director James Blair and deputy campaign officials Taylor Budowich and Robert Gabriel. And a third group consists of transition co-chair and Secretary of Education-designate Linda McMahon and alumni from the America First Policy Institute like Brooke Rollins (who was rumored as a finalist for chief of staff) and Keith Kellogg, who was former Vice President Mike Pence's national security advisor.

Dust-ups between top Trump advisors are also breaking out during Trump transition team meetings. The Post's report began by describing an altercation between Trump attorney Boris Epshteyn and transition team co-chair Howard Lutnick (whom Trump has tapped to lead the Department of Commerce). Lutnick physically blocked Ephsteyn's path as he tried to enter a Mar-a-Lago meeting about potential Cabinet appointees, telling him: "We're not talking legal nominees today." But Ephsteyn reportedly stiff-armed Lutnick, saying: "I'm coming in."

In another contentious meeting, billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk — who is sometimes referred to as "co-president" over Vance — and Epshteyn got into a loud back-and-forth, with the former suggesting the latter was leaking sensitive details of meetings to the press. One unnamed witness described the encounter on the Mar-a-Lago patio as a "huge fight" and a "big blowup," with Epshteyn reportedly saying: "I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t do anything wrong."

READ MORE:These 3 Republicans are already 'knife-fighting' over who will be Trump's WH chief of staff

“It’s Boris against the world,” one unnamed "Trump confidant" told the Post, with another anonymous source saying Epshteyn was on “an island of his own.”

Vance has also participated in some the more heated arguments among transition team leaders, with one culminating in a social media post the vice president-elect has since deleted. While several Republican senators were at a SpaceX launch earlier this week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) managed to get several of President Joe Biden's last remaining federal judges confirmed. Grace Chong, who works for former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon on his "War Room" podcast, criticized Vance for missing the vote.

"You guys better show up and do your one fricken[sic] job!!" Chong posted to X, referring to both Vance and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who Trump picked to head the State Department. Vance responded by calling Chong a "mouth-breathing imbecile" in the now-deleted tweet. Chong has since added "mouth-breathing imbecile" to her X bio.

:{Click here to read the Post's report in its entirety (subscription required).

READ MORE:An internal 'power struggle' threatens to damage Trump's campaign: report

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an 11 24

Trump's children aren't wasting any time launching new money-making opportunities after their father was elected to a second term in the White House.

According to the Daily Beast, Lara Trump – the Republican National Committee co-chair who is married to the president-elect's son, Eric — is now launching a new clothing line. Her company, LT Brand by Lara Trump Collection, is labeled "a celebration of strength, resilience and patriotism." She wrote on Instagram that it would help "American workers and factories" and that her products will be "handcrafted in the USA because I believe in bringing jobs back home and making a difference where it matters most."

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Trump's eldest son, Donald Jr., is now going into business with a former supporter of Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis to specifically fund companies eschewing ESG (environmental, social and governance) philosophy. His new business partner, Omeed Malik, is a former Bank of America executive who was fired in 2018 over allegations of making unwanted advances toward female employees and was in relationships with female subordinates.

READ MORE:**Inside Donald Trump Jr.'s plan for 'building the new Republican Party': report**

Their new firm, 1789, is now seeking $100 million in startup capital with a promise to exclusively fund American companies in "response to the weaponization of capital by foreign entities." Some of the more notable board members of the company include failed Arizona U.S. Senate Republican nominee Blake Masters and Jamie McCourt, who was the U.S. Ambassador to France during Trump's first term in office.

Virginia Canter, who is the chief ethics counsel for the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told the Journal that the Trump children's businesses raise numerous questions about how their private sector work will benefit from their familial connections.

"If it is a regulated entity, will it be given less oversight? Will they be treated differently than other regulated industries?" She said.

According to the Journal, Trump Jr. and Malik first got acquainted while doing business with the company PublicSquare, which was expressly focused on marketing to conservatives who felt alienated by more mainstream brands. Trump Jr. said on a 2023 episode of his podcast that he wanted to help PublicSquare "really get that dual economy going until the other side is willing to not be political, to not hate your guts, to not hate your freedoms, your religion, your values, until they’re willing to not jam their woke bulls— down your throats."

READ MORE:['If he was on The Apprentice right now he'd be fired': Analyst explains why Trump Jr.'s deposition matters

However, PublicSquare has yet to show any definitive proof of success. Despite having a valuation of roughly $200 million in February of 2023, the Journal reports that it has since seen its value plunge by approximately 90%, trading from around $29.80 per share down to around $2 per share in late 2024. In the first three quarters of 2024, PublicSquare posted revenue of $16 million, but losses of nearly $37 million. And the company recently laid off more than a third of its workforce.

Trump Jr. is no stranger to launching failed businesses. He's coming off of a failed cryptocurrency venture called World Liberty Financial, whose signature "gold paper" currency has an image of the president-elect's face on the front. After being unable to tap into a mass market of buyers for its tokens that can't be resold, it reduced its sales targets by 90% after just launching in September.

Lara Trump and Donald Jr. aren't the only Trump relatives to try their hand in business. Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner (who is married to his eldest daughter, Ivanka) runs the firm Affinity Partners out of Miami, Florida. That company has attracted billions of dollars in investments from foreign governments including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, along with money from Taiwanese billionaire Terry Gou, who founded the manufacturing giant Foxconn.

Ivanka also had her own clothing line during Trump's first term. However, she eventually shuttered it, with the Beast reporting that the Trump heiress opted to instead focus on supporting her father's administration. The Journal noted that Ivanka's decision to shut down her business was also "tired of the extra restrictions and scrutiny."

READ MORE:**Kushner firm may be 'front to funnel foreign government money' to Trump family: Senate Dem**

Click here to read the Beast's article about Lara Trump, and click here to read the Journal's full report about Trump Jr. (subscription required)

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New Jack Smith documents reveal millions spent on Jan. 6 rally - Raw Story

new documents unsealed in Donald Trump's criminal Jan. 6 case disclosed $3 million spent to get people to the rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol building.

Among the nearly 2,000 heavily redacted pages of evidence for charges against Trump related to an attempt to steal the 2020 election were documents relating to a budget and trip plan for the day.

The evidence is being considered by Judge Tanya Chutkan before she rules if Trump is immune to criminal charges under a Supreme Court decision. Trump's team opposed the papers being unsealed.

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USA Today reported an unnamed organization spent $3 million to bring guests and protesters to D.C., and on ad buys to encourage people to make the trip. The actual costs of the event itself were under $400,000.

"Several versions of the “Confidential – Not To Be Disclosed” document are included, with some redactions, and appear to have been prepared for House Jan. 6 Select Committee investigating the attacks, which disclosed some of the information," reported USA Today.

Read Also:Behind the legal tactics Trump is using to dodge justice for January 6

Among the recipients of the money was the conservative group TurningPointAction, which got $1 million, according to the papers.

chase bank 906 jefferson shorewood Ill

Donald Trump Jr's super PAC, "Save the Senate" got a $500,000 payment.

The Tea Party Express got $400,000 and $200,000 was sent to a redacted name that was recruited "to assist with his organization efforts," the documents say.

There was also a $200,000 donation to the Republican Attorneys Generals (RAGA) Rule of Law Defense.

Meanwhile, "$300,000 was budgeted for speaker fees and travel for VIP speakers and a busing program to bring in rallygoers within a 180-mile radius."

A $100,000 payment was given to a redacted group to cover "the estimated cost of their hotels, private flights, car services and private security for about 10 to 15 of its members.

See some of the screen captures of the documents below or at the link here....

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Donald Trump Jr. recently told The Wall Street Journal that his father, former President Donald Trump, "always jokes—or maybe doesn’t joke, I’m not 100% sure sometimes with him—'You know, you’re much better at politics than you were at real estate.'"

The former co-host of "The Apprentice," and current host of "one of the most popular" podcasts on the Rumble platform, Trump Jr. has big plans for the GOP in the case his dad reclaims the White House next month, the WSJ reported Sunday.

“I don’t want just MAGA with only Trump, and then it goes back to the old ways,” Trump Jr. told the newspaper. “We need to have a bench. And for a long time I don’t think we had any of that. And this election cycle, you’ve seen the emergence of people that can actually carry that mantle. I think that’s really important.”

READ MORE:[The 'contradiction at the heart of the Republican Party' that gives Dems an advantage: columnist

The MAGA heir is proud that he successfully managed to get Senator JD Vance (R-OH) on the 2024 GOP ticket.

“I expended about 1,000% of my political capital" in persuading his dad to pick the Ohio senator as running mate, Trump Jr. told the WSJ, "as Vance smiled bashfully beside him."

“Making the argument, getting others who believe the same thing to do that—you know, just a constant barrage. I can be pretty persistent when I need to be.”

WSJ reports:

Vance isn’t the only lawmaker he’s handpicked and promoted. Rep. Jim Banks, a wonky young Indiana congressman who grew up in a trailer park, caught Trump Jr.’s eye with a 2021 memo calling on the party to ignore the “embittered and loud minority in the GOP that finds our new coalition distasteful” and seize the opportunity to 'permanently become the Party of the Working Class.'

Trump Jr. was one of Banks’s first supporters in his current run for Senate, endorsing him even before his father did, hosting multiple fundraisers and campaign events and helping clear the field of GOP competition. 'More than anybody, Don is focused on the future of the movement, building the new Republican Party, getting younger people like myself and JD elected in key places,' Banks said. “He recognizes those of us who are fighting back, changing the old-school Republican Party to the America First, pro-Trump party.'*

READ MORE:**Best-case scenario for GOP is for Trump to 'lose and lose soundly' in November: columnist**

The WSJ also highlights Trump Jr.'s appeal with GOP donors as one of his superpowers.

“From a donor standpoint, he’s by far the No. 1 requested person,” a top Republican fundraising consultant told the newspaper. "He goes places and they sell out immediately. He’s the No. 1 surrogate and it’s not even close. It’s pretty rare that you have someone who has that kind of hybrid appeal with both donors and grassroots.”

If his father defeats Vice President Kamala Harris, "Trump Jr. will be well positioned to call in favors from the Congress he has stocked with friends and allies," such as Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL).

"I think the Republican Party has just drastically changed and there’s no going back," Vance told the WSJ. "And my job is to make sure that that change is successful and effective and can actually implement successful public policies."

READ MORE:['The party needs to burn to the ground': Former adviser rips into GOP under Trump

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As key Trump allies advocate for revenge, Project 2025 provides a policy framework to attack the media

Former Trump national security adviser Kash Patel: “We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media”

Written by Jack Winstanley

Published 08/27/24

Project 2025, a comprehensive transition plan organized by conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation to staff the next GOP administration with extremists and implement a far-reaching right-wing agenda, proposes that a second Trump presidency should gut funding for public broadcasting and “reexamine” the relationship between the White House and reporters. These policy proposals laying the framework for the next Republican administration to attack the media are especially notable as former President Donald Trump and his allies have a long history of hostility toward the press, including during the 2024 presidential campaign, and some of Trump’s key allies have openly threatened retaliation against specific journalists and outlets if he is reelected.

Project 2025 attacks public broadcasting and suggests a future administration “reexamine” the relationship with the White House press corps, following years of Trump and his allies attacking the media

* Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign has denied press credentials to outlets and journalists that have reported critically on the former president. While in office, Trump revoked press passes for dozens of journalists, and his 2020 reelection campaign continued the pattern of denying credentials. Reporters from HuffPost, Vanity Fair, The Washington Post, and Spectrum News have stated that their press access to Trump’s 2024 campaign events has been revoked, assumedly over prior unflattering coverage. Vanity Fair, [4/19/24; Media Matters, 4/22/24; Twitter/X, 8/15/24, 8/14/24, 8/15/24; Columbia Journalism Review, 5/9/19; The Washington Post, 12/2/19]

* Taking issue with a recent report from The New York Times questioning Trump’s claim that he survived a helicopter crash landing with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, the former president attacked the paper and journalist Maggie Haberman for their “Fake & Fraudulent writing on the Russia, Russia, Russia HOAX.” Trump reportedly called the newspaper and demanded an apology after it debunked his story (which Brown has also denied) and “used ‘a sing-song voice’ to mock the Times’ request for the helicopter flight records.” HuffPost, [8/10/24]

* Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation and the principal architect of Project 2025, attacked the “deceitful ‘journalism’” covering the Trump 2024 campaign. In a separate post, Roberts accused Harris of “dodging tough questions, and the so-called ‘Professional Journalists’ are just fine with it?! It’s a disgrace to real journalism.” Twitter/X, [8/16/24, 8/9/24]

Donald Trump Jr. calls to “abolish” the FBI, CIA, and IRS

07/08/24 mma

'Astounding lack of awareness': Don Jr. raked over coals for mocking CNN anchor’s hair

mma 5 24

eric and Donald Trump Jr. are assuming the position of “loyalty czars” within the Trump campaign, Axios reported on April 24, with the two eldest Trump sons aiming to “focus on vetting potential officials and staffers for ideology and loyalty” and to “take a lead in making sure government jobs are filled by Republicans aligned with Trump's vision for the party.”

Reporter Alex Thompson writes:

Don Jr.’s goal “is to keep the John Boltons of the world outside a second Trump administration,” a person close to him told Axios, referring to Donald Trump's hawkish former national security adviser who wrote a bestselling book lambasting the former president.

The New York Post similarly reported in March: “Should his father retake the Oval Office, Trump Jr. said he plans to take a ‘very active’ role in the the 2024 presidential transition team.”

“Mostly just to make sure we stop some of the D.C. swamp rats and the swamp creatures from getting in there and doing their thing,” he told the paper. “There are so many great people to choose from now with the first four years of the administration you have a good understanding of who would be great and loyal and implement the America First policies.”

On his Rumble podcast, Triggered, Trump Jr. has frequently taken recommendations from his audience and made his own suggestions of far-right extremists, conspiracy theorists, and MAGA loyalists who would fit into his vision for a second Trump administration:

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Donald Trump Jr.: "Deep state retribution" for DOJ to indict of FBI informant for making false claims about the Bidens | Media Matters for America

// poison dad nazi hitler rhet

Donald Trump Jr. says immigrants “dilute” the American population | Media Matters for America

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mma 1 24 mg

After decisions in two states ruled that Donald Trump was disqualified from the presidential ballot because he “engaged in insurrection” on January 6, 2021, right-wing influencers called for Republican officials to retaliate in kind by dropping President Joe Biden from the ballot. It took only days for them to find someone willing to play the part: Jay Ashcroft, Missouri’s secretary of state and a candidate for governor.

Ashcroft said last week that he would enforce “the new legal standard” against Biden in his state if the Supreme Court sustains Trump’s removal in Colorado. He probably won’t be the last to make such a pitch given the incentives GOP officeholders have to follow the lead of the party’s media propagandists.

Colorado’s Supreme Court generated a legal firestorm when it ruled in December that Trump is ineligible for office under the 14th Amendment’s ban on officials who “engaged in insurrection,” for his “overt, voluntary, and direct participation” in the storming of the U.S. Capitol by his supporters. Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows subsequently removed Trump from the primary ballot on similar grounds. Trump has appealed both decisions, and the Supreme Court said Friday it would review the Colorado ruling.

Prominent conservative legal scholars have argued in favor of Trump’s removal on 14th Amendment grounds. As conservative former federal Judge J. Michael Luttig wrote with liberal Harvard Law professor Lawrence Tribe, “any disinterested observer who witnessed that bloody assault on the temple of our democracy, and anyone who learns about the many failed schemes to bloodlessly overturn the election before that” would agree that January 6 was “an insurrection for which Trump bore responsibility.”

But Trumpist propagandists have spent the last three years crafting a bogus alternate narrative of January 6 in which the rioters were victims of a government conspiracy and the then-president who incited them based on lies did nothing wrong. And so they’ve responded to the rulings in Colorado and Maine by urging Republican officials to bump Biden from the ballot in retaliation.

“Due process is not taken into account any more in America in 2023 and certainly going into 2024, so Republicans should say Joe Biden is off the ballot in all the Republican-controlled-AG states because of his links, clearly, to bribery schemes,” Donald Trump Jr. offered on his Triggered podcast on December 28, 2023. “There's far more evidence of that than an actual insurrection.”

“I want to see a secretary of state in the next couple of days just put out the press release,” Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk said Wednesday. “Joe Biden's not going to be on the primary ballot. He's not going to be on the general election ballot.”

Like Trump Jr., Kirk made clear that any explanation for why a secretary of state would do such a thing would be a pretext, saying, “Shot across the bow. Power dynamics. Fight power with power.”

“We need a red state secretary of state to kick Biden off the ballot now,” Daily Wire podcaster Michael Knowles added Friday morning. “And they can come up with some explanation. It will probably be a more credible explanation than the one that the Democrats have come up with for kicking Donald Trump off the ballot.”

Knowles went on to say that a GOP secretary of state could cite a 2020 tweet by Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign asking supporters to donate to a Minnesota bail fund to “help post bail for those protesting on the ground” there following the murder of George Floyd by a police officer.

“Certainly we can say Kamala Harris led an insurrection. She personally fundraised for rioters and criminals who were insurrecting against cities around the country during the George Floyd riots,” he explained. “So OK. Make it Kamala Harris, and then Kamala can't appear on the ticket, and you don't even need to go after Joe Biden.”

The incentive structure on the right is such that once major players like Kirk and Knowles start creating a demand for action, Republican officials will supply it. Ashcroft, who is seeking a promotion to governor but faces a competitive GOP primary against candidates including the state’s lieutenant governor, answered the call later on Friday.

“What has happened in Colorado & Maine is disgraceful & undermines our republic,” the Missouri secretary of state wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “While I expect the Supreme Court to overturn this, if not, Secretaries of State will step in & ensure the new legal standard for @realDonaldTrump applies equally to @JoeBiden!”

He subsequently used the story to direct people to his campaign website, saying on X, “Its time to stand and be counted. The future depends on it.”

It can be difficult to tell whether GOP officials are acting in response to right-wing media figures or if they’re converging on the same idea independently because they’re all swimming in the same milieu of Republican base voters. But notably, when Ashcroft discussed the potential rationale he would use to remove Biden from the ballot in an interview with NBC News, it sounded an awful lot like Knowles’ idea from earlier in the day:

Asked how he would disqualify Biden from the ballot for insurrection, Ashcroft said that he's “let an invasion unstopped into our country from the border.” Vice President Kamala Harris, he added, “supported people that were rebelling against the U.S. government during the riots in 2020,” referring to racial justice protests in the wake of George Floyd's murder.

“If this is the standard, does that suddenly mean she's not allowed to run? None of us can say, because there is no standard,” he said.

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Donald Trump Jr. calls QAnon supporters "patriotic Americans" | Media Matters for America

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Don Jr. rips GOP senators for 'remaining silent' about bombshell Colorado court ruling - Alternet.org

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Donald Trump Jr. tells white nationalist that he “may be my favorite Twitter account of all time” | Media Matters for America

oops

Donald Trump Jr. interviewed antisemitic white nationalist Douglass Mackey — who was recently convicted of election interference during the 2016 presidential election — on the December 7 episode of his Rumble podcast, Triggered with Donald Trump Jr., and said that Mackey’s suspended “Ricky Vaughn” Twitter account “may be my favorite Twitter account of all time.” Trump Jr. also suggested that he may have been in contact with Mackey in 2016.

During the 2016 presidential election campaign, Mackey had a Twitter account under the name “Ricky Vaughn.” HuffPost revealed his real name in 2018 and reported that the account was known for spreading “anti-Semitism and white nationalism,” such as using the antisemitic “echo” and tweeting that Jews had “control of the media” and were broadcasting “antiwhite messaging” in the mid-1900s. HuffPost also reported that Mackey had appeared on “numerous white supremacist podcasts.” Mackey has also reportedly spoken of his support for creating all-white communities and said he shuns interracial marriages “to maintain our unique culture and racial heritage,” and he has promoted Islamaphobic and anti-migrant content.

In October, Mackey was sentenced to seven months in prison for “spreading falsehoods via Twitter … in an effort to suppress Democratic turnout in the 2016 presidential election,” specifically by falsely posting that it was possible to vote for Democrat Hillary Clinton by texting or posting on social media. (Trump Jr. indicated on his podcast that Mackey is appealing the decision.)

During the December 7 interview, Trump Jr. described Mackey as an “original MAGA meme lord” and misleadingly claimed that Mackey’s prosecution and conviction was “literally over a meme from 2016” (a claim other right-wing media figures have also made; in reality, the Department of Justice said that thousands of people tried to vote by texting to the number he distributed). While introducing Mackey, Trump Jr. also said that “we’ve probably gone back and forth on Twitter back in the old days and DMs.”

Video

CitationFrom the December 7, 2023, edition of Triggered with Donald Trump Jr., streamed on Rumble

DONALD TRUMP JR. (HOST): And with that, guys, joining us now is Doug Mackey. Again, if you guys were in the meme wars, like, early adapters like me back in 2015 and ’16, you’ll know him as Ricky Vaughn. But Doug, for the people watching — and it’s great to have you. You know, I know — we’ve probably gone back and forth on Twitter back in the old days and DMs, and I’m sure we were put on lists way back then. But for the people watching, can you explain what happened here? I mean, you literally ran a Twitter account named Ricky Vaughn. And you got charged for posting a meme. What’s going on?

Later in the interview, Trump Jr. told Mackey that his Ricky Vaughn account was “awesome” and “may be my favorite Twitter account of all time” and “maybe the best of all time.” (Trump Jr. also lauded Mackey on Tim Pool’s show earlier this year.)

Video

CitationFrom the December 7, 2023, edition of Triggered with Donald Trump Jr., streamed on Rumble

DONALD TRUMP JR. (HOST): But, hey, you had an awesome account. It may be my favorite Twitter account of all time. Now I’ll get in trouble for saying that because they’ll say, oh, he said something once that you must disavow. Like, it was hilarious, OK? Like, again, like I said, maybe the best of all time, but how’d you get into the idea of that account? How were you able to grow such a large following that put you on the radar of these people?

Trump Jr. also helped Mackey promote his legal defense fund, asking, “How much funds do you need to get through that next level if in fact you need to take it to the Supreme Court?” An on-screen graphic also told viewers to go to the defense fund’s site to donate. Trump Jr. ended the interview by thanking Mackey for “all of the entertainment over the years.”

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Right-wing media figures exploit anti-immigrant riots in Ireland to demonize migrants and Muslims, and attack legal immigration

Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, and others pushed the “great replacement” conspiracy theory and falsely portrayed immigrants as threats to public safety

WRITTEN BY JOHN KNEFEL

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM JACINA HOLLINS-BORGES, SOPHIE LAWTON & JACK WHEATLEY

PUBLISHED 11/30/23

Right-wing media figures reacted to anti-immigrant riots in Ireland by demonizing Muslims, falsely accusing migrants of being a risk to public safety and attacking the very idea of legal immigration. Their response is an escalation of the xenophobic rhetoric that right-wing media frequently direct at unauthorized migration, and is a clear attempt to push for policies that would drastically reduce legal immigration levels.

The riots in Dublin were sparked after early reports on November 23 that an Irish citizen who allegedly stabbed five people, including three children, was believed to have been born abroad — thus highlighting the suspect’s perceived foreignness. Subsequent reporting found that although the alleged attacker was apparently born in Algeria, he has lived in Ireland for at least 20 years, according to Irish authorities. Numerous studies have found that increased levels of immigration do not cause a rise in crime rates either in the United States or European countries.

This manufactured panic and demonization of a marginalized group echoes a similar episode from last week, when Fox News invented a terrorism scare over a car crash at the U.S.-Canada border and used the nonexistent plot to paint Muslims, Arabs, Palestinians, and their supporters as the culprits, only to retract its reporting hours later. Anti-Muslim hate incidents have also skyrocketed during Israel’s bombardment and invasion of the Gaza Strip after Hamas’ attack on October 7.

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon exploited the Dublin attack to spread his anti-immigrant message across multiple platforms, including his own War Room podcast as well as Tucker Carlson’s show on X (formerly Twitter) and Donald Trump Jr.’s streaming show on Rumble, a far-right competitor to YouTube. In several of these segments, Bannon and his interlocutors endorsed versions of the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which holds that liberal elites are attempting to change the demographics of white-majority countries through mass migration from the Global South to maintain political and economic dominance.

Prior to Fox News’ firing of Carlson, he was the network’s — and perhaps the entire country’s — most visible proponent of the great replacement theory. During Bannon’s appearance on Carlson’s show on November 27, both figures pushed openly nativist bigotry alongside the racist conspiracy theory.

Bannon referred to migrants to the United States and Ireland as “alien invaders,” adding that Irish politicians have “sold out the sovereignty of the Irish” and that the riots were “natural blowback.”

“The Irish government is trying to replace the population of Ireland with people from the Third World, obviously,” Carlson responded. “But why? What's the justification for that?”

“You talk about the great replacement theory and people are — oh, you know, people get very upset when you talk about it, but just look at the math,” Bannon answered.

“It’s not a theory,” Carlson interjected.

“This has happened across Europe,” Bannon continued. “It's happened in Germany.”

“In 100 years, there'll be a minority of Irish people in Ireland,” Carlson said. “That's a big change, and it's on purpose.”

Later in their conversation, Bannon endorsed mass deportations, saying: “I think illegal alien invaders are coming because they've gamed the asylum system. My belief is those people have to go home. They have to be returned, they have to leave our country or we're not going to have a country.”

Later that day, Bannon appeared on Donald Trump Jr.’s Triggered to celebrate Hungary’s far-right authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán and Irish mixed martial arts fighter Connor McGregor, who had come under police investigation following anti-migrant social media posts.

Video

CitationFrom the November 27, 2023, edition of Triggered, streamed on Rumble

Former President Donald Trump fought “for the sovereignty, not just of nation-states, but the sovereignty of the individual citizens in those nation-states,” Bannon said. “I think it's inspired Orban in Hungary. I think McGregor in Ireland standing up the other day was inspired by Donald Trump.”

The discussion then turned to the knife attack in Dublin, with the host claiming Arab and Muslim cultures celebrate anti-social violence.

“In their culture, they can stab people in the streets. It's fine. We must allow them to do that to our children,” Trump Jr. facetiously said, adding, “I mean, the government is taking an actively hostile position against their citizens in favor of, like, seemingly savages in many cases.”

Bannon returned to the subject the next day on his War Room podcast, calling for the “deportation of the 9 million — at least 9 million to 10 million — illegal alien invaders coming in the Biden regime.”

“What happened in Ireland — it's all coming here, folks,” Bannon warned ominously. “It’s all coming here.”

His guest the following hour was conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who has been increasingly embraced by right-wing media in recent years. Jones falsely claimed that “illegal aliens or migrants” are responsible for “the majority of muggings, rape, and murder in every European country."

That evening, Bannon discussed the violence in Ireland in another episode of War Room, where his guest, author Michael Walsh, again pushed the great replacement conspiracy theory.

“This was the spark that set off what’s become a powder keg across the country, which is the notion — widely held among the Irish people — that they’re being replaced by foreigners,” Walsh said. He added that the Irish government “is committed to this program of quiet replacement and has demonized what we would have called Irish patriots,” referring to the far-right mobs.

Several other right-wing media figures also used the riots to spread anti-migrant bigotry.

"Across the West, the status quo has become intolerable,” Loomer added. “The endless waves of immigrants, the devastation of our culture, and the crackdown against anyone who dares to stand against it has all become too much to bear.”

“There can be no doubt that the average person is, at last, awake to the gravity of the situation, and their anger is brewing,” Loomer continued. “White people, in particular, have taken all of this on the chin for the last few decades, but that appears to be coming to an end.”

Following the riots, some observers of the far right argued that anti-immigrant sentiment had become a major issue in Ireland in recent years, and that politicians needed to do more to address the rising xenophobia. Right-wing media figures are determined to stand in the way.

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Trump Jr. says he wants self-described “Islamophobe” Laura Loomer as White House press secretary and Mike Davis as attorney general | Media Matters for America

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https://www.mediamatters.org/donald-trump-jr/donald-trump-jr-gives-fodder-qanon-conspiracy-theorists-maybe-i-know-who-q-and-i not tell

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https://www.rawstory.com/don-trump-jr-faces-calls-for-australia-ban-due-to-white-supremacy-transphobia-and-misogyny/

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https://www.alternet.org/Bank/ivanka-trump-splits-from-don-jr-and-eric-as-250-million-fraud-trial-looms-2659915220/

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https://www.alternet.org/trump-jr-trans/  bogus

https://www.alternet.org/the-charisma-of-wet-blanket/

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oh, the sweet scent of desperation in the air. Donald Trump Junior, paragon of moral fortitude, decided to take justice into his own hands on Truth Social by posting a photo of the daughter of the judge presiding over his father's porn star hush money trial.

As Junior learned from Daddy, the best way to win a case is through intimidation and badgering the family members of those in charge.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez chimed in with a tweet that summed it up perfectly: "Because nothing says 'innocent' like threatening a judge's family."

Clearly, the apple doesn't fall far from the orange tree.

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loan money launder? jr

https://www.alternet.org/trump-jr-2659601326/

no lnx

Donald Trump Jr. personally approved sketchy loan now being probed as Russian money laundering

Travis Gettys and Raw Story March 15, 2023

A pair of sketchy loans to Trump Media now under investigation for possible Russian money laundering were personally approved by Donald Trump Jr.

Federal prosecutors in New York are scrutinizing two loans totaling $8 million from two Kremlin-linked entities, and company officials set aside their own concerns about the origins of the money because Donald Trump's eldest son had confirmed to Trump Media's lawyers that the transaction should proceed, reported The Guardian.

“Just want to keep you in the loop — no guaranty that these will get signed and funded, but we remain hopeful,” wrote John Haley, outside counsel for Trump Media, in a Dec. 24, 2021, email reviewed by the newspaper.

“Thanks john much appreciated. d,” Trump Jr. replied.

Trump Jr. had joined the board of the company along with the former president's ally Kash Patel and former Rep. Devin Nunes, who served as the tech company's chief executive.

Trump Media co-founder Will Wilkerson first alerted federal prosecutors on Oct. 23, 2022, to the loans, which came from Paxum Bank and ES Family Trust, both of which were controlled by an individual named Anton Postolnikov, who appears to be a relation of Vladimir Putin ally Aleksandr Smirnov.

Wilkerson and Trump Media’s then-chief financial officer Phillip Juhan considered returning the money in spring 2022 due to their obscure origins but the company had only $12 million cash at hand at the time as it awaited approval by the Securities and Exchange Commission for a merger with the blank-check company Digital World.

Digital World's chief executive Patrick Orlando sourced the loan from Paxum Bank, which is known for providing services to the adult entertainment industry, in December 2021, and two months later an unexpected second $6 million payment showed up in Trump Media’s account from ES Family Trust.

Orlando, as an SEC-licensed broker-dealer, is obligated to comply with the SEC's “Know Your Customer” requirements to guard money laundering.

The former president was chairman of Trump Media at the time, but it's not clear whether he was aware of the origins of the loans, Wilkerson said, adding that he was not typically interested in managing day-to-day operations of the company bearing his name.

However, Trump was interested in the deal because he would receive 90 percent of the shares without putting any of his own money into the venture, although one source familiar with the matter said the ex-president did invest some money into Digital World, which would have allowed him to cash out twice if the merger went through.

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/05/trump-gold-cards-nazi-papers

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false flag?

https://www.alternet.org/there-wasnt-enough-insurrection-pipebomber/

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aha funny they call us alarmists, but apocalypse economy collapse hype fear anger greed constant

https://boingboing.net/2023/03/06/grifters-gonna-grift.html

gold

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an 3 23

donald Trump Jr. shared his outrage via Twitter Thursday after PNC bank closed the account for his media company, MXM News, complaining the "woke" corporation is prejudiced against him for his "political affiliation."

The son of former President Donald Trump tweeted, "BREAKING: Woke @PNCBank just shut down the bank account for my app @mxmnews without any explanation. The Left doesn't think you should be able to exist, much less thrive, in society. It should be illegal to discriminate based on political affiliation!!!"

Journalist Aaron Rupar shared a clip of Trump's recent interview with Newsmax, in which he blamed the bank's decision to cut ties with him on "cancel culture." Rupar tweeted, "Don Jr breaks news on Newsmax that his news aggregator site was dumped by PNC Bank."

READ MORE: Donald Trump Jr. suggests President Joe Biden stole his father's ideas in State of the Union speech

Similarly to Rupar, other Twitter users were not buying Trump's so-called reason for getting dumped by PNC.

Jason Selvig: "'You give a speech at ONE insurrection…'"

@gartmartin9: "You are calling PNC Bank 'the left'? Its CEO Bill Demchak is literally a long-time Republican. this is about business....and who on earth would want to do business with you."

@sydrasmith: "That said, banks do business with a lot of bad people so I'm curious how Junior managed to get kicked out

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dominion

https://www.mediamatters.org/paul-ryan/donald-trump-jr-says-fox-corp-must-remove-paul-ryan-its-board

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https://www.vice.com/en/article/88qwbx/far-right-conspiracy-theory-wants-you-to-think-ukraine-war-staged

no lnx

david Gilbert @ Vice News: The Far Right Wants You to Think Ukraine’s War Is Staged: ‘It Is Clearly a Psyop.’

a year after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, tens of thousands of civilians have been murdered, tens of millions of Ukrainians are displaced, and billions of dollars in damage have been inflicted on homes and buildings across the country—and the American far right is still pushing the narrative that the war in Ukraine is fake.

Coinciding with the one year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, conspiracists, far-right influencers, and trolls have made a coordinated effort to push the conspiracy theory that the entire conflict in Ukraine has been staged.

The narrative that the war was fake first emerged in the early days of the invasion, and one of the key pieces of “evidence” used by those spreading the disinformation was a video they claimed showed “fake bodies” in body bags.

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}:

The video, which shows the body bags moving in the background, was in fact taken at a climate change protest in Austria about a month before Russia invaded Ukraine. Over the weekend, it was once again shared as “evidence” that the mainstream media was lying about the war.

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}:

The most popular post came from an anonymous right-wing Twitter account called Amuse, which shared the video with the comment: “Stop Moving - You’re Supposed to be Dead! Psyop?”

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}:

The tweet currently has been viewed over 3.9 million times and been liked over 45,000 times.

When it was pointed out that the video was not taken in Ukraine, the account holder responded: “Someone told me it is some sort of crazy four dimensional misinformation—video might be from Austria. Not sure who is pushing it - Ukraine or Russia. Without embedded journalists we’ve got this mess.” They later added: “No one seems to know who is responsible but it is clearly a Psyop.”

The same video was shared widely across Facebook and Twitter in recent days.

At the same time, Catturd, a hugely influential MAGA shitposter favored by Elon Musk, posted a screen on Twitter that questioned the reality of the war in Ukraine because he apparently has not seen any footage from the war front.

“We get no footage, no detailed updates, no graphs explaining how the war is going, who has control of what land,” Catturd wrote. “All we get is Biden fake air raid sirens and one famous actor or politician a day happily prancing around Kiev with Zelenskyy with no helmets or body protection offering him 100s of billion of dollars.”

Catturd’s tweet has been viewed over 10.4 million times, despite Twitter’s fact-checking community appending a note to the post saying: “Footage and analysis of the Russian war on Ukraine from multiple media sources including reporters embedded with Ukrainian troops is and has been available.”

On Truth Social, disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn endorsed Catturd’s claims,writing: “What Catturd said, and I double dare anyone to say he is wrong.”

Kyle Becker, a far-right commentator who has in the past worked for Fox News and Tim Pool’s podcast, also shared the claim that there was no footage available of what’s likely the most-documented war in human history.

“I am sick and tired of the lack of footage of the Ukraine war. I worked in cable news. I am initiated. If it bleeds, it leads. Where is the war footage? Where are the Pulitzer Prize winning photos? This smacks of a scam and the American people are fed up,” Becker tweeted.

Meanwhile Stew Peters, a far-right podcaster and COVID conspiracist, added to the conversation by posting a video from the Ukrainian government that shows how the country has been working to fix some of the damage inflicted by the war over the last year.

According to Peters, the video is not a positive story about the resilience of the Ukrainian people, but proof the war is “100% fake” and that the damage was never inflicted in the first place. 

Peters spent the weekend pushing the narrative that the media and governments around the world are lying about the war.

“The world is a stage,” Peters tweeted on Sunday. “It’s ALL fake. When enough people realize what has been done to them, and they’re ready to admit it, there will be NOWHERE safe for these criminals to hide.”

One other strand to the conspiracy about the war in Ukraine being fake is a renewed push to surface videos from the former life of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a comic actor and using it to claim he is merely playing the role of a head of state.

One of the most prominent people sharing this claim in recent days was Donald Trump Jr. who shared a clip of Zelensky dancing in high heelsand leather from a 2014 parody video with the comment:

:{:{}:

}:

“Just so we understand, this is the leader of the left’s new religion, Ukraine. He replaced Lord Fauci who replaced goddess Greta as the leader of the leftist lunacy movement. Give him all of your money forever it doesn’t matter how much or for what… the Gods have spoken!”

The tweet has racked up almost 9 million views in the space of just 24 hours.

TAGGED:

UKRAINE DISINFORMATION CATTURD STEW PETERS FAR RIGHT TWITTER WORLD NEWS

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an 2 23

Donald Trump Junior conjured up a new conspiracy theory over the weekend regarding train derailments. His hypothesis is that hackers working on behalf of the Russian government were responsible for the February 3rd East Palestine, Ohio Norfolk Southern disaster as well as, perhaps, other incidents involving railcars disconnecting from their tracks.

Shortly after the crash that spilled toxic substances like vinyl chloride and forced thousands of residents to evacuate, many began to recall that Junior's father, former President Donald Trump, loosened regulations on braking mechanisms and safety features during his term.

But that is not the narrative that Junior was presenting.

READ MORE: 'This is why God made pipelines': GOP senator gives nonsensical explanation of Ohio train derailment

"No MSDS for the chemicals on train. Yeah, I don't know what that, I don't know what the acronym is. I'm sorry. Um, but yeah, there, it's just gonna keep going. And I read about a spill in Houston and another one in Detroit," Junior said. "And again, it feels like a lot. Hey, maybe there's a train derailment every day. I, I don't know, but like, it seems like we're having an awful lot of train derailments that we're finally hearing about, uh, in the last few days."

Statistically, these are common occurrences, with around three per day on average according to the United States Department of Transportation Federal Railroad Administration. Junior also was unaware that MSDS stands for Material Safety Data Sheet, which is used to catalog hazardous materials and the potential harm that they can cause.

Nevertheless, Junior pressed on, positing that Moscow could be retaliating for the destruction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline last September:

And all of that happens to come, after, you know, an alleged US attack on a Russian pipeline. And, you know, we know they have very sophisticated, uh, hackers working in the systems and like, does anyone even ask the question? I'm not saying it is. I'll say I'm a conspiracy theorist. Like, uh, I, I don't know, seems like a question we'd wanna ask even if it's refuted with actual evidence. That would be nice. Like, I'd love that for it to not be the case, but maybe it's just a whole sh*t ton of coincidence. Uh, but, I don't believe in that much coincidence anymore.

MSDS material safety data sheet. Ah, yeah. I don't, they have 'em, but they have 'em, but they burned them up. Yeah. That wouldn't surprise me. It seems like the evidence always magically disappears, right? It, it always goes away. Or it, it's discovered conveniently after the other side gets what they want. Uh, again, if you still believe in this much coincidence, folks, I got some, uh, oceanfront property in Colorado to sell you.

Watch below or at this link.

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j6 ch 2

...2.2 The Plan Emerges

More than a month before the Presidential election, the media reported that the Trump Campaign was already developing a fallback plan that would focus on overturning certain election results at the State level. An article published on September 23, 2020, in The Atlantic explained, “[a]ccording to sources in the Republican Party at the State and national levels, the Trump Campaign is discussing contingency plans to bypass election results and appoint loyal electors in battleground States where Republicans hold the legislative majority.” 15 Ominously, the same reporting predicted, almost exactly, what would later come to pass: “With a justification based on claims of rampant fraud, Trump would ask State legislators to set aside the popular vote and exercise their power to choose a slate of electors directly.” 16

Numerous senior Trump Campaign advisors—including Campaign Manager William Stepien, Deputy Campaign Manager and Senior Counsel Justin Clark, and President Trump’s lead attorney Rudolph Giuliani—all told the Select Committee that there was, indeed, a State-focused “strategy” or “track” to challenge the outcome of the election, which included pressing State legislators to challenge results in key States and to appoint new electoral college electors.17

“You know, in the days after election day, later in that first week, bleeding into the second, as our numbers and data looked bleaker, internally we knew that,” Stepien told the Select Committee.18 “As the AP [Associated Press] called the race, I think some surrounding the President were looking for different avenues to pursue.” That’s when Stepien remembered the concept first coming up.19

Those around President Trump were pushing this idea, and pushing it hard.

Just two days after the election, President Trump’s son, Donald Trump, Jr., forwarded to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows a suggestion that “State Assemblies can step in and vote to put forward the electoral slate[,] Republicans control Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, etc. we get Trump electors” and so “we either have a vote WE control and WE win OR it gets kicked to Congress 6 January . . .” 20 Chief of Staff Meadows responded: “Working on this for pa, ga and nc already.” 21

Within one week after the election, Meadows had also sent or received several other similar messages:

“The state legislature can take over the electoral process”—Mark Meadows’s text to Georgia State Senator Marty Harbin.22

“Agreed”—Mark Meadows’s text to a different sender, who suggested that the Trump Administration “should get that out there” if they were “seriously considering the state legislature strategy.” 23

“I will tell him”—Mark Meadows’s text to a sender who suggested President Trump “[s]tart building momentum for the state legislatures.” 24

“I love it”—Mark Meadows’s text to Representative Andy Biggs, who relayed what he acknowledged as a “highly controversial” idea to have “Republican legislature’s (sic)” “appoint a look doors (sic) [electors].” 25

“. . . Why can’t the states of GA NC PENN and other R controlled state houses declare this is BS (where conflicts and election not called that night) and just send their own electors… I wonder if POTUS knows this . . .”—former Secretary of Energy Rick Perry to Mark Meadows.26

Another White House official exploring such a plan less than a week after the election wasVince Haley, Deputy Assistant to the President for Policy, Strategy and Speechwriting. He suggested:

“. . . Imagine if every red state legislature slated zero electors. It would reveal that we are a red country. To do this we would have to jack this to the nth degree as a battle of tribes . . . .” 27

Haley pushed this strategy in several texts and emails, including to Assistant to the President and Director of Presidential Personnel Johnny McEntee,28 an individual Haley characterized as “a very trusted lieutenant” for President Trump, “a direct conveyor to Boss with ideas,” and “[a]t his side almost all the time.” 29

For Haley, however, purported election fraud was a way to justify President Trump-friendly legislatures changing the outcome of the election, but there were other reasons for doing so, too. Election fraud was “only one rationale for slating Trump electors,” Haley told McEntee, and “[w]e should baldly assert” that State legislators “have the constitutional right to substitute their judgment for a certified majority of their constituents” if that prevents socialism.30

Haley added, “[i]ndependent of the fraud—or really along with that argument—Harrisburg [Pennsylvania], Madison [Wisconsin], and Lansing [Michigan] do not have to sit idly by and submit themselves to rule by Beijing and Paris,” proposing that radio hosts “rally the grassroots to apply pressure to the weak kneed legislators in those states . . .” 31

McEntee replied “Yes!” and then: “Let’s find the contact info for all these people now.” 32 Hours later, Haley sent him names and—in most cases—cell phone numbers for top GOP legislators in six States, suggesting “. . . for POTUS to invite them down for a WH meeting . . .” 33 The President would later call several named in that message, including Rusty Bowers and Karen Fann in Arizona; Lee Chatfield and Mike Shirkey in Michigan; and Jake Corman in Pennsylvania.34

Others weighed in with the President about a State-focused plan, too. Some were already looking ahead to January 6th.

On November 8th, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich met President Trumpat the White House.35 Two days later, he sent a follow-up note to the President’s executive assistant titled “please give to POTUS[,] newt.” 36 It suggested that “[t]he only way Trump loses is rigged system” and added that President Trump could encourage “GOP legislatures elect not to send in electors,” forcing a House vote by State delegations on January 6th that Gingrich expected President Trump would win.37 Meadows replied: “Thanks Speaker.” 38

Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy had President Trump’s ear and reportedly spoke with him by phone at least four times before December.39 He forwarded a memo to other close advisors of the President recommending that the Trump team persuade one or more Republican-led chambers in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and even Minnesota to “pick a separate competitive State slate of Electors,” which the memo predicted might turn January 6th into “a cat-fight in Congress wherein VP Pence is Presiding.” 40

Attorney and conservative activist Cleta Mitchell was recruited by Mark Meadowsimmediately after the election to assist the Trump Campaign’s legal work.41 By November 5th, she emailed Dr. John Eastman of Chapman University,42 who would later play an outsized role pushing a theory about what Vice President Pence could or couldn’t do during the January 6th joint session of Congress that is detailed in Chapter 5 of this Report. In her email, Mitchell asked Eastman to write a memo justifying an idea that State legislators “reclaim” the power to pick electors and asked, rhetorically, “Am I crazy?” 43 Dr. Eastman wrote the memo, entitled “The Constitutional Authority of State Legislatures to Choose Electors,” and sent it along for sharing “widely.” 44

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npr

HARWELL: Yeah, 100%. I think that was the most stunning claim she made, and that was one that was a real headline from one of the committee hearings, which was that Twitter, in her words, protected Trump because he was a star.You know, he had brought a large amount of attention and clout to Twitter. Twitter in social media is effectively an also-ran, right? They're not a Facebook or an Instagram or a TikTok. They're a news platform, and Donald Trump helped make Twitter into a very influential company. And so in her words, she felt like the company had become deferent to Trump because they felt like they couldn't punish somebody who was beneficial in this way. There was kind of a mutually beneficial arrangement here.

But there were other people who spoke to the company, too, from inside Twitter that also suggested that there was some fear of the backlash of being too tough on Trump. And, you know, even before January 6, Trump had always been very infamous for what he would say on Twitter, as anybody who was online during those years knew. I mean, it was a lot of borderline or over-the-line tweets that people were wondering, why is Donald Trump able to talk like this on the platform? Anybody else who was sharing these kinds of messages would be treated differently, and this is what Anika ended up saying to the committee - was that he was treated differently. He was given special treatment because of this impactful role he had in the company....

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You know, I will say Facebook had stood up some election integrity efforts even before January 6 that were about, you know, if somebody posts something about the election being stolen, we're going to post a disclaimer that actually that's false. We're going to link you to proactive, right, accurate information. Facebook had very notably disbanded those efforts before January 6. I think they sort of felt like the election's over; we're not needed anymore. That was specifically called out as an institutional failure that could have led to some of these things. But it all sort of came back to, could the company have done more, taken down more, been more active in addressing these calls to violence? And would that have made any difference on January 6?

DAVIES: There was also mention in this memo that you and your colleagues found of a white list that Facebookkept of certain accounts that were exempted from the fact-checking that would occur on other accounts. Among the people on that list -Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr. Glenn Beck, Gateway Pundit, various other conservative things. Did the committee find that troubling, the committee's investigators?

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had to go harder rt (with young ppl?) b/c groyper spat?

an 12 22

Christian nationalist U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene‘s remarks at the New YorkYoung Republican Club’s Saturday night gala have elicited massive response – and condemnation – from many after she insisted had she been “in charge” of the January 6, 2021 insurrection the rioters “would’ve been armed” and they “would have won.”

“I want to tell you something, if Steve Bannon and I had organized that, we would have won. Not to mention, we would’ve been armed,” Greene, a Republican from Georgia, told the group (video below). Some of the rioters and attendees were armed.

In addition to Greene and Bannon, Donald Trump, Jr. and far-right agitator Jack Posobiec were also in attendance, as was disgraced former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani.

READ MORE: ‘Mob Boss’: Trump Willing to ‘Burn the Country Down’ if DOJ Doesn’t Back Off Says His Former Longtime Attorney

The Southern Poverty Law Center described the New York Young Republican Club’s gala attendees as a “collection of radical right figures including white nationalists and ultranationalist European leaders” and noted the “group’s president declared ‘total war’ on perceived enemies.”

Some are questioning how Greene can retain her congressional seat given the oath of office she swore to, which in part reads: “I, __, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

Former Democratic U.S. Senator from California Barbara Boxer tweeted: “If you’re in Congress and swore to protect the Constitution & you’re asked if you had anything to do with 1/6 insurrection, you say something like: I would NEVER partake in violence against America. You wouldn’t say something like: if I did it I would’ve been armed!”

U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX) quoting Greene, tweeted that winning is “overturning an election,” and “Being armed = using force to do it.”

Congresswoman Greene “represents today’s Republican party and defines a coup as ‘winning,'” she stressed.

“This is un-American and dangerous,” Escobar added. “And Republican silence is complicity.”

READ MORE: Don’t Call Us ‘Fascists’: Marjorie Taylor Greene Blasts News Media After Criticism Over Her Feral Hog Hunting Stunt

Veteran journalist and SiriusXM Progress host Michelangelo Signorile called Greene’s remarks, “Treason out loud.”

“Marjorie Taylor Greene tells extremist confab that if she organized Jan 6 ‘we would’ve won’ and ‘we would’ve been armed.’ Take it as a plan for the next assault on democracy, which Trump is right now inciting,” he warned.

Gun violence prevention activist Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action observed this is a “Member of Congress fantasizing about killing her colleagues.”

Former Obama White House Senior Advisor David Axelrod, now the director of the non-partisan University of Chicago Institute of Politics, quoted Greene and called her one of House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy’s “new top apparatchiks.”

Watch the video via Kyle Mazza below or at this link.

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One day after Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly was projected to win re-election in Arizona, Donald Trump, Jr. is spreading the idea that GOP Leader Mitch McConnell wanted Republican nominee Blake Masters to lose.

McConnell reportedly wanted to draft GOP Gov. Doug Ducey to challenge Kelly, but former President Trump put his weight behind Masters, a venture capitalist.

"Rumors are that Doug Ducey, the weak RINO Governor from Arizona, is being pushed by Old Crow Mitch McConnell to run for the U.S. Senate," Trump said in a January statement. "He will never have my endorsement or the support of MAGA nation!"

After Ducey did not run, he followed up by saying, "Smart move, Doug—there’s no room for RINOs."

"RINO" stands for "Republican in Name Only," which used to refer to moderates but is used by Trump to describe any Republican he dislikes.

On Saturday, Trump, Jr. took to his dad's microblogging site to retweet user "Cattturd2."

"The reason Mitch McConnell hasn’t said anything about the bullshit happening in Arizona is because he wants Blake Masters and Kari Lake to lose," Catturd2 alleged.

"He only cares about power, money, and he absolutely hates us," Catturd2 concluded.

On Truth Social, Trump, Jr. refers to himself as a "Meme War General."[twt catturd]

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an 11 22

The suspect, David Wayne DePape, has been charged with a slew of state and local offenses, including attempted homicide and attempted kidnapping of a family member of an elected official.

DePape allegedly smashed a back window of Pelosi’s San Francisco home early Friday morning, woke up her sleeping husband and demanded to speak with “Nancy.” The Speaker was not at home.

DePape told investigators his plan was to hold “Nancy hostage and talk to her.” He came prepared with flex-cuffs, tape, rope and two hammers, according to police. He said he wanted to interrogate Nancy Pelosi, because she was the “leader of the pack” of the lying Democratic Party, according to the federal criminal complaint.

READ MORE: 'Break her kneecaps': Feds charge suspect who attacked Paul Pelosi as new details on his motivation are revealed

DePape said he planned to let Pelosi go if she told him “the truth,” but that if she “lied,” he was going to break “her kneecaps,” the complaint said. DePape said he was certain that Pelosi would not have told the “truth.” This was an astute inference on his part seeing as the “truth” he was looking for probably had something to do with a cabal of satanist pedophiles. Pelosi’s wounds, DePape stated, would put Congress on notice that there are “consequences for actions.”

That’s the classic logic of terrorism.

DePape’s plan is reminiscent of another plan to kidnap and interrogate Democratic leaders. It’s what the Wolverine Watchmen militia were accused of plotting to do with Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat. The men schemed and trained to kidnap her and “put her on a show trial” over covid regulations.

DePape’s online footprint shows a man in the tightening grip of radicalization. He registered a domain name in August and began posting feverishly about QAnon, Pizzagate and the pedophile cabal that runs the world. He was an election denier and a proponent of the Big Lie of 2020 voter fraud. He also indulged in Holocaust denial and other forms of antisemitism, anti-Black racism, rants against “groomers” and attacks on Ukrainian democracy. He also found time to defend the honor of rightwing scholar and icon Jordan Peterson.

READ MORE: 'What the hell is wrong with these people?': Conservative batters the GOP response to Pelosi beating

DePape embraced the Revolutionary War kitsch beloved of J6 insurgents. In an interview, he repeatedly likened himself to the American founding fathers. He claimed to be fighting tyranny without the option of surrender.

Some of the most notorious J6 insurgents specifically targeted Pelosi during the J6 siege.

Guy Reffitt said he wanted to drag Nancy Pelosi out of the building. He brought a semi-automatic handgun onto Capitol grounds. "I just want to see Pelosi's head hitting every fucking stair of the building,” Reffitt said. Reffit also brought flex-cuffs.

Oath Keeper Kelly Meggs, who is on trial for seditious conspiracy, said he wanted to see Pelosi’s head “rolling down the front steps” of the Capitol. Meggs and fellow Oath Keeper Kenneth Harrelson are accused of splitting off from the group to go “hunting” for Pelosi.

Insurgent Mark Mazza, who brought two loaded guns, told investigators that if he’d crossed paths with Pelosi "you'd be here for another reason."

Dawn Bancroft admitted on video that she and her friend broke into the Capitol and that they’d been “looking for Nancy to shoot her in the friggin' brain.”

We now know, in the suspect’s own words, that he was specifically targeting Speaker Pelosi for political violence. In the days following the attack, the political right has tried every bad faith deflection tactic imaginable, blaming DePape’s actions on drugs and mental illness. While DePape is likely mentally ill and may suffer from addiction, these factors are secondary at best.

This was a well-organized, premeditated attack.

DePape allegedly assembled a restraint kit, bought hammers, pinpointed his target’s address, and broke into the home under the cover of darkness. He knew exactly what he was doing.

The roots of this attack lie in toxic conspiracy theories that convince unstable people that their freedom is at risk and an insurrection that has gone largely unpunished.

As President Joe Biden said in Delaware, “[i]t’s one thing to condemn the violence but you can’t condemn the violence unless you condemn those people who continue to argue the election was not real, that it’s being stolen.”

READ MORE: 'Too soon?' Don Jr. mocks brutal hammer attack with 'Paul Pelosi Halloween costume' meme

underwear and hammer gay tryst?

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seth a substack july

...

But what about the second question posed at the end of the Introduction, above? Does the fact that a leading counterintelligence adviser to the Trumps (Michael Anton) was publishing coup fan-fiction in a venue associated with one of Trump’s leading lawyers—a lawyer (Eastman) who joined Trump’s legal team just as he came to be associated with the aforementioned leading Trump counterintelligence aide publishing strange coup fantasies—mean the Trumps kept paying attention to what was being published in the Claremont Institute’s The American Mind not just in September 2020 but even in (could it be? is it possible?) October of 2020? This is the key question that launches this Proof investigation.

2. John Yoo

Just two weeks prior to the 2020 presidential election, in October 2020, a former law clerk of Justice Clarence Thomas took to the website of the same institute we have been speaking of, and at which then-Trump lawyer and fellow former Thomas clerk John Eastman was a senior fellow at the time—The American Mind and the Claremont Institute, respectively—to make precisely the anti-democratic argument about the powers of an American vice president that Eastman himself would be making a few weeks later as part of what federal judge David Carter recently ruled was more than likely a criminal conspiracy involving Eastman and—at a minimum—Donald Trump.

According to Business Insider,the former Thomas clerk Yoo had spent much of 2020 working with the Trump White House on one of Trump’s top priorities: immigration. Yoo’s work also would have appealed to Trump personally for a more venal reason: as Business Insider notes, “He also wrote a book about Trump that came out in July 2020 titled Defender in Chief: Donald Trump’s Fight for Presidential Power.” So not only had Yoo gotten Trump’s attention by writing a book about him, but had done so on yet another top priority for the then-president: asserting his power over the government.

{Note: At least three of John Yoo’s fellow former Clarence Thomas law clerks—besides John Eastman, also William Consovoy and Patrick Strawbridge—are lawyers for Donald Trump.}:

Former Clarence Thomas clerks are known to be a close-knit, far-right bunch. As has been widely reported (including at Proof) they congregate online at Thomas Clerk World, a private listserv which roiled with pro-insurrection language following the 2020 election—some of it authored by Clarence Thomas’ wife, Ginni Thomas. Both John Yoo, the former Thomas clerk referenced in the paragraph above, and Eastman, the Trump co-conspirator, would have had access to Thomas Clerk World not only in November and December 2020 but in late October 2020, too, when Yoo published the shocking words below while part of a listserv obsessed with post-election scenarios that included in its rapt audience the aforementioned Thomas (Ginni) and Eastman:

Under the 12th Amendment, “the President of the Senate [i.e., the Vice President] shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates [of the electoral votes of the states] and the votes shall then be counted.” Left unclear is who is to “count” the electors’ votes and how their validity is to be determined.

While the far-right-fringe rhetoric above—which posits a through-the-looking-glass view of the 12th Amendment that is presently only held by seditionists—was written by Yoo for The Claremont Institute, it certainly would have been music to the ears of future seditionist, Claremont Institute senior fellow, Yoo acquaintance, Ginni Thomas friend, and fellow former Clarence Thomas law clerk John Eastman. Notably, Eastman did not only clerk for Thomas, but an almost equally revered far-right conservative jurist, J. Michael Luttig, who has now testified under oath before the United States Congress that there is no possible way for anyone in the United States, whether Yoo or Ginni Thomas or Clarence Thomas or John Eastman or Donald Trump, to read the 12th Amendment as being “unambiguous” on how electors are counted post-election.

ABOVE (top to bottom): J. Michael Luttig, John Eastman, and Clarence Thomas.

But not only did a longtime Ginni Thomas friend who’d clerked for her husband take precisely this radical view, he took it much further—doing so at a time it is hard to imagine he did not know John Eastman was among his audience members whether through the Claremont Institute or Thomas Clerk World. Specifically, Yoo said the following (emphasis supplied)

We suggest that the Vice President’s role is not the merely ministerial one of opening the ballots and then handing them over (to whom?) to be counted. Though the 12th Amendment describes the counting in the passive voice, the language seems to envisage a single, continuous process in which the Vice President both opens and counts the votes.

The check on error or fraud in the count is that the Vice President’s activities are to be done publicly, “in the presence” of Congress. And if “counting” the electors’ votes is the Vice President’s responsibility, then the inextricably intertwined responsibility for judging the validity of those votes must also be his.

It isn’t possible for Proof to sufficiently emphasize here how radical these words are.

They would, if put in practice, end American democracy immediately and permanently.

So Proof will have to settle, for now, for calling the above words “small-s” (i.e., non-statutorily) “seditious”, and say that anyone who adopted them following the 2020 presidential election and took any action to advance their execution via then-Vice President Mike Pence was doing so as a (small-t) “traitor” to the United States and American democracy. As even the arch-conservative Judge Luttig confirms, there is no good-faith legal reading of the 12th Amendment that could lead to the reading of it Yoo offers above; such a reading—adopted only when it was feared (as Yoo makes clear in his article) Trump would lose the Electoral College, and never made when a Democratic vice president was in office—could only be intended to provide legal cover for the moral abomination of a seditious plot with Pence as its spearhead.

{Note: This calls to mind the way John Yoo infamously provided legal cover for the moral abomination of torture when he worked for George W. Bush’s Department of Justice. That Yoo is a man without character is generally accepted by mainstream news-watchers, with the exception of cable news channel CNN—which regularly uses him as an on-air legal analyst.}:

As Proof has already reported (see here, here, and here), Ginni Thomas—who is a far-right activist rather than a practicing lawyer—was publicly expressing identical, off-the-grid fringe-right views to those of her friend John Yoo at the same time Yoo was publishing them. With this in mind, Proof went looking for more information about past contacts between Ginni Thomas and John Yoo; as Thomas is a prolific public interviewer of far-right figures she admires and is friends with—not only did she do a lengthy televised interview with Trump co-conspirator Mark Meadows, but even gave him an award thereafter, and spent much of the run-up to the coup texting him—and sure enough I quickly found one of the longest interviews John Yoo has ever given, which saw him speaking with Ginni Thomas on television for over half an hour.

You’d be able to watch that interview if it had not mysteriously been made private.

3. Donald Trump Jr.

Seventeen days after Yoo published his Claremont Institute article—which spread like wildfire among the far-right fringes of the internet—Donald Trump Jr., the son of the sitting president, wrote Ginni Thomas friend Mark Meadows (at a time Ginni Thomas was texting him also) in the shadow of his dad’s quickly-becoming-apparent landslide defeat at the hands of Democrat Joe Biden.

Remarkably, Trump Jr. seemed entirely unconcerned that his father was about to lose the presidency and his immunity from criminal prosecution. Indeed, Trump Jr. had apparently read something online that made him downright giddy about his infamous pater’s chances of remaining in office. Specifically, he said the following to Meadows:

It’s very simple….We have multiple paths [to staying in power]. [And] we control them all.

What was Trump Jr. referring to? Other messages of his to Meadows during the same conversation clarify. Immediately preceding the text above he had sent the following:

This [NB: an unknown embedded link was inserted here] is what we need to do [to stay in power]. Please read it and please get it to everyone that needs to see it because I’m not sure we’re doing it. We have operational control[.] Total leverage. Moral High Ground[.] POTUS [Donald Trump] must start [his] second term now.

Had Trump Jr. himself been the author of the “operational control” and the “total leverage” plan he sent to the White House chief of staff? No—of course not. Trump Jr.’s lawyer Alan Futerfas says this of the Trump Jr. texts to Meadows:

After the election, Don received numerous messages from supporters and others. Given the date [November 5, 2020], this message [NB: the embedded link referenced above] likely originated from someone else and was forwarded.

So what did the link in question entail? CNN reports as follows (emphasis supplied):

The November 5 text message [from Donald Trump Jr. to Meadows] outlines a strategy that is nearly identical to what allies of the former President [Trump] attempted to carry out in the months that followed. Trump Jr. makes specific reference to filing lawsuits and advocating recounts to prevent certain swing states from certifying their results, as well as having a handful of Republican state houses put forward slates of fake “Trump electors.”

While we do not yet know if the specific link Donald Trump Jr. referred to was Yoo’s article, whatever the link was, it echoed perfectly Yoo’s argument from 17 days earlier:

State legislators and governors might come under mounting pressure to designate electors on their own if the popular vote remains incomplete [after Election Day in 2020], especially if there are allegations of fraud or abuse. Article II of the Constitution provides that “each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress.” The time when state legislatures directly appointed electors themselves are long gone: since the 19th century, states have delegated that power to their voters. But as the Supreme Court noted in Bush v. Gore, a state “can take back the power to appoint electors.”

The constitutional question is not whether but how a state legislature could reclaim the appointment of electors. States have provided by statute for the selection of their electors by their voters; therefore one might argue they may only resume that power with a second, superseding statute. On the other hand, the Constitution specifically designates state legislatures, rather than the executives or a combination of the two, to choose the electors.  A state legislature might argue that a past legislature-and-governor cannot constrain its discretion to choose electors today.

Yoo’s vision, above, could only have been effectuated via the sort of “lawsuits” and “fake elector” schemes the link in the Trump Jr.-Meadows text message apparently detailed.

Were Yoo’s argument a mainstream argument being widely made by conservatives in the days before Trump’s text, we might think that there would be little chance that Yoo (again, friends with Trump adviser Ginni Thomas and publishing in the media outlet run by Trump lawyer John Eastman’s institute) was one of the originators of Trump Jr.’s third-party plan for “operational control” of, and “total leverage” over, American democracy—which plan evolved into, per the ruling of Judge Carter, the more-likely-than not federal criminal “conspiracy” of which Trump is now accused.

And yet.

4. Ginni Thomas

On February 23, 2022, Proof published a comparison between Ginni Thomas’s public statements and writings on the 2020 election and what would become known as the “Green Bay Sweep” coup plot attributed to Ginni Thomas friend John Eastman and a top adviser to Ginni Thomas advisee Donald Trump, the now-indicted Peter Navarro.....

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“The real fascist”

That’s when we witnessed the “meme**ification” of Biden – endless Hitler comparisons that got #PedoHitler trending on Twitter.

Tucker Carlson said Biden stood in front of a “blood-red Nazi background.” Marjorie Taylor Greene layered a Hitler video over the speech to create a “deep fake” of Biden looking like Hitler.

Texas state representative Briscoe Cain gave a subtler Hitler reference by saying he couldn’t understand Biden’s speech, because it was in German. Others just called Biden satanic or lunatic.

Robert Paxton described five stages of fascism in an article published in 1998 (he wrote an op-ed calling Trump a fascist in 2021).

These include:

:{:{}:

Jason Stanley writes of three essential features of fascism. They include “conjuring a mythic past” that the enemy has somehow destroyed, sowing division and attacking the truth with propaganda. This propaganda is usually particularly anti-intellectual.

:{:{}:

}:

[do not discount meme, don't ignore; prop can be dumb and still work]

}:

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/09/trump-fraud/

The New York Attorney General has filed a civil fraud lawsuit against Donald Trump and three of his adult children, and his business, the Trump Organization, and others, according to CNN, citing court records.

“The case docket indicates the defendants are Donald J. Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Ivanka Trump, Allen Weisselberg, Jeffrey Mcconney, The Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, The Trump Organization,Inc., and other businesses associated with Trump.”

Donald Trump, James says in her news conference, inflated his net worth by “billions of dollars,” and did so with the assistance of others named in her lawsuit.

NY AG Letitia James is holding a news conference slated to start at 11:30 AM ET, which you can watch live here.

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surrogate for midterms?

9 22

rww

dominionist author, speaker, and political operative Lance Wallnau is a right-wing anti-LBGTQ activist, conspiracy theorist, and unabashed Trump cultist who has repeatedly praised authoritarian leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. He is also a self-proclaimed Christian nationalist who has urged former President Donald Trump to organize public rallies across the nation and infuse them with right-wing Christianity in order to bring about a revival in the United States'

[vid]

the reason Wallnau has urged Trump to hold such rallies is that Wallnau is one of the leading advocates of Seven Mountains dominionism, a theology connected to right-wing political ideology that teaches that Christians are to “do whatever is necessary” to take control of the seven main “mountains” that shape our culture—education, government, media, business, arts and entertainment, family, and religion—in order to implement the will of God throughout the nation and the world.

As Wallnau explained earlier this year, if right-wing Christians can gain control of the seven mountains, they can control a nation.[vid]

on Monday night, Wallnau announced on his Facebook page that he will be joining Donald Trump Jr. in speaking later this week at a fundraiser for election-denier and Christian nationalism promoter Doug Mastriano, who is the Republican nominee for governor in Pennsylvania.

“I’m coming up from Dallas, Texas,” Wallnausaid. “I’m paying to go. I’m putting a couple thousand dollars into making this event happen, to help this great guy, Doug Mastriano, take a stand. He’s getting beat left and right. Why? Because he’s standing up for Christian values and is a strong conservative and a MAGA Republican.”

“Doug is doing what God called him to do,” Wallnau continued. “I believe the spirit of God is going to show up in a unique way. They’re attacking everyone who is a Christian in politics as a Christian nationalist. All the Christians are pearl-clutching and handwringing about Christian nationalism. All the nervous religious types are all warning me, ‘Lance, don’t use the term Christian nationalist.’ This just makes me so mad I feel like coming out as a Christian nationalist, because the devil controls—it’s like the rainbow. The rainbow used to be in the Bible a sign from God of his covenant that he’d never destroy [humanity again], but then the LGBTQ movement got a hold of it and now if you put a rainbow on something [people ask], ‘Are you LGBTQ?’ It’s like the devil grabs stuff and brands it. It makes me so mad. I’m not willing to let Christianity or nationalism or love of nation be destroyed by the left, who’s like a ubiquitous force; they’re like a virus."[vid]

mastriano already has deep connections to QAnon conspiracy theorists, self-proclaimed prophets, New Apostolic Reformation dominionists, the antisemitic founder of Gab, and a theocratic offshoot of the Unification Church that worships with AR-15s. We can now add Seven Mountains-promoting Christian nationalists to this list.

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seth a

https://sethabramson.substack.com/p/breaking-news-new-revelations-indicate

extensive  on Ginni

eg

Caroline Wren, the top aide of top Trump adviser (and then-secret Donald Trump Jr. fiancée) Kimberly Guilfoyle, told Dustin Stockton that Jenny Beth Martin’s group and Women for America First—the latter the insurrectionist outfit behind the January 6 event that incited the attack on the Capitol—were only able to work together because Ginni Thomas, who’d served as an “early Tea Party activist” with Women for America First leader Amy Kremer, had worked diligently to make that cooperation possible.

Without Ginni Thomas, the Times indicates, the “years[-long]…bitter legal dispute” between Kremer and Martin would have made their cooperation impossible—and thus the January 6 White House Ellipse event that launched an insurrection a non-starter.

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quien is mas macho? bear bait pastry

https://www.alternet.org/2022/05/donald-trump-jr/

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grift? dad says tent cities for homeless 7 22

https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/desperate-people-do-stupid-things/

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ref no lnx

https://www.thedailybeast.com/even-donald-trump-cant-make-sense-of-his-own-dark-money-maze

[Pay Dirt is a weekly foray into the pigpen of political funding. Subscribe here to get it in your inbox every Thursday.

An inquiry from the feds has thrown new light on the murky relationships between a dozen Trump-aligned groups. And the problem traces back, as do so many other problems in Trumpworld, to a familiar name: former top aide Corey Lewandowski.

When Lewandowski got himself fired from a pro-Trump super PAC last fall—after allegedly sexually assaulting a big donor—the group brought in a clean-up crew. When Lewandowski refused to step down, they opened up a new super PAC without him.

That super PAC—the preposterously titled “Make America Great Again, Again!”—was the 12th in a sprawling labyrinth of political groups and nonprofitsthat comprise the Trump fundraising network. And in terms of the incestuous confusion, it may have been the one that finally tipped the scales; federal election officials now want to know why some of the super PAC’s payments aren’t being properly reported.

[Trump’s Dark-Money Machine Gets a Makeover—and New Owners

BILL OF GOODS

Roger Sollenberger]

Brendan Fischer, deputy executive director of good government group Documented, said the extent of Trump’s network is unparalleled.

“It is worth emphasizing: All of this is totally unprecedented for a former president,” Fischer told The Daily Beast. “Even if Trump kept it simple, and just had one hard money PAC, a single super PAC, and a pair of 501(c)(3)/501(c)(4) nonprofits, there would be no parallel with any former president in American history.”

Anyone who’s taken even the quickest of peeks at Trump’s personal financial disclosures would recognize the pattern.

His first such disclosure revealed positions with more than 500 entities, nearly 400 of which used his name or initials. And Trump has “organized” the mess in a stultifying Russian-nesting-doll structure—companies within companies within companies. Frequently, one company will be held under multiple Trump companies at the same time, each with stakes in still other Trump companies.

This isn’t an accident. The structure gave the Trump Organization an enormous amount of financial flexibility, while making it difficult to follow the billions of dollars that Trump, his family, and his accountants move across the organization.

When Trump hauled his private life into politics, he brought this practice with him, too.

The full Trump-aligned apparatus counts a dozen separate political committees and dark money organizations. Almost all of them share one of three names.

Here they are:

Make America Great Again PAC (converted from the old Trump campaign)

Make America Great Again Action (super PAC)

Make America Great Again, Again! (super PAC)

Trump Make America Great Again (small-dollar joint fundraising committee)

Make America Great Again Policies Inc (a 501(c)(4) nonprofit)

America First Policy Institute (a 501(c)(3) nonprofit)

America First Works (formerly America First Policies; a 501(c)(4) nonprofit)

America First Legal Foundation (a 501(c)(3) nonprofit)

America First Action (super PAC)

Save America (leadership PAC)

Save America JFC (joint fundraising committee)

Trump Victory (high-dollar joint fundraising committee)

“Typically, former presidents focus on their presidential library, or start a charitable foundation, but Trump is staying in the political game and raising a staggering amount of cash,” Fischer said.

It is staggering.

Want a closer look inside the pockets of the government’s most powerful players? Subscribe to the Pay Dirt newsletter here for exclusive reporting every Thursday.

For instance, the Trump-endorsed America First Action super PAC pulled in nearly $200 million between 2017 and 2020. Its sister nonprofit, America First Works—formerly America First Policies—posted $51.3 million in revenue for 2020, doling out nearly $40 million in grants.

[Dark-Money Group Paid Former Trump AG to Ask for Pardons

BEG YOUR PARDON

Roger Sollenberger]

The TMAGA PAC raised $884 million for 2020, with Trump Victory tossing in another $336.3 million. Those guns mostly fell quiet last year, while Trump’s three new PACs built up a $124.4 million stash, with another $12.5 million in the MAGAA! super PAC.

And we won’t know how much those other dark money nonprofits raised in 2021, or what they did with it, until after the midterms.

As Trump and the Republican Party gear up for 2024, these groups are in various stages of repair. However, that also appears to have created some internal problems. In fact, according to a filing on Wednesday, even the Trump campaign admits it isn’t always able to follow its own money.

Fischer chalked up the mess to a few factors, including Trump’s will-he-or-won’t-he candidate status, his relationship with the Republican National Committee, and disarray among his associates.

But Brett Kappel, a specialist in campaign finance and nonprofit law at Harmon Curran, perceived something more designed.

“The central lesson of Watergate is ‘Follow the money,’” Kappel told The Daily Beast. “And this byzantine structure of different types of legal entities—which are subject to different fundraising restrictions and file different reports with different agencies according to different filing schedules—appears to be designed to make that task as difficult as possible.”

To illustrate, these organizations can be divided into two groups: PACs and joint fundraising committees, and “dark money” nonprofits.

The PACS and joint fundraising committees are Trump’s political organizations. They disclose their finances to the Federal Election Commission. But they don’t all follow the same filing schedule, and, depending on what kind of committee they actually are, they can raise and transfer different amounts of money from different types of people and organizations.

[The GOP Dark Money Group Giving Big to White Supremacists

UNWORTHY CAUSES

Roger Sollenberger]

Of these groups, Save America leadership PAC is currently Trump’s main squeeze. Most of the money he raises goes there.The Save America JFC is a joint committee that splits donations between Save America and MAGA PAC, which used to be the Trump campaign. Weirdly, MAGA PAC doesn’t get much out of this joint arrangement—more than 90 percent of every contribution goes to the Save America PAC.

And the super PACs are, as mentioned above, something of a mess.

As for the “dark money” nonprofits, unlike the PACs, these groups file with the IRS. They don’t have to disclose their donors at all (hence “dark money”). They also only file once a year, and because those deadlines are so late, it can take nearly two years for a transaction to become visible to the public.

The IRS restricts their activities, too. Some groups have leeway to be political (the 501(c)(4) groups). Some must focus on social welfare (the 501(c)(3) groups). The Trump network has a healthy helping of both.

Sometimes, however, these PACs and nonprofits can overlap, even sharing employees and office space, like America First Action and America First Policies did during the Trump administration.[shuffle?]

And while they appear to be giving that another go, as the FEC found, it hasn’t been so clean this time.

Enter Lewandowski.

After Trump left the White House, the industriously sycophantic Lewandowski wormed his way back into his graces, winning the right to run the Make America Great Again Action super PAC. At the same time, he quietly created a Florida nonprofit, Make America Great Again Policies Inc.

But MAGA Policies didn’t appear to do anything—at all. There has been no reporting on any actual activity since it was created. Zero. It is a black box.

Then Lewandowski reportedly sexually assaulted a Trump donor and got himself booted from orbit. More experienced hands took over the new MAGAA! super PAC, led by former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi, and that also got complicated.

[Trump PAC Lavishing $37K a Month on Trump Tower Rent: WaPo

DONATIONS WELL SPENT

According to a new corporate filing in Florida, Bondi—who also happens to lead the massive America First Policy Institute nonprofit—also took over Lewandowski’s mysterious MAGA Policies nonprofit, adding former Trump administration officials Ric Grenelland Matt Whitaker, as well asDonald Trump Jr. paramour Kimberly Guilfoyle. All of those people are also on the new super PAC’s payroll.

But here’s the rub: The super PAC hasn’t been paying them directly. The nonprofit has, as part of a “cost share agreement.”

On Tuesday, the FEC sent the super PAC a letter saying that’s not cutting it. The group needs to explain exactly what they mean by “cost share agreement,” the letter said, because what they provided is not adequate.

Kappel said the FEC may be trying to figure out whether the two groups are “financially and operationally independent.” If the super PAC was found to be “connected” to the MAGA Policies nonprofit, he said, that meansit can only raise money from people tied to the nonprofit—and not from the general public. That would be a death blow, and the group would be forced to reorganize itself yet again.

Fischer said he wouldn’t be surprised to see more groups strategically shut down, like Trump Victory began doing last year.

“It might be more straightforward for Trump to shut down MAGA PAC,” he said, though he pointed out that MAGA PAC appears to own the campaign’s valuable supporter data, which might make it more cost-effective to retain for joint fundraising efforts.

But, Fischer pointed out, even though the constellation of Trump-aligned groups is basically unnavigable, it always could have been worse.

“Recall that Brad Parscale also started the ‘American Greatness’ super PAC in 2021, which never really got off the ground,” he said.

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/don-trump-jr-:{mark-meadows/}:

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/don-trump-jr-election/

no lnx twt

Two days before the 2020 election was called for Joe Biden the President’s son, Donald Trump, Jr. sent a text to the White House Chief of Staff that said “we have operational control” to ensure a second Trump term,according to a just-published CNN bombshell report.

"It’s very simple,” Trump Jr. added in the November 5 text. “We have multiple paths We control them all.”

The damning text to Mark Meadows did not end there.

"We have operational control Total leverage,” Trump Jr’s text continued. “Moral High Ground POTUS must start 2nd term now.”

Legal experts are weighing in.

U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA), an attorney who obtained the rank of Colonel in the Air Force Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps made sure to stress the President’s son’s remarks seem to reveal illegality:

Former federal prosecutor of 30 years, Glenn Kirschner, wrote: “The ‘Subject’ line of Don Jr.’s email might as well have been, ‘I’m a member of my father’s criminal conspiracy to overturn the election.’"

And he asks, “How long do we have to endure this open, treasonous criminality by Trump and company before someone gets indicted?”

Election law expert Rick Hasen, a law and political science professor at the University of California, Irvine School of Law says “Mark Meadows election subversion texts are the gift that keep on giving. It’s amazing he didn’t fight against turning them over.”

Former US Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal served up a one-word response: “Premeditated.”

:{:{}:

}:

Richard Painter, former chief White House ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration: “This was an attempted putsch. He belongs in the slammer!”

"The son of a US President plotted to stop the US government from carrying out the transfer of presidential power,” tweeted attorney Luppe B. Luppen.

Popular MSNBC legal analyst and former federal prosecutor:

Former Manhattan DA’s office prosecutor Tristan Snell:

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/trump-jr/

news aggregator echo escalator grift extraction

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3 22

Fact checker shreds Trump Jr.'s claim about 6 million military hours being spent promoting the 'woke' agenda

Donald Trump, Jr. speaking at the 2019 Teen Student Action Summit, hosted by Turning Point USA at the Marriott Marquis in Washington, D.C., Gage Skidmore

Meaghan Ellis March 03, 2022

A fact-checker is pushing back against Don Trump Jr.'s latest claim suggesting the military's last 6 million hours have placed an emphasis on the so-called "woke" agenda.

The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler highlighted remarks made by former President Donald Trump's son when he appeared at theConservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla. At one point during his speech, he criticized the U.S. military.

“Our generals, the great woke leaders of our military that spent 6 million man-hours training our troops about wokeness — not fighting, not killing bad guys," Trump Jr., said on February 27. "They wanted to learn about White rage, a term none of us had heard of prior to him [Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff] testifying, right?”

[Donald Trump Jr. Bashes Biden Over Ukraine Crisis In Fiery CPAC 2022 Remarks | Full Speech

youtu.be]

Kessler pushed back with the facts about the military's hours spent. He noted that Trump Jr.'s remarks would only make sense to conservatives who rely on information from far-right influential platforms like Fox News and Newsmax. He went on to explain why.

After tracking down the six million figure, Kessler acknowledged that it derives from a letter written by Milley that was addressed to Sen. James M. Inhofe (Okla.), who is a high-ranking Republican official serving on the Senate Armed Services Committee. At the time, Inhofe had requested to know how much time had been dedicated to three key items as under the U.S. Department of Justice requirements. Those items, according to Kessler, are "an extremism 'stand-down' related to the Jan. 6 attacks on the Capitol, a climate change plan and a new diversity, equity and inclusion training program."

Although Trump Jr. claimed the military had spent a substantial amount of its time on the woke agenda,Kessler pointed out that they actually placed an emphasis on mitigating extremism.

"The biggest chunk of time was devoted to the extremism stand-down — nearly 5.4 million hours," Kessler explained. "Since nearly 2.5 million members of the military participated, that means about two hours per person, which Milley noted is “comparable to other Joint Force periodic training requirements.” The climate change plan (1,059 hours) and diversity training (529,711 hours) brought the total up to 5.9 million hours. But you can see that more than 90 percent of the total related to the extremism course."

Kessler also highlighted Trump Jr.'s attempt to bend words.

"Notice the sneaky trick that Trump Jr. plays here," he wrote.

The vast majority of the “6 million man-hours” and the “White rage” comment concerned the attack on the Capitol by supporters of his father — an attack that the former president has defended and even seemed to celebrate. But his son does not make that clear. Instead, he claims that this is all about a “woke agenda” imposed by the Biden administration. To some extent that might be a matter of opinion, but it seems like a real stretch."

He concluded saying that although the 6 figure number is an actual estimate of real-time hours, "there is no evidence that this relatively minor course detracted from any military training — and Trump Jr. entirely mischaracterizes what the training was for."

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mirror BS deflection an 921

Donald Trump, Jr. is falsely claiming President Joe Biden is responsible for the impending deaths of Americans sick with COVID-19 after the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services bought an additional 1.4 million doses of Regeneron's monoclonal antibody treatments. After discovering that 70% of all monoclonal antibody treatment doses were being ordered by just seven states, HHS announced it is taking over distribution of the life-saving drug.

Florida, Texas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana – states that have some of the highest per-capita cases of COVID-19 and some of the lowest vaccination rates, have been limiting the supply of monoclonal antibody treatments to the rest of the nation, CNN reports.

"Given this reality, we must work to ensure our supply of these life-saving therapies remains available for all states and territories, not just some," an HHS spokesperson said.

"HHS will determine the amount of product each state and territory receives on a weekly basis. State and territorial health departments will subsequently identify sites that will receive product and how much," the spokesperson said. "This system will help maintain equitable distribution, both geographically and temporally, across the country – providing states and territories with consistent, fairly-distributed supply over the coming weeks."

"HHS will determine the amount of product each state and territory receives on a weekly basis. State and territorial health departments will subsequently identify sites that will receive product and how much," the spokesperson said. "This system will help maintain equitable distribution, both geographically and temporally, across the country – providing states and territories with consistent, fairly-distributed supply over the coming weeks."

That's akin to killing people, Donald Trump, Jr. is suggesting.

"Americans will die because of Biden's despicable decision to punish his political enemies in red states by restricting their ability to secure life-saving monoclonal antibody treatments for all that need them," the former president's son, who is not a medical expert, declared on social media. "Their blood is directly on Joe's hands," he added, disrespectfully refusing to address President Joe Biden by his elected position.

When his father was president Donald Trump, Jr. repeatedly praised the coronavirus vaccine and the Trump administration's Operation Warp Speed. But after Joe Biden became President Trump Jr. switched tactics, repeatedly attacking any efforts to promote vaccination or help keep Americans safe through social distancing measures including masks. At least 17 times since Biden was elected Trump Jr. has railed against "vaccine passports" and other methods of protecting Americans' health from the coronavirus that has already killed over 650,000 people in the U.S.

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trump Jr. mocked for tweet claiming troops refusing vaccine will get 're-education'

David Badash The New Civil Rights Movement

August 26, 2021

Donald Trump Jr. is being mocked after retweeting a post from the far right wing website The Daily Caller that claims troops refusing the Military's mandatory coronavirus vaccination program will go through "re...

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pre-emmptive pardon?

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/trump-jr/

lie under oath inaug $

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trms? notes that gop not about ideas or even policy, just own the libs eg matt gaetz angling for some fox pundit talk radio gig before scandal? cruz and hawley trump mini-me's, trump kid general in meme war

literally red meat for the base: gubmint gonna take your guns, burgers, gasoline...

https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/how-larry-kudlow-set-off-a-right-wing-anti-biden-smear-campaign/

How Larry Kudlow set off a right-wing anti-Biden smear campaign

Jon Skolnik and Salon April 26, 2021

Fox News host and former economic Trump adviser Larry Kudlow set off something of a right-wing smear campaign over the weekend when he went on a tirade against President Joe Biden's nonexistent plan to force "plant-based beer" upon the American public, calling Biden an "ideological zealot" intent on scrapping America's most cherished tradition of meat-eating.

In a Fox News interview on Thursday, Kudlow erroneously attacked Biden for putting forth a climate plan that calls for the elimination of meat, eggs, and dairy from the American diet. "There's a study coming out of the University of Michigan which says that to meet the Biden Green New Deal targets, America has to…stop eating poultry and fish, seafood, eggs, dairy, and animal-based fats," he started. "Ok, got that? No burger on July 4. No steaks on the barbecue. I'm sure Middle America is just going to love that. Can you grill those Brussels sprouts?"

Kudlow, notably livid over the thought grilling vegetables –– let alone foreign ones –– continued to rail against Biden's new climate action plan.

"You can throw back a plant-based beer with your grilled Brussels sprouts and wave your American flag. Call it July 4th Green. Now, I'm making fun of this because I intend to make fun of it. This kind of thing is stupid. It comes from a bunch of ideological zealots who don't care one whit about America's well-being. Not one whit."

It should be noted that beer, generally made from water, grain, hops, and yeast, and barley malt, is already, in fact, plant-based. Furthermore, nothing in President Biden's plan so far calls for a prohibition on meat consumption. The original culprit of this misinformation, a Thursday Daily Mail article headlined "How Biden's climate plan could limit you to eat just one burger a MONTH," speculated that Biden intends on "cutting red meat consumption by 90% and animal products by 50%."

The article, quickly feasted upon by Kudlow and amplified Fox Newswithout the slightest fact-check, was then picked up by Republicans in government, including Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott, Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who spread the lies to their voting bases.

"Joe Biden's climate plan includes cutting 90% of red meat from our diets by 2030. They want to limit us to about four pounds a year," tweeted Boebert. "Why doesn't Joe stay out of my kitchen?"

"Not gonna happen in Texas!" Gov. Abbott tweeted, with a screenshot of Kudlow's broadcast.

Greene, posting a picture of Biden eating a hamburger with others a table, echoed: "The Hamburglar. No burgers for thee, but just for me."

The misinformation also came into the good graces of Donald Trump Jr., who declared most proudly, "I'm pretty sure I ate 4 pounds of red meat yesterday. That's going to be a hard NO from me."

On Saturday, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman explained how Kudlow's remarks planted the seeds for a concerted misinformation campaign.

"If you read what Kudlow actually said,'' Krugman argued on Twitter, "he's cagey — doesn't say that Biden proposed this, only that some people say this is what would happen. But Fox viewers won't notice, which is the intention. This is what right-wing politics is down to.It's all false claims about evil liberals, which the base is expected to believe because it's primed to believe in liberal villainy. They're not even trying to engage on actual issues."

The White House has thus far released scant information about any formal plan to address emissions. According to the Washington Post, on Thursday, the President made vague remarks about investing in "American infrastructure and American innovation" in order to build "a critical infrastructure to produce and deploy clean technology."

The right's outrage was widely mocked online by the left, who were quick to point out that Biden's apparent political aversion to meat has no factual or historical basis at all. On Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., took a jab at his conservative colleagues . "Excited to be watching the Oscars with an ice cold plant-based beer," he tweeted, with a picture of himself holding a beer while watching the Oscars. "Thanks Joe Biden."

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

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mar a lago trying to keep dad from living there

florida locals complain as Donald Trump Jr and Kimberly Guilfoyle prepare to move in: report

Matthew Chapman Raw Story

January 20, 2021

On Tuesday, The Palm Beach Post reported that residents of Admirals Cove, an exclusive gated waterfront community in Jupiter, Florida, are complaining and expressing concerns after Dona

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an

A screaming Joe Scarborough demanded the arrest of President Donald Trump, the president's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, and the president's son, Donald Trump, Jr., for inciting Wednesday's deadly violent insurrection.

"Are we a nation of laws?" the "Morning Joe" co-host yelled the morning after thousands of armed Trump MAGA supporters, some draped in "Make America Great Again" flags, breached the nation's Capitol Building, with hundreds crawling the halls of America's seat of government.

"Donald J. Trump called for the insurrection against the United States of America. He called for it. Rudy Giuliani called for 'combat justice,' [trial by combat?]just an hour or two before this happened. Donald Trump, Jr. said, 'We are coming for you!'"

"That's insurrection against the United States of America. And if Donald Trump, Jr., Rudy Giuliani, and Donald Trump are not arrested today for insurrection and taken to jail and booked, and if the Capitol Hill Police do not go through every video, and look at the face of every person that invaded our Capitol, and if they are not arrested and brought to justice today, then we are no longer a nation of laws and we only tell people they can do this again."

Scarborough and co-host Mika Brzezinski also blasted the Capitol Hill Police for treating the insurrectionists with kid gloves "because they are white," and accusing them of opening "the fucking doors" for the Trump insurrectionists.

"If these insurrectionists were Black, they would have been shot in the face. And my god, if these insurrectionists were Muslim, they would have been shot from the top of buildings."

Watch:

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/donald-trump-jr-2649705740/

~cnn

==

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/donald-trump-jr/

rnc bot 300K$ of books

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/did-donald-trump-steal-the-election/

 (AFP) - All it took was a Facebook page and a hashtag: As election tallies trickled in Donald Trump supporters were busy going viral, accelerating the unsubstantiated claim that Democrats were "stealing" the election under the rallying cry #StopTheSteal.  It lived just 48 hours but the page quickly racked up 350,000 members, people subscribing to the conspiracy theory the Republican president too has been touting to his 88 million Twitter followers.  Trump's social media "influencers" -- his son Donald Trump Jr, or the spokesperson of the Republican party Elizabeth Harrington -- also play...

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

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1120 an

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/a-far-right-radio-host-promoted-an-authoritarian-plan-to-steal-the-election-and-donald-trump-jr-signed-off-on-it/

Thursday, former Vice President Joe Biden had won 253 electoral votes in the U.S. presidential race compared to 214 for President Donald Trump — and as the vote-counting continued in Pennsylvania, Nevada and other battleground states, Biden's chances of a victory looked better and better.

In response to this dismal situation for the president, far-right radio host Mark R. Levin responded with a tweet suggesting a plan to overturn the results. Mother Jones' Tim Murphy denounced the idea as an authoritarian idea for trying to steal the election if Biden is declared the winner, and Murphy noted that Donald Trump, Jr. has signed off on Levin's idea.

Levin, typing in all caps, tweeted:[wacko rant re electors]

Murphy explains: "With Pennsylvania on the verge of flipping into the Democratic column — the remaining uncounted ballots appear to heavily favor Biden — Levin was promoting a legal theory that drew some attention before the election. Because state governments have to formally certify results and then formally send electors to the Electoral College, the Republicans who control the state legislatures of Pennsylvania and several other swing states could, in this theory, simply send their own set of rival electors and force Congress to choose — potentially tipping the election to Trump."

Trump, Jr., Murphy notes, signed off on Levin's idea for an authoritarian power grab by forwarding his tweet.But the Mother Jones reporter also points out that Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent has explained why there are many reasons to be skeptical of such a strategy from a legal and constitutional standpoint.

"Changing the process by which Pennsylvania appoints its electors requires changing Pennsylvania law, which the Democratic governor (Tom Wolf) would veto," Murphy writes. "If Biden goes on to win enough of the remaining uncalled states, perhaps his sizable Electoral College and popular vote lead will dissuade Republicans from attempting to deploy such chicanery."

Murphy also points out that Republican Jake Corman, majority leader of the Pennsylvania Senate, "wants nothing to do with" that type of power grab.

twt:

For anyone wondering: spokesperson for Pennsylvania Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman reiterated just now that the Republican controlled state legislature will NOT move to appoint electors to override popular vote, despite concerns about PA electoral process.

Nonetheless, Murphy stresses, it is disturbing when a well-known radio host wants to brazenly defy the will of the voters and the president's son signs off on it.

"The thing about going into untrodden territory is that no one really knows what it's like; the only sure thing is that it's not where you want to be," Murphy warns. "Even President Trump hasn't gone this far yet. But his son's promotion of such a plan is an ominous development as the campaign seeks to claw its way back by taking away people's votes."

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an 1020 kids have to do train on how not fraud charities

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/how-donald-trump-jr-s-intellectual-bankruptcy-made-him-a-star-in-the-republican-party-report/

When Donald Trump first announced, in 2015, that he was seeking the Republican presidential nomination, no one in the GOP gave much thought to his son, Donald Trump, Jr. But the younger Trump has since become a prominent figure in the Trumpian version of the Republican Party. Journalist David Smith discusses the rise of Trump, Jr. in an article published in The Guardian this week, explaining why he has become so popular with a certain type of Republican voter — even though some conservatives view him as a glaring example of the GOP's intellectual decline.

Combative, snarky, belligerent and mean-spirited, Trump, Jr. has a lot more in common with his father than he does with his sister, White House Senior Adviser Ivanka Trump — who fancies herself as more of a conservative intellectual even though her critics view her as low-information. Ivanka Trump at least pretends to have a thoughtful tone when she is giving a speech or writing a Twitter post, whereas Trump, Jr. openly disdains intellectuals. And even though Trump, Jr. is a millionaire, MAGA voters with a fraction of his income adore his anti-elitist schtick.

"When Don Jr. and his father bash Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and (former Vice President Joe) Biden at campaign rallies, they generate louder reactions from the crowd than when they set out agenda items or achievements," Smith explains. "Don Jr.'s Twitter feed offers his 5.8 million followers little by way of policy but a torrent of Democrat-baiting and conspiracy theories."

Trump, Jr., Smith stresses, is "adept at throwing red meat to" his father's MAGA base, and Trumpians eat it up when he is giving a speech at a rally.

But Trump, Jr., now 42, has his share of critics on the right, including conservative activist/author Rick Wilson — a former Republican Party strategist who is supporting former Vice President Joe Biden in this year's presidential election and was a co-founder of The Lincoln Project, a right-wing anti-Trump group. Interviewed by The Guardian, Wilson slammed Trump, Jr. as a perfect example of the modern-day GOP's intellectual bankruptcy but stressed that he knows how to rally his father's base because he "speaks fluent MAGA."

The 56-year-old Wilson explained, "Trumpism replaced conservatism as the ideological underpinning of the Republican Party, and because of that, they don't really fight about issues anymore. They fight about effect and whether or not they're winning these ephemeral social media battles — and in that world, the highest order goal is the 'owning of the libs.' It is a throwaway phrase substituting the validity or strength of an argument with a sort of self-satisfaction that you have been transgressive in some way towards liberals or progressives."

The Never Trumper continued, "Donald Trump, Jr. is a master of that. He is a post-Republican Republican. He is there only to engage in that performative dickery that is lib-owning in the Trump world. It is a political performance art to show your contempt for norms, institutions and education."

But even though Wilson has a very low opinion of the president's son, he predicts that Trump, Jr. will run for president in 2024 and believes that the GOP has sunk low enough to give him the nomination.

Wilson told The Guardian, "What I tell all these Republicans who think they're going to run in '24 for president — Ben Sasse and Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz — is they're not going anywhere. They should stop right now. They're wasting their time and everyone else's, because the nominee in 2024 is going to be Donald Trump, Jr. He will come in, he will have his father's endorsement, and he will promise great feats of lib ownership

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aha qanon is apoc in minature, trump = messiah , wicked will be vanquished

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/the-extremist-qanon-movement-is-growing-and-being-weaponized-to-boost-trumps-reelection-campaign-report/

Whenever President Donald Trump is asked about QAnon, he will say a few nice things about the far-right conspiracy theorists while insisting that he doesn't know much about them. It isn't hard to understand why Trump is taking that approach: he wants the votes of QAnon supporters, while keeping some distance from them. In an article published in Axios on October 21, journalists Stef W. Kight and Sara Fischer report that the movement is still "growing" — and thatQAnon is being "weaponized to boost President Trump ahead of the election."

Kight and Fischer explain, "What began as a single conspiracy theory linking Hillary Clinton to child trafficking four years ago is now part of a convoluted web of falsehoods being spread to undermine Joe Biden…. In a year of unrest and expected election turmoil, experts are concerned that belief in QAnon could be another instigator of violence in some communities if Trump loses in November."

According to the QAnon conspiracy theory, the federal government of the United States has been infiltrated by an international cabal of child sex traffickers, Satanists and cannibals — and Trump was put in the White House to fight against them. An anonymous figure named Q, members of the cult believe, is providing updates on the president's battle. QAnon members believe that everyone from billionaire Democrat George Soros to R&B superstar Beyoncé is part of the conspiracy, insisting that Beyoncé isn't really African-American but rather, is really an Italian woman and Soros ally named Ann Marie Lastrassi.

But as absurd as QAnon's beliefs are, FBI agents have warned that the movement is dangerous. Kight and Fischer note that security experts are worried about how QAnon will respond if Biden wins the election — and Bryce Webster-Jacobsen, who specializes in cyber-security for GroupSense, says that QAnon's possible response to a Biden victory on November 3 "keeps me up at night."

"Recent reports about what was purported to be Hunter Biden's computer hard drive have sparked renewed activity from Q, with more concrete ideas to latch onto," Kight and Fischer explain. "On the day the New York Post reported on the alleged hard drive, Q posted 16 times, per GroupSense."

President Trump's son Donald Trump, Jr., the Axios reporters point out, has been encouraging QAnon.

"Earlier this year, Donald Trump, Jr.jokingly insinuated that Biden was a pedophile — a nod to QAnon lore that many Democrats use their political power to hide widespread pedophilia," Kight and Fischer note. "Some Republican politicians' adoption of aspects of the theory has helped bring it more mainstream, Webster-Jacobsen said."

Some tech companies have been taking a stand against QAnon.

Kight and Fischer report, "On Monday, Spotify removed QAnon podcasts, and TikTok officially banned all QAnon content. YouTube and Peloton announced QAnon crackdowns last week. Facebook and Triller both banned QAnon earlier this month. Etsy banned QAnon products two weeks ago, and Twitter shut down QAnon accounts in July."

However, the Axios reporters add that "despite these bans, QAnon followers still find other places online to congregate, like Parler, a far-right social media app."

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vs break up tech? banks?

Trump Jr. says dad’s ‘next move’ is to ‘break up’ the FBI: ‘He has to get rid of these things’

David Edwards Raw Story

Donald Trump Jr. on Sunday called on his father to "break up" the FBI if he wins a second term.

During an interview on Fox News, host Maria Bartiromo asked the president's son what his father would do if the FBI does not

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/propaganda-experts-blast-trump-dni-for-declassifying-unverified-anti-clinton-russian-disinformation

no lnx

Director of National Intelligence, pro-Trump former MAGA congressman John Ratcliffe, has just declassified and released what is being described as "unverified" Russian chatter and "disinformation" that suggests Hillary Clinton may have been in touch with the Russians in an attempt to help her 2016 presidential campaign.

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Ratcliffe, just hours before Tuesday night's presidential debate, sent a letter to Republican Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, who is facing his own major re-election challenge.

The letter claims in 2016 "U.S. intelligence agencies obtained insight into Russian intelligence analysis alleging that U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians; hacking of the Democratic National Committee."

The DNI's letter then clearly says the intelligence community "does not know the accuracy of this allegation or the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect fabrication."

The Director of National Intelligence heads all 17 U.S. intel agencies and offices.

(Ratcliffe's installation as Director of National Intelligence was, according to some, illegal. Congress passed a law requiring the DNI to have prior "extensive national security expertise," which Ratcliffe, like his two predecessors, lacks.)

It took the President's son, Donald Trump Jr., no time to try to weaponize it:

OMG??????JUST DECLASSIFIED: The Russia hoax was Hillary’s plan, and the Obama-Biden White House was briefed on it. https://t.co/ytquclKKg1

— Donald Trump Jr. (@Donald Trump Jr.)1601407501.0

Intelligence experts and reporters are furious that Ratcliffe would declassify and release what they see as unverified Russian propaganda.

Intelligence analyst Eric Garland:

THE RATCLIFFE DOSSIER: Unverified, except obvious propaganda, no tradecraft, and less pee-pee. https://t.co/qLI2fk2lhA

— Eric Garland (@Eric Garland)1601407092.0

CNN national security reporter Jeremy Herb:

The latest declassification from Ratcliffe to Senate GOP: Russian intelligence that the Clinton campaign planned to… https://t.co/Vm55rnROmJ

— Jeremy Herb (@Jeremy Herb)1601406864.0

U.S. intel and terrorism expert Malcolm Nance:

Trump crony Ratcliffe sends a letter declassifying Russian intel report. It’s full of statements intended to look l… https://t.co/QRJRV9YWFq

— Malcolm Nance (@Malcolm Nance)1601407085.0

Politico Congressional reporter Andrew Desiderio:

To recap: The country’s top intelligence official just declassified a Russian intel assessment that he acknowledges… https://t.co/wpdJHhcEQF

— Andrew Desiderio (@Andrew Desiderio)1601405922.0

Democratic strategist Adam Parkhomenko:

Even for Ratcliffe, this is shocking. https://t.co/DDlGSg3sTy

— Adam Parkhomenko (@Adam Parkhomenko)1601406638.0

Former U.S. intelligence officer, current NBC News national security and intelligence analyst Ned Price:

This is less about tonight and more about tomorrow, when Comey will appear before Graham's Committee. Ratcliffe is… https://t.co/NmewLaUnPh

— Ned Price (@Ned Price)1601407273.0

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==

an 920

bizarre campaign ad leads many to ask: 'What is up with Donald Trump Jr. in this video?'

Aldous J. PennyfarthingDaily Kos

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no lnx

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/21/us/politics/andrew-weissmann-mueller.html

Mueller’s Team Should Have Done More to Investigate Trump-Russia Links, Top Aide Says

A new book by one of the special counsel’s top deputies, Andrew Weissmann, is the first inside account of the investigation.

“We could have done more,” Andrew Weissmann, who was one of the top aides in the special counsel’s office, writes in a new book.

By Charlie Savage

Sept. 21, 2020

WASHINGTON — The team led by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, failed to do everything it could to determine what happened in the 2016 election, shying away from steps like subpoenaing President Trump and scrutinizing his finances out of fear he would fire them, one of Mr. Mueller’s top lieutenants argued in the first insider account of the inquiry.

“Had we used all available tools to uncover the truth, undeterred by the onslaught of the president’s unique powers to undermine our efforts?” wrote the former prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann, in a new book, adding, “I know the hard answer to that simple question: We could have done more.”

The team took elaborate steps to protect its files of evidence from the risk that the Justice Department might destroy them if Mr. Trump fired them and worked to keep reporters and the public from learning what they were up to, Mr. Weissmann wrote in “Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation,” which Random House will publish next week.

While he speaks reverently of Mr. Mueller, he also says his boss’s diffidence made him ill-suited for aspects of shepherding the politically charged investigation. He saw Mr. Mueller and his deputy, Aaron M. Zebley, as overly cautious.

Mr. Weissmann also defended against accusations by the president and his allies that he and other investigators were politically biased “angry Democrats”; Mr. Weissmann said his personal views had no bearing on the crimes that Russian operatives and Trump aides committed.

And he elevates particular details — for example, emphasizing that the same business account that sent hush payments to an adult film star who alleged an extramarital affair with Mr. Trump had also received “payments linked to a Russian oligarch.” The president has denied the affair; his former lawyer Michael D. Cohen controlled the account. Mr. Mueller transferred the Cohen matter to prosecutors in New York.

Previously a mafia and Enron prosecutor and then a lawyer at the F.B.I. for Mr. Mueller, who was the bureau’s director for 12 years, Mr. Weissmann ran one of three major units for the special counsel’s office. His “Team M” prosecuted Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort for numerous financial crimes. The goal was to flip him and learn whatever he knew about any Trump campaign links to Russia.

Mr. Manafort had worked for pro-Russian interests in Ukraine, and the investigation uncovered ties by his business partner, Konstantin V. Kilimnik, to Russian intelligence. The book builds toward investigators’ discovery that Mr. Manafort had shared internal campaign polling data with Mr. Kilimnik, who flew to the United States to meet with Mr. Manafort during the campaign, asking whether Mr. Trump would permit a peace plan for Russia to essentially take over all of eastern Ukraine.

But while admitting this much, Mr. Manafort — seeing the dangle of a potential pardon from Mr. Trump — refused to cooperate further. Investigators did not obtain any final puzzle pieces and lacked the evidence to charge anyone in the campaign with a criminal conspiracy involving Russia’s covert electoral assistance.

“It would seem to require significant audacity — or else, leverage — for another nation to even put such a request before a presidential candidate,” Mr. Weissmann wrote of Mr. Kilimnik’s request. “This made what we didn’t know, and still don’t know to this day, monumentally disconcerting: Namely, why would Trump ever agree to this? Why would Trump ever agree to this Russian proposal if the candidate were not getting something from Russia in return?”

Mr. Weissmann explained the significance of Mr. Manafort’s interactions with Mr. Kilimnik — also a major focus of a recent bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report, which explicitly labeled Mr. Kilimnik a Russian intelligence agent — more clearly than the Mueller report did.

Mr. Mueller had strictly forbidden leaks, and the special counsel team took extraordinary care to protect the high-profile, high-stakes investigation, Mr. Weissmann wrote. They kept window blind slats tilted at an angle to keep out prying eyes, shutting out natural light. They concocted an “almost comically elaborate and surreal” plan to sneak in “through the many hidden arteries of the courthouse” to obtain a grand jury indictment without tipping off reporters.

And worried about the possibility that Mr. Trump would fire them and the Justice Department would then seal off or destroy their evidence, the Mueller team members packed their numerous applications to judges for search warrants with extensive, up-to-date details about their investigation — ensuring they backed up their work beyond the reach of the executive branch.

Ty Cobb, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, also privately promised to be a “canary in the coal mine” and provide a heads up if Mr. Trump was going to fire the special counsel team, according to Mr. Weissmann. In an email, Mr. Cobb wrote that he “never made the commitment” described by Mr. Weissmann.

The investigation played out against the backdrop of regular vilification of the Mueller team by Mr. Trump and his allies like Fox News’s Sean Hannity — who turned out to be in regular contact with Mr. Manafort cooking up a “smear campaign” over text messages. Mr. Weissmann, a major target, wrote that such “ad hominem” insinuations of bias appealed to emotion rather than reason.

“I am a registered Democrat,” he wrote. “Does this make Paul Manafort or any of the other 32 people our office charged any less guilty? Did Russia not attack our democracy and disrupt our election with its self-described online information warfare operation? Which facts that we alleged in our various indictments — and to which many of those we indicted, including Manafort, would plead guilty — did our attackers believe were invented as a result of our alleged bias as ‘angry Democrats?’”

Mr. Trump’s allies have recently pointed with alarm to documents showing that cellphones issued to Mr. Mueller’s team were erased during the investigation; Mr. Weissmann twice entered an incorrect passcode too often, triggering a security measure that erased his phone. In an interview, he portrayed the concerns as a “tempest in a teapot” and said his understanding was that all emails and other such data from phones were backed up. He called on the Justice Department to release information about the special counsel’s data backup system.

Mr. Weissmann also wrote that he is not “anti-Trump” but rather “pro the rule of law.” Still, the distinction is less than clear in a book that also portrays Mr. Trump as a liar and a dangerous demagogue trying “to peel the world around him away from the rule of law — away from reason itself — and mold it to accommodate his desire for unchecked power.”

Mr. Weissmann was equally scathing about Attorney General William P. Barr, calling him an enabler and likening his misleading letter last spring about the then-still-secret Mueller report as a betrayal and “gut punch.”

Mr. Weissmann also criticized colleagues, portraying the special counsel team as divided between aggressive investigators like him, the F.B.I. special agent Omer Meisel and the prosecutor Jeannie Rhee — who headed “Team R,” which investigated Russian issues other than those centered on Manafort — and far more risk-averse law enforcement officials like Mr. Zebley who pulled punches.

In one episode in 2017, the Mueller team issued subpoenas to Deutsche Bank for information about Mr. Manafort’s income in Ukraine. Deutsche Bank had also lent large sums to the Trump Organization, and the White House somehow found out about the still-secret subpoenas — though not their focus. The White House demanded to know what investigators were doing, andMr. Mueller authorized Mr. Zebley to tell the White House that they had not been seeking Mr. Trump’s financial information.

“At that point, any financial investigation of Trump was put on hold,” Mr. Weissmann writes. “That is, we backed down — the issue was simply too incendiary; the risk, too severe.”

The book provides many other examples of concessions large and small. Investigators did not try to question Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka — who had spoken in the lobby to a delegation of Russians who came to Trump Tower in June 2016 to meet with campaign leaders who had been promised that they were offering dirt on Hillary Clinton from the Russian government.

They “feared that hauling her in for an interview would play badly to the already antagonistic right-wing press — look how they’re roughing up the president’s daughter — and risk enraging Trump, provoking him to shut down the special counsel’s office once and for all,” he wrote.

Similarly, they did not subpoena the Trump Organization for emails about its efforts to develop a Trump-branded building in Moscow, which were active deep into the 2016 campaign.

And they did not immunize Mr. Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr., a step that would have prevented him from being able to invoke the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying about matters like the Trump Tower meeting. Bound by grand-jury secrecy rules, Mr. Weissmann did not come out and say whether Donald Trump Jr. was threatened with or actually issued a subpoena and used his right against self-incrimination to repel it.

Mr. Weissmann laid much of the blame for what he saw as a pattern of timidity on Mr. Zebley, portraying him as a primary decision maker. “Repeatedly during our 22 months in operation, we would reach some critical juncture in our investigation only to have Aaron say that we could not take a particular action because it risked aggravating the president beyond some undefined breaking point.”

Mr. Weissmann acknowledged, but did not clearly address, concerns that the aging Mr. Mueller had lost a step, both declaring that he was capable of making the tough decisions despite “speculative concerns” about his health but also describing him in one scene as looking drained and worn down by his years of grueling public service.

While Mr. Zebley obtained Mr. Mueller’s sanction for many of his cautious directives, in one striking episode, Mr. Zebley appeared in Mr. Weissmann’s telling to have unilaterally agreed — without Mr. Mueller’s knowledge — to a request by the office of the deputy attorney general overseeing them, Rod J. Rosenstein, not to coordinate with state prosecutors “as it would undermine the president’s pardon power.”

Two other former officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, disputed the account. Mr. Rosenstein did not decline any request to share information with state prosecutors, a person familiar with his thinking wrote in an email.

Another person familiar with how the special counsel’s office interacted with Mr. Rosenstein’s office denied that there had been any agreement about sharing evidence with or withholding it from state prosecutors, and said Mr. Zebley had consulted with Mr. Mueller on every material decision.

On the failure to subpoena Mr. Trump, Mr. Mueller was determined to avoid “any public disagreements” with Mr. Rosenstein, Mr. Weissmann wrote. Because the special counsel regulations required telling Congress about any instance in which Mr. Rosenstein overruled him, Mr. Mueller never actually proposed subpoenaing Mr. Trump, instead coyly asking what Mr. Rosenstein’s reaction would be. Mr. Rosenstein just kept demurring.

In the end, Mr. Weissmann said in an interview, the caution was more justified early on to avoid provoking Mr. Trump into firing them before they could get going. But he and Ms. Rhee, among others, believed the office should have been willing to be more aggressive later on, after they had learned much of what Russia had done and had already used indictments to drag it into public view.

“We would have subpoenaed the president after he refused our accommodations, even if that risked us being fired,” he wrote. “It just didn’t sit right. We were left feeling like we had let down the American public, who were counting on us to give it our all.”

==

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trump-jr-makes-absurd-excuse-for-er-kyle-rittenhouse-we-all-do-stupid-things-at-17/

the cosmic disappointment of a son only Donald Trump could have, Donald Trump Jr., was on ExtraTV on Tuesday to discuss hisnew book,Liberal Privilege.I believe the book is sold exclusively at the Hypocrites Handbook Book Store on Nepotism Island, in the magical land of Cowpie. Right out of the gate, Junior was asked by Extra host Rachel Lindsay what he thought of the statement Black Lives Matter, as well as the movement underneath its umbrella.

Trump Jr. stammered his way into explaining that “the phrase Black Lives Matter is obvious, ah no one in America, you know, says anything else.” Lindsay, who is Black, cut Trump Jr. off to remind him that yes, in fact, there are tons of people that say almost anything else besides Black Lives Matter. Trump Jr. responded that “no one” he knew did. Welcome through the looking glass, Extra! This is the Trump family, of course, so somehow this was the least offensive and ignorant thing Junior said in the interview. It was the first question, so he was likely just warming up those three brain cells he’s working with.

Junior went on to explain that he thought Black Lives Matter was a “very good marketing message,” and a “great catchphrase,” but that the political ideology behind it didn’t support it. As opposed to, I guess, Trump and Junior’s white supremacist agenda. Trump Jr. went on to defend his father’s lack of communication with Jacob Blake’s family and his very direct communication with the Kenosha police department. His defense was the same one we’ve already heard: Trump called someone and the Blake family had asked that their family lawyer be on the call—and we know lawyers not in Trump’s pocket spook Donald Trump—and the police department that Trump was meeting with are fighting to save businesses.

Lindsay, a former reality television contestant, did about as well as any traditional media outlet host could, pointing out that those hollow talking points aside: “Why hasn’t the Trump Administration or President Trump condemned what happened in Kenosha with Kyle Rittenhouse—coming across state lines and murdering two people and injuring another?"

it is here that Trump Jr. reminds the world exactly who the Trumps are:

DONALD TRUMP JR.: We’re waiting for due process. We’re not jumping to a conclusion. If I put myself in Kyle Rittenhouse’s shoes, maybe I shouldn’t have been there. He’s a young kid. I don’t, I don’t want 17-year-olds running around the street with AR-15s. Maybe I wouldn’t have put myself in that situation. Who knows? But we all do stupid things at 17.

It looks like some of us continue to live a life of doing “stupid things” well into their 40s. Maybe Trump Jr. can speak to his father’s full page ad calling for the death penalty for the five children who lost decades of their lives, only to be exonerated later. Those kids were 14-year-old Kevin Richardson, 14-year-old Raymond Santana, 15-year-old Antron McCray, 15-year-old Yusef Salaam, and 16-year-old Korey Wise. Those kids were straight up doing “stupid things,” but went to jail for some completely other man’s truly evil actions. The reason those teenagers were falsely treated like rapists and attempted murderers was because they were children of color in a New York City where law enforcement’s job is to keep people of color far away from white supremacists like Donald Trump Jr.

Yes, we all know that being young is filled with doing “stupid things.” But there are degrees of stupid, and what is excruciatingly clear is that people like Donald Trump and his progeny believe that white youth are more valuable than Black youth, and therefore the rules must be applied differently. It’s that fundamental difference that is the root of white supremacy.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/once-disregarded-by-his-father-donald-trump-jr-appears-to-be-his-fathers-political-heir/

==

girlfriend kimberly (ex -newsom) coked out? used in college?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/rnc-review-speakers-described-an-alternate-reality-in-which-chaos-and-violence-of-the-trump-era-is-joe-bidens-fault/

==

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/rnc-review-speakers-described-an-alternate-reality-in-which-chaos-and-violence-of-the-trump-era-is-joe-bidens-fault/

no lnx twt

RNC review: Speakers described an alternate reality in which chaos and violence of the Trump era is Joe Biden’s fault

Written by Igor Derysh / Salon August 25, 2020 Commentary

The first night of the Republican National Convention featured a diverse lineup that defended President Donald Trump from charges of racism, even as other speakers sought to stoke racial fears and push conspiracy theories.

The convention, largely consisting of a mix of live and pre-taped speeches before an empty auditorium, appeared to take place in an alternate reality where Trump had successfully beaten back the coronavirus pandemic, and where the protests, violence and racial division seen during Trump’s presidency would only get worse Democratic nominee Joe Biden is elected. It was a wildly dishonest night, with the New York Times fact-checking team counting at least 30 false and misleading claims.

“This one half-night of Republican programming so far has been exponentially more dishonest than the entire four nights of the Democratic convention,” wrote CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale.

While Republicans insisted that their convention would be optimistic, and headliners like former UN ambassador Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina delivered speeches on the promise of America that could have taken place under any other Republican president, the tone of the night was dark and the theme was racial fear-mongering.

The night kicked off with a speech by Charlie Kirk, founder of the right-wing student group Turning Point USA, who described Trump as a “bodyguard of Western civilization” — a common white nationalist dog whistle — who is defending America against a “vengeful mob that seeks to destroy our way of life, our neighborhoods, schools, churches and values.”

Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio gave a speech riddled with falsehoods accusing Democrats of stoking “crime, violence, and mob rule.” Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, one of Trump’s most loyal followers in Congress, bizarrely warned that Democrats will “disarm you, empty the prisons, lock you in your home, and invite MS-13 to live next door.”

Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the St. Louis couple who threatened Black Lives Matter supporters with guns, delivered a gloomy, downbeat chat accusing “radical Democrats” of trying to destroy the suburbs.

“They are not satisfied with spreading the chaos and violence into our communities. They want to abolish the suburbs altogether by ending single-family home zoning,” Patricia McCloskey said. “This forced rezoning would bring crime, lawlessness and low-quality apartments into thriving suburban neighborhoods.

“These are the policies that are coming to a neighborhood near you,” she added. “So make no mistake: No matter where you live, your family will not be safe in the radical Democrats’ America.”

These divisive speeches were interspersed between people of color who insisted that neither Trump, the Republican Party nor the nation had a problem with racism.

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Former NFL player Herschel Walker — who once played for the New Jersey Generals, a long-gone USFL team owned by Trump — said it “hurt my soul” to hear people call Trump “racist,” noting their long friendship. Haley, speaking of her own experience as the daughter of Indian immigrants, said that “America is not a racist country” but a “work in progress.”

Scott, the night’s keynote speaker, [heh appt by nikki] delivered a powerful speech on the promise of America and his own experiences with racism. Scott urged viewers to “not look simply at what the candidates say” before listing a number of remarks made by Biden to suggest that he, and not Trump, would ignore minority communities. Scott repeatedly insisted that Biden wants to turn the U.S. into a “socialist utopia,” which would be news to Biden and the progressive primary challenges who repeatedly criticized him for being too conservative.

But while the headliners tried to ignore the division stoked by Trump since long before he launched his 2016 campaign, Donald Trump Jr. and his girlfriend, former Fox News personality Kimberly Guilfoyle, stole the show with stunningly dark and loud diatribes that prompted viewers to question whether cocaine was involved.

Guilfoyle, who earns $180,000 per year from the Trump campaign, shouted an amped-up speech into the empty auditorium comparing Democrats to socialists in Cuba and Venezuela. Guilfoyle, who was formerly married to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, claimed that Democrats (including her ex-husband, apparently) had turned California into a “land of discarded heroin needles in parks, riots in streets and blackouts in homes.”

“They want to control what you see and think and believe so that they can control how you live,” she warned. “They want to enslave you to the weak, dependent liberal victim ideology to the point that you will not recognize this country or yourself.”

“Biden, Harris and the rest of the socialists will fundamentally change this nation,” she continued. “They want open borders, closed schools, dangerous amnesty, and will selfishly send your jobs back to China while they get rich. They will defund, dismantle and destroy America’s law enforcement. When you are in trouble and need police, don’t count on the Democrats.”

Donald Trump Jr. gave a speech touting his father’s response to the pandemic, albeit one that was entirely detached from reality.

He claimed that the president had “acted quickly,” even though Trump spent the crucial early weeks downplaying the threat, and that the administration had delivered supplies to “hospitals that needed them most,” even though the Health and Human Services Department’s inspector general found rampant shortages of vital supplies. Six months into the pandemic, such equipment remains in short supply.

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The night also featured segments in which Trump hyped hydroxychloroquine, a drug that has repeatedly been found ineffective in treating the coronavirus, and a video that touted Trump’s “rapid policy changes” in the face of the pandemic.

MSNBC broke away from the broadcast to fact-check the claims.

“To say that 170,000 souls lost in our country up to now is a success by any measure is fantasy,” Dr. Vin Gupta, a disease expert at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, said during the segment. “It’s disrespectful to the families who lost loved ones, to frontline clinicians who put their lives at risk. It’s just fantasy. It’s propaganda.”

During another segment, Trump spoke with a group of Americans who had been freed from overseas prisons, including pastor Andrew Brunson, who was arrested by Turkey during President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s purge following an unsuccessful coup attempt.

“To me, President Erdogan was very good,” Trump told the pastor, who was detained for two years.

Though all of the major news networks break away during portions of the convention for analysis and ads, Fox News host Sean Hannity warned his viewers that “the media won’t cover large parts of the RNC that we’ll be showing.”

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Twitter users couldn’t help but notice that Fox News actually aired fewer segments from the convention than CNN and MSNBC. Trump’s former campaign manager, Brad Parscale, tweeted his complaints at Fox News.

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“Can’t believe I have to watch the convention on @CNN,” he wrote. “Unbelievable.”

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wapo: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/senate-intelligence-trump-russia-report/2020/08/18/62a7573e-e093-11ea-b69b-64f7b0477ed4_story.html

no lnx

National Security

Trump’s 2016 campaign chair was a ‘grave counterintelligence threat,’ had repeated contact with Russian intelligence, Senate panel finds

By

Karoun Demirjian and

Ellen Nakashima

August 18, 2020

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President Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman posed a “grave counterintelligence threat” due to his interaction with people close to the Kremlin, according to a bipartisan Senate report released Tuesday that found extensive contacts between key campaign advisers and officials affiliated with Moscow’s government and intelligence services.

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In its report, the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee states that Trump’s then-campaign chair Paul Manafort worked with a Russian intelligence officer “on narratives that sought to undermine evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election,” including the idea that purported Ukrainian election interference was of greater concern.

It found that a Russian attorney who met with Manafort, along with the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., and his son-in-law Jared Kushner at Trump Tower in 2016, had “significant connections” to the Kremlin. The information she offered them was also “part of a broader influence operation targeting the United States that was coordinated, at least in part with elements of the Russian government,” the report stated.

But the panel also concluded that the FBI’s handling of Russian threats to the election was “flawed” and that the bureau gave “unjustified credence” to allegations about Trump’s Russia ties made in a dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, “based on an incomplete understanding of Steele’s past reporting record.”

Document: Read the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election]

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s three-and-a-half year investigation stands as Congress’s only bipartisan examination of Russian interference in the 2016 election. The panel, significantly, agreed that the FBI overestimated Steel’s reliability and that Manafort and other aides exposed the campaign to undue Russian influence. But its leaders were noticeably divided along party lines in how they interpreted the report’s significance, and several committee members — including its acting chairman Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — endorsed dissenting conclusions about Trump’s own culpability.

The partisan divisions are a sign that the panel’s tome likely will not put to rest the political wrangling over how seriously to treat foreign interference in U.S. democracy as the country heads into its most divisive election in modern history.

“After more than three years of investigation by this Committee, we can now say with no doubt, there was no collusion,” a group of six panel Republicans, including Rubio, wrote in a statementinstead accusing the Democratic Party of coordinating with foreign actors to produce Steele’s dossier.

“In 2016, the Democratic Party, using a series of arm’s length transactions, hired a foreign citizen to seek out dirt on a political opponent, provided by foreign sources,” the Republicans wrote, attacking the FBI for “sloppy work and poor judgment.”

Five Democrat senators ­— including Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), the party’s 2020 vice-presidential nominee — asserted the report “unambiguously shows that members of the Trump Campaign cooperated with Russian efforts to get Trump elected.” Referring specifically to their findings on Manafort, the Democrats wrote, “This is what collusion looks like.”

The intelligence committee’s vice chairman, Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), who did not sign onto the Democrats’ dissenting views, noted “a breathtaking level of contacts between Trump officials and Russian government operatives that is a very real counterintelligence threat to our elections,” and he encouraged “all Americans to carefully review the documented evidence of the unprecedented and massive intervention campaign waged on behalf of then-candidate Donald Trump by Russians and their operatives and to reach their own independent conclusions.”

The committee’s past chairman Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who oversaw the bulk of the investigation and also steered clear of the GOP’s dissent, struck a position in the middle.

“One of the Committee’s most important — and overlooked — findings is that much of Russia’s activities weren’t related to producing a specific electoral outcome, but attempted to undermine our faith in the democratic process itself,” he said in a statement. “Their aim is to sow chaos, discord, and distrust. Their efforts are not limited to elections. The threat is ongoing.”

Senate panel told Justice Dept. of suspicions over Trump family members’ Russia testimony

Burr and Warner launched the committee’s probe before Trump’s inauguration in January 2017 and sustained the bipartisan investigation over the following three and a half years, even as other Congressional investigations into the same matter faltered along partisan lines. Since the Senate Intelligence Committee began its probe, former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III also released a 448-page report on Russian interference in the 2016 election — and Trump was impeached and acquitted after Democrats accused him of coercing Ukrainian leaders to interfere in the 2020 election.

Though the committee’s probe covers much of the same turf as Mueller’s investigation, it was different in nature. Mueller was running a criminal probe; the Senate committee was conducting an intelligence investigation — a distinction that helps to explain some of nuanced differences between their conclusions.

The Senate panel’s probe, which was mostly driven by the committee’s bipartisan staff, included more than 200 witnesses and considered evidence relating to Russian disinformation, Trump’s personal, business and campaign contacts with Russians and the transition period following the 2016 election.

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At one point, the document all but concludes that Trump aides were duped and manipulated by Russian interests they were too callow to understand.

“Russian officials, intelligence services, and others” acting in concert with the Kremlin “were capable of exploiting the transition team’s shortcomings,” the report concluded. “Based on the available information, it is possible — and even likely — that they did so.”

The report also presents a damning portrait of the Trump campaign’s hasty move in March 2016 to assemble a foreign policy team, asserting that it had recruited inexperienced people without thoroughly vetting them and thus potentially exposed itself to Russian influence.

“Ultimately,” the committee wrote, “the foreign policy team exposed the Trump Campaign to significant counterintelligence vulnerabilities.”

The committee pointed to Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos, who attempted to secure a face-to-face meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin through “highly suspicious” contacts with people close to the Russian government. Ultimately, investigators concluded, Papadopoulos “was not a witting co-optee of the Russian the Russian intelligence services. The panel also found that while Russia seemed to show an interest in campaign adviser Carter Page, investigators “found no indication that Page had useful Campaign information for the Russian intelligence services to extract, nor meaningful influence for them to exploit.”

The committee did find however that Putin personally directed the 2016 hack-and-leak campaign targeting the Democratic Party, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Clinton campaign. The anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks “actively sought and played a key role in the Russian campaign and very likely knew it was assisting a Russian intelligence influence effort,” the report stated, surmising that a Russian military spy agency, known as the GRU, transferred hacked emails to WikiLeaks likely because it offered a more effective platform for publicity than the GRU’s own methods.

Yet investigators could not “reliably determine the extent of authentic, nonpublic knowledge” Trump’s friend Roger Stone had about WikiLeaks’s coming releases and shared with the campaign.

The panel noted that its investigation was hampered by several witnesses’ refusing interviews and to produce documents, citing Fifth Amendment rights that protect against self incrimination. These included Stone, Manafort and Rick Gates, the campaign’s deputy chair at that time. The panel’s request to interview Julian Assange was rebuffed.

The committee also outright accused Blackwater founder and Trump supporter Erik Prince of stonewalling its investigation, saying that it was “hampered by a lack of cooperation” and that his account of a controversial 2017 meeting in the Seychelles alongside a Russian official was “brief and deceptive.”

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The committee previously released other volumes detailing aspects of its inquiry. Those reports focused on U.S. election security, Russia’s use of social media in disinformation campaigns, the Obama administration’s response to the perceived threat in 2016 and the intelligence community’s joint assessment that Russia had interfered in an attempt to tip the scales in Trump’s favor.

Yet the panel’s effort to maintain a bipartisan approach has not saved it from partisan scrutiny. Last year, the panel came under fire from Senate Republicans after issuing a subpoena for Donald Trump Jr. to come in for a second round of testimony.

After his testimony, Trump Jr. was one of several witnesses that the panel referred to the Justice Department for closer scrutiny over discrepancies between their testimony and that of Gates, the ex-deputy campaign chair who was a key witness in Mueller’s probe.

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Earlier this year, Burr stepped aside as panel chairman after coming under scrutiny over stocks he sold in industries hit badly by the coronavirus pandemic. Rubio has been serving as acting chairman in his place.

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https://www.alternet.org/:{2020/08/:(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}:senate-panel-referred-trump-family-members-to-doj-over-suspicions-of-misleading-russia-testimony-report/

wapo

Bipartisan leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee last year notified the Department of Justice that members of President Donald Trump’s family and close circle “might have presented misleading testimony” to the panel during its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, the Washington Post reports.

According to the Post, then-Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) and Vice Chairman Mark R. Warner (D-VA) referred a list of individuals,including Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner to federal prosecutors after their accounts of a pre-election meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya “were contradicted by the president’s former deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates” during former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

In a separate section, the congressional panel said it had reason to believe Steve Bannon, Erik Prince and former campaign co-chair Sam Clovis “had lied to congressional investigators — a potential felony,” the Post reports.

According to the Los Angeles Times, which first reported on the referrals and viewed a copy of the panel’s letter, the committee believes Bannon may have lied about his knowledge of a meeting Prince held in the Seychelles with a Russian official tied to the Kremlin. Per the Post, “Prince had told Mueller’s team that he briefed Bannon on the meeting, which occurred before Trump’s inauguration in early 2017; Bannon denied the conversation took place.”

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/aiming-to-take-down-fox-donald-trump-jr-reportedly-investing-in-far-right-oann/

Investors aligned with Donald Trump Jr. and Republican National Committee (RNC) co-chair Tommy Hicks Jr. have acquired a major stake in One America News Network (OANN), sources familiar with the deal told Vanity Fair.

“Tommy Hicks and Don Jr. have been looking to buy a station for Trump TV,” a person briefed on the negotiations told Vanity Fair.

“This is all about building a Fox competitor. Trump is really aiming to take down Fox,” the person said.

The report is the first to connect the Trump family to the acquisition, discussions of which were first reported in January by the Wall Street Journal.

The Journal reported that Hicks Equity Partners, a firm belonging to the family of Tommy Hicks Jr., the RNC co-chair, was negotiating a $250 million deal with Herring Networks, the parent company of OANN, a low-impact far-right network that offers a home to the likes of Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec and has defended Roy Moore and endorsed Russian propaganda.

Sources told Vanity Fair the deal has stumbled along for months and still hasn’t closed, but that the Trump-affiliated group had reportedly talked Herring down to $200 million. VF said it was also unclear whether Donald Trump Jr. invested Trump money in the deal, or was given equity.

As the buyout talks progressed, President Trump has repeatedly expressed his growing distaste with Fox News — long perceived as the only network he likes, and certainly the only network that consciously slants coverage and analysis in his favor.

Last month Trump accused Fox News of “being on a bad path,” and has asked twice now “what the hell is happening” at the network. He attacked Fox reporters twice last month during White House coronavirus briefings, and has taken several potshots at several of the channel’s shows and personalities, tweeting in January that Fox News was “really pathetic” and “so politically correct,” singling out Chris Wallace’s impeachment coverage.

After it was reported that Fox had fired MAGA-world luminaries Diamond and Silk for hawking ludicrous coronavirus conspiracy theories, Trump tweeted his support for the duo: “But I love Diamond and Silk, and so do millions of people!”

In late April, Trump took to Twitter once again to call for an alt-Fox, pro-himself network:

“The people who are watching @FoxNews, in record numbers (thank you President Trump), are angry,” he wrote. “They want an alternative now. So do I!”

During this same period, Trump often promoted OANN, providing the nascent network — which is viewed with disdain by many reputable journalists — with cover against the White House Correspondents’ Association. Trump even plugged OANN by name in a tweet last month as the alternative he has been asking for.

But this isn’t the first time Trump has appeared to be switching media mistresses. When Fox soothes him, he reciprocates. When they rankle him, he pumps OANN.

OANN, which has roughly one-third of Fox’s reach, with ratings reportedly lower than the Tennis Channel, appears to have no problem serving as the president’s megaphone.

For instance, OANN hired former Trump campaign aide Michael Caputo— the newly-hired spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services who recently disgraced himself with a barrage of racist, pandemic-related tweets — who hosted a special program dedicated to “the Ukraine Hoax.” Late last year a network crew accompanied Rudy Giuliani and personal assistant Christianné Allen on a trip to Ukraine, which resulted in a three-part series that mainlined viewers with apparentRussian disinformation.

Spokespeople for Trump Jr. and Hicks denied involvement in the deal to Vanity Fair.

President Trump, who is in no financial position to acquire Fox News, views OANN as a fallback business opportunity should former Vice President Joe Biden defeat him in November, according to Vanity Fair, which reported the president might look to OANN as a “post-presidential television platform.”

The cash from the buyout will reportedly help OANN increase its production values and campaign to expand its viewership, two elements Trump would demand of any home for a post-White House TV home.

Trump Jr. and Hicks have been wrapped in scandal before. The president’s eldest son and his younger brother Eric were — along with Hicks and Dallas-based investment manager Gentry Beach — co-registrants for a nonprofit called Opening Day, which insinuated itself in Trump’s inauguration. Trump’s sons had to abandon the organization weeks after its inauguration event was announced, amid allegations that they were selling access to their father.

An associate ofGentry Beachdeclined to comment when Salon inquired about his possible involvement in the OANN deal.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/trumps-campaign-chief-has-been-funneling-money-to-don-jrs-girlfriend-and-eric-trumps-wife-report

no lnx

Trump’s campaign chief has been funneling money to Don Jr’s girlfriend and Eric Trump’s wife: report

Written by Alex Henderson March 10, 2020

President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign includes not only Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump, but also, the women two of Trump’s sons have been romantically involved with. And according to the New York Times, the president’s campaign manager has been funneling money to Kimberly Guilfoyle (Trump Jr.’s girlfriend) and Eric Trump’s wife, Lara Trump.

The payments, the Times reported, were made through Parscale Strategy, a private, San Antonio, Texas-based company owned by the president’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale.

HuffPost’s Mary Papenfuss notes that the “family benefits” are “linked to a network of politically connected private companies — operating with the support and help of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner — that have charged roughly $75 million since 2017 to the Trump reelection campaign.”

Guilfoyle is a former Fox News pundit who left that right-wing cable news channel in 2018 and has been dating Trump Jr. for two years. In January, Trump’s campaign announced that Guilfoyle would be leading joint fundraising between Trump’s reelection campaign and the Republican National Committee (RNC).

Long before she dated Trump Jr., Guilfoyle was married to Democrat Gavin Newsom — who was mayor of San Francisco at the time and went on to become governor of California.

According to the Associated Press (AP), Lara Trump was hired as a senior consultant in early 2017 by Giles-Parscale — another company owned by Parscale. In January, Lara Trump mocked former Vice President Joe Biden’s stuttering and said, “Joe, can you get it out? Can you get the words out, Joe?”

Adam Brewster

@adam_brew

The Trump Campaign is in Des Moines with the Women for Trump bus tour. @LaraLeaTrump, Senior Adviser @mercedesschlapp and Nat’l Press Sec @kayleighmcenany are speaking

Joe Biden (Text Join to 30330)

@JoeBiden

I’ve worked my whole life to overcome a stutter. And it’s my great honor to mentor kids who have experienced the same. It’s called empathy. Look it up. https://twitter.com/SarahHuckabee/status/1207863935426322432 …

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pleads ignorance but also gen of meme wars?

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/how-racists-cynically-market-hate-by-hijacking-mainstream-symbolism/

no lnx

How racists cynically market hate by hijacking mainstream symbolism

Written by David Neiwert / Daily Kos January 14, 2020

The gun that Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, showed off on Instagram this week was intended to grab people’s attention: An AR-15 semiautomatic rifle adorned with dubious Christian “Crusader” decorations, sold by a Florida gunmaker who assures buyers that they are “inspired by some of the most fierce warriors who fought in nearly 200 years of epic conflicts known as the Crusades.”

In addition to the pseudo-medieval decorations, the gun (called “The Crusader”) featured a magazine decorated with a caricature image of Hillary Clinton behind bars.

A Trump Jr. spokesperson told The Hill: “The Instagram post was strictly about him using a famous meme to mock Hillary Clinton, as he and many others have done on numerous occasions and will surely do again in the future, so long as it continues triggering humorless liberals.”

However, the gun itself and its decorations were what caught a lot of people’s attention, since the Crusades and medieval mythology are yet another field of mainstream culture that has been appropriated by the racist alt-right in recent years. The way alt-right activists deploy such symbology—ironically, with full awareness of its mainstream meaning, behind which the people wielding them cynically hide by claiming that the people offended or disturbed by their use are simply oversensitive liberals—is similar to the alt-right’s similar appropriation of such mainstream symbols as the “OK” hand signal, or the cartoon Pepe the Frog and its permutations.

As with all these ploys, it’s frequently difficult to discern the user’s motives. Is it an innocent display intended to invoke its established mainstream meaning? Or is it a surreptitious (and cynical) expression of affiliation with racist ideology?

The ensuing confusion has a twin effect: It simultaneously creates chaos within the realm of mainstream discourse, while it provides cover for the spread of that racist ideology and its organizing.

“The adoption of these symbols is meant largely as a way ofsignaling anti-Muslim sentiment in particular, but also this notion that Christianity needs to retake western civilization,” Howard Graves, a senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told CNN.

Trump’s spokesman told CNN there was no connection, saying that “Symbols on firearms depicting various historical warriors are extremely common within the 2nd Amendment community.”

The gunmaker, Rare Breed Firearms, responded angrily: “It’s objectively silly and dishonest for leftwing groups, like the SPLC, to claim that this symbol on our Crusader model has anything to do with hate or an extremist ideology,” said CEO Cole Lelux. “In other words, these people have no idea what they’re talking about and should apologize for their outrageous smears.”

When Rare Breed first began making the gun, it explained the religious connotations of its decorations to the Orlando Sentinel in xenophobic terms: “They believe America and much of the world is threatened by Islamic terrorism and the Crusader is a symbol of shared Christian values and the right to defend themselves, he said. The safety selector that controls the Crusader’s trigger has three settings: Peace, War and God Wills It.”

Trump’s gun featured an etching of a Bible verse as well as the Latin phrase “Deus Vult,” another medieval term meaning “God wills it”—a phrase with an ominous quality, since the alt-right ideologues latching onto Crusader mythology have adopted it as their personal battle cry. It appeared on the streets ofCharlottesville in 2017, and still crops up regularly in far-right demonstrations involving such hate groups as the Proud Boys.

It turned up recently at the scene of the attempted firebombing of a Planned Parenthood women’s health clinic in Newark, Delaware. An 18-year-old man named Samuel Gulick spray-painted “Deus Vult” on an exterior wall before he threw a lit incendiary device into the building, police said.

Police investigators were able to identify Gulick through a combination of video evidence and his social media posts, in which he frequently used “Deus Vult” and ranted against abortion. More broadly,Gulick eagerly participated in alt-right ideology, using a Pepe-esque “Groyper” cartoon as his online avatar and posting viciously anti-Semitic and anti-LGBT sentiments.

One post featured a link to an article about transgender girl, on which he commented: “Hans, get the flamethrower.”

“The Nazis said killing millions of Jews was a national health issue. Democrats are using the same excuse to kill American children,” Gulick wrote in another post. “When will we start shooting? Its about time we kill these genocidal demons.”

His social media posts were filled with references to the Crusaders, as were those of another teenager charged last August in a strikingly similar case. Justin Olsen, an 18-year-old Ohio man, was charged with threatening federal officers for posts fantasizing about the murders of FBI agents after the 1993 tragedy involving the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas. Olsen operated an iFunny page titled “Army of Christ” adorned with images of Christian Crusade knights.

White nationalist fanboys’ love affair with the Crusades dates primarily back to 2011, when Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik published a manifesto titled “2083—A European Declaration of Independence,” adorned with Crusader imagery and demanding a “Second Crusade” in which Muslims would be driven out of European nations—just before setting off a truck bomb in downtown Oslo that killed eight people, and then murdering 69 teenage campers at a socialist youth camp.

At his trial, it emerged that Breivik claimed to be a member of a modern-day group of “Knights Templar,” the 12th-century military order. According to Breivik, an April 2002 meeting of the “Knights” in London featured pseudonyms for the participants such as “Richard the Lionheart” and “Sigurd the Crusader.”

More recently, the Christchurch shooter claimed a similar kind of affiliation in his manifesto, and the weapons he used to murder 51 people in March 2019 were scrawled with references to crusading knights. Fittingly, he also notoriously flashed the “OK” white-power symbol with his hands.

The Crusades have also been adopted by a broad range of alt-right activists, notably at neo-Nazi websites such as The Daily Stormer, where pro-Trump memes featuring Crusade imagery have been common. The debate has even made its way into academia. As Joseph Livingstone explained in The New Republic, all of these reinterpretations are travesties of history—and the internet has played a critical role in producing them.

Hijacking vaguely understood religious belief systems for their own ends is nothing new for the American radical right. In the early 1980s, a number of neo-Nazis—choosing to reject the racist “Christian Identity” movement popular among their ranks at the time, on the grounds that Jesus was Jewish and therefore tainted—instead decided to adopt certain ancient Nordic religions as their “true faith,” most notably the Odinist religion Asatru.

That trend has intensified in recent years, thanks in no small part to the increasing reach of far-right ideologies on the Internet. It’s also spread globally, and racists deploy it as a kind of cynical shield in much the same way as other appropriations from the mainstream.

Asatru recently turned up in news stories about a couple of Army National Guardsmen in Georgia who were given the boot after their activities as neo-Nazis were uncovered. Active in a local chapter of Asatru Folk Assembly, described by the SPLC as “perhaps this country’s largest neo-Völkisch hate group,” the men complained that they were being persecuted for their faith.

Ex-Guardsman Trent East told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he is not a racist—rather, he’s simply interested in his ancestry and worshiping as his forebears did.

“The whole race thing started with me finding Asatru or Odinism or whatever you want to call it and seeing that as a better option than Christianity as a spirituality,” he said. “I’ve just never been a fan of Christianity, and so seeing a faith that was about my ethnic roots was something I could get into a little more.”

However, as the AJC noted, East’s social media profile—much of it deleted after he was exposed—told a very different story. It included “numerous memes and slogans popular among white supremacists, and his contacts include neo-Nazis and other extremists. After his doxxing, East opened an account on VK.com, a Russian social media platform popular among the racist far right.” He also attended a speech by alt-right godfather Richard Spencer in 2017, toting a sign bearing white nationalist slogans.

For white nationalists, disguising the vile bigotry inherent in their ideology is critical to their ongoing project to normalize their belief systems within the mainstream of society—which is why so many of them go to such lengths to deny their involvement or the existence of the innate racism in their movement.

As social media’s wide-open global distribution of ideas has taken hold, the work of camouflaging their beliefs has become increasingly sophisticated—particularly the way it hijacks popular internet behaviors such as trolling and the use of ironic language as both vehicles for ideas as well as means of intimidating and threatening their critics. This is central to the alt-right’s appeal to its targeted core demographic—namely, young white males between the ages of 12 and 30.

Talia Lavin at GQ acutely observes that Donald Trump Jr.’s exercise in indulging this mindset on his Instagram account—intentional, accidental, or otherwise—fits in neatly with the White House’s current push to war in the Middle East, one in which the underlying premise is that “war is holy”: “It’s a Knight Templar with an AR-15; it’s Arabic script as a signal of enmity. That’s the signal Donald Trump Jr. was sending, with his snug Crusader gun-helmet. And it may be ensconced even deeper in the halls of power, with those formally entrusted with our nation’s security under the Trump regime.”

The machinery of hate thus encompasses both the individual nebbishes—hiding in the dark corners of the Internet, ever-fearful about revealing themselves as the face of hate even as they revel in it as trolls—and their willing, if not always conscious, enablers who walk the world’s halls of power, as well as everyone in between. Mainstream observers, particularly those working in media, often feel confused by the resulting crossfire—unsure about the meanings of the wielded symbology, most likely feeling “left out”—and so dismiss the talk as functionally meaningless.

It’s not, particularly for the racist ideologues who organize and spread their hatefulness behind the resulting fog and smoke they throw up for the rest of us. Donald Trump Jr. may not have intended to send an encouraging, approving signal to white nationalists—it’s likely it never crossed his less-than-a-steel-trap mind—but intentions matter little in this arena.

That’s not how things work in the world of white nationalists. Just as with his father, these kinds of signals are received rapturously as proof that the Trumps are on their side, and that their values are shared by people at the very apex of the social ladder: thus, they feel deeply empowered. Any later denials are laughed at and excused as “what he has to do.”

The key to the game, no matter who’s playing, is plausible deniability for everybody involved. The alt-right has mastered its use as a way to market and spread the movement’s hate.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/don-jr-posts-photos-of-his-assault-rifle-bearing-ancient-symbol-of-war-with-islam-now-used-by-white-supremacists-experts/

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/ivanka-trump-and-trump-jr-rank-in-the-top-four-of-a-poll-on-possible-2024-gop-presidential-candidates/

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long a way to launder $? wright gingrich?

https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/9-conservative-groups-caught-stocking-piling-donald-trump-jrs-book-onto-the-best-sellers-list/

no lnx pix

9 conservative groups caught ‘stocking piling’ Donald Trump Jr’s book onto the Best Seller’s list

Written by David Edwards / Raw Story November 28, 2019

Nearly ten conservative groups or officials have been accused of inflating sales of Donald Trump Jr.’s new book by purchasing it in bulk.

The New York Times reported on Thursday that conservative student group Turning Point U.S.A. is “stocking piling” roughly 2,000 copies of Trump’s book “Triggered.”

According to the Times, at least nine organizations or conservative personalities have participated in the bulk purchases.

Earlier in November, the Republican National Committee said that it had raised $200,000 off of $75,000 in book purchases. Citizens United is another group offering the book to its followers.

Turning Point said that it had purchased the book to provide to students ahead of Don Trump Jr.’s appearance at their December summit.

“When an author headlines a Turning Point USA event, we regularly purchase the author’s latest work for the students in our chapters who attend,” a Turning Point spokesperson told the Times. “As one of our most requested speakers, Don is headlining our student-leadership conference in Florida this December, and so we purchased copies for some of the students, chapter leaders and V.I.P.s.”

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and the Texas Republican Party are fundraising off of the book.

“Leader McCarthy shares a close relationship with Donald Trump Jr. and was thrilled to offer ‘Triggered’ to his campaign supporters,” a spokesperson for McCarthy said.

A representative for Trump insisted that the bulk purchases had little impact on the book’s status on the New York Times Best Seller’s list.

“Don is proud of the fact that the demand for ‘Triggered’ has been so high that it has allowed groups like the R.N.C., N.R.S.C. and the N.R.C.C. to net hundreds of thousands of dollars through their marketing of the book,” Trump spokesperson Andy Surabian said.

Nick Confessore

?

@nickconfessore

Replying to @nickconfessore

Breadth of the effort is striking for Trump Jr., a noncandidate who has defended himself a “private citizen.” And underscores cross-pollination between the Trump family’s political ambitions, its business ventures and the party President Trump leads. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/28/us/politics/donald-trump-jr-book.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share …

Nick Confessore

?

@nickconfessore

Here’s a pic I was sent of boxes of “Triggered” sitting in the offices of Turning Point USA, a student group with close Trumpworld ties.

View image

---

post ucla coincidence?

University of Florida student body president facing possible impeachment over use of student fees for Trump Jr speaking event

At the University of Florida, Student Body President Michael Murphy…

==

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-j-trump-jrs-book-goes-viral-after-new-covers-change-title-daddy-please-love-me-1470754

Trump Jr,'s book Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us was changed by TGL to Daddy, Please Love Me: How Everything I Do Is to Try to Earn My Father's Love.

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hachette

Center Street publishes Nonfiction books in such categories as Conservative Political and Military.

:{:{}:

}:

https://www.amazon.com/Triggered-Left-Thrives-Wants-Silence/dp/154608603X

blurb

This is the book that the leftist elites don't want you to read -- Donald Trump, Jr., exposes all the tricks that the left uses to smear conservatives and push them out of the public square, from online "shadow banning" to rampant "political correctness."

In Triggered, Donald Trump, Jr. will expose all the tricks that the left uses to smear conservatives and push them out of the public square, from online "shadow banning" to fake accusations of "hate speech." No topic is spared from political correctness. This is the book that the leftist elites don't want you to read!

Trump, Jr. will write about the importance of fighting back and standing up for what you believe in. From his childhood summers in Communist Czechoslovakia that began his political thought process, to working on construction sites with his father, to the major achievements of President Trump's administration, Donald Trump, Jr. spares no details and delivers a book that focuses on success and perseverance, and proves offense is the best defense.

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About the Author

Donald Trump, Jr. is the eldest son of President Donald J. Trump. He is Executive Vice President at Trump Organization, where he has overseen major construction projects in New York City, Chicago, Las Vegas and numerous countries internationally. During the 2016 presidential election, he became a sought-after speaker on politics, Republican fundraiser, and played a major role in Donald Trump's 2016 campaign. Trump, Jr. is an avid outdoorsman and when he's not on the campaign trail he can be found on streams and in the mountains all over the world. He is also an active and loving father of 5 young children. Donald Jr. holds a Bachelor's degree in Finance and Real Estate from the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania.

Product details

Hardcover: 304 pages

Publisher: Center Street (November 5, 2019)

===

outs wb but sez ok bc pvt citizen

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Clapper: GOP Calls to Reveal Whistleblower Will Have 'Chilling Effect'

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an 1119

no lnx

Watch: Donald Trump Jr booed off stage at UCLA book event — by members of the far right

Written by Tom Boggioni / Raw Story November 11, 2019

An appearance by Donald Trump Jr. at UCLA was abruptly ended on Sunday when the son of President Donald Trump was attempting to promote his book “Triggered.”

According to the LA Times, “Chanting ‘humanity first,” dozens of people protested outside the UCLA hall on Sunday where Donald Trump Jr. was speaking as part of a promotional tour for his new book.”

Inside the hall, protesters chanted “America first,” and then booed after Trump, TPUSA activist Charlie Kirk and Trump girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle refused to take questions.

According to the Guardian, “the appearance backfired when his own supporters, diehard Make America Great Again conservatives, raised their voices most loudly in protest and ended up drowning him out barely 20 minutes into an event scheduled to last two hours.”

“At first, Trump and Guilfoyle tried to ignore the discontent, which originated with a fringe group of America Firsters who believe the Trump administration has been taken captive by a cabal of internationalists, free-traders, and apologists for mass immigration,” The Guardian continued. “When the shouting would not subside, Trump Jr tried – and failed – to argue that taking questions from the floor risked creating soundbites that leftwing social media posters would abuse and distort. Nobody was buying that.”

You can see clips from the event below via Twitter.

The Red Elephants Fan Account

@elephants_red

Turning Point USA announced that they cancelled the Q and A... Everyone booed. What are you afraid @charliekirk11 ??

Embedded video

Brett MacDonald

@TweetBrettMac

Donald Trump Jr. says "we're willing to listen"

Crowd chants: "Q&A! Q&A!"

"We're willing to listen..." just not to Q&As says Don Jr.

Embedded video

@MisterAntiBully

Audience: We want to ask questions

TPUSA: Have sex incel

This will end well.

Embedded video

ZoomerNat

@ZoomerNat

What an airhead femoid, get groyped

Embedded video

The Columbia Bugle ????

@ColumbiaBugle

Glorious, Absolutely Glorious!

America First!!!!!!

Embedded video

hen

@toodamnlitz

Hey @DonaldJTrumpJr @charliekirk11 just wanted you both to know that the protest happening outside your UCLA event rn is peaceful and nonviolent. We’re not radical snowflakes, just a group of passionate folks exercising our first amendment right ?

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an 1119

Nauseating’: CBS slammed for ’embarrassing’ softball interview with Trump Jr

David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement

“CBS This Morning” hosted Donald Trump Jr. Tuesday morning to talk about his new book that attacks the left and many Americans are asking: “Why?"

---

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/don-jr-and-kimberly-guilfoyle-received-50000-for-university-of-florida-speaking-event-at-trump-campaign-officials-request-student-newspaper/

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Don Jr and Kimberly Guilfoyle received $50,000 for University of Florida speaking event at Trump campaign official’s request: Student newspaper

Written by Alex Henderson November 1, 2019

During an October 9, 2006 appearance on Larry King’s show on CNN — ten years before he was elected president of the United States — Donald Trump declared, “I like nepotism.” That is among the most honest things Trump has ever said; he likes nepotism a lot — so much that, according to the student newspaper at the University of Florida, his reelection campaign urged the student body to bring in his son, Donald Trump Jr., for a paid speech given on October 10.

Trump’s fondness for nepotism has been impossible to miss. His daughter, Ivanka Trump, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, are both senior advisers in his administration — and Donald Trump Jr. is a prominent figure on his 2020 reelection campaign. And as affluent as Trump Jr. is, his father’s campaign was happy to help him earn thousands more, according to the University of Florida’s student newspaper, The Alligator.

Trump campaign official Caroline Wren, The Alligator reports, directly e-mailed the University of Florida’s student body president, Michael Murphy, in September and asked him to bring in Donald Trump Jr. to speak along with GOP operative Kimberly Guilfoyle (who previously co-hosted “The Five” on Fox News), and Republican National Committee (RNC) official Tommy Hicks. Although Guilfoyle has been very involved in Republican politics, she was once married to a prominent Democrat: California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

@radleybalko

Student newspaper finds evidence that the Trump campaign arranged for Trump Jr. and Guilfoyle to speak on the UF campus. Which means that Trump Jr. got $50K in mandatory student dues to come campaign for his dad.

https://twitter.com/AdamWeinstein/status/1189746365745770497?s=20 …

Adam Weinstein

?

@AdamWeinstein

“Emails show a Donald Trump re-election campaign official personally asked UF Student Body President Michael Murphy in September to bring Donald Trump Jr. and Kimberly Guilfoyle to campus the following month.”

Get yourself an indy school paper like UF’s https://www.alligator.org/news/emails-released-between-student-body-president-and-donald-trump-campaign/article_7dad41f0-fb7a-11e9-9b4f-3795b8d7df23.html …

@AdamWeinstein

“Emails show a Donald Trump re-election campaign official personally asked UF Student Body President Michael Murphy in September to bring Donald Trump Jr. and Kimberly Guilfoyle to campus the following month.”

Get yourself an indy school paper like UF’s https://www.alligator.org/news/emails-released-between-student-body-president-and-donald-trump-campaign/article_7dad41f0-fb7a-11e9-9b4f-3795b8d7df23.html …

Emails released between Student Body President and Donald Trump campaign official

Donald Trump Jr. and Kimberly Guilfoyle spoke at UF on Oct. 10

alligator.org

Brad Po-sometimes-scum-BOO??

?

@brad_polumbo

I feel like Don Jr. isn't the best guy to make the case against nepotism... https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1189896064486252546 …

The Hill

?

@thehill

"I wish my name was Hunter Biden. I could go abroad, make millions off my father’s presidency. I’d be a really rich guy." http://hill.cm/gndFg4I

53

6:25 AM - Oct 31, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

See Brad Po-sometimes-scum-BOO??'s other Tweets

The $50,000 payment for Trump Jr., Guilfoyle and Hicks (described by The Alligator as a “joint payment”) for the October 10 event was funded by student tuition.

In a September 10 e-mail, according to The Alligator, Wren told Murphy, “We met at my house on the 4th of July. I wanted to follow up with you regarding a speaking engagement at the University of Florida for Donald Trump Jr.” And on September 11, Murphy responded and said he would to “love to hop on a phone call” to discuss bringing Trump Jr., Guilfoyle and Hicks to the campus.

Wren told The Alligator that, in her e-mails to the University of Florida, she used a Trump campaign-related e-mail signature by accident and that she was communicating “via my private e-mail in my personal capacity and mistakenly forgot to remove my Trump Victory signature.”

---

Who Makes Money When a Bunch of Conspiracy Theorists Throw a Party at Trump’s Hotel?

The American Priority Conference at the Trump National Doral Miami last month was filled with pro-Trump conspiracies. The “Trump, Inc.” podcast was there for it.

This month, about a thousand supporters of President Donald Trump gathered at his resort in Florida to discuss a variety of unsupported theories. There were panels on the “Russia Hoax” and “Voter Fraud in the USA.” One speaker endorsed the theory that former President Barack Obama had planned to “turn over” North Africa to al-Qaida.

The American Priority Conference and Festival at the Trump National Doral Miami drew national attention for a video shown that depicted a fake Trump shooting and stabbing members of the media. And as ProPublica and WNYC detailed, speakers also told conference-goers to prepare for “war” and invoked other violent imagery. (The conference organizers said they oppose all political violence.)

Alice Wilder of “Trump, Inc.” was there during it all. (Listen to the episode.) And we explored who profited from the three-day event.

Here is what we know about who got paid.

1. Trump: The President Won’t Say How Much He Made

Neither conference organizers nor the Trump Organization would say how much the festival paid to rent the Donald J. Trump Grand Ballroom and adjacent event rooms over the three days. Disclosures by the Republican National Committee and Republican Governors Association show they each spent about $400,000 for multi-day events at the resort.

Also, many of the thousand attendees stayed at the Trump Doral. Neither the conference organizers nor the Trump Organization would say how many. Those who did stay there paid $199 per night.

2. Donald Trump Jr.: He Won’t Say if He Got Paid, but He Made $50,000 for Speaking the Night Before

Donald J. Trump Jr. was the conference’s headline speaker. During his speech, he alleged that Instagram suppressed the prominence of his profile. “I typed in my handle. Like my full handle, ‘Donald J. Trump Jr.’ I came up on Page 6,” he said. “It’s not an error.” (We searched his name. It’s the first result.)

Trump Jr. did not answer our questions about any pay he received for speaking. The night before, he addressed an audience at the University of Florida with his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle. They were paid $50,000.

...

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/furious-former-white-house-official-blasts-trump-video-of-church-slaughter-mass-shootings-are-not-jokes/

former White House official blasts Trump video of church slaughter: ’Mass shootings are not jokes!’Tom Boggioni / Raw Story

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Furious former White House official blasts Trump video of church slaughter: ’Mass shootings are not jokes!’

Written by Tom Boggioni / Raw Story October 14, 2019

A CNN panel was equally appalled and furious about a video that was shown at the conservative conference held at a hotel owned by Donald Trump that showed the president slaughtering church worshipers who represented CNN, NPR, MSNBC and Black Lives Matter in the “Church of Fake News.”

Speaking with hosts John Avlon and Alisyn Camerota, former President Bill Clinton communications director Joe Lockhart seemed visibly angry that it was shown at a conservative sanctioned event that featured Sarah Sanders and Don Trump Jr. as speakers.

Asked by Avlon, “Has there been anything remotly like this in American political history or something truly new and dangerous?”

“This is something truly new,” Lockhart responded. “We haven’t had the internet for that long of time, if you’re going over the sweep of history. that’s what allows this to be distributed widely. But we’ve had presidents who have denounced the media. We’ve had every president in the history of the country who has at times wanted to denounce them and probably had thoughts in their head about what they’d like to do.”

“But kept them inside their head,” Avlon prompted.

“This isn’t a case where some over-enthusiastic supporter did something,” Lockhart continued. “This is Nixonian in the sense that the campaign was sanctioning dirty tricks like Nixon did. Here the president is not blameless — he has retweeted these people’s memes. He has retweeted memes with things hitting CNN reporters in the head — they’re not funny.”

“What struck me from this video is this all happened in a church. The president — probably the biggest part of his base are churchgoers, evangelicals,” he added. “And they are now making fun of someone coming in and committing vicious murders in a church. I don’t care what the president does, he’s already lost his credibility on this. People who went to church yesterday who are going to wake up this morning and wake up and see the president and his supporters think it’s funny to commit violence in a church. ”

Watch below:

==

Trump Jr. makes #MeToo ‘joke’ at his father’s NC rally

David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/donald-trump-jr-will-seek-the-gop-nomination-in-2024-and-hell-probably-win-republican-strategist

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Donald Trump Jr will seek the GOP nomination in 2024 — and he’ll probably win: Republican strategist

Written by Travis Gettys / Raw Story September 5, 2019

Like it or not, warned Republican strategist Rick Wilson, the president’s eldest son is running for the GOP nomination in 2024.

Donald Trump Jr. has been traveling the country for fundraisers and other events for Republican candidates, and he often appears on “Fox & Friends” to plug his upcoming book, “Triggered,” which signals he’s considering a run in his family’s new business, Wilson wrote in a column for The Daily Beast.

“He is fluent in the language of whining, dickish grievance-mongering, which has replaced modern conservatism,” Wilson wrote. “Whether the GOP wannabe 2024 field knows it or not, it’s DJTJ’s opening shot for the 2024 nomination.”

It’s not implausible that President Donald Trump’s son would run for the White House, and maybe win the GOP nomination, regardless of the outcome of next year’s election.

“For GOP candidates who think they’re going to finesse this one somehow, or blow up Trump Jr. in 2024, may I remind you of the hell of 2016?” Wilson said. “This time, the cult you fear so much will listen to its leader and support the dynasty. Trump’s royal fantasies won’t wait, and no matter how much any other GOP candidate has polished Donald Trump’s knob in the past years, he’ll throw them under the bus for his spawn.”

Wilson said the president’s son might even have a better shot at winning the nomination in five years if Trump loses his re-election bid.

“Every single one of these candidates will spend the year before the election posturing and posing as the sole heir to Donald Trump’s legacy,” Wilson wrote.

“Making the pivot to the general election won’t just be difficult; it will be laughable,” he added. “Imagine trying to make the jump from ‘I would let Donald Trump dry hump my wife in broad daylight if he would tweet something nice about me’ to the era of ‘Trump has passed and I will lead a Republican party as it seeks to bring all Americans together as one to face the great national challenges ahead of us.’”

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/trumps-hardcore-base-giddy-over-don-jrs-trolling-on-the-campaign-trail-like-hes-a-next-generation-model/

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Trump’s hardcore base giddy over Don Jr.’s ‘trolling’ on the campaign trail: ‘Like he’s a next-generation model’

Written by Alex Henderson August 13, 2019

In the Trump family, 37-year-old Ivanka Trump and 41-year-old Donald Trump Jr. have radically different approaches when it comes to promoting right-wing politics: while Ivanka has been trying to position herself as an intellectual conservative and generally avoids the crude, in-your-face approach of her father, her older brother is more than happy to throw red meat to the worst parts of the GOP base — and Marianne Levine, in a report for Politico, describes the ways in which Donald Trump, Jr. has been firing up that base on the campaign trail.

Levine explains that when President Donald Trump is unavailable for a reelection campaign event, the base often considers his son a very good substitute. And when Trump Jr., like his father, engages in “trolling,” hardcore Trumpistas welcome it.

Matt Mackowiak, president of the right-wing consulting firm Potomac Strategy Group, told Politico that Donald Trump Jr. “loves responding — you might want to even say trolling — on a more active basis. Because he’s more current, he can use modern-day tactics, understands how to make a sharp argument, understands how to sort of cheekily criticize someone, sort of demonstrate a clever but cutting approach. In a way, it’s almost like he’s a next-generation model.”

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who was once a vehement critic of President Trump but is now an obsequious sycophant, described Trump Jr. as “very helpful” and told Politico that he “brings a lot of energy” and is “out there fighting for his father and his agenda.”

An anonymous source identified by Levine as “close to Trump Jr.” told Politico that he can be even more in-your-face than his father — which can cause problems at times.

“I think he goes a little bit edgier than his father does, and edgier isn’t always better,” that source told Politico. “It can create a bad news cycle. When his father creates a bad news cycle, it’s by design.”

Much like his father, Trump Jr. is a polarizing figure — and while his presence can excite the base in red states, Levine reports that it could prove detrimental in swing states or blue states.

One such blue state is Maine, where four-term Republican Sen. Susan Collins is considered vulnerable in 2020. When Politico asked Collins if she would welcome Trump Jr.’s help, she replied, “That’s a very premature question because I haven’t made my own decision yet.”

Collins said of Trump Jr.’s participation in his father’s campaign, “I didn’t even know he was playing a role in the 2020 elections.”

---

https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/08/politics/interior-department-arizona-development-bernhardt/index.html

trms)

In the summer of 2017, Arizona developer Mike Ingram's proposed housing and golf course project in the desert was facing a road block because of a decision by the Department of the Interior.

A field supervisor for the US Fish and Wildlife Service had determined that it was "reasonably certain" that threatened and endangered species could be harmed.

But that decision suddenly changed following a secret breakfast meeting at a Montana hunting lodge between Ingram -- a donor to President Donald Trump and co-owner of the Arizona Diamondbacks -- and David Bernhardt, then the Trump administration's deputy Interior secretary.

Following the meeting, which did not appear in Bernhardt's official calendar and has not been previously reported, the field supervisor says he was pressured to reverse his decision, allowing the project to move ahead.

"I felt pressured to reverse my decision ... in simplest terms, I was rolled," Steve Spangle, then a 30-year veteran of the Fish and Wildlife Service, told CNN in an interview. "I made a decision, which was my authority to make in Arizona, and that was overruled by higher-ups in the administration."

The meeting is one of at least 11 interactions Ingram had with top officials at the Interior Department and Environmental Protection Agency during the Trump administration, according to a CNN review of emails and calendars.

Former FWS official Steve Spangle

The meetings and the reversal suggest yet another example of Trump administration officials siding with executives and business leaders in the industries for which they have oversight.

A lawsuit filed by environmental groups earlier this year has put the project on hold once again. The House Committee on Natural Resources is also investigating what happened. Committee Chairman Raul Grijalva has asked Interior for documents and raising "questions about whether a key permit decision at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was inappropriately reversed."

A phone call and a reversal

The Villages at Vigneto is designed as a development of 28,000 homes, golf courses and a resort community planned for the sprawling patch of mesquite scrub expanse just east of Benson, Arizona.

Local officials welcome the development; Benson Mayor Toney King said it's desperately needed to bring jobs back to the area. "We've been fighting really hard to get growth here," King told CNN. "We've had generations of kids that have left and they can't come back. There are no jobs."

Interior declined to answer any of CNN's specific questions for this story, and instead provided a one sentence statement: "U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has reexamined the issue at hand and using the best available science as required under the Endangered Species Act issued the same exact conclusion."

Lanny Davis, a prominent Democratic attorney representing Ingram's El Dorado Holdings, told CNN there is no evidence of any political influence by his client, and any suggestion of influence is "innuendo."

Mayor Toney King, Benson, Arizona

But the environmental concerns surrounding the area go back more than a decade because of its proximity to the San Pedro River and the habitats of endangered and threatened species. The remote desert landscape was initially slated for development in the early 2000s. The Environmental Protection Agency has long been opposed to building on the site, writing in 2005 that it "represented a substantial and unacceptable impact on aquatic resources of national importance," and the EPA stance has not changed since. Opponents of the project also say the aquifer that feeds the river could be impacted.

Despite those environmental concerns, the US Army Corps of Engineers approved a Clean Water Act permit in 2006, but the 2008 recession forced the owners to sell.

Ingram bought the property with his company El Dorado Benson LLC in 2014, renaming the development the "Villages at Vigneto," with the intention of building using the 2006 Army Corps permit.

That permit was suspended, however, in 2016 after six environmental groups sued and demanded an environmental consultation by the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Spangle was the top official in Arizona evaluating development projects and their impact on the environment and endangered species. In October 2016, he wrote a decision about the Villages at Vigneto that "direct and indirect effects to threatened and endangered species... are reasonably certain to occur," referring to the western yellow-billed cuckoo, the southwestern willow flycatcher and northern Mexican gartersnake.

[pix This August, 2013 photo provided by Point Blue Conservation Science shows a yellow-billed cuckoo, which has made the western United States its breeding ground for many years. But the migratory bird, which otherwise lives in Latin America, has seen its population dwindle in the past few decades because its habitats have been marred. NThe U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Thursday, Oct. 2, 2014, announced that the western population of the yellow-billed cuckoo has been listed as a threatened species and will be protected under the Endangered Species Act. The bird resides in 12 western states and in Mexico and Canada, but Arizona has the largest population. (AP Photo/Point Blue Conservation Science, Mark Dettling)

He ordered that a full scale "biological assessment," which can take months and bring additional litigation, was needed before the project could move ahead. He also wrote that the Clean Water Act permit issued earlier by the Army Corps "should not have been issued."

Spangle assumed the project would move ahead with the assessment he ordered, like other projects he had worked on. Then in August 2017, he says, he received an unusual phone call from Peg Romanik, an associate solicitor at the Interior Department.

"[S]he told me that she had gotten a call from a high-level political appointee within the Department of the Interior who informed her that our position out here, in Arizona, was not the position of the administration," Spangle told CNN.

During that call, Spangle said he was strongly pressured to reverse his decision on Vigneto; his reversal would remove a major hurdle for the project and allow it to move forward without the in-depth biological assessment he asked for.

Romanik met with Bernhardt at 8:30 a.m. the same day that she called Spangle, according to Bernhardt's calendar, which does not list what was discussed.

The phone call and reversal were first reported by the Arizona Daily Star, but the name of the solicitor and her meeting with Bernhardt have not been previously reported.

Spangle said it was the first time in his career that he was asked to change an official decision he had made, saying it "wasn't a good feeling, but I felt I had a duty. I work for the administration, I have to do what I'm told, and so I did."

On October 26, 2017, Spangle issued a new decision, reversing his earlier letter, and allowing the project to move ahead without the full biological assessment. He retired four months later.

Romanik did not return a call requesting comment.

Developer's contacts with Trump administration

Ingram is a wealthy and powerful figure in Arizona. El Dorado Holdings is one of the largest private landholders in the southwestern US, with assets exceeding $1 billion. Ingram is also one of the owners of the Arizona Diamondbacks, the state's Major League Baseball team.

CNN has found a trail of contacts between the developer and top government officials, along with political contributions, that raise questions of access and influence.

Ingram co-chaired a "Camouflage and Cufflinks" fundraiser around the time of Trump's inauguration, which offered a private reception with the President, and a hunting trip withDonald Trump Jr, and Eric Trump in exchange for a $500,000 donation. The event was canceled after ethical questions surfaced over buying access to the President and his sons.

An avid hunter, Ingram is a director of the non-profit Safari Club International Foundation, which Bernhardt formerly represented as an attorney, according to Bernhardt's financial disclosure statement.

Ingram was also appointed by then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to the International Wildlife Conservation Council, an official federal group set up to advise on issues related to "citizens traveling to foreign nations to engage in hunting," according to its website.

Several weeks after Spangle received the phone call asking for his reversal, Ingram made a one- time $10,000 donation to the Trump Victory Fund. Since November 2015, Ingram donated $50,900 to political committees supporting Trump. In the same time frame, Ingram donated $6,050 to Democrats.

Since the beginning of the Trump administration, Ingram or his representatives had at least 11 meetings, emails or phone calls with top officials at Interior and EPA, including one meeting with Zinke, two meetings and three emails withthen-EPA Secretary Scott Pruitt, and at least five meetings with Bernhardt, who succeeded Zinke as Interior secretary earlier this year.

Ingram declined CNN's request for an interview, but Davis, El Dorado Holding's attorney, says his client has done nothing wrong.

"The innuendo is, well, he's close to Trump, there must've been political influence," Davis said in an interview, adding, "That's just innuendo. I can't negate that because it's a quote 'feeling.'"

While Davis confirmed to CNN the meetings between Ingram and administration officials, he said there was nothing untoward about them.

Davis points to a recent letter sent by the US and Fish and Wildlife Service to the Army Corps of Engineers, which reiterated that the reversal by Spangle was the correct course of action. The letter also said, "we take the allegations made by Mr. Spangle seriously," and that a re-evaluation was done at the local level without influence from regional or Washington, DC headquarters.

"[T]he local Fish and Wildlife Service... [said] that the likely impact on endangered species is not sufficient to stop this project," Davis said, adding that the facts contradict any suggestion that the federal agency was influenced by Ingram. "If you focus on facts, the facts are that the Army Corps of Engineers made a decision on the facts under the law," Davis added.

The letter, dated June 12, 2019, was given to CNN by Davis just days after CNN requested an interview with Ingram, and was a response to a May 23 request by the Army Corps of Engineers.

CNN sent Interior a detailed list of questions about the Vigneto project asking about the phone call to Spangle, why he was pressured to reverse his decision, why Bernhardt had a secret meeting with Ingram, and whether that led to the pressure on Spangle to reverse his order. CNN also asked to do an interview with Bernhardt. Interior declined to answer those questions.

Environmentalists who oppose the project in Arizona are livid.

"I think it's the most blatant example most people have seen of how people with power and money, connections and influence, have changed how the system is supposed to work, " said Tricia Gerrodette, a local resident and activist. "We're supposed to work under the laws and science. And science was overridden here."

Gerrodette is on the board of the Tucson Audubon Society, one of six environmental groups which filed a joint lawsuit earlier this year demanding the Army Corps complete a full Environmental Impact Statement, and the Corps once again suspended the permit for the Villages at Vigneto development. The case is still pending.

El Dorado Holdings has argued it does not need a permit to begin construction, and it would be willing to change the footprint of the development to avoid federal waters if needed.

But with Spangle's reversal and the Fish and Wildlife Service backing that decision it is expected the corps will lift the suspension on the original 2006 permit. Environmentalists vow they will fight on in the courts, because they believe the project will destroy the underground aquifer.

"The development will ruin this area. It will drain the aquifer and kill it," Gerrodette said.

Clarification: This story has been clarified to reflect that the suspension is expected to be lifted from the original 2006 permit, and updated to include the May 23 request by the Army Corps of Engineers.

CNN's Collette Richards contributed to this report.

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Trump Jr.: Modern Teddy Roosevelt or conservation letdown?

:{:{}:

The president's eldest son was once offered as a direct line to the White House for conservationists, but that may be gone now.

By Michael Doyle and Jennifer Yachnin in Greenwire1:31 PM EDT

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/don-jr-reportedly-accuses-kushner-of-leaking-2016-trump-tower-meeting-as-pair-battle-for-control-in-2020-campaign-really-dislike-each-other/

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Harris, 54, was born in Oakland, California to a father from Jamaica and a mother from India. She spoke of her experience growing up black in the debate, recalling a story about neighbors who wouldn’t let their children play with Harris and her sister because of the color of their skin.

The attacks on Harris’s background started Thursday when Ali Alexander tweeted she is not an “American black.”

“She is half Indian and half Jamaican,” Alexander wrote. “I'm so sick of people robbing American Blacks (like myself) of our history. It's disgusting. Now using it for debate time at #DemDebate2? These are my people not her people. Freaking disgusting.”

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escalator/ reddit?

Here's how a fringe smear targeting E. Jean Carroll reached Donald Trump Jr.

Blog ››› June 26, 2019 6:35 PM EDT ››› ALEX KAPLAN

Sarah Wasko / Media Matters

After author and advice columnist E. Jean Carroll reported that President Donald Trump sexually assaulted her in the 1990s, the president's son, Donald Trump Jr., pushed a conspiracy theory that the claim was "ripped-off a plot" from a 2012 episode of NBC procedural Law & Order. Before being amplified by Trump Jr., the conspiracy theory was spread by a Twitter account associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory and another account whose content has regularly been shared by “seemingly-automated accounts.” It has also been pushed by the Daily Mail's political editor.

On June 21, Carroll wrote in New York magazine’s The Cut that 23 years ago, Trump assaulted her in a department store dressing room. According to Carroll, Trump “lunge[d] at me, pushe[d] me against the wall, hitting my head quite badly, and [put] his mouth against my lips.” She wrote that he then pulled down her tights and assaulted her. Carroll told two close friends at the time, both of whom “confirmed the allegations to New York and to [The New York] Times.”

Even though her friends confirmed that Carroll told them about the incident at the time, social media accounts and message boards have claimed that Carroll “ripped-off a plot” from an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit that dealt with a similar sexual assault against an actor. However, the episode aired in 2012, well over a decade after the incident allegedly occurred.

Here’s how the smear spread from social media to message boards to some right-wing sites and to Donald Trump Jr.:

Twitter user @RickMcCargar:

Twitter user @tksusie:

Twitter user @thebradfordfile (real name John Bradford Williams) also tweeted about the Law & Order episode. The Outline reported last year that Williams’ account has “more than 100,000 followers, a penchant for spreading far-right propaganda, and a curious network of seemingly-automated accounts regularly amplifying the reach of its tweets.” One of Williams’ former coworkers told The Outline that Williams “farms a significant portion of his engagement from direct-message based group chats on Twitter”:

8chan’s "/pol/" amplified @thebradfordfile’s tweet:

Twitter account @Trump454545 posted a clip of the episode in a tweet calling for Carroll to be prosecuted. The account's profile contains a hashtag of the abbreviated slogan for the QAnon conspiracy theory -- “where we go one, we go all” or “WWG1WGA”:

Reddit forum “r/The_Donald” amplified the smearand @thebradfordfile and @Trump454545’s tweets:

Twitchy cited @thebradfordfile to push the claim:

Twitter user @thebradfordfile then dug up this clip from “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.” The detectives are interviewing a man who’s hired to play out women’s rape fantasies, and he mentions one in particular that took place … in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room.

No, for real.

A user on 4chan’s “/pol/” cited the same link that @thebradfordfile tweeted earlier.

YouTube conspiracy theorist and far-right troll Mark Dice tweeted another video of the episode (Donald Trump Jr. liked the tweet):

Model and reality television star Mindy Robinson later tweeted the same video as the account @Trump454545 did:

Multiple videos of the episode were posted on YouTube to push the smear:

The Gateway Pundit published a piece headlined “Fraud Gets Caught! Crackpot Trump Accuser’s Story Likely Stolen from Law and Order Episode of Rape Fantasy in Bergdorf Dressing Room (VIDEO).”The article cited both @thebradfordfile and @Trump454545 to push the claim:

Boston Herald columnist Adriana Cohen quoted tweeted Robinson's post of the video.

Donald Trump Jr. also quote tweeted Robinson’s post of the video to push the smear, writing, “As long as the media gives these nut jobs unfettered air time they will keep coming”:

Multiple other conservative figures also pushed Robinson’s tweet, including right-wing commentator David Wohl, the Daily Mail’s David Martosko, former speechwriter for President George W. Bush Ned Ryun, and RedState:

Additionally, when searching for Carroll’s name on Google (via incognito search), the phrase “e jean carroll law and order” now appears as an automatic search suggestion:

Posted In

Sexual Harassment & Sexual Assault

Network/Outlet

4chan, Reddit, Gateway Pundit, Google, Twitter

Person

Donald Trump Jr., David Wohl, David Martosko

Show/Publication

Twitchy.com, YouTube, RedState

Stories/Interests

Fake News

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AN

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Donald Trump Jr joined an army of dubious social media trolls to target Kamala Harris with a racist smear

written by Travis Gettys / Raw Story June 28, 2019

President Donald Trump sarcastically asked Vladimir Putin not to meddle in the 2020 election — hours after his son helped amplify an attack on Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) that was pushed by suspicious bot accounts.

Shortly after Harris dealt former Vice President Joe Biden a devastating blow by questioning his commitment to racial justice, Donald Trump Jr. retweeted a post questioning the California Democrat’s own racial credentials.The president’s son later deleted his post, but not after an army of sketchy-looking Twitter accounts began pushing the same theme just minutes later.

A lot of suspect accounts are pushing the “Kamala Harris is not Black” narrative tonight. It’s everywhere and it has all the signs of being a coordinated/artificial operation. #DemDebate2 pic.twitter.com/DTeB2qWJnm

— Caroline Orr (@RVAwonk) June 28, 2019

That message was further amplified byKatrina Pierson, the president’s former campaign spokeswoman.

Kamala Harris is going to get a stern talking to after the debate. Can’t play the race card without going all the way…Obama did choose Biden &none one yelled foul! Obama is actually African American – Kamala Harris is not. Who is best to speak for the AA Community? #DemDebate2

— Katrina Pierson (@KatrinaPierson) June 28, 2019

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Kirk, a former contributor to Breitbart News, the online platform of the racist alt-right, is an ally of the Trump administration. He worked for the Trump campaign in 2016 and spoke at the Republican National Convention that year. Kirk has appeared on Fox News alongside members of the Trump family.

Two members of the TPUSA advisory council, investor Gentry Beach and Thomas Hicks, Jr., the son of a Dallas billionaire, worked with Trump’s sons Donald Jr. and Eric to establish a Texas nonprofit to sell access to the president to big donors during inauguration festivities in January. Beach and Hicks, who were both national vice chairmen of the Trump campaign, raised millions of dollars for the campaign. Beach has visited the White House multiple times in 2017.

Beach’s father, Gary, was indicted on five charges of bankruptcy fraud in 2016. Charlie Kirk's father is allegedly Robert W. Kirk, the project architect manager for Trump Tower in New York City.

“We stay totally removed from restricted political activity,” said Kirk. “Instead, we focus on starting chapters, hosting debates on campus, planning training seminars, and hosting national training conferences such as our upcoming one in Palm Beach in December.”

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One day after the midterm elections in which the Republicans lost the House majority, President Trump once again sought to flip the script by firing his longtime nemesis, Attorney General Jeff Sessions. He announced the dismissal in an especially sour press conference, during which he berated all the losing Republicans for failing to tether themselves close enough to him, which he of course insisted sealed their defeat.

This article was originally published at Salon